CHERRY PIE SABOTAGE
Characters:
Janelle Parker, a writer for a prestigious food magazine
Gabriel Lachance, the magazine Editor
Sarah Smalls, writer
Rebekah Lawrence, Janelle’s best friend
Location: Paris, Texas
Janelle was going to write an article about a local bake
off when she encounters one of her old best friends, who had become
famous. Now she has disappeared. Can Janelle find her before the bake-off
starts?
Janelle Parker starts off her day at her magazine
business. She gets a little bit tired of
all the noise and heads home. There she
cools off and thinks about all the wonderful times she has had with her
friends. Then she eats dinner and goes
to bed.
Most of the story is about mundane, day to day activities
until she goes on vacation to the bake-off where she encounters strange
characters such as Jasper Justerpen, who has wild hair and bulging eyes and
seems to think there is something sinister going on at the bake-off.
Then she meets Melissa Wright, a southern bell who has
beautiful red hair and a neck like a swan’s and she is making a wedding cake
for the bake-off. Her entire family is
there including her cousins. She doesn’t
seem suspicious at all.
There are other characters she meets that doesn’t seem to
impress her until she sees her old friend, Carrie Sheldeon, who says something
brisk to her and wanders off. They used
to be really close. Janelle brushes this
aside and turns her attention on her writing because she’s been mingling with
the crowd instead of writing.
Strange things begin to happen. Someone’s crème bruele catches fire. Then a tart winds up missing. Then someone’s barbecue sauce is too spicy
for the judges. Who is doing all these
things?
Janelle decides to spruce up her character and becomes a
detective. She wanders around the
bake-off, looking for clues, and finally deduces someone is after Carrie. Carrie is the most important figure at the
bake-off. She is also secretly one of
the judges. Janelle pulls her aside to
have a heart to heart and realizes the culprit is none-other than the
paparazzi, who sabotaged other people’s cooking so the headlines would make the
front page on the Enquire.
1
“Oh, drat,” Janelle Parker
muttered, shaking her head.
Her paper was fluttering
toward the window. She reached up and
grabbed it.
Janelle Parker drank a sip
of her Diet Pepsi and placed it on the desk.
“Oh, drat!” she complained. She had spilled her pop. She mopped it up with a piece of paper
towel.
She drummed her fingertips on the desk, thinking about
the article she was supposedly supposed to write. She stared out the window. Sighed.
She wasn’t getting anywhere. She
might as well go home.
She rose to her feet, making the swiveling chair swish,
and grabbed her bag. She started to head
for the door.
Her boss, Mr. Lachance,
stopped her in the hallway. “Where are
you going?” he demanded in a gruff voice, even though his mind wasn’t on
her. He was thinking about numbers. And his wife.
And a whole lot of other things, too.
“Home,” she explained, her
voice trembling. She straightened her
shoulders firmly and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lachance, but I can’t think about writing in this
office. It’s where…” she stopped and
swallowed hard. She couldn’t finish the
sentence. She waved goodbye and headed
out the door. He shrugged and returned
to his labors.
She fished her keys out of
her bag and went to her car, a red Porsche.
She hopped into it and drove off.
She thought she looked hot, with blonde, bouncy curls and she had just gotten
a mud bath the day before. She wore a
pretty red dress. She pulled in her
driveway and rushed up the stairs to her apartment, eager to get home. It was a high-scale, one bedroom apartment
that her daddy paid for with his millions, and it had two bedrooms and a
kitchenette. She didn’t like cooking,
but the rent didn’t come with a maid, phooie.
She sighed and kicked off her shoes and sat down on the couch. Her toes ached. It took so much pressure to be pretty and
popular and she didn’t like it at all but she did it because it made her feel
special and important.
She was ecstatic that her next article was going to be on
the front page of Enquire Magazine, that she didn’t know what else to think
about besides that. She thought of
little else that entire day. She was
daydreaming. She couldn’t help it.
Janelle pushed herself off
the couch with her fists and went over to the kitchen. She began to get her dinner together, chicken
and asparagus with a yummy wine sauce.
It was something she had made up a long time ago, back when she was
still a freshman in college. She fried
up the chicken and the asparagus together and poured the sauce over it. Then she put everything on a plate and sat
down to dinner. She sighed. Some people might think she was lonely, but
she wasn’t. She was just stressed. That was it.
Yeah, stress.
She had her precious car
and her tv and her piles of books she wanted to read. She had everything she could ever want,
including a loving family. The bake-off
was going to be amazing. She had read in
her magazine’s newsletter that a well-known celebrity was going to show up and
she wondered who it could be. She felt a
tingle of excitement run along her spine.
She was happy. Sometimes she felt
left out of her friend’s lives, as if they didn’t care about her at all, but
she could always find something to do and wait for them to show up in her life again. She talked to countless people on
facebook.
She dug into her food then
washed off her plate and took a shower and went to bed. She was going to have to drive all the way to
Tulsa to pick up some much needed groceries and maybe browse around for some
books tomorrow.
She loved books.
They were the closest thing she had to friends right now
because everyone was busy.
She hardly ever watched any tv because everything was
boring and once she had been on the local news when she was a child and that
hadn’t been too exciting in the least.
She wanted adventure. She wanted
excitement. She wanted money and lots of
it.
Janelle pulled her covers
up to her chin and stared out the window at the moonlit night. It was very peaceful. Even though Paris, Texas, was a very busy
town, it was peaceful at night, just the way she liked it.
She drowsily went to sleep,
thinking about what she was going to write for her article in the Enquire....
2
Mr. Lachance didn’t speak
to her all afternoon. He finally
cornered her in her office. “What was
that yesterday?” he barked at her, his nostrils flaring. Janelle studied his face. He was a good-looking, older man in his
mid-fifties and had snowy white hair and had a few whiskers coming out of his
nose. Janelle didn’t mind that, though. She wasn’t prejudiced.
“I’m sorry about that,”
she apologized, biting her lip. “I was
just upset about something. The article
and all. I don’t know who I’m going to
meet at the bake-off, and I started to worry about it...” she shook her head
and trailed off.
She was relatively outgoing, but when she met local
celebrities, she was unsure of herself.
Very unsure of herself. She didn’t
know how to deal with all the pressure.
Mr. Lachance patted her
shoulder reassuringly. “I understand,”
he said soothingly. “It’s hard to be
around a lot of people. I hate people
myself. That’s why I became an Editor,
so I won’t have to talk to people. Most
people don’t want to deal with Editors, I’ve found.” He let out a bark of laughter, it was bitter
laughter, she thought, one from a man who had seen too much in his life and was
dealing with a lot of pain.
Janelle tried to hold his sentiment, but she couldn’t. He still didn’t understand how difficult it
was for her to participate in everyday life where people were concerned. Alone, she was fine, but being around other
people was a whole different story. She
nodded instead, hoping he would go away so she could be alone with her thoughts.
“Thank you,” she said
sincerely. “I appreciate it. If you would like, I can get to work
now. I have to do the article on the
wedding cake right now, so...” she gestured to her desk. Maybe he would take the hint and fuck
off. That would be the best thing for
him to do.
He looked startled then
laughed a little. “You were always one
to do your work first instead of chatting,” he told her. “Keep up the good work, Jan. You’re one of the best writers we have here.” With a nod and a wave, he exited her petite little
office that overlooked acres and acres of land.
She was getting hungry now.
Her tomato bisque was waiting in the magazine business’s
kitchen.
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