Dear Amanda,
The Chicken Sisters sound intriguing. We are wrapping up Rib Wars in Kansas City and would like to come meet you. If everything’s as you say, we’ll start filming immediately. How’s Wednesday at 2?
Sabrina Skelly, Host, Producer, Food Wars
The Food Channel
AMANDA
It was one thing to put a message in a bottle and another thing entirely when that bottle came back to you from across the sea with a genie stuffed in next to the reply. She had to rub the bottle now, right? She’d cast the spell, wished the wish, and asked in prayer, and she had received. It would be different if she didn’t believe. It wouldn’t have worked if she didn’t believe. But of course, she did believe. She believed with all her heart and soul that Food Wars had the power to change everything, and she was right.
Later, she wished she’d been a little more specific.
It had been fun, sending the e-mail. And honestly, she figured the result would be a few weeks of dreaming, of imagining how Food Wars could make everything better, followed by a letdown when they said no or just never replied. It was a lottery ticket, minus the dollar she couldn’t afford to spend.
Now she was sitting in her car outside Walmart, idly scrolling, a new habit born of an unreasonable expectation that somewhere in her phone was something that would change her mood, when the reply appeared, a response beyond her wildest dreams that sent an actual, literal chill through her body. She turned her car back on, abandoning her planned shopping trip, and backed out of the parking spot she’d just pulled into, narrowly missing a beat-up Camry. Her foot shook on the gas pedal. Her whole leg was quivering. This is it, she thought. From now on, everything will be different. Different, and better.
Better. She kept repeating that to herself, and that conviction, really this is going to make things better, helped her squash down any doubts about her mother or about Frannie’s or about what the hell Merinac was going to make of Food Wars and vice versa. It carried her past the two miles of corn and soybean fields between Walmart and Nancy’s house and right through her mother-in-law’s back door, bellowing her name. She stopped short when she saw Nancy, already in the kitchen and looking worried at Amanda’s wild entrance.
“No, no, it’s good, it’s something good. Food Wars, you know, the show with the restaurants that compete—they want to come here! To do us, us and Mimi’s. Food Wars!” She waited for Nancy’s response, biting her lip, fists clutched, a euphoric and probably goofy smile on her face. Because, Food Wars. Here!
Nancy smiled back, but it was a confused smile, a little dubious. She did not look thrilled. Why did she not look thrilled? Amanda did not need doubts right now; she needed enthusiasm. She grabbed the older woman’s hands and squeezed them tightly. “They’re going to come here. And film us, and we will win a hundred thousand dollars, and everyone will know who we are and want to eat here, and Frannie’s will be famous.” She let go of Nancy’s hands and let her feet do the little dance they wanted so much to do, waving her arms in the air and shaking her hips. “Here, they’re coming here, they’re really coming here! And we will be huge.” She grinned. “Huge!”
Once, long ago, that had been the plan for Frannie’s. Back then, the town had been bigger and the world felt smaller, and Daddy Frank—great-grandson of the original Frannie, and father to Amanda’s husband, Frank—was a leading figure in Merinac’s business scene, a restaurant owner and real estate magnate with big ideas. A Banquet chicken dinner in someone’s freezer or the sight of a Tippin’s potpie at Albertsons would send him into a lengthy monologue about his dream of sharing Frannie’s with the entire country, or at least the shoppers at major midwestern grocery stores. They all dreamed big along with him, back when the Franks had been in charge of the business plan, Nancy a capable and steady first mate, and Amanda a mother first, a student second, and a Frannie’s fill-in hostess and waitress only a distant third.
Now, six years after the car crash that killed both Franks and left Nancy and Amanda in charge, the restaurant did little more than break even. Every day brought more bills and more tax forms and, for Amanda at least, a giant, soul-sucking fear that the future held nothing but more of the same. She often thought that Frannie’s could spiral around the drain and finally get pulled under and no one would even notice that she and Nancy had gone with it.
But Food Wars would change all that.
Amanda looked down at her mother-in-law’s tiny, tense frame, at the burgundy hair that was due for a color, thinning, just a little, in a way that was hard to disguise. Please don’t let her start in on the risks and the worries and the things that could go wrong. Please let her see how much she needs this, how much we all need this.
Suddenly Nancy rushed forward and hugged Amanda, hard. “Food Wars? Us? Frannie’s? You did this? You got them to come here?”
One more wish, granted.
“I did. I did!” Amanda squeezed her mother-in-law back, dancing them both back and forth before they let go. “I wrote them, and they’re coming. They loved what I told them about the chicken sisters, and the history and everything.”
“We’ll be on TV.” Nancy grabbed a chair from around her kitchen table and sat down on it, hard. “TV. Like Mae—TV. Frannie’s.”
Mae. Oh hell. But even the thought of her sister wasn’t enough to suck the glory out of this moment. “Television, yes, and they do a lot of live bits on the Internet. Social media.” Amanda loved those. She followed all of TFC’s social media accounts, but Food Wars was her favorite. Nancy, though, looked at her blankly. “Like, they record a little bit, and people can watch it on their phones or computers if they follow the show. It usually takes a while for the episodes to get on television, but they do a whole bunch of live stuff while they’re recording, to get people excited about it. It’s sort of a cross between a web show and a regular show.”
Nancy brushed that aside, as though Amanda had said Food Wars would also be available for pandas to watch from the zoo, and rushed on. “Television! Do you have any idea what this could mean?”
Amanda, who thought she did, laughed, and Nancy got out of her chair and grabbed Amanda and hugged her again, then stood back, still clutching Amanda’s shoulders. “We have to win,” Nancy said. “I mean, of course we’ll win. There’s not even a comparison.” Nancy paused, and her voice, which had been getting increasingly higher, dropped. “In fact . . .”
Amanda knew where she was headed, and this, unlike the mention of Mae, did suck a little air out of her bubble. Mimi’s and Frannie’s both served fried chicken, yes. And they had the same kind of name. And they had been started by sisters. But from there, the similarities—and any competition—ended. Frannie’s was open all day, with an extensive menu. Mimi’s offered only dinner: chicken, biscuits, French fries, and salad, and off-the-menu doughnuts on Saturday mornings for those in the know. And of course pie, but only when the spirit moved her mother to bake. It wasn’t a real restaurant so much as an erratic takeout joint, supported by loyal customers willing to overlook the way the place had run down over the years.