The apartment above Piccolos’ Pizza wasn’t empty for long. Mr. Alden and Watch left for Greenfield just as soon as the children got their luggage from the car. Grandfather promised to return in a couple of weeks. And they promised him a large Pizza Supreme when he came back.
Mr. Piccolo helped the children bring their belongings to the little apartment above the restaurant. “It will be good to hear footsteps overhead when I’m working,” Mr. Piccolo told the Aldens. “It’s been too quiet since Nick moved out.”
“I like this cozy apartment,” Violet said when she looked around the sunlit rooms. “But I liked it better when Nick lived here.”
“Remember all those wonderful stories he told us?” Benny asked.
“And the time he helped us build a snowman,” Henry added.
“I miss Nick, too,” Jessie said. “Where did he move?”
Mrs. Piccolo sighed. “He didn’t tell us. He just left. Now that he’s gone, I hope you children will fill these rooms with noise!”
“We will!” Benny yelled, and everyone laughed.
“Please get anything you want from the restaurant kitchen, anything at all,” Mrs. Piccolo said.
After the Piccolos went to their own house a few blocks away, the children settled in. They dusted and scrubbed. They laid out their sleeping bags on the beds and the sofa. They covered the kitchen table with a cheery red-and-white tablecloth.
When they were finished, Henry put on his jacket. “I’m going to get the bike and take a ride over to the gas company. I know Mr. Piccolo said that someone from Mighty Mufflers called the gas company to get the broken line fixed. But what if they forgot? You know what Grandfather always says. Double check to make double sure.”
“Well, come back hungry,” Jessie told Henry as he zipped up his jacket. “Hungry for pizza!”
“I wouldn’t count on it, Jessie,” he said quietly. “Not today anyway. I don’t think the gas company could fix the broken gas line so fast. But I’ll do my best.”
“And I’ll do mine,” Jessie said. She gave her brother a big smile. She had a plan, and when Jessie Alden had a plan, nothing could stop her.
“All this talk about pizza makes me hungry,” Benny said. “I didn’t eat very much before. The pizza just wasn’t the same.”
Jessie didn’t seem to hear Benny. She was staring at the small electric stove in the kitchen. She was thinking about pizza, too. “Violet,” she said, “you and Benny go downstairs. Mrs. Piccolo said we could help ourselves to anything. Bring up two bags of pizza dough, some of her homemade sauce, and two blocks of mozzarella cheese. Then come right back up.”
Violet and Benny got going, but they weren’t too hopeful. They knew that the Piccolos’ big, hot brick oven was one of the secrets of their delicious pizza. The small apartment stove was good only for boiling eggs or making hot chocolate, not crispy pizza.
But Jessie had thoughts of her own. She turned the oven dial. “There. Four hundred degrees should be hot enough.”
By the time Benny and Violet came back with all the pizza fixings, Jessie had new jobs for both of them. First she showed Violet how to work cornmeal into Mrs. Piccolo’s dough. This would help it get crispy, even if it was baked in a small oven. Then she got Benny busy grating the soft mozzarella cheese into small piles. He gave Jessie a hungry look.
“Okay, okay, Benny. Save a small pile of cheese for yourself,” Jessie told him. “Save the rest for our pizzas, all right?”
“Oh, goody!” Benny cried. “You just said ‘pizzas’ not ‘pizza.’ I could eat two big ones all by myself.”
Jessie broke into a big smile. “Guess what, Benny? You might get to eat three or four pizzas! But not big ones—small ones. I figured out that the only thing wrong with the pizza Mrs. Piccolo made was that it was too big to bake in this oven.”
Violet’s face lit up, too. “I get it! Small pizzas for a small oven. Then they should get hot and crispy enough! I guess the Piccolos have been too upset to think of that.”
In no time, the children had set up an assembly line. Benny got the best job of all. He took small balls of pizza dough then smacked them as flat as he could. Smack! Smack! Smack! Violet placed the rounds of dough onto heated baking sheets. Finally, Jessie spooned Mrs. Piccolo’s good tomato sauce over them, along with curls of grated cheese. The pizzas were ready to be baked.
Violet got a good idea, too. She ran downstairs and came back up holding a big white pizza box.
“I don’t think we need such a big box for such little pizzas,” Benny said. He tried hard not to think about the huge pizzas that usually went into a box that size.
“Oh, yes, we do.” Violet disappeared into the bedroom and shut the door.
A few minutes later, wonderful smells began to fill the apartment. The pizzas were nearly ready when the children heard Henry’s footsteps on the back stairs. “Mmm,” Henry hummed when he came in. “I caught a whiff all the way out at the shed when I put the bike away.”
Jessie opened the oven to give Henry—and Benny, of course—a look at the rows of small pizzas just starting to brown at the edges. Henry’s mouth watered.
“I just hope those little pizzas work out better than my trip to the gas company,” Henry told everyone. “We might need to keep this small oven going a lot longer.”
Violet, who had rejoined the others, looked worried. It wasn’t often that her brother set out to fix a problem and failed. “Aren’t the repair people coming soon to fix the gas line, Henry? Mr. Piccolo told us that someone had reported the broken gas line a while ago.”
Henry shook his head. “That’s just it. The gas company said no one had ever called to report it. It’s a good thing I checked.”
Jessie took a final peek in the oven. The pizzas looked good. But even if they were good, the children couldn’t turn out enough of them to get Piccolos’ Pizza busy again. They needed that big brick oven in a hurry.
“How soon can the repair people come out, Henry?” Jessie asked.
“They wouldn’t say,” Henry answered. “We’re on the list, but there are several people ahead of us.”
“Oh, no!” Violet cried.
“Unless . . . ” Henry paused. “Unless I can get someone at Mighty Mufflers to call the gas company right now. After all, the factory is an important business in Silver Falls. Maybe if the owner calls and says it’s an emergency, the repair people will come sooner.”
Ding! Ding! The timer on the stove sounded. Jessie’s pizzas were ready. Everyone gathered around the stove as Jessie carefully slid out two baking trays of small pizzas.
“Oooh, they’re nice and hot!” Jessie said. She set down the steaming trays on the enamel kitchen counter.
The pizza plan had worked! While the other children watched, Jessie slid each pizza onto a separate plate. “See? One for each person. I know it’s not dinnertime, but let’s sample them anyway. If they’re good, maybe we can bake another batch for the dinner hour at the restaurant tonight. What do you think?” Jessie asked everyone with a proud smile.
Before Violet sat down at her place she ran to the bedroom again. When she came back she was holding up a big sign she had drawn on the pizza-box cardboard. She held it up for everyone to read:
PICCOLOS’ PERSONAL PIZZAS
BIG TASTE IN A LITTLE SIZE
PERFECT FOR DIETERS AND SNACKERS
BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE
FOR A COMPLETE MEAL
“It’s fantastic!” Jessie said. “If people could only get a taste of these pizzas, I just know they would start coming back to the restaurant. After we eat, let’s ask the Piccolos if we can make up some coupons that say the same thing as the sign. Maybe Henry could go around on the bike and hand them out while we stay here and make more pizzas.”
“More pizzas!” Benny called out between bites.
“We may only have a little oven—” Jessie said with a laugh.
“But we have BIG appetites!” Benny cried.
Only Jessie and Violet laughed with Benny. Henry’s mind was on something else. How did the gas line get broken, and why couldn’t they get it fixed? Well, that was something he was going to find out. |