Mia in the Mix (Volume 2) (Cupcake Diaries, Band 2) - Hardcover

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From cupcakes to ice cream and donuts! When she’s not daydreaming about yummy snacks, Coco Simon edits children’s books and has written close to one hundred books for children, tweens, and young adults, which is a lot less than the number of cupcakes, ice cream cones, and donuts she’s eaten. She is the author of the Cupcake Diaries, Cupcake Diaries: The New Batch, the Sprinkle Sundays, and the Donut Dreams series. Her newest series is Mia in the Middle.

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Mia in the Mix

CHAPTER 1

An Interesting Remark

My name is Mia Vélaz-Cruz, and I hate Mondays.

I know, everybody says that, right? But I think I have some very compelling reasons for hating Mondays.

For example, every other weekend I go to Manhattan to see my dad. My parents are divorced, and my mom and I moved out to a town in the suburbs, an hour outside the city. I really like living with my mom, but I miss my dad a lot. I miss Manhattan, too, and all of my friends there. On the weekends I visit my dad, he drives me back to my mom’s house late on Sunday nights. So it’s weird when I wake up on Monday and I realize I’m not in New York anymore. Every two weeks I wake up all confused, which is not a good way to start a Monday.

Another reason I don’t like Mondays is that it’s the first day of the school week. That means five days of school until I get a day off. Five days of Mrs. Moore’s hard math quizzes. And I have to wait all the way till the end of the week for Cupcake Friday. That’s the day that either I or one of my friends brings in cupcakes to eat at lunch. That’s how we formed the Cupcake Club. But I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.

Lately I’ve been looking over a bunch of journal entries, and I’ve realized that when annoying things happen, they usually happen on a Monday. Back in May, my mom told me on a Monday night that we were moving out of New York. When I ruined my new suede boots because of a sudden rainstorm, it was on a Monday. And the last time I lost my cell phone, it was Monday. And when did I find it? Friday, of course. Because Friday is an awesome day.

Then there was that bad Monday I had a few weeks ago. It should have been a good Monday. A great Monday, even, because that was my first day back at school after the Cupcake Club won the contest.

Remember when I mentioned Cupcake Club? I’m in the club with my friends Katie, Alexis, and Emma. It started because we all eat lunch together, and on the first day of school Katie brought in this amazing peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcake that her mom made. Katie is a fabulous cupcake baker too, and she and her mom taught us all how to make them, so we decided to form our own club and make them together. Fun, right?

A little while after we formed the club, Principal LaCosta announced there was going to be a contest the day of the first school dance. There would be a big fund-raising fair in the school parking lot, and the group that raised the most funds would win a prize at the dance.

We hadn’t really planned on participating in the fund-raiser, but then this other group in our class, the Popular Girls Club, kept telling everyone they were going to win. The leader of the group, Sydney, bragged that they had some “top-secret” idea that was going to blow everyone away. It’s not like we’re rivals or anything, but once we heard that, we decided to enter the contest too. Our idea was to sell cupcakes decorated with the school colors (that part was my idea).

The PGC’s big secret ended up being a makeover booth, which would have been a cool idea except they weren’t very good at doing makeovers. In fact, they were terrible at it. But we were very good at baking cupcakes. We sold two hundred cupcakes and won the contest. At the dance that night, Principal LaCosta gave us our prizes: four Park Street Middle School sweatshirts.

I know it’s not a huge deal or anything, but it felt really good to win. Back at my old school, things were really competitive. Just about every kid took singing lessons or art lessons or violin lessons or French lessons. Everyone was good at something. It was hard to stand out there, and I never won a prize before. I was really happy that we won. It made me think maybe it wasn’t bad that we moved out here.

Just before my mom picked me up the night of our big win, Alexis had an idea.

“We should all wear our sweatshirts to school on Monday,” she said.

“Isn’t that kind of like bragging?” Emma asked.

“We should do it,” Katie said. “All the football guys wear their jerseys when they win a game. We won. We should be proud.”

“Yes, definitely,” I agreed. I mean, Katie was right. We should be proud. Making two hundred cupcakes is a lot of work!

Except for one problem. I don’t do sweatshirts. I’m sorry, but the last time I wore one I was five, and it made me look like a steamed dumpling. They are all lumpy and the sleeves are always too long.

Even though I wanted to show how proud I was of winning, I also knew there was no way I could wear that sweatshirt on Monday. I really care about what I wear, probably because my mom used to work for a big fashion magazine. So fashion is in my blood. But I also think clothes are a fun way to express yourself. You can seriously tell a lot about a person by what they choose to wear, like their mood for instance. And so to me a sweatshirt just says “I’m in the mood to sweat!”

I told Mom about my sweatshirt issue on the drive home.

“Mia, I’m surprised by you,” she said. “You’re great at transforming your old clothes into new and amazing creations. Think of your old school uniform. You made that look great and like you every day. If you had to wear a sweatshirt, I’d bet you could come up with something really cool and great.”

Mom was right, to be honest, and I was a little surprised I hadn’t thought of it first. Our old school uniform was terrible: ugly plaid skirts with plain white, itchy tops. But you could wear a sweater or a jacket and any shoes, so you could get pretty creative with it and not look gross on a daily basis. That’s one of the good things about my new school—you can wear whatever you want. Inspired, I sat at my sewing table the next day and cut up the sweatshirt. I turned it into a cool hobo bag, the kind with a big pouch and a long strap. I added a few cool studs to the strap and around the school logo to funk it up a little. I was really proud of how it looked.

On Monday morning I picked out an outfit to go with the bag: a denim skirt, a blue knit shirt with a brown leather belt around the waist, and a dark-gray-and-white-striped-blazer. I rolled up the sleeves of the blazer, then put the bag over my shoulder and checked out my reflection in the long mirror attached to my closet.

Too much blue, I decided. I changed the blue shirt to a white one, then changed the belt to a braided silver belt and checked again.

Better, I thought. I pulled my long black hair back into a ponytail. Maybe a headband . . . or maybe braid it to the side . . .

“Mia! You’ll be late for your bus!” Mom called from downstairs.

I sighed. I’m almost always late for the bus, no matter how early I wake up. I decided to leave my hair down and hurried downstairs.

Taking a bus to school is something I still need to get used to. When I went to my school in New York, I took the subway. A lot of people don’t like the subway because of how crowded it is, but I love it. I like to study the people and see what they’re wearing. Everyone has their own distinct style and things that they’re into. And there are all kinds of people on a subway—old people, moms with little kids, kids going to school like me,...