Cracks in the Cone

by Coco Simon

  Most athletes would just go to the gym. But like I said earlier, I hated the gym showers. No one was going to drag me into one of those. My mom ran, so I had started going on runs with her. There were two problems with that. First, she talked when she ran, which was annoying. The second was that she ran insanely early in the morning. Sometimes we ran together on the weekends, but I’d decided to join the cross-country team, which ran at a more reasonable hour after school.

  I heard shoes crunching on the path behind me. A girl with blond hair in braids passed me—Grace Riley. We’d never had anything in common until I’d joined the team. She nodded to me as she passed. I didn’t mind so much because at least she was on the MLK team. I wasn’t super-competitive, but I never liked it when girls from the opposing team passed me.

  I picked up my pace a little bit, but I couldn’t catch up to Grace. I heard more footsteps behind me and turned to see three girls, one from MLK and two from the Branchton Middle School team.

  I pushed myself even faster. One of the Branchton girls passed me, but I kept the other two at bay.

  Finally the finish line was in sight. I could see five runners ahead of me, which would put me in sixth place. Not bad, out of seventeen girls.

  I crossed the line and then bent over, hands on my knees.

  “Yay, Tamiko!”

  “You did it, Tamiko!”

  I looked up to see my dad and Kai, cheering me on. I hadn’t been expecting to see either of them there. Dad and Mom both worked at the college a few towns away, so they sometimes had off in the afternoon, depending on their class schedules. Kai’s lone after-school activity was the business club. He’d never been into sports.

  I walked up to them, sweating and panting.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Nice job, Tamiko,” Dad said. “I’m very proud of you. You put a lot of effort into that final stretch.”

  “Yeah, well, sixth place,” I said with a shrug.

  “But MLK also got first, second, and fourth place,” Kai added. “So I’m guessing that your team probably won.”

  “We can take you home, so you don’t have to ride the bus,” Dad said.

  I nodded. “Great! Be right back!”

  I ran off to check in with Coach Furman, looked at my recorded time, and then jogged back to Dad and Kai.

  “Thanks for coming to see me,” I said as we got into the car.

  “I was also thinking that we could stop at Mrs. Shear’s ice cream parlor on the way home,” Dad said. “I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “But before dinner?”

  “Well, it’s early still,” Dad said. “And if you don’t tell Mom, then I won’t.” He smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “Plus, Mom’s making her casserole tonight.” Now he grinned even bigger at me.

  I’d suspected that Dad had an ulterior motive for coming to my meet, and for suggesting the ice cream parlor. Mom loved to make this casserole. Kai and I liked it—it was creamy and had mysterious but delicious ingredients in it. But Dad didn’t really care for it. So he probably wanted to fill up on ice cream beforehand.

  That didn’t bother me at all, because after running two miles, I was pretty hungry. We drove into downtown Bayville and entered the shop.

  It was four fifteen, and the shop was deserted, except for Allie’s mom, who was standing at the counter all by herself. She brightened up when we came in.

  “Toshi, Tamiko, Kai!” she said. “Good to see you.”

  “Good to see you too,” Dad said. “The place looks very nice.”

  “Very nice, and very slow,” she said with a sigh.

  “Is it always this slow?” Kai asked.

  Mrs. S. shook her head. “No,” she replied. “Tuesday is just the slowest day of the week, but I think that’s because this is a beach town. Lots of people stay for three-day weekends, but they’re all gone by Tuesday.”

  I looked up on the menu board and saw FLAVOR OF THE DAY: LAVENDER BLACKBERRY.

  “Hey, you did a flavor of the day!” I said. “Is that the purple ice cream?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I used blackberries, so it’s naturally purple. It came out great.”

  I looked at Dad. “Can we order?” I asked, and he nodded. “Then I’ll have a single scoop of Lavender Blackberry please, in a sugar cone.”

  As much as I thought that sugar cones were boring, I actually really liked them. When you wanted to really taste a flavor of ice cream, they were the best backdrop.

  Mrs. S. handed me my cone. “Would you like a sprinkle of happy?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Yes, please!”

  Dad and Kai ordered their cones. Dad got the Banana Pudding, and Kai got the Kitchen Sink with chocolate sprinkles.

  “Oh, man,” Kai said after a few bites. “Mrs. Shear, this is awesome! This place should be packed every minute!”

  “I told you,” I said.

  “It is delicious,” my dad agreed.

  We paid for our ice cream, said good-bye to Mrs. S., and headed home. We found Mom in the kitchen, busy working on her casserole.

  “Hey, guys,” she said. “How was the meet?”

  “MLK won,” I replied. “I placed sixth.”

  Mom wiped her hands and gave me a hug. “Good job!” she said.

  “We stopped at Mrs. Shear’s ice cream parlor,” Kai said, and Mom glared at my dad but didn’t say anything. “That ice cream is amazing. There is no reason why her shop should not be packed every day.”

  “She told you,” I said. “It’s a beach town. Nobody’s around on Tuesdays.”

  “That’s not true,” Kai said. “Bayville has a year-round population of twenty-one thousand people. That’s enough people to pack an ice cream shop on a Tuesday. She just has to up her marketing game.”

  “She totally does,” I said. “She doesn’t even have a page on social media.”

  Kai grinned. “I love a challenge,” he said. “Want to help me?”

  “Of course!” I answered.

  “Tonight, after homework,” he said mysteriously.

  “Cool. I need to shower,” I said. I went upstairs.

  Before I could shower, I got a text from Keiko.

  Fun seeing you Saturday, T! Miss you!

  I stared at the text. The whole thing with her and Ken liking each other had really gotten to me. It wasn’t like I was jealous that they were closer, and it wasn’t that I liked Ken too. I still thought boys were mainly gross and annoying.

  I just liked how things used to be. Keiko, Ken, Tamiko. Or Allie, Sierra, Tamiko. I liked both groups exactly the way they were. And I did not want anything to upset the balance.

  I texted back.

  Miss you too!

  I wanted to talk to Keiko about the whole Ken thing, but now was not the time. I had a casserole to eat. And a plot to hatch with my brother, the business genius.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I’M MELTING . . .

  As much as I hated admitting it, Kai was a very popular kid in his high school. As his sister, it was hard for me to be objective, but I thought there were a few reasons why he was popular. Some people would say Kai was handsome, and even though he said he didn’t pay attention to fashion, he always managed to look pretty cool. He was outgoing and made friends easily. He had a lot of energy, and he used it to keep up on every trend out there. He knew the deets of every social media star, he would be the first one to send you a meme before it blew up, and he knew which songs were going to be popular before they even came out.

  Kai was plugged in. So I knew that Kai was the perfect person to help Mrs. S. boost her business.

  “You were right about my taiyaki proposal,” I confessed to him Tuesday night as we sat down at his desk in his incredibly neat bedroom. “Mrs. S. said she’d think about it, but Allie kept bringing up all kinds of problems.”

  “I still think it’s a good idea,” Kai said. “But I think our first priority should be helping Mrs. Shear boost her Tuesday business. And I think th
at’s a lot easier to do than making taiyaki, for now.”

  I nodded. “What were you thinking?” I asked him.

  Kai started typing into his computer. “There are several marketing strategies geared specifically for food-service business,” he said. “For example, Mrs. Shear could sell ice cream at a food festival like the one at the Japan center. It would raise more awareness about her business.”

  “Right, but it would have to be within traveling distance of Bayville,” I said. “Because ice cream melts pretty fast. And that still doesn’t solve the Tuesday problem, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Kai agreed. “The most logical action to take would be to create some kind of Tuesday offer. A discount, or buy one, get one free. You said she doesn’t have a social media presence?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Not yet.”

  Kai frowned. “That’s too bad. E-mail is a great way to get out coupon offers. So are media sharing networks.”

  “Mrs. Shear is pretty old-school,” I informed him.

  “We can work with that,” Kai said. He typed something into his computer, and an image of a supermarket coupon came up. “We’ll go with a coupon. Everybody loves coupons!”

  “Perfect!” I said. “Can I design it?”

  “Sure,” Kai said. “I’ll help you with the wording. And we need to figure out what kind of discount would be best.”

  I yawned. “Awesome. Can we work on it during the week? I’m beat.”

  “No prob,” Kai said.

  I left, thinking how lucky I was to have a big brother who didn’t tease me or bully me like the big brothers in some TV shows. Kai was pretty cool.

  The problem was, Kai was busy, and so was I. I had a big science test coming up on Friday, so between cross-country and studying, I had no time to work on the coupon. And Kai was busy with the internship he’d gotten himself in the advertising office of the local TV station, WKSC.

  I was hoping to get the coupon ready with Kai on Saturday, after my meet, but he was at a WKSC event all day, and then he went out with his friends at night. Luckily, he always woke up early, so I cornered him Sunday morning.

  It took longer than I’d thought to get the coupons ready. We decided to make one hundred, to start. We figured out the exact wording, and I designed them on my laptop. Then Mom took us to the office supply store to make the copies.

  Back home I had to cut out all the coupons by hand. I had been unprepared for my taiyaki proposal, but I wanted to really impress Mrs. S. with this plan. I wanted to make sure that the Tuesday coupons would not be something that people would just throw away, or stick into their purses and forget about. These coupons needed to be memorable, and to do that I needed glitter.

  I was in my DIY room with the music blasting, and glitter all over my hands, when Mom barged in, scaring me.

  “Tamiko!” she said. “It’s almost one o’clock! Don’t you have to be at the ice cream shop?”

  “Oh, gosh!” I said, looking up. “I just have a few more to finish. I’ll be ready in five.”

  “Don’t you think we should leave now?” Mom asked. “You’ll already be a half hour late.”

  “I know I should probably leave now,” I said, “but then I won’t be able to show Mrs. S. these coupons until next Sunday!”

  Mom gave me the look that said, I’ll let you face the consequences, then left me alone. It was actually ten more minutes before I finished, and I had to wash the glitter off my hands and put on my work T-shirt.

  By the time I got into the store, the clock on the wall read 1:35. There was a line of customers at the counter, and Mrs. S. was taking orders.

  “There you are, Tamiko!” she said. “We were wondering where you were.”

  “I was working on these!” I said, waving the coupons. “Kai gave me this great idea, and he helped me make them.”

  I walked behind the counter as Mrs. S. was passing a milkshake to the customer in front of her. I held a coupon up to show her.

  “Remember Tuesday, when we came in and you talked about how it’s always so slow?” I asked. “Well, my brother and I came up with these coupons.”

  Tuesday Treat!

  Share a Sprinkle of Happy!

  Buy One, Get Half Off a Second!

  Offer is good for all cups, cones, sundaes, shakes, sodas, and mix-ins. One coupon per customer. This coupon is valid any Tuesday from noon to 5 p.m.

  To finish them off I had used a glitter pen to add sparkles that looked like sprinkles on each one.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “They’re incentive for people to come in on Tuesdays. And they are too beautiful to throw out! People will keep them and remember to use them. Kai said if this works well, we should think up promotions for other days of the week too.”

  While I’d been talking, more people had come into the shop. The woman closest to the counter eyed the coupon in my hand.

  “Buy one, get one half off?” she asked. “I’d come in on Tuesday for that. Can I have one?”

  I couldn’t have planned that moment better myself. It was perfect! I looked at Mrs. S. She read the type carefully, and I waited for what seemed like an hour but was only a few seconds.

  “Sure,” she said, handing the woman a coupon.

  “I’d like one!” said another woman behind her.

  “Tell you what, Tamiko,” Mrs. S. said. “Let’s keep them by the register and have Sierra give them out. We don’t want to get glitter in the ice cream.”

  “Good thinking,” I said.

  “All right. I’m going into the back, girls,” Mrs. S. said. “Tamiko, please jump right in so that people aren’t waiting too long.”

  “You got it, Mrs. S.!” I said cheerfully. Mrs. S. took a coupon with her to the office.

  I was feeling pretty good. Mrs. S. hadn’t exactly praised the coupons, but she hadn’t rejected them either. Over the next half hour I made thirteen cones and five cups, and Allie put together five sundaes, two milkshakes, and four mix-ins. Business was booming!

  Oh, and one of the customers was a woman in pink scrubs whom I remembered right away. It was the nurse! She had brought two other nurses with her.

  “Three unicorn sundaes?” I asked when I saw her, and she laughed.

  “You really brightened my day the last time I was here,” she said. “That unicorn sundae was delicious, but today I was thinking of something more chocolate.”

  “Kitchen Sink hot fudge sundae?” I suggested.

  “I completely trust you,” she said. “Bring it on!”

  “I’ll try a unicorn sundae, though,” said one of her nurse friends. The other nurse ordered a cup of vanilla, but I didn’t give her a hard time about it. I caught myself humming a tune as I scooped out the vanilla ice cream. It was funny how a nice customer could make you feel happy just as much as a rude customer could ruin your mood.

  Since I’d come in late, I hadn’t had time to check in with Sierra or Allie. We hadn’t taken our Sunday selfie. They were both being pretty quiet, but I figured it was because we were busy.

  When it finally slowed down, I wiped my hands on a towel and picked up my phone. “Is it too late for our Sunday selfie?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Allie said. “Is it too late?” She emphasized the last word. Before I could ask what she meant by that, three kids came into the shop.

  I recognized them as friends from Allie’s new school. The boy, Colin, had a cute smile. I couldn’t remember the two girls’ names, but I was pretty sure these were the nice girls that Allie had met, not the mean girls that she called the Mean Team.

  “Colin! Amanda! Eloise!” Allie cried, and she ran around the counter to hug them.

  “We saw your SuperSnap, so we came by,” Colin said.

  “What SuperSnap?” I asked.

  Colin walked over to me and held out his phone. The picture was a selfie of Allie and Sierra, each holding up an ice cream cone. Their mouths were open, like they were screaming.

  We all scream for ice cr
eam! #IceCream #SundayGoals #BayvilleBeach

  “That’s cute,” I said, but I was feeling a little bit hurt. “It’s just missing something. Me!”

  Allie ignored me. “What do you guys want?” she asked her new friends.

  “I was thinking of trying a unicorn sundae,” said Amanda.

  “I need a Chocolate Mint Chip shake, please,” said Eloise.

  “I’ll have a Butterscotch Chocolate Chunk cone,” Colin said.

  Allie gave him the biggest smile.

  “I’ve got the butterscotch,” I said. “Will that be a regular cone, Colin, or do you want something fancy?”

  “Regular cone is fine,” he said. “Tamiko, right?”

  “That’s me!” I said. I wondered if Allie talked about us to her new friends.

  The shop got busy again for a while, but Allie’s friends hung around until things got quiet again, and then Allie went over and talked to them for a few minutes. Finally they left.

  Sierra looked at Allie. “Colin is really nice,” she said, and she wiggled her eyebrows.

  Allie blushed. “Yes, he is nice. That’s why he’s my friend.”

  “He’s kind of cute, too,” Sierra said.

  “Sierra!” Allie squealed.

  “Why is it that every time a boy and a girl are friends, people assume they like each other in a romantic way?” I asked, thinking of Keiko and Ken. “Can’t boys and girls be friends?”

  “Of course they can,” Allie said. “Just like me and Colin.”

  Sierra rolled her eyes. “Of course that’s possible. I’m just saying . . . Allie, he was following your SuperSnap. And then he came to see you.”

  “He came to get ice cream,” Allie corrected her.

  “It was a good SuperSnap,” I said. “Although, I wish you guys had waited for me. You know—Sprinkle Sundays?”

  “Tamiko, you were so late!” Allie said. “And I texted you, but you didn’t answer. As far as we knew, you were bailing.”

  “I would never bail!” I protested. “I was working. Working on the coupons.”

  “But you were supposed to be working here,” Allie pointed out.

  I looked to Sierra, hoping to get some backup. She shrugged. “We didn’t know what was happening, Tamiko,” she said. “We were worried, but it was also a little unfair because we were trying to do the work of three people.”