Read Online Edna in the Desert by Maddy Lederman - Free Book Online Page B

almost as hard as the sun’s and displayed a different desert, with a palette of dark greens, browns, and blacks. Night had an even more profound stillness, and Edna let it seep into her as she sat in her chair. There was no chance of falling asleep again.
    She was glad her embarrassing jump off the porch wasn’t real. She’d try to have a better dream about Johnny next time. She’d try not to throw herself at him or imagine he was so far away and totally unattainable. He had said “see you next week,” hadn’t he? Edna thought so, but she couldn’t be completely sure she had heard right. His back had been to her, and he had been walking toward the truck.
    In any case, Edna couldn’t wait an entire week to see Johnny again. So far she’d given 100% of what was required of her; she shouldn’t be held at the cabin like a prisoner. Nothing outlined in the rules of this punishment should conflict with a trip to a store, if Grandma really could drive. Why shouldn’t she and Grandma go out? The plan was to get Grandma to take her to Bishop’s General, even though Grandma had everything she thought she needed brought to her.
    A good way to get her mother to go out was to create a need for baking ingredients. Jill loved doing anything domestic because she could blog about it, so Edna would find recipes for desserts with obscure ingredients and then suggest a shopping trip. On the way, Edna would mention what she really wanted in the first place as if it were an afterthought. If Jill was as distracted as she usually was, Edna could convince her to stop for a phone upgrade or new jeans. It was just so much faster to upgrade a phone than to fight with Edna.
    The major downside of the plot was having to do research and actually make desserts, otherwise it wouldn’t work the next time. And Edna hated being a recurring character in videos on Shimmer, but that part mattered less and less. No one remembered anything about anyone’s videos anymore unless they were famous or the videos had sex in them. The other downside was that Edna was becoming a dessert expert, and Jill was so happy about it. Edna would never be able to tell her mother that it was all an act. Baking had become a permanent part of her personality, and Edna had no idea how to stop it.
    She found a cookbook in Grandma’s pantry. It had sat in the same spot for years, evident from the mark left on the shelf when Edna took it down that evening. She liked the cracking sound that the book’s dried out spine made when she opened it, and she loved the faded paper’s smell.
    Edna had already decided to make her father’s favorite dessert, Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, an esoteric offering that Grandma was unlikely to have all the ingredients for. She was going to give the cake to Johnny eventually, so it had to be something out of this world. Edna knew she could make a good one. She didn’t need a recipe; she’d made it with her mother a hundred times. The recipe was a visual aid in getting her trip to the store for ingredients. Better it was written in a book and not just on her say-so. Edna was confident in her plan to get to Bishop’s. A girl baking a cake was the most natural thing in the world.
    She turned to the recipe for Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. A yellowed newspaper clipping was saved there, from the San Diego Gazette, dated September 16, 1964. The headline read: San Diego Sweetie Takes Top Pineapple Prize . Grandma, practically unrecognizable as a young woman named Mary Miller, had won a blue ribbon for what was described as her “knock-out delicious” Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. The article went on to say that Mrs. Miller was the wife of Lt. Ezekiel Miller, a Marine serving in Vietnam. Mary smiled sweetly behind her creation, the most robust Pineapple Upside-Down Cake that Edna had ever seen. Each pineapple ring was bursting with clusters of cherries and surrounded by flowers of chopped walnuts. The details were shown, but they were grainy in the