“Let me break it down,” Jim said. “People eat food. People want good food. We have good food. People come here to eat and buy food. We get money. Some people like it here so much, they move here. Petersville survives. The end.”

Now I got it.

Jim was going to bring people to town on the promise of doughnuts I didn’t have, the doughnuts I couldn’t make enough of, for the people who were coming now.

Going back to “plain old Tris” was one thing. Becoming the kid who let Petersville go extinct was another. Our doughnut supply problem had just gone from serious to epic.

Chapter 7

Jim spent the rest of the meeting explaining his “Main Street Makeover” plan.

Step one: give Main Street a facelift. We were all supposed to sign up at the library to help clean out, repair, and paint all the storefronts.

Step two: open new stores. Jim was holding a contest for the best new shop ideas. The winners would get to rent the empty buildings for a dollar a month.

The meeting ended when a fight broke out between two women who both wanted to start a quilting shop. At least a quilting store sold stuff people might actually buy. Mr. Jennings wanted to open a shop that would sell the old animal bones he’d collected on his property over the years, some of which he’d made into lamps.

The second we got into the car, Jeanine started blabbing about how Jim’s plan was never going to work if we didn’t get the word out about Petersville. She thought the Destination Eating article on The Doughnut Stop would help, but it wouldn’t be enough. “We need something huge. Like, TV commercial huge.”

“Commercials are really expensive,” Dad said.

“I know. That’s why I said ‘like a TV commercial.’” Jeanine rolled her eyes.

Zoe tugged on Jeanine’s sweatshirt. “When I’m old enough, I’m going on Can You Cut It?”

Jeanine was suddenly bouncing up and down. “That’s it! It’s perfect!”

“I know!” Zoe said, bouncing too.

“Not you. Tris.”

I laughed. “Forget it, Jeanine.”

“See, he doesn’t even want to go,” Zoe said.

“That show was like, made for you. How can you not even want to try?”

“Because I have The Doughnut Stop.”

That was true, but it wasn’t the only reason. It wasn’t why I didn’t even need to think about it. It wasn’t why I’d never thought about sending an audition tape to Can You Cut It? It wasn’t the cooking. It was all the other stuff, the competing with everyone watching. I’d competed before in basketball and soccer, but always on a team. This was all on your own. This was like having to do a math problem in your head in front of the whole class, only instead of a whole class, it would be the whole television-watching world.

“Think about it,” Jeanine said. “You could talk all about The Doughnut Stop and Petersville. Like that kid, what was his name?”