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to do with the type of liquid used to heat it. The more eggs you use, the thicker and richer the final product will be.
    Or in other words, it’s the substance you’ve got when you start that determines the outcome.
    CRÈME PATISSERIE
    2 cups whole milk
    6 egg yolks at room temperature
    5 ounces sugar
    1½ ounces cornstarch
    1 teaspoon vanilla
     
    Bring the milk just to a boil in a nonreactive saucepan. In a stainless steel bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch. Temper the yolk mixture with milk. Put the milk and yolk mixture back on the heat, whisking constantly. When the mixture starts to thicken, whisk faster until it boils, then remove from heat. Add vanilla and pour into a stainless steel bowl. Sprinkle with a bit of sugar, and place plastic wrap directly on top of the crème. Put in fridge and chill before serving. This can be used as a filling for fruit tarts, napoleons, cream puffs, éclairs, et cetera.
    Amelia
    February 2007
    My whole life, I’ve never been on a vacation. I’ve never even left New Hampshire, unless you count the time that I went with you and Mom to Nebraska—and even you have to admit that sitting in a hospital room for three days watching really old Tom and Jerry cartoons while you got tested at Shriners was nothing like going to a beach or to the Grand Canyon. So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out that our family was planning to go to Disney World. We would go during February school vacation. We’d stay at a hotel that had a monorail running right through the middle of it.
    Mom began to make a list of the rides we would go on. It’s a Small World, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Peter Pan’s Flight.
    “Those are for babies,” I complained.
    “Those are the ones that are safe,” she said.
    “Space Mountain,” I suggested.
    “Pirates of the Caribbean,” she answered.
    “Great,” I yelled. “I get to go on the first vacation of my life, and I won’t even have any fun.” Then I stormed off to our room, and even though I wasn’t downstairs anymore, I could pretty much imagine what our parents were saying: There Amelia goes, being difficult again.
    It’s funny, when things like this happen (which is, like, always), Mom isn’t the one who tries to iron out the mess. She’s too busy making sure you’re all right, so the task falls to Dad. Ah, see, there’s something else that I’m jealous about: he’s your real dad, but he’s only my stepfather. I don’t know my real dad; he and my mother split up before I was even
born, and she swears that his absence is the best gift he could ever have given me. But Sean adopted me, and he acts like he loves me just as much as he loves you—even though there’s this black, jagged splinter in my mind that constantly reminds me this couldn’t possibly be true.
    “Meel,” he said when he came into my room (he’s the only one I’d ever let call me that in a million years; it makes me think of the worms that get into flour and ruin it, but not when Dad says it), “I know you’re ready for the big rides. But we’re trying to make sure that Willow has a good time, too.”
    Because when Willow’s having a good time, we’re all having a good time. He didn’t have to say it, but I heard it all the same.
    “We just want to be a family on vacation,” he said.
    I hesitated. “The teacup ride,” I heard myself say.
    Dad said he’d go to bat for me, and even though Mom was dead set against it—what if you smacked up against the thick plaster wall of the teacup?—he convinced her that we could whirl around in circles with you wedged between us so that you wouldn’t get hurt. Then he grinned at me, so proud of himself for having negotiated this deal that I didn’t have the heart to tell him I really couldn’t care less about the teacup ride.
    The reason it had popped into my head was because, a few years ago, I’d seen a commercial for Disney World on TV. It showed Tinker Bell floating like a mosquito through