“No idea. Walter and I were trying to get in an extra knife skills session.”

The woman on the other side of the counter held up the gun. “So I just put the tip in the hole you made and pull this trigger thing?”

Josh nodded. “Just make sure to do it slowly or you’ll end up covered in cream.”

She did as Josh instructed and giggled as the doughnut inflated. “This is so much fun!”

“It was his idea.” Josh pointed at me.

“FYO, it’s clever,” she said.

“Thanks, um, I think the doughnut’s had enough.” Cream was dribbling out the back end.

“Oh, of course.” She handed Josh the gun and took a bite. “Mmm.”

When she was gone, I sat on a stool behind the counter and leaned my head against the wall. “My whole life, Walter was always so chill. But ask the man to teach you what he knows about slicing and dicing, and it’s like he’s training you for the army. Not kidding, I think I’ve cut over a hundred onions.”

“What’s your best time?”

“Not good enough.” I dropped my head on the counter. “And I don’t understand—why can’t I cut them into even pieces?”

“Because onions are round?”

“Still. The pieces can be about the same size, and I always end up with some tiny and some huge. You should see Walter’s. They’re perfect. And I try to just copy him, but the guy is like a ninja with that knife. Look at this.” I held up my hands. My thumbs and the first two fingers on both hands were covered with Band-Aids.

Josh cringed.

“They look worse than they are. The real problem is that onion juice stings.”

“Onion juice?”

“Yeah, you don’t think of onions as juicy but the fresh ones are, and that juice kills if it gets in a cut.”

Knife technique was my weakest area, but I was definitely getting better. I pretty much had the four basic cuts—the slice, the chop, the back-slice, and the rock-chop—down. The real issue now was speed. My onion chopping time was still slower than anybody who’d ever won Knife Skills Showdown, and I was less than two weeks from competition. I had to get real. There was no way I was winning that challenge. The goal now was just to get fast enough not to finish last and be eliminated.

In addition to knife skills training with Walter, I was doing two other training sessions every day: recipe creation with Mom and dish presentation with Dr. C. When I wasn’t doing those or making doughnuts, I was practicing on my own, making up recipes from scratch, cooking and plating them until I was too tired to stand. I’d spent the night on the couch a few times because I was just too tired to climb up to the attic.

“I’ll take a chocolate FYO,” the next customer said.

“Sure.” I turned to grab the gun from its hook. “Hey, who’s got the cho—Zoe!”