The Midnight Brigade by Adam Borba & Karl Kwasny

Author:Adam Borba & Karl Kwasny [Borba, Adam & Kwasny, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2021-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

“My, uh, mom cuts it.”

“Ah.”

She placed her baseball cap on his head. “Better,” she said.

Because it was. He wore her cap for the rest of the school year.

“And take this, too,” she said as she tore her drawing from the sketchpad. “Thanks for being cool about us butting in on your secret.”

She’d drawn a perfect likeness of Frank sitting under the bridge. His knees hugged to his chest. Her signature in a corner.

The troll looked sad.

A crystal chandelier hung in the middle of the dining room, and the servers wore crisp white smocks. That kind of uniform always made Bee nervous. How did they keep them so clean? She figured their dry-cleaning bills were astronomical.

The restaurant they’d chosen for Review Night was called Paris in Spring. She found the name equal parts pleasant and generic, which was also what she thought of the appetizers. Bee had a hunch that her mother felt the same way, but she wouldn’t know for sure until they exchanged reviews later that evening. Her mother’s editor had pestered her to review the place for months. Apparently she had gone to college with the owner. That kind of thing always ended poorly. Favor reviews were never as glowing as the editor wanted, and the food was never as delicious as Maddy Lee wanted.

“I hope you enjoy,” the server said as he delivered their entrees. “The chef uses a secret ingredient that makes his chicken one of a kind.”

Bee took a whiff of the dish as the server departed. “Truffle salt?”

Maddy Lee winked at her daughter.

Bee smiled and made a note to herself on her little pad on the table. “Why does everyone think that’s a secret ingredient? I mean, I like it and all, but secret? It has such a distinct taste and smell. It’s like truffle salt is half of all secret ingredients these days. Who do they think they’re fooling?”

Maddy smiled.

“Sorry, we should wait until we read each other’s reviews to talk about this,” Bee said. “I saw this gourmet corn dog place by the ballpark that I thought we could try tomorrow night.”

“That sounds fun, but tomorrow’s not possible.”

Bee smirked as she thought of Frank living under the bridge downtown. “I’ve recently decided that nothing is impossible.”

“Oh yeah?” Maddy asked with a raise of her brow.

Bee eyed her mother and debated how much she could say and how she could say it. “Have you ever come across anything truly incredible in this city? Like, something you didn’t think could be that was? Maybe when you were chasing a story for work?”

Maddy thought for a moment. “Well, once I was working on a piece about a new steakhouse, and its kitchen literally had three dozen different kinds of health code violations.”

Bee shook her head. “No. That’s not what I mean. I mean something that’s supposed to be impossible. Like, actually amazing. Otherworldly, even.”

Maddy bit her lip; then her face lit up. “I know! Last year I had to cover one of those competitive eating contests, and some guy from Willow Crest ate seven pounds of chipped chopped ham.

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