As soon as Dad stopped the car, Jeanine jumped out. “How much time do we have before the meeting?”

“We’ll leave in about an hour,” Dad said.

She gave a thumbs-up and took off across the lawn.

“What’s the rush? You’re on break!” Dad called after her. My parents are always trying to get Jeanine to study less and spend more time outside.

“I need to Skype Kevin about the scholarship!” she called back without stopping.

Kevin Metz has been Jeanine’s best friend since they met in Gifted and Talented in kindergarten, and somehow they’re still JeanineandKevin even though we live in Petersville now.

“We’re home!” Dad called, as we came through the door.

“Hi!” Mom shouted from the kitchen.

Dad hung up his jacket and headed for the stairs. “I’m grabbing a quick shower before the meeting!”

“Good, I can smell you from here!”

“Very funny!”

“Shhhhh!” Zoe’s hand waved over the back of the living room couch.

“‘Hello’ to you too,” Dad said as he jogged up the stairs.

“Five! Four! Three! Two! One! AAAAAANNN!” Zoe shouted at the television.

My parents think TV rots your brain unless you’re watching a show that teaches you how to cook something. Basically, they’ll let us watch anything if it has to do with food. I’ve tried telling them that there are plenty of educational channels we could watch, like the History Channel or Discovery, but they said I could read about all that other stuff—which doesn’t really make sense, because I could read a cookbook too. I think they just didn’t want to change the rule. In our house, once a rule is made, my parents stick to it even when it stops making sense—or, in this case, never made sense. I think someone must have told them that to be good parents, you can’t rethink your own rules.

So cooking shows are what you get at my house, and before you knock them, you should know that you can learn some pretty handy tricks from watching those shows. Did you know if you smash a garlic clove with a can, the peel basically pops off?

The thing is, in most cooking shows, there’s no story: no aliens take over the planet, no twins switch places, no kids hack the school computer—people just cook. Unless you’re dying to learn how to make a chocolate soufflé, it gets boring fast. That’s why we started watching Can You Cut It?. It’s a kids’ cooking contest, but unlike regular cooking shows, there are bad guys and heroes, winners and losers. If you’re lucky, you even get to see blood or tears or both.

I dropped my backpack and sat down on the couch next to Zoe. She had on her Chef JJ bald cap. She must have put it on by herself because her orange hair puffed out all around the bottom like a clown collar. “Does this mean bald people don’t scare you anymore?”

“Chef JJ’s not bald. She didn’t lose her hair. She shaved it. It’s different.”