With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo
Every Day I’m Hustling
It’s been two weeks since I turned the proposal in, but finally Chef Ayden and the school administration have approved my fund-raising plan, and I officially have a new schedule that’s taken over my life. I wake up an hour and a half earlier than I used to, before the sun has even blinked awake, and get ready for school. The guards know two of us have special permission three mornings out of the week to be let into the kitchen early, where Chef waits to start the lunch special for the day. Although he never said anything, I know he had to argue with the principal on our behalf to reopen the small training restaurant attached to the downstairs kitchen.
Us students rotate so no one has to show up more than once a week, but if someone can’t make it, I fill in since I’m the fund-raising lead. In the afternoons, a different student volunteers to be the lunchtime server for the three different lunch periods; each day after school for a whole week one student washes the dishes and helps Chef Ayden clean the restaurant. Since people are getting extra cooking time in the morning, it should work out that everyone ultimately learns the same number of recipes.
I expected teachers would want the option of another food spot in the building, but I never expected the little restaurant to be full every single shift. Most days we run out of everything we’ve made and Chef has to turn people away. And at a profit of seven dollars a pop for a meal, and about ten to twelve teachers per lunch period, three lunch periods a day, we’re raising just shy of seven hundred dollars a week and have five weeks still left to go until our December deadline. I’ve done the math over and over, but it still comes out that we’ll hit about three thousand five hundred dollars by the Winter Dinner. I try not let my nervousness over how much we need to raise show when I give weekly updates to the class, but I know I have to do everything in my power to get as many people at the dinner as the gym will hold.
And putting all this effort at school isn’t easy. I’m still working hours at the Burger Joint, going to tutoring after school for math, and spending as much time with Babygirl as I can manage.
Before I know it, the first two months of school have flown by and we are in the middle of November. Which means that the Winter Dinner is coming up. And how much money we raise by December doesn’t just determine whether the class can go to Spain, it determines whether my ideas and sweat and time have mattered. Which means I can’t fail.