Dad was already there.

“It came!” He waved a magazine out of the station wagon’s open window. “You made the cover!”

What? The Doughnut Stop was on the cover of Destination Eating?

Destination Eating is this fancy food and travel magazine for upstate New York, and I was blown away when they called about doing an article on the doughnut business I started with my friend Josh. But just an article. They never said anything about the cover.

I jogged across the parking lot and took the magazine from my father.

There we were: me and Josh, all glossy, knocking doughnuts together, sitting on the ticket counter in the old train station where we opened The Doughnut Stop.

This was huge. People didn’t even have to read the magazine to learn about us; they’d just have to see it lying around somewhere. Talk about buzz.

“Let me see!” Zoe pulled my hands down. “Why does your face look like that?”

“That’s the way his face always looks,” Jeanine said, peering at the magazine over Zoe.

“You look so clean and shiny,” Zoe said.

“Um, thanks?”

Zoe pulled the magazine lower and sounded out the words under the photo. “‘Meet the to-as-t.’ To-ast?”

“‘Meet the toast of Petersville,’” Jeanine read. “‘Two twelve-year-old boys who opened a doughnut shop in the town’s abandoned train station.’”

“They don’t make toast,” Zoe said.

Jeanine rolled her eyes. “It’s an expression. They mean a toast like when you knock glasses together and say, ‘cheers.’”

“Oh.” Zoe sucked her lower lip. She was clearly still confused.

Dad thumped the side of the car. “Come on, guys. Let’s go.”

We all piled in, me up front, Zoe and Jeanine in back.

I laid the magazine on my knees and then flipped to the article.

There were a couple of photos of me and Josh in the shop selling doughnuts, and then some of me frying them at home. The article took up almost four whole pages.

During the interview, the reporter had asked a bunch of questions about how a banker (Dad) and a chef (Mom) ended up moving their family to a tiny town in upstate New York in the first place, and that’s where the article started: Tris explains that when his father lost his job last fall, his parents decided they wanted a new adventure.

Just so you know, “adventure” was definitely not the word I used. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “adventure” unless I was talking about an amusement park.

They packed up and moved from the big city to tiny Petersville, NY, so his mother, a professional chef, could open the town’s first restaurant. When asked to explain where the idea for a cream doughnut shop came from, Tris points to a sign hanging over the counter that reads, “Yes, we do sell chocolate cream doughnuts!”

“That sign was in the window of the General Store my first day in town, but it turned out that the owner, Winnie, didn’t make the doughnuts anymore, even though everybody said they were…this sounds weird, but people said they were like…life-changing. Now that I tell the story, it sounds kind of bad, but this all started because I just had to have one of those doughnuts. Then I met Josh and we decided to start the business together, and it really is the best thing I’ve ever done. I mean, it’s not easy, but I still love it.”