Ginnie made bread not chocolate cake and won a special ribbon, a white one. Chocolate had been the original plan. Geneva blacked out. I checked the whole series out from the library. Ginnie and the Wedding Bells. Ginnie and the Mystery Doll. Ginnie got hit by a snowball and got a big bruise on her face that wouldn’t fade in time for the dance, or was it a wedding? I remember the bruise changing colors, black to green to yellow. Ginnie and Her Juniors. Ginnie and the New Girl. Best friends Ginnie and Geneva had a falling out that lasted a whole book. That hadn’t happened to me yet, but the world was unpredictable and strange if that could happen. Ginnie and the Mystery Cat. Why hadn’t she made the chocolate cake? Strings of mishaps befell her and her recipes. Of the mysteries I remember only that Geneva blacked out, in Europe, and put her head between her knees, as Ginnie’s mom advised. That phrase, “blacked out,” emblazoned in my mind, somehow linked with Europe.

Gwynne Garfinkle lives in Los Angeles. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in such publications as Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium, Goblin Fruit, and Shimmer. She is currently working on a novel set in the early ’80s L.A. music scene.