Page 5 of Grumpy Mountain Man

“Are you kidding?” Hailey put a hand on my arm. “Of course you can. You came all this way to give up now?”

“I live fifteen minutes from here,” I said. “But that’s not the point. You and everybody else are so talented, I have no idea what I’m doing. Did you see my cake?”

She nodded. “It looked great.”

She was being generous. As soon as it was sliced to hand out to the judges, it’d been clear my coverup efforts were a joke. Anyone could see something weird was going on with the cake.

“I follow recipes,” I said. “That’s what I do. I make the same things over and over again, and people compliment them, but I don’t get it like you guys do. I don’t know the science of how to get the exact right moist center without it being too gooey. All the stuff they were talking about this morning. I feel like…”

“An imposter?” Hailey asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“We all feel that way. We’re still learning.”

I shook my head. “It’s not the same.”

“Just come inside and wait for the final decision.”

Somehow, she managed to talk me into it. But five minutes into the first exercise, I was cursing her in my head. She was stationed at an oven across the room, and all my other new friends were spread out too. That meant I was surrounded by strangers, and everyone but me seemed to know exactly what she was doing.

“And…time!” Victoria, the woman serving as the host for this event, announced.

I looked down at the pie in front of me. That had been the exercise—to make a pie with fruit and ingredients we’d grabbed from a selection on the far side of the room. I’d had no idea what to take, so I ended up with blueberries, cinnamon, and chocolate chips—the only ingredients left after the feeding frenzy that happened when we were sent over there. I’d spent half the cooking time trying to figure out how to make it not taste rancid.

I stood at the prep table, hands behind my back as instructed, waiting for the judges to come around. They’d approve or disapprove, and we’d put our concoction into the oven. The taste test would come later.

Once they’d made their rounds, the judges gathered at the front of the room. My heart sank. I knew exactly what was coming next.

“Dakota?” Victoria called out. “Can you step outside?”

All eyes were on me as I headed out of the room, keeping my head high. The host had stepped out, but the judges were walking back to their station—a long table with eight chairs behind it.

None of them looked at me as I pushed my way through the tent flap that the chainsaw guy had followed me through that morning. Where was he now? I could use him reassuring me that every problem had a solution. I’d sure love to know what the solution to this was.

One look at Victoria’s sheepish expression, and I knew what I had to do. “This isn’t for me,” I blurted. “I told my roommate this morning after lunch that I was going to quit. She talked me into coming back in. But I know I can’t cut it, right?”

For a terrifying second, I thought I’d misunderstood what was going on here. Maybe she was planning to tell me I made the best pie ever, and everyone loved cinnamon and chocolate in their blueberry pies.

But then she gave me sad eyes and nodded, and I knew I’d been spot on. “Yeah, baking isn’t for everyone,” she said. “Heck, I can’t even make cookies from packaged dough. If you really want to bake, of course you can learn it, but after trying your cake this morning and seeing what you did this afternoon, the judges aren’t convinced that you belong in this competition.”

I’d tried to keep from hearing those words, but here it came—the rejection I’d faced all my life. Everything I’d tried to do, fromballet class as a kid to auditioning for school plays in middle school, had led to situations like this. I just couldn’t seem to figure out where I fit.

“Can you go get my stuff?” I asked, pointing toward the tent. “I really don’t want to walk back through there.”

“Of course.” She nodded. “Stay right here.”

Once Victoria was gone, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Then I heard something off in the distance. It was a sound similar to the one that had dominated the tent early that morning.

Vroom, vroom, vroom.

I sucked in a breath. My mountain man. He was out there somewhere. I had to find him.

“Thanks,” I told Victoria a couple of minutes later when she handed over the backpack. “I was thinking about exploring the property.” I pointed toward where I’d heard the noise. “Is there a road that leads in that direction?”

Victoria opened her mouth as if to answer, but nothing came out. She turned and looked behind her, then flipped back around to me.

“I don’t think you can get there by car,” she said. “But I don’t know. I’m from Philadelphia.”

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