20
For 3B, the weekend before the performance of Banana Pants was terrible. Norbert tried to make his script shorter but cried every time he erased a word. He loved them all too much! Hillary found that she could only add things to her Things to Do List, and Felix glued so much wood together that he accidentally barricaded himself in his room. Donut tried to book a trip out of the country, but his mom kept stopping him and making him practice his (zillions of) lines. Desdemona broke her grandmother’s favorite lamp trying to learn Fletcher’s still-impossible dance routines.
Since Felix’s sets were too big for anyone to see her props, Miranda moped around the castle looking for something to do. She avoided the East Library with the beautiful typewriter, but even in the fun rooms (indoor trampoline! rope swings!), she was bored and grumpy. Eventually, she found herself in the kitchen, where Blake was frosting tiny cupcakes.
“Blake? What are you doing down here?” Miranda was surprised. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Blake anywhere but in the car.
Blake didn’t look up. “I could ask the same of you.”
“I’m . . . I don’t know.”
“Oh. Well, as you can see, I’m frosting tiny cupcakes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t just drive, you know. I wanted to do something different today. Something challenging.”
“Is Chef Blue driving?” Miranda asked curiously.
Blake shook his head. “Absolutely not! He doesn’t have a license.”
“Oh.”
“Are you all right?” Blake asked. “You seem . . .” He looked up from the tiny cupcake he was frosting.
“I’m fine,” Miranda said. And then she promptly burst into tears.
After she stopped crying, Miranda told Blake everything about Maude’s causes and her love cause and Banana Pants, and how the beautiful typewriter in the East Library had made her realize she could write secret love letters.
“Secret love letters?” Blake asked.
“I wrote two letters. One to Miss Kinde and one to Walt. They were about watching Banana Pants together and eating soup.”
Blake nodded.
“They both like soup and theater. There could have been a cast party at Maude’s after the play. I thought if Maude could see how happy Miss Kinde and Walt were, she’d realize I was right about my love cause.”
Blake nodded again.
“Remember the early morning when you drove me to Maude’s?”
“I do.”
“I was putting the letter in Maude’s mailbox.”
Blake nodded a third time and handed Miranda a tiny cupcake, which she began to frost, even though she didn’t like cupcakes or frosting.
Blake’s tiny cupcakes were lovely shades of green and blue, but Miranda’s cupcake turned out yellow—banana yellow—which made her think about the play and that early morning two weeks ago, before she’d even heard of a creative endeavor. Suddenly, Miranda remembered Maude saying, “Don’t get my dad into any love cause or anything. Okay?”
And she had said okay! She’d agreed! But she wrote those letters anyway!
The princess made a dreadful noise.
Blake looked up.
“Maude asked me not to do something and I did it anyway,” Miranda told him.
Blake looked at Miranda. “It might be wonderful if Walt and Miss Kinde ate soup at a cast party. I think the world would be a better place if more people came together to eat soup.”
Miranda’s eyes grew wide. Blake understood! He believed love was a cause! She wasn’t wrong!
“But,” Blake said, “Maude told you not to get involved and you did it anyway. You went against her wishes for your own reasons. That’s wrong, no matter how good your intentions were.”
Miranda blinked back hot tears. “I wish I’d never found that stupid beautiful typewriter! Then I never would’ve written those stupid secret love letters!”
Blake looked at Miranda thoughtfully before he said, “But typewriters don’t write secret love letters. People write secret love letters.”
“What do I do now?” Miranda asked.
“Apologize,” Blake said matter-of-factly.
“Apologize?” Miranda said the word like she’d never heard it before. “How?”
Blake smiled as he frosted his last tiny cupcake. “If you can figure out what to say in two secret love letters,” he said, “I’m certain you can figure out how to say you’re sorry.”
