Pizza Is the Best Breakfast (5 page)

“I'm making egg salad,” Paige says.

“Sounds yummy,” Grandmom says. “Mandy, are you helping?”

“I hate egg salad,” I answer.

“Well, I bet if you help Paige with this recipe,
you'll get to pick the dish next time. Right, Paige?” Grandmom prompts.

“Right,” Paige answers, but I am absolutely positive that if Grandmom weren't standing next to her, she would never have agreed. “So can you get the eggs, please?” Paige asks me this in her sweetest voice, and I know it is only because Grandmom is listening.

I sigh an enormous breath but pad over to the refrigerator, pull out the carton of eggs, and place it on the counter next to Paige. And I really wish my parents had taken me to the carnival just once in the past three years so that I wouldn't want to go so badly now. Because if I have to spend much more time with Paige, I am pretty sure I am going to throw up egg salad all over the kitchen.

I WAKE UP SUNDAY MORNING
with grumblies in my stomach again, because all we had to eat for dinner was dumb egg salad. I told everybody over and over that I do not like egg salad, and Mom said that if I really wanted to eat something else, I had to cook it myself. But there was no way I was going to cook anything else with bossy Paige around, yammering over my shoulder the whole time. No way! So I went to bed without even eating a pudding cup, which is very unfair.

Paige slept in Timmy's room again, because I told her that she smelled like egg salad. But I am kind of glad she is there now, because I don't like Paige the way I used to. I liked Paige when she had Rainbow Sparkle stuff and she let me try on her click-clack boots and she told me that I was her favorite cousin. This Paige who is visiting now is no fun at all.

I pull my Rainbow Sparkle comforter off of me and stretch down toward my feet, and I smile when I see the purple polish on my toenails. I bounce out of bed and hop up and down on the trampoline mattress that Paige is supposed to be sleeping on. My stomach grumblies get very angry then and let out a big growl, so I decide I better go find them something to eat.

I open my bedroom door as quietly as I can and pad down the stairs, and I do not trip once even though there are no lights on and it's still
dark outside. I cannot risk turning on the hallway lights because I do not want anyone else to wake up yet, especially not Timmy and Paige. I run through the living room and into the kitchen and turn on every light I can find, just like I did yesterday morning. When the whole downstairs is bright, I let out a big gust of air, realizing that I had been holding my breath until I knew there were no ghosts in the house. All of these lights will keep me safe now, I think.

The clock on the microwave reads 5:24. That is super-duper early, even for the twins, and I skip around the counter a few times at the thought of having so much time by myself. I open the refrigerator door, but all I see right in front of me is Paige's egg salad, and there is no way I am eating that for breakfast. I keep the refrigerator open just to have some extra light on in case a ghost comes around, and I pull the kids' cookbook off
of the counter. I flip through the pages looking at the pictures, and then my eyes land on it: pizza. I can make my very own pizza and eat all of the corner bites by myself, and no one can say one word about it! Grandmom definitely should have mentioned this page when she gave us the book.

I place an empty bowl in the middle of the cookbook to keep it open to the pizza page, and I read the list of ingredients:
tortillas, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, broccoli, onions, and mushrooms.

I do not like broccoli, onions, or mushrooms, so I take those off of the list right away. I look around in the refrigerator, peering on all of the shelves and in each of the drawers. There is a package of bright orange cheddar cheese slices in one drawer, but nothing that says “mozzarella.” I place the cheddar cheese on the counter, and I read the list of ingredients again:
tortillas, tomato sauce, pepperoni.

Hmm.

I look all around the refrigerator again, but I do not see any of these things. I place the bag of white bread next to the cheddar cheese, and then I pull the jumbo-size bottle of ketchup out of the refrigerator door. Ketchup is much better than tomato sauce anyway, I think. Because ketchup is best friends with French fries, so it has very good taste in friends.

The only thing missing now is the pepperoni, and I study the picture of the pizza with the small circles of pepperoni slices sprinkling the top. I look in the pantry, and the only round things I see are these salty crackers that Mom sometimes gives us as a snack with the cheddar cheese. This means that the crackers taste good with the cheese—plus, they are round, so they will be a good pepperoni substitute.

I roll up the sleeves of my pajamas and get to
work. But even if I stand all the way on my tippy toes, it is still hard for me to reach everything on the counter. I walk into the toy room and turn the light on, then I pick up one of the chairs from the stupid kiddie table where Mom and Dad like to make me eat with Timmy. I carry it into the kitchen and place it next to the counter, and I step on top of it. Now I am the perfect height.

I undo the twisty tie on the bread bag and place a slice on the counter in front of me. I look back at the recipe:
Spread tomato sauce on top of the tortilla.
I lift the gigantic bottle of ketchup, turn it upside down, and flip open the cap. An enormous stream of ketchup shoots out of the bottle, onto the slice of bread, and onto the counter, too, and I quickly flip the bottle back over and hop off of the chair to get a spoon. I then spread the ketchup all over the slice of bread with the back of the spoon, and I look like a real chef now, I think.

Top with cheese. Assemble pepperoni slices and vegetables.

I make a face at the word “vegetables,” and I pull a slice of cheddar cheese out of the package. It covers most of the bread slice, but not all of it, and cheese is the best part of pizza anyway, so I take another slice out of the package. Then I place four crackers on top of the cheese so that they look like pepperoni.

Bake at 350,
the recipe says, and since I do not know how to turn on the oven without a grown-up, I lift up the corners of my pizza, carry it carefully over to the microwave, open the door, and place it inside. Then I press 3 and 5 on the microwave's number pad, followed by the
ON
button. I watch my pizza start to turn around and around inside, and I lick my lips as my stomach grumblies start to complain again.

While I wait, I decide to make myself another
pizza, because I am very, very hungry. The microwave whirls and hums as I assemble another ketchup-smothered bread slice, topping the whole thing with two slices of cheese again. I perfectly place the crackers into position, lift up the pizza, and begin to step off of the chair to bring it to the microwave.

Pop!

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Hisssssssssss.

POP!

I slip the rest of the way off of the chair and accidentally throw the second pizza over my head. The chair topples onto its side with a crash, and I hit the floor with a thud. The pizza splats back onto the counter, while the popping sound continues from across the kitchen. I start crawling on my hands and knees as fast as I can toward the living room, trying to hide from the ghost
that I am sure has snuck into my house, even though all of the lights are on and everything. My knees scrape against the floor, but I duck down as far as I can and scramble out of the kitchen.
I glance over my shoulder to make sure a ghost isn't following me, and then I slam right into it: the ghost himself.

“Arghhhhhh!” I scream at the top of my lungs, and I try to back away from the ghost, scooting across the floor on my bottom.

“Mandy, Mandy, it's me.” Dad stoops down so his face is next to mine, but he is still hard to see in the darkness of the living room. “What is going on in there?”

“I thought you were a ghost!” I tell him.

“What is that sound in the kitchen?” Dad steps over me to investigate, but my heart is beating so hard that I am sure it is going to have a fight with my stomach grumblies. I hear a beeping sound, and then the whirl of the microwave stops. One last
pop
echoes across the room.

“Mandy, what—how—why—I can't—” Dad stutters, and I see him looking all around the
kitchen. He opens the door of the microwave, and even from the floor, I can see it: my beautiful pizza, exploded. Orange and red cover the entire inside of the microwave, like the ugly finger paintings Timmy makes in preschool.

“I was hungry,” I tell Dad, finally lifting myself onto my feet. “And I wanted pizza. Not dumb egg salad.”

“Does this look like pizza to you?” Dad points in the microwave and then to my second pizza, which is lying upside down on the counter, the crackers broken and the ketchup running down the side like blood. “And how long did you set this for?”

“I pressed three and five,” I answer.

“Thirty-five
minutes
?” he exclaims.

“That's what it said in the cookbook,” I explain. “ ‘Bake at 350,' but I knew I was not allowed to touch the oven, because I am very good at following that rule, so I put it in the microwave instead.”

“It's not even six a.m. yet,” Dad says with a sigh. “How could you possibly have made such a mess before six a.m.? Really, even for you, Mandy, this is a record.” He looks around the kitchen one more time, like he is still a little bit asleep. “Here's what we're going to do: You clean up this whole catastrophe you have going on in here, and if the kitchen looks pristine—even better than when you entered it—by the time everyone else wakes up, I won't have to take away Rainbow Sparkle's TV show this week.”

I slump my shoulders and push my lips together into a pout, but I do not disagree. “Let me know when you're ready for me to examine your work. I'll be waiting on the couch,” Dad says, padding out of the kitchen and into the living room, shutting off one of the kitchen lights on his way. “And why does it look like Grand Central Station in here? You're wasting electricity.” I watch him
walk to the couch, and while his back is turned, I skedaddle to the light switch and flip it back on. Even if it was my pizza and not a ghost popping and hissing at me, you can still never be too careful when it comes to keeping them away.

I walk over to the paper towel holder and begin to unwind a huge glob, but then my stomach growls at me—the grumblies even angrier than they were before. I place the paper towels back on the counter, lift the chair off the ground, step on top of it, and then make myself one more pizza slice, this time with no crackers. Without placing it in the microwave, I take a gigantic bite out of my white bread, cheddar cheese, and ketchup pizza.

And no matter what anyone else says, I know it is the best pizza I have ever had.