Sprinkles Before Sweethearts

by Coco Simon

  “Tamiko, if Ewan doesn’t show up today, you’ll need to make a plan to meet with him outside of school so you two can work on your drawings.”

  As if! I wanted to say.

  Luckily, Ewan came rushing in just then, red in the face, and grabbed a stool and pulled it over to where I was sitting. He mumbled “Sorry” to me and Mr. Rivera. Then he yanked out his sketch pad.

  “Okay. I guess you’re drawing first today?” I said.

  “What? Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Um. Did you want to go first?” He could barely meet my eye. What was the deal?

  I sighed. “No. You just go first.”

  He nodded and continued to draw. After a few minutes he seemed to settle down. “Did you get your bull home okay?” he asked, not meeting my eye.

  Bull? Oh right. I had forgotten that he had seen me with El Toro. “Yeah. He’s pretty giant.”

  Ewan flicked his eyes at me, then looked away. “Pretty sweet that you won him.”

  I nodded. Ewan put his pencil down and started rummaging through his backpack. Then he pulled something out.

  It was my idea notebook!

  “I can’t believe it!” I nearly snatched it from his hands. “Where did you find it?”

  Ewan blushed, and he looked down at his feet. “I found it on the bench right after I saw you with the bull last Saturday. I wanted to call you or text you, but I didn’t have your number, and I was too embarrassed to ask your friends at the ice cream shop for it. I figured I’d just give it to you at school anyway.”

  “So why didn’t you give it to me right away?” I asked, perplexed.

  Ewan stared at the ground. “My parents are divorced. I stay at my dad’s place some weeks, and then the other weeks I’m at my mom’s. I forgot your notebook at my dad’s house, and then I was at my mom’s house until yesterday. I know it sounds really weird and complicated. . . .”

  I shook my head. “No. My best friend’s parents are divorced. I know how it is. It’s not your fault.”

  He sighed in relief. “Thanks. I thought you’d want to kill me for taking so long to give it back.”

  “No. Thank you for finding it,” I said. “I just wish you’d told me it was safe. I hoped it hadn’t fallen into the wrong hands.” But then I remembered . . . the last person I’d wanted to see this notebook was Ewan. Now my face was flooding with color. “Uh, did you . . . did you look at what was inside?”

  “Well . . .” Ewan laughed in embarrassment. “Kind of. But I didn’t read anything. I just . . . I kind of flipped through it.”

  I started talking a mile a minute. “The sketches of you . . . I just . . . They were the art assignment, but I didn’t want to do them in the school sketch pad because I thought if you saw them . . . well . . . you’d think . . . and now you saw them anyway. Oh gosh. I feel like such a creepy person. I only did them for the assignment—”

  “It’s not creepy. I knew it was for art class,” Ewan said. “Anyway, I’m glad your notebook is back with you now.” Then he picked up his sketch pad and went back to work.

  Sitting there silently, I examined Ewan. He still looked like the annoying popular kid who had thrown sprinkles at Molly’s. But I felt like I had jumped to conclusions before actually seeing him. He wasn’t a bratty guy who thought he was hot stuff. He was actually understanding and had been kind enough to return my notebook . . . even if I hadn’t exactly been the nicest person to him.

  “Okay. All done!” said Ewan. He folded shut his sketch pad and assumed his pose for me.

  “Wait! I mean, you’re totally finished?”

  Ewan nodded. “Yup. I worked on it at home a little, so I was just tidying up some loose ends today. I’m done.”

  “Can I . . . Will you let me see it?”

  Ewan’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Nope. You can see it on the wall at the art show.”

  “Ewan! Come on! I deserve to see it! I posed for it!”

  “Fine.” Ewan opened the sketch pad and turned it toward me.

  I gasped. The portrait of me was incredible—it was so accurate that it was nearly a photograph. My head was tilted a tiny bit, giving me a sassy attitude, but there was a trace of a smile on my mouth. Then there was a sort of hazy glow all around me, and a pink to my cheeks and a brightness in my eyes that made me look alive in the picture. It had taken amazing skill, and I felt bad again for having assumed that he was a popular kid who thought it was cool to be bad at art.

  But most of all I looked really, really pretty. Like, prettier than I’d ever thought of myself, even on my best day.

  “Um . . . wow!” I said. Then I felt a slow grin taking over my face. “I love it.”

  Ewan smiled, and we high-fived. Being Ewan’s partner had turned out to be a good thing after all.

  Allie was already at the ice cream shop when Sierra and I arrived after school. They were both shocked when I told them who had found my idea notebook. But they were even more shocked to hear about Ewan’s portrait of me.

  “EWAN?” Sierra screamed. “Ewww, Ewan? He’s a jerk!”

  “Well, maybe he’s not such a jerk, because he returned my book,” I said.

  “Wait, do you like Ewan?” Allie asked, her eyes widening.

  “I don’t like him!” I shot back. “Well, not in a romantic way.”

  “There’s always more than meets the eye!” said Allie, trying to sound old and wise. I pretended to throw some sprinkles at her.

  “Tsk-tsk, throwing sprinkles! You’re starting to act like your boyfriend!” joked Sierra.

  “He’s not my boyfriend!”

  “He was the only nice one that day, remember? He stayed to clean up, and then he left that money on the counter,” said Sierra.

  I was grateful that she’d remembered. It did make me feel better about Ewan that he’d done that. I didn’t think I could be friends at all with the other two guys from that day. They were really jerks. But then again, maybe I had only been looking and not seeing them, too.

  Allie looked thoughtful. “Maybe you should buy him a sundae the next time he comes in. Like, as a reward for returning your notebook.”

  “No! No free sundaes. He can buy his own sundaes.”

  “That’s not a very nice way to treat your boyfriend!” said Sierra.

  “Once and for all, he’s not my boyfriend!”

  We were all silent for a moment. “So no sundae for him?” said Allie in her meek little voice again.

  This time we all had to laugh, even me. “No!”

  We sat down at one of the tables in front, and Mrs. S. brought out a test batch of Caramel Apple ice cream. She served us like we were real customers, bringing us each our own bowl of the new flavor.

  “Ready, set, go!” said Allie, and we all dug in at the same time.

  “Mmmmm!” I said through a mouthful of ice cream. Then I chewed and swallowed. “Oh, Mrs. S., this is insane! It’s tart like a real green apple, with a little bit of a crunch here and there—”

  “That’s the caramel coating the apples that I put in!” said Mrs. S. happily.

  The caramel was amazing. It was like she’d folded actual sheets of caramel and then cut them into strips and mixed them in. They were more like solid caramel than just caramel sauce.

  “This is incredible. I could eat this all day!” agreed Sierra.

  “We just might have to, if it doesn’t sell,” Allie said.

  “Let me SuperSnap this right now!” I said, whipping out my phone. My fingers flew over the keyboard.

  “Girls! Let me take a photo of you all,” said Mrs. S. “Hand me your cameras, please.”

  We handed over our phones, and she snapped a bunch of shots for each of us, smiling, with our spoons in the air.

  “Besties forever!”

  “Friends come first!”

  “Even when we’re old and gray!”

  When Mrs. S. handed back my phone, I looked at the photo of us and smiled. I loved my Sprinkle Sundays sisters and would do anything for them.

  I poste
d the shot of the three of us on my SuperSnap story. And I knew exactly what the caption would say: #CrazyFriendLove!

  Keep reading for a preview of

  Too Many Toppings!

  by

  Coco Simon

  I checked the time on my phone as I hurried down the sidewalk—1:12 p.m. Whoops! I was late for my most important, most favorite activity of the week. Well, one of my most favorite activities. I had a lot of favorites. That was sort of the problem.

  “I’m late! I know! I’m sorry!” I declared as I burst through the front door of Molly’s Ice Cream parlor. The bell tied to the top of the door tinkled merrily, but that was the only merry thing that greeted me. My two best friends, Allie Shear and Tamiko Sato, were both in a whir of activity, taking orders and scooping ice cream.

  Tamiko glanced up and gave me an icy stare, colder even than the ice cream. Ouch.

  Even the customers in line seemed annoyed. Maybe I shouldn’t have announced my lateness quite so . . . loudly.

  I quickly tied back my long, curly brown hair and wished I’d thought of that on the way there. Customers didn’t want hair in their food, and they probably didn’t want to see me tying it back as I was dashing to the counter!

  As quick as a flash, I washed my hands, donned an apron and a huge smile, and took my place at the register. I was the best at math, so I usually took the money and made change, while Tamiko, master marketeer, took orders and tried to convince customers to choose exciting new options that she often invented on the spot. Allie, whose mother owned the store, made the cones and shakes. We all did a little bit of everything, truth be told, but the three of us had been working together every Sunday afternoon for a few months now, and we’d gotten into a very comfortable and efficient rhythm of who did what.

  There was no chance to explain my lateness with customers waiting. But with all three of us pitching in, we made quick work of the line and soon had the shop to ourselves. I took the opportunity to wipe down the counters, paying extra attention to the area around the toppings bar.

  I felt really bad about being late. I wanted to apologize, but I was scared to bring it up, because I knew Tamiko and Allie would be mad. And I hated when my friends were mad at me. I was pretty sure I hated that feeling more than any other feeling in the world.

  “Today must be your lucky day,” Tamiko said finally.

  I could hear the edge in her voice. It made my stomach queasy.

  “What’s lucky about being late?” I asked. I knew it was better to just say it than to try to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “You’re lucky because we were low on rainbow sprinkles, and my mom ran out to the store to get more before you got here,” Allie explained. Her voice was less edgy, but I could tell she was annoyed too. “So she won’t know you were late. Because we won’t tell her.”

  “Yeah,” said Tamiko. “You’ll get away with it. Again.”

  The bad feeling in my stomach grew worse. I didn’t like getting away with something. I wasn’t trying to get away with anything. I really wasn’t.

  “Thanks for understanding, you guys,” I said. “I really do have a good excuse! My soccer game yesterday got canceled because of the rain and rescheduled for this morning. And then the game was 3–3, so we went into overtime . . .”

  Allie sighed and rubbed a gritty spot on the counter with her thumbnail. “That’s the problem, Sierra. You always have a good excuse.”

  “Since when is having a good excuse a bad thing?” I asked. I half smiled, trying to bring a little cheerfulness to the situation. After all, we were only talking about twelve minutes. Twelve minutes! I was sometimes much later for things.

  Allie glanced at Tamiko. They seemed to have an entire conversation with their eyes in mere seconds.

  Then Allie said, “Because I’m waiting for the day when you tell somebody else that the reason you need to leave early is because you have a responsibility to be at your job at Molly’s. Which my mom pays you for. Why is everything else more important to you than being here?”

  “It isn’t more important!” I protested. “Really. I love my job here—you know that. I’m just, well . . . I guess I’m just so used to being late that this isn’t really that late to me. Anyway, I figured you guys would understand.”

  “We do understand—you’re taking advantage of your friends,”  Tamiko said. “And it’s not cool, Sierra.”

  Wow. Another ouch. This day was just getting worse and worse. Tamiko was always outspoken and said exactly what was on her mind, which I loved about her. But occasionally, when it was directed at me (or at one of my faults), it could hurt a little. But I couldn’t deny that it was true: I did count on our friendship to keep me from getting into too much trouble. Working at Molly’s on Sundays was my job. I needed to take it just as seriously as soccer and softball and student council and all the other things I did. Because they were all commitments I had made. And even more important, they were all so much fun. That’s why I committed to so many things in the first place. I loved activities and meeting new people and being involved in lots of stuff. It made my head spin, but in a really good and exciting way. I was not the type of person to sit around. I liked to go, go, go!

  Sometimes it was hard to explain that to people who liked things calm and structured, like Allie. Or precise and efficient, like Tamiko.

  “Listen, you guys. I am really, really, really, truly, with cherries and Oreos and sprinkles on top, sorry. Okay? I’ll stay later today to make up the time.”

  Allie sighed. “I know, Sierra. It’s just that you’ve said that before.”

  Just then Allie’s mom, Mrs. Shear, breezed in. “I’m back, girls!” she called, her arms full of economy-size tubs of toppings. “And they had so many yummy-looking things at the store that I had to try a few new things.”

  She went straight for the toppings bar and showed us the spiced nuts, lemon curd, nut brittle, and peppermint she’d bought. “Tamiko,” she said, “I’ll leave you in charge of coming up with interesting new treats that use these. You always have good ideas.”

  She patted Tamiko on the shoulder and flashed me a smile as she headed toward the back of the shop, where the storage and little office area were. We all called it “backstage.”

  “Now, I’ll be backstage for a while doing some paperwork, but feel free to come back if you need to talk to me,” Mrs. Shear said. “And, Allie, please put some music on. . . . It’s dead in here!”

  Allie obediently turned on the store’s speaker system and cued up a song on her phone. It was a fast-paced song and sounded out of place as my two friends and I stared at one another, not sure how to go on after our disagreement, especially since Allie’s mom was back and might overhear us.

  I was grateful they hadn’t told on me, and truly sorry for being late. But I believed I had a valid excuse. I played right fullback on my soccer team, and my sub hadn’t been there. I’d had to play. But there were two other employees here at Molly’s working, and both were able to do the cash register. Was there something else they were mad about? Or was it really just my occasional lateness?

  The three of us worked for a while in stony silence.  Allie and Tamiko were stiff and awkward, and I felt so miserable that I debated whether I should just go tell Mrs. Shear I’d been twelve minutes late so that she could reprimand me. Maybe then my friends would let me off the hook. But if Allie had wanted her mother to know, she would have told her, and she hadn’t. So I didn’t want to get her in trouble for covering for me.

  Ugh. It was all so awkward.

  Finally an older lady came in and began studying the menu.

  “What can I get you?” asked Tamiko, turning on her special Molly’s charm. “We have lots of one-of-a-kind treats that aren’t on the menu, so just tell me what you’re in the mood for, and I’ll make it happen!”

  The woman, who was wearing a beautiful print scarf and pearls, looked amused. “One of a kind?”

  Allie jumped in. “Yes! Here at Molly’s all o
ur ice cream is homemade, and we constantly have new items on the menu that you can’t find anywhere else. Molly’s is completely unique.”

  “I like unique.” The woman smiled, studying us. “Are you three friends, or just coworkers?”

  “Friends,” I said quickly. “Best friends. They’re my two best friends in the whole world.”

  The woman nodded knowingly. “I have two best friends too. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Three can be a hard number for friendships sometimes, but I’m glad to see you girls have it all worked out.”

  I didn’t say anything, and neither did Allie or Tamiko. I wasn’t sure we had it all worked out, especially today.

  “I have a good feeling about you girls,” the woman said. “How about you surprise me with something of your choice?”

  Tamiko clapped her hands with joy, and with a sly look at me, whispered something into Allie’s ear.  Allie nodded and quickly got to work.

  Tamiko told me what to charge, and I rang it up on the cash register. When Allie presented the woman with the finished product, a frothy milkshake made with three scoops of vanilla ice cream, flavored with spiced nuts, lemon curd, and peppermint.

  “Mmm. It looks heavenly,” the woman said. “What’s it called?”

  Tamiko beamed. “It’s called a forgiveness float. Because even though friendships can sometimes be spicy or sour, forgiveness is sweet.”

  The woman took a sip and beamed. “Well done, girls. This tastes exactly like forgiveness—especially the little bit of lemon curd!”

  She slipped a five-dollar bill into our tip jar and gave me a wink as she walked out the door.

  “Thanks, you guys,” I said, relieved to have been forgiven. “I mean it.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Allie. “Just don’t make the forgiveness float a permanent item on the menu, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Tamiko agreed. “Promise us you won’t add one more thing to your schedule, Sierra. You can’t handle it, and we can’t either.”