“Nice tattoo,” I said.

“Mom did it for me,” she said, admiring the NEVER GIVE UP on her bicep. “When I get mine for real, it’s going to be purple bubble letters.”

“You’re getting a tattoo?”

“Mommy said, ‘We’ll see.’”

“Do you know how you get a tattoo? It’s like, really, really painful. They put the ink into your skin with needles.”

“Nah-unh.”

“Yuh-huh. How do think they get it on so it doesn’t come off?”

“I don’t care.” She stood up on the couch and began to jump. “We’re tough.”

“We?”

“Me.” Bounce. “And Larissa. She’s getting one too.”

“If you say so.” Last time Zoe got blood taken, both my parents had to hold her down while she screamed, “Child abuse!”

“Shhhhh!” Zoe landed on her butt on the couch, her eyes glued to the TV. A boy’s face, bottom lip trembling, filled the screen. “Bet you a dollar Jackson cries.”

“Zo, you scare me sometimes.”

“It’s just TV.”

“You know these are real kids, right?”

Zoe shrugged.

“I thought we were rooting for Jackson.” I’d watched Jackson win One Ingredient Masterpiece with this amazing chickpea popcorn creation, but I’d missed the last two episodes.

“We’re for Lily now. She can chop three onions in seventy-two seconds. She won Knife Skills Showdown and Blind Cooking Challenge. Plus she’s a ridmick gymnast.”

“A what?”

She waved her arms around. “With the ribbons, remember?”

“Oh, right.”

The Olympics is an exception to the nothing-but-cooking-shows rule—don’t ask, it doesn’t make sense—and somehow whenever we turned it on last summer, rhythmic gymnastics was all we could find.

Did you know there are individual and team events in rhythmic gymnastics?

Zoe and I watched as Jackson mashed his lips together to stop them quivering. I should have taken Zoe’s bet. Jackson looked like he was going to hold it together, which couldn’t be easy with Chef JJ lasering him with her neon-blue eyes. Chef JJ must wear colored contacts. That, or she’s an alien.

Next to her, Dieter, co-host of Can You Cut It? bent over to study the steak Jackson had made.

Dieter Koons, food critic and restaurant owner, wears three-piece suits in different shades of green and glasses that look like the ones they give out free at 3D movies. I’m pretty sure he’s only on the show because they need someone to talk while Chef JJ tastes, chews, and thinks, which would be an okay amount of quiet time in real life but not on national television.

Chef JJ scratched the stubble of her shaved head so hard, her microphone picked up the scritch scritch. She looked as disappointed as Zoe that Jackson wasn’t bawling.

Mom actually worked with JJ Jordan right out of cooking school—that’s why we started watching the show in the first place—and she says Chef JJ was making people cry even back then.

“What. Color. Is. That?” Chef JJ stabbed a slice of meat with a gleaming steak knife.

“Pink?” Jackson’s voice caught, breaking the word in two.