Bliss. Kathryn Littlewood

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      Whenever he passed her in the halls at school, she found an excuse to stare at her shoes. In fact, the most she’d ever said to him in real life was “Thanks for the doughnut,” but in her brain they had already sped alongside the river on his moped, had made a picnic in the middle of an open field and read poetry out loud and let the long grass tickle their faces, had kissed under a street lamp in the autumn. Maybe today she would cross one of those off her list of things to do in real life with Devin Stetson. Or not. What would he want with a baker?

      Rose turned to go and get dressed.

      “Oh, and another thing!” Purdy cried again. “Take your little brother with you.”

      Rose looked past the mess in the kitchen and through the side door into the yard, where her younger brother Sage Bliss was bouncing with gusto on their giant trampoline, shouting theatrically, still in his pyjamas.

      Rose groaned. Carrying ingredients in the front basket of her bike was hard enough, but dragging Sage from door to door made the whole thing ten times harder.

      1. Borzini’s Nuttery. 1 lb poppy seeds

      Rose and Sage leaned their bikes against the stuccoed storefront of Borzini’s Nuttery and went inside. You really couldn’t miss Borzini’s Nuttery. It was the only store in Calamity Falls shaped like a peanut.

      Sage marched immediately to a barrel of Mr Borzini’s fanciest imported Ethiopian macadamia nuts, shoved his arms into the barrel and tossed dozens of the nuts in the air. Rose stared at her brother as he scrambled like a nervous juggler to catch the macadamias in his mouth before they hit the floor.

      At nine years old, Sage already looked like he belonged onstage at a comedy club. A mess of curly strawberry blond hair exploded from the top of his head, and two freckled, pudgy cheeks took up most of his face. His red eyebrows hovered over his eyes in a look of permanent confusion.

      “Sage, why are you doing that?” said Rose.

      “I saw Ty do it with popcorn, and he caught most of it in his mouth.”

      Ty was their big brother, the eldest Bliss child, and he had one of those faces that made everyone melt. He had wavy red hair and wild grey eyes like a Siberian husky. He was fifteen and played every sport there was to play, and though he wasn’t always the tallest, he was always the handsomest. He was exactly the sort of boy who could toss a handful of popcorn in the air and catch all of it in his mouth. The only thing he couldn’t do was be bothered to help with the bakery. But their parents didn’t seem to mind much. Ty’s face was like a get-out-of-jail-free card that worked better and better with each passing year.

      Mr Borzini, who himself was shaped like a peanut, lumbered out from the back storage room. “Hiya, Rosie!” he said with a grin. Then he saw the macadamia nuts on the floor and his grin disappeared. “Hello, Sage.”

      “We need a pound of poppy seeds,” said Rose with a smile.

      “Prrrronto!” Sage said, rolling the r like an Italian and kissing his fingers. Mr Borzini’s frown melted away and he laughed.

      Mr Borzini smiled at Rose as he handed over the seeds. “You sure have got a funny brother, Rosie!”

      Rose smiled back, wishing that someone thought she was as funny as Sage. She was quietly sarcastic, but that wasn’t the same thing. She wasn’t gorgeous, like Ty. She was too old to be adorable, like Leigh. She was good at baking, which mostly meant that she was meticulous and good at maths. But no one ever smiled at her and said, “Wow! How meticulous and good at maths you are, Rose!”

      And so Rose had come to think of herself as merely ordinary, like a person walking silently in the background of a movie set. Oh well.

      Rose thanked Mr Borzini and loaded the unwieldy Hessian sack into the metal basket on the front of her bike. Then she dragged her brother outside, and the two of them took off.

      “I don’t understand why we have to go and get all this stuff,” Sage grumbled as they worked their way up a hill. “If Leigh spilled it, then she should have to go and get it.”

      “Sage. She’s three.”

      “I don’t understand why we have to work in the stupid bakery anyway. If our parents can’t run the bakery by themselves, then they shouldn’t have started one in the first place.”

      “You know they have to bake – it’s in their blood,” Rose replied, taking a breath. “Plus, this town would collapse without them. Everyone needs our cakes and pies and muffins, just to keep going. We are running a public service.”

      As much as she rolled her eyes, Rose secretly loved to help. She loved the way her mother sighed with relief whenever Rose returned with all the right ingredients, loved the way her father hugged her after she’d made a shortbread dough just crumbly enough, loved the way the townspeople hummed with happiness after taking the first warm, flaky bite of a chocolate croissant. And she loved how the mixture of ingredients – some normal, some not so normal – not only made people happy, but sometimes did much more than that.

      “Well, I want a copy of the Calamity Falls child-labour codes because I’m pretty sure what they do to us is illegal.”

      Rose slowed and clamped her nose as Sage rode past. “So is the way you smell.”

      Sage gasped. “I do not smell!” he said, but then lifted his arms in the air to double-check. “OK, maybe a little bit!”

      2. Florence the Florist. A dozen poppies

      Rose and Sage found Florence the florist asleep in a comfy chair in a corner. Everyone speculated about her exact age, but the consensus in Calamity Falls was that she couldn’t be younger than ninety.

      Her store looked more like a living room than a floral shop – yellow sunlight splashed through the shutters on to a little sofa, and a fat tabby cat lay splayed out near a dusty fireplace. A collection of vases near the window were filled with every conceivable kind of flower, and a dozen baskets hung from the ceiling with leafy green vines spilling out of them.

      Rose brushed a curtain of ivy away from her face and cleared her throat.

      Florence slowly opened her eyes. “Who is that?”

      “It’s Rosemary Bliss,” Rose said.

      “Oh, I see.” Florence grumbled as if she were annoyed at the prospect of having a customer. “What… can… I… get for you?” she asked, rising and panting as she shuffled towards the vases below the window.

      “A dozen poppies, please,” Rose said.

      Florence groaned as she bent to collect the papery red flowers. She perked up, though, as she looked over at Sage. “Is that you, Ty? You’re looking… shorter.”

      Sage laughed, flattered to be mistaken for his older brother. “Oh no,” he said. “I’m Sage. Everyone says we look a lot alike.”

      Florence grumbled for the second time. “I’ll sure miss seeing that heartthrob Ty around when he goes off to college.”

      Everyone always wondered what her dashingly handsome СКАЧАТЬ