“That’s what your boiling water is for.”
My peripheral gaze catches on my pot of boiling water, and I cringe. “You want me to kill Sebastian? Is Scuttle next?”
I hear his deep chuckle, but I can’t tear my eyes away from the longest whiskers I’ve ever seen. “If you’re referring to the crab in The Little Mermaid, then you’ve got your sea creatures confused.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not killing that thing either way.”
I knew we were cooking a seafood dish today from scratch, but I didn’t think Desmond was going to make us kill the damn ingredients first. I glance at an amused Gretta who is setting down the recipe on my stainless steel workstation.
“I don’t blame you,” she whispers with a shake of her head. “I could never do it.”
I can feel my insides trembling. “This is inhumane,” I hiss back at her.
She just chuckles and walks to the next station.
I straighten my spine and glare at the set of broad shoulders now making their way to the front of the room. “I won’t do it.”
Desmond swivels around, locking eyes with me. “If you can’t prepare the meal, you’re free to leave, but you won’t leave with a certificate.”
My jaw drops. I shouldn’t even care, seeing as I never wanted to come to class to begin with. But I’m less than two hours from putting closure on the last three months of classes I’ve endured. I’m not going to just walk away. I’ve earned that certificate. “Give me something else to make. You can’t make me kill a live lobster.”
There’s chuckling around the room because, apparently, I’m the only one having a hard time with this. Even my sister is biting her lip with amusement, the traitor.
“I’m not handing out individual assignments. I’m sorry, Maggie, but no lobster means no certificate.”
My chest puffs as heat wraps around my body like a raging fire.
“C’mon, Mags, you can do it,” Monica says with a gentle nudge. That’s her, the eternal optimist. I swear there’s never been a dare my sister hasn’t accepted in her life.
I don’t know how long I stand at my station, fuming, but at some point, Monica is by my side, setting her cooked lobster on my station. “Take mine. He’ll never have to know,” she whispers. “Now start on the shallots, or you’ll get too far behind.” She grabs my lobster and plops it in her still-boiling pot.
When I raise my eyes to hers, she just winks and goes on about her mission. I do as she says and prepare the pan and shallots to get them cooking. Then I stare at the poor cooked lobster and contemplate becoming a vegan.
It’s not like I eat much meat anyway. I’m more of a salad-with-a-dash-of-olive-oil kind of woman. My one indulgence is pasta on the odd occasion. Besides the whole kill-a-lobster part of class, I find my mouth watering for the ravioli part of the meal.
I manage to mix up the shallots with the lobster and some ricotta and Parmesan cheese for the filling. Then I lay them in spoonfuls on a pasta sheet. Easy peasy. Once my raviolis are boiling, I start on the lemon-garlic sauce then set it to simmer.
This whole cooking thing isn’t entirely bad, but it doesn’t mean I would want to come back here again. After today, I’ll be set free, and I can go back to spending my Saturdays on the couch, flipping through fashion magazines.
I’m leaning over my workstation, tapping my fingers on the stainless steel, bored out of my mind, when I hear my sister’s frustrated growl beside me. I look at her over my shoulder, noting her flushed cheeks and wide eyes.
She swipes her forehead with the back of her hand as she looks my way. “How are you done already?”
I shrug and stand up, glancing quickly at the lobster ravioli I made from scratch. “It was easy after the whole lobster murder.”
She winces. “Don’t say that. I’m the one who did the murdering.”
“Twice,” I remind her, only to receive a heartfelt frown. Just because my sister is braver than me doesn’t mean she enjoyed boiling the damn thing. Neither of us have had much experience with cooking, and while she’s much better now than she was three months ago, I know she wants to prove to herself that her skills extend beyond fashion design.
I attempt to get off the subject of murder. “Anyway, there was nothing to it. Shred the lobster, prepare a garlic-lemon sauce, and let it simmer on the