“On the weekend?” Lisa asked, sounding incredulous. “Phyllis is a party girl. Herb told me that, even back in high school, she’d stay up late and barely make it to school on time the next morning. Their first class was history, and Phyllis slept through it almost every day. Herb had to give her his notes or she would have flunked.”

“Herb’s right,” Hannah conceded. “I sat right across from her and she fell asleep almost every morning. As a matter of fact, she asked me to poke her if she dropped her pen.”

They sat in silence for a moment, and then Lisa gave a little shrug. “I can’t help but wonder if Herb picked Phyllis up at her place and they went somewhere together. I shouldn’t be thinking like that, but maybe Mayor Bascomb isn’t the only married man Phyllis has set out to seduce.”

RED VELVET WHIPPERSNAPPER COOKIES

DO NOT preheat your oven quite yet—this cookie dough needs to chill before baking.

1 box (approximately 18 ounces) red velvet cake mix, the kind that makes a 9-inch by 13-inch cake (I used Duncan Hines)

1 large egg, beaten (just whip it up in a glass with a fork)

2 cups of Original Cool Whip, thawed (measure
this—a tub of Cool Whip contains a little over 3 cups and that’s too much!)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup semi-sweet MINI chocolate chips (I used Nestle)

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½ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (you don’t have to sift it unless it’s got big lumps)
small jar of red maraschino cherries, cut in half ver- tically and without stems

Pour HALF of the dry cake mix into a large bowl.

Use a smaller bowl to mix the two cups of Cool Whip with the beaten egg and the vanilla extract. Stir gently with a rubber spatula until everything is combined.

Add the Cool Whip mixture to the cake mix in the large bowl. STIR VERY CAREFULLY with a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula. Stir only until everything is combined. You don’t want to stir all the air from the Cool Whip.

Sprinkle the rest of the cake mix on top and gently fold it in with the rubber spatula. Again, keep as much air in the batter as possible. Air is what will make your cookies soft and have that melt-in-your-mouth quality.

Sprinkle the cup of semi-sweet mini chips on top and gently fold the chips into the airy cookie mixture. Cover the bowl and chill this mixture for at least one hour in the refrigerator. It’s a little too sticky to form into balls without chilling it first.

Hannah’s 1st Note: Andrea sometimes mixes whippersnapper dough up before she goes to bed on Friday night and bakes her cookies with Tracey in the morning.