I cut a piece of toast and ate it. All I tasted was ash. No amount of maple syrup would cover it up, but sweet, sticky ash had to be better than flaky, dry ash. I reached for the bottle and poured.

“Oh, and don’t forget to visualize success,” Jeanine added. “That’s key. You have to picture yourself attaining your goal. Believe and achieve.”

“Did you get that from Yoda? ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try,’” I said in my best Yoda voice.

Jeanine rolled her eyes. “Think about it. How can you do something if don’t believe you can do it?”

I looked at my plate and tried to see Chef JJ handing me my Can You Cut It? apron in the pool of syrup.

“Don’t just look at it. Eat it! We gotta go.” Jeanine was coming to the city because she’d arranged for her friend, Kevin, to meet us for dinner after the callback.

Zoe had wanted to come too, but the last time we’d driven to Manhattan, she’d filled three vomit buckets, and nobody wanted to relive that, not even for dinner at China Palace.

Dad seemed perfectly happy to stay home with his face glued to his laptop. People had really flipped for his newspaper, especially people whose names showed up in it. I thought the newspaper was okay, but I didn’t see why he couldn’t do something else too, something more useful for the town. I didn’t care how amazing a newspaper might be, it couldn’t keep a place from disappearing. Besides, how much time could he spend reporting news in Petersville anyway? It wasn’t as if chickens lay eggs with four yolks every day.

• • •

By 8:15 a.m., we were already crossing the bridge from the Bronx into Manhattan. Jeanine hadn’t stopped talking the whole way. She had some idea about making Petersville into a colonial living history museum with costumes and theme food and games.

“I don’t care, Jeanine. I’m not putting mutton on the menu,” Mom shouted over the air whooshing through the station wagon. The air-conditioning was broken, so we’d rolled down all the windows, which meant we’d been yelling at each other for the last two hours.

“But mutton was what they would have served in 1627,” Jeanine shot back.

“Jeanine, I told you,” my mother shouted at the rearview mirror, “The Station House could do some Colonial-themed dishes, but we’re not serving mutton.”

“And I’m not changing The Doughnut Stop to The Olycakes Stop.” According to Jeanine, that’s what the Dutch colonists called doughnuts. “Hey, Mom, isn’t mutton just lamb?” I was hoping if I could get Mom to do what Jeanine wanted, she’d stop hassling me.

“It’s old lamb,” Mom said. “Old and chewy and has a flavor that kind of screams, ‘flesh.’”

“Yum.” We came around a bend and stopped in a line of cars that stretched as far down the West Side Highway as I could see. “Do you think maybe we should take the streets?”