Chapter 8

Chapter eight I stuck my hand in the air and waved it around wildly, trying to get Ms. Smiley's attention. At last, she noticed and came stomping over to me. "What is it now, young man?" she asked. "Do you have a blender I can use?" I asked. "There is a blender on the counter right in front of you," she snapped. "Oh, right," I said. "Sometimes I can't do two things at once—like think and look." "I suggest you concentrate," she said. "You're wasting precious time." She was right. I noticed that Judith Ann was already putting her meatballs into the pot.

I scooped up all the pieces of my chopped lunch and carefully dropped them into the blender jar. Then I pulled the straw from the carton of chocolate milk and poked it inside. Turning the carton upside down, I squeezed it and watched the milk squirt into the blender through the straw. I made sure I got every last drop out of the carton. "It's showtime!" I called to Judith Ann. With a big grin, I pushed the blender's start button. Oops! I had forgotten to put the top on. Chocolate milk and bananas and cookies and chunks of sandwich flew out the top of the blender and landed smack in the middle of my face. A few chunks sprayed on Judith Ann's counter.

"Henry!" she cried. "Turn off the blender and put the top on. Don't get your mess on my meatballs!" I switched off the blender and put as much of the goop as I could back inside. "Six-minute warning," Ms. Smiley called over the loudspeaker. I put the top back on the blender and turned it on. At least everything stayed inside this time. I stood there watching my lunch swirl around in the blender jar. The banana, the peanut butter

and jelly sandwich, and the cookies turned to liquid, blending with the chocolate milk to make a thick, frothy smoothie. "Look at that," I said, pointing to the glass jar of the blender. "It's a work of art." "It's a mess," Judith Ann said. "Fine cooking is not throwing things into a blender and hoping for the best." "I'm not hoping for the best," I snapped back. "It is the best." Truthfully, I had no idea what my smoothie was going to taste like. It did turn a pretty ugly shade of mud brown, not a color that makes your taste buds stand up and say hello. I poured my smoothie into two glasses, one for each judge, and put each glass on its own little plate. "Psst, Hank," I heard Ashley call from the audience. "I watch cooking shows on TV all the time. The winners always make their dish look pretty. You need to dress those plates up." The only thing I could think of was the half- eaten box of gummy bears in my backpack. I

left my station and ran to get it. Of course, it wasn't where I thought I had put it. I had to unzip every little pocket until I found it buried beneath my crumpled-up spelling test. (By the way, I got a D-minus, which is better than an F.) When I returned to the counter, I emptied the box into my hand and spread the colorful gummy bears around the edge of the plates. Ashley was right. All of a sudden, my smoothies looked like a party on a plate. Now all I had to do was wait for the judges. When the buzzer rang, the two judges appeared. "Our first judge is Maxine Nosebomb, the head pastry chef at Café Sweetooth," Ms. Smiley announced. Ms. Nosebomb waved her hand at us.

"Our other judge," Ms. Smiley continued, "is Bob Bones, master chef of one of our city's finest restaurants, Robert's Kitchen." He looked like he was going to be a strict judge. I stood at my station while the two judges went down the row, starting at kitchen station number one. They stopped and chatted with each junior chef, including Goggle Girl and Crying Onion Boy. At each chef's station, the judges took one bite of the dish and made notes on their clipboards. When they got to Judith Ann, I could see that her hands were shaking. She tried to smile, but her lips were