The Last Super Chef by Chris Negron

Author:Chris Negron
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

25

“How do you think it’s going?” Pepper asks, impatiently tapping a finger on her schedule. Joey’s been gone for a couple of hours already.

The rest of us shrug.

Pepper refuses to accept that response. “You saw what he was wearing, right?”

Joey had come out of his room wearing the most extra clothes I’d ever seen on a twelve-year-old. Almost a tuxedo, with a bow tie and even a pocket square. His dark hair was slicked back with what must’ve been two handfuls of gel. When Kari and his handler, Craig, came to collect him, they both did a double take.

We knew the one-on-one meeting must be airing on TV—live, Chef Taylor had assured his home audience multiple times—but that didn’t matter. We had no TV. No internet, either. So while we desperately wanted to see what was going on between them, we couldn’t. And it was pretty obvious why—we weren’t supposed to overhear the questions the Super Chef would be asking Joey. That would give us an unfair advantage for our meetings, one he hadn’t had for his.

Meanwhile, we’d tried to find other tasks to keep us busy. Made dinner, cleaned up first the dishes, then the dorms. Bo’s handler, a big college intern from Wisconsin named Brett, supervised us the whole way. But now we aren’t really sure what to do with ourselves. All we know is none of us wants to go to bed before Joey gets back. No way am I missing the chance to interrogate him about how his meeting went. I need as much intel as possible in order to develop a plan for keeping mine, whenever it ends up happening, on track. Cooking and food focused.

I don’t end up having to wait much longer, though, because a few minutes later the front door bursts open and Joey storms back into the dorms.

“Take the L, losers,” he yells out. Using the thumb and index finger of one hand, he sticks an L on his forehead. He grabs his belt buckle with the other, then starts kicking his feet out like he’s in a rodeo. The “Take the L” dance from Fortnite. “I’ve got this thing . . . In. The. Bag.”

“Your meeting went well,” Kiko, sitting up, says more than asks.

Pepper twists in his direction. “What kinds of questions were there? Did you have to take a test?”

“It went awesome!” Joey shouts. He stops dancing and thrusts a fist into the air. “He loves me.” He glances at Pepper. “I can’t tell you the questions. You trying to cheat?”

Pepper turns back fast, facing forward again. “Fine. Be that way.”

“Congratulations, Joey,” Bo says, but Joey ignores him.

“Yeah, great,” I add, because I don’t know what else to say. I mean, not that I care, but it should be impossible that the Super Chef, who always said he built his empire from scratch, from totally modest beginnings, would have some kind of special connection with this silver-spoon-in-his-mouth Chicago kid. Joey must be exaggerating; he can’t possibly be Taylor’s favorite.

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