Chapter 7

Chapter seven, To be truthful, my lunch bag wasn't entirely the answer. It was only half an answer. The contest was starting in less than a minute. Ms. Smiley hurried me over to station number six. "Your ingredients are laid out on the cutting board," she said to me. "There will be two judges. Do the best you can. Just make sure you look busy for the photographers." With that, she disappeared into the big kitchen space and left me staring at the cutting board in front of me. There were a couple of crab legs still inside their shells. I thought I saw them wiggle. There was a jar of little green raisin-type things in juice. I figured those were the capers. And right

第七章，说实话，我的午餐袋并不能完全解决问题。 这只是半个回答。 比赛还有不到一分钟就要开始了。 斯迈利女士赶紧把我送到6号车站。 “你的食材已经放在砧板上了，”她对我说。 “将有两位评委。 尽你所能。只要确保你在摄影师面前看起来很忙就行了。” 说完，她就消失在厨房的大空间里，留下我一个人盯着面前的菜板。 有几条蟹腿还在壳里。 我想我看到他们在扭动。 有一罐果汁里的小绿葡萄干之类的东西。 我以为那是刺山柑。 和右

in the middle of the cutting board were some baseball-size green things that looked like cactuses. They had a whole lot of leaves, and each leaf had a sharp thorn at the end of it. I know this because when I picked one up, it felt like a needle had pricked my finger. "Ow!" I screamed. Judith Ann looked up at me from her station. "That happened to me the first time I picked up an artichoke," she said. "Those things should come with a warning sign." "And a pair of gloves," I added. "There's no way I can make anything out of this. It's dangerous." "You have to cook something," Judith Ann said. "You don't want to look bad in front of the photographers."

在砧板的中间有一些棒球大小的绿色东西，看起来像仙人掌。 它们有很多叶子，每一片叶子的末端都有一根锋利的刺。 我知道这一点，因为当我拿起一个时，感觉就像针扎了我的手指。 “噢!”我尖叫起来。朱迪思·安在她的站台上抬头看着我。 “我第一次拿起洋蓟的时候就发生过这种事，”她说。 “这些东西应该附有警告标志。” “还有一副手套，”我补充说。 “我不可能从中得到任何东西。 是很危险的。”“你得做点什么，”朱迪思·安说。 “你不想在摄影师面前看起来很糟糕。”

"Never fear, Hank is here," I said. "With a plan. Actually, half a plan." I bolted from my station. I grabbed my lunch bag from Ashley. I knew exactly what was in there, because I had made it myself. A peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, with some extra strawberry jam thrown in for fun. A banana with no brown spots. A box of chocolate milk with a straw. A plastic bag with a chocolate chip cookie and an oatmeal raisin cookie, because I didn't want my tongue to get bored. And a Happy Birthday napkin left over from Emily's reptile birthday party. "What are you doing, Hank?" Ashley asked. There was no time to answer. I made it back to my station with my lunch bag just as the starting bell rang. Ms. Smiley's voice came over the loudspeaker.

“别害怕，汉克在这里，”我说。 “有个计划。实际上，只有一半的计划。” 我离开了我的岗位。我从阿什利手里拿过午餐袋。 我很清楚里面是什么，因为是我自己做的。 花生酱和葡萄果冻三明治，还有一些额外的草莓果酱。 没有棕色斑点的香蕉。 一盒带吸管的巧克力牛奶。 一个塑料袋，里面装着巧克力饼干和燕麦葡萄干饼干，因为我不想让我的舌头感到无聊。 还有艾米丽爬行动物生日派对留下的生日快乐餐巾。 “你在干什么，汉克？”阿什利问道。 没有时间回答。 就在发车铃响的时候，我拿着午餐袋回到了车站。 扩音器里传来斯迈利女士的声音。

"Attention, junior chefs," she announced. "You have forty-five minutes to create your favorite dish. After that, our judges will perform a taste test and select our two finalists. You cannot look at a written recipe. You cannot pick your nose, touch your hair, or otherwise dirty your fingers. You cannot borrow another contestant's food. Now—ready, set, cook!" The first thing I did was push the artichoke and crab legs off the cutting board, being careful not to get pricked again. Then I put my brown paper bag right in the center of the board. I looked around at the other kitchen stations. The chefs were hard at work. In one station, a curly-haired girl wearing goggles was chopping tomatoes. Boy, were they juicy. It's a good thing she had on those goggles, because the tomato seeds were squirting all over her face. Next to her, a teenage boy with green streaks in his hair was chopping onions. He

“请注意，初级厨师们，”她宣布。 “你有45分钟的时间来做你最喜欢的菜。 之后，我们的评委将进行品鉴并选出两名决赛选手。 你不能看书面食谱。 你不能挖鼻子，摸头发，或者弄脏手指。 你不能借其他选手的食物。 现在，准备好，厨司！”我做的第一件事就是把洋蓟和蟹腿从砧板上推下来，小心翼翼地不要再被刺破。 然后我把我的棕色纸袋放在黑板的正中央。 我看了看厨房里的其他工位。 厨师们在努力工作。 在一个车站，一个戴着护目镜的卷发女孩正在切西红柿。 天啊，它们多汁啊。幸好她戴着护目镜，因为番茄籽喷了她一脸。 在她旁边，一个头发上有绿色条纹的十几岁男孩正在切洋葱。 他

was crying like a baby. He could have used that other girl's goggles. Right next to Judith Ann was a girl named Lily Chun who's in the fifth grade at my school. I know because her class comes to help us during language arts, and she tutored me in spelling. She was really nice when I couldn't remember how to spell any of my words except for "cat." I could tell Lily was going to bake a cake, because she was pouring flour into a bowl. It looked like she was in the middle of a white dust storm. There was flour everywhere— on her hands, on her apron, even on her nose.

哭得像个婴儿。他可能用了另一个女孩的护目镜。 紧挨着朱迪斯·安的是一个叫莉莉·春的女孩，她在我们学校读五年级。 我知道是因为她的班级来帮助我们学习语言艺术，她还教我拼写。 当我除了“猫”一个单词都不记得怎么拼写时，她真的很好。 我看得出莉莉要烤蛋糕，因为她正在往碗里倒面粉。 看起来她就像在一场白色沙尘暴中。 到处都是面粉——她的手上，围裙上，甚至鼻子上。

"Hank!" a voice called from the audience. It was Ashley. "Get going. Do something. You've been just standing there for ten minutes." "Oh, right," I said. I could feel my mind coming back to earth. Sometimes it wanders far away without even asking permission. I want to concentrate on what's happening in front of me, but my mind has ideas of its own. I looked around and saw Ms. Smiley walking up and down between the kitchen

“汉克！”一个声音从观众中传来。 是艾希礼。”走了。 做点什么。你已经在那儿站了十分钟了。” “哦，对了，”我说。我能感觉到我的思想回到了现实。 有时它甚至没有得到允许就走到很远的地方。 我想把注意力集中在眼前发生的事情上，但我的大脑有自己的想法。 我环顾四周，看到了李小姐。 斯迈利在厨房里走来走去