Marla's Sweet Treats

BUT PERHAPS...

On the long car ride to the hotel, I flipped through the pages of the book, and wrote down page numbers with recipes that might appeal to the judges. But when I was almost halfway through, I realized that none of the recipes would help me win against the talented Magnus LeDeux. But I couldn't give up now. I didn't have a choice. I kept flipping through the pages, and about an hour later, I reached a black page, which was totally blank. I knew this page. It was the one that seperated white magic from black magic.

Hesitantly, I flipped to the next page. It would have never crossed my mind that one day, I would be considering using black magic. The ink was red and not blue, and it was bleeding through the pages. The pages were old and had a brownish teint, the ink was pale, and yet, it looked bold and mysterious. I looked at the recipes, which had illustrations of skulls next to them. I frowned when I saw that one of them had a picture of a person falling down a black hole. If I wanted to win against someone who used black magic, maybe the only way was to do the same. Maybe I didn't have a choice this time...

"What are you doing?"

I looked up and saw that Marla had turned back from the front seat, her eyes were on the book.

"Was that the black magic section? I told you so many times not to look at that, and yet you did"

I slammed the book shut, which created a cloud of dust.

"I-I was just curious. I wasn't going to bake anything using black ma-"

"Louise." Marla interrupted me- again. "I know exactly what you were doing. You thought you needed to use black magic to win, huh?"

Robert, who was driving, put his hand on Marla's shoulder and said

"Calm down Marla, she wouldn't do that."

It worked, and Marla took a deep breath, her mouth was no longer in a straight line.

"I better not catch you doing that again" she warned me, and lifted her finger.

"I'm sorry" I said bashfully, and felt incredibly guilty.

She turned around. For the rest of the drive, I kept the book shut, and ruminated. It would be completely against my morals to use dark magic, but on the other hand, that way I could had the biggest chance of winning. Black magic is powerful. More powerful than white magic. The only other way would be if I would make up a recipe or modify one that was already in the book. From what I was told, none of the recipes have been modified since 1982, and it could be extremely dangerous. I still remember the morning that I used a drop of acid rain instead of a normal raindrop in the hydration-sensation muffins. Mr. Cooper, who bought the muffin, was sad for weeks. And I was lucky that time, too. It could have gone way worse.