“No.”
“Get two. Get big ones.”
“I’ll buy you one at the store, but you can’t eat the jack-o’-lanterns on the stoops.”
“Buy it.”
“I can’t now. It’s not my own money. I have to buy radishes and lettuce. You have to wait until I get paid.”
“Now! Now!”
I reach back and grab Inkling by the scruff of his thick, furry neck. I yank him around and hold him in front of me. I look where I think his eyes are. “You know I don’t get paid till Friday,” I bark. “You have to control yourself!”
“Hank?” A voice startles me. “Hank, whatcha doing?”
It’s Joe Patne, a kid from my class. Standing there with his dad. Looking at me like I’m a crazy person.
Probably Only Small Ponies, Though
I drop Inkling and pretend to scratch my arm. “Oh, hi, Patne,” I say.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Buying radishes for my mom. What are you doing?”
“Dad and I are going swimming at the gym on Court Street.” He takes his glasses off and digs a pair of goggles from his bag. He puts them on. They make him look like a supervillain, which I like. “What I meant was, why are you yelling at the air?”
Patne and I are kind of friends.
I mean, we were. Kind of.
He went to Science Fellow camp with me and my best friend, Wainscotting, after second grade. I went to his birthday party in third grade and he went to mine. But Patne was out of town all last summer, and when school started again and Wainscotting moved away to Iowa—well. I don’t hang around with him anymore.
Why not?
I don’t know.
He goes to after-school every day, and I get picked up. Plus, his family moved to Clinton Hill and now he gets to Public School 166 on the subway instead of walking. Still, after-school and geography are not really reasons to stop being friends with a guy.
“Swimming sounds fun,” I say.
“But why were you yelling at your hand?”
“I was, ah, speaking of swimming, do you ever think there might be a giant lizard in the swimming pool, even though you know there isn’t? Like, you’re sure it’s lurking in the deep end, the part where the water is cold.”
“Not really,” says Patne.
“I always think of giant lizards,” I say. “Or maybe water snakes. The faint-banded sea snake is insanely poisonous. And the anaconda isn’t venomous but it’s very huge. It can squeeze ponies to death and eat them.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” says Patne. “But that’s cool about the ponies.”
I can’t believe he doesn’t ever think about creatures lurking in the swimming pool. I mean, I know I have an overbusy imagination, but that was something I thought everybody worried about.
At least he’s stopped asking why I yelled at my hand.
“Probably only small ponies, though,” I say. “Pygmy ponies. I—whoa!”
A jack-o’-lantern rolls across my feet. A large one.
Inkling!
I stop the pumpkin with one foot and smile up at Patne like nothing weird is happening.
“Is that your pumpkin?” he asks.
“No,” I say, loudly and meaningfully. “This is not my pumpkin. It is not a pumpkin belonging to anyone I know. This is a stranger pumpkin that just rolled off its stoop. We should put it back. It belongs to somebody who cares very much about it.”
I lug the pumpkin back to the stoop. It is really, really heavy.
There is a quiet chewing sound. Coming from inside it.
Oh no.
Inkling is eating the stranger pumpkin from inside. Should I try and talk to Patne like a normal person? Pretend like it’s not happening? Or should I save the pumpkin by taking off the cap and yanking Inkling out, which means Patne will think I am crazy?
I whack the pumpkin with my open palm. “This is someone’s special jack-o’-lantern!” I say loudly. “It’s good to respect our neighbors and their holiday decorations!”
“Hank, I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Patne. “I have to go to the pool now.”
“Okay!” I say, slapping the pumpkin again. “Goodbye and have a nice day!”
As soon as Patne’s gone, I yank Inkling out and tuck him under my arm like a towel. “You’re insulting my dignity,” he mutters.
“You lost that a long time ago,” I tell him.
We Can’t Have Blood Ice Cream
My family is the Wolowitz family and we run a shop called Big Round Pumpkin: Ice Cream for a Happy World. It’s a few doors down from the apartment where we live—Mom, Dad, me, my sixteen-year-old sister, Nadia, and seven hundred books.
Mom and Nadia work the counter. Mom does the bills. Nadia writes the signboards. She has pretty handwriting.
Dad makes all the ice cream himself and does cleanup duty.
I recycle and take out the trash.
Yeah.
You don’t need to tell me it’s the worst job in the family. I know it’s the worst job.
A thing about me is, I need a promotion.
Another thing about me is, I’ve invented hundreds of ice-cream flavors. Really, hundreds. Only there is not one single Hank Wolowitz flavor up on our chalkboard.
Nadia has two: espresso double shot and cinnamon mocha.
Dad and Mom are always inventing flavors to bring new customers into the shop. Besides all the usual kinds, we have white cherry white chocolate, nectarine swirl, even chocolate-covered pretzel.
So why not fruit punch? Why not pancakes and syrup? Why not green Jell-O pineapple?
Why won’t Dad even try making them?
(Don’t remind me about what happened that time with the Cheddar Bunnies. That has nothing to do with the fact that green Jell-O pineapple is really, truly worth a try.)
Every year, Dad makes a special Halloween flavor. Last year, third grade, it was candy corn.
Nadia’s idea. Vanilla ice cream with little candy corns in it.
Boring.
It didn’t sell well, either. We were stuck with gallons of candy corn ice cream that no one wanted. My parents ended up donating it to a family shelter.
“It didn’t sell because it was a dumb idea,” I told Dad, as he was packing it all into the refrigerated truck. He was wearing a dirty apron. “Next year you should make monster mash,” I went on. “You should make Frankenstein ice cream! You should make orange and licorice! Make loose tooth! Make—”
“Loose tooth?” Dad looked a bit ill, but maybe he was just cold from kneeling in the icy truck. “What would that be?”
“Red ice cream with candy teeth.”
“Red like what?” He frowned. “Because cherry ice cream comes out pink. So does raspberry.”
“Red like blood,” I said.
Dad shook his head. “We can’t have blood ice cream.”
“It would just be food coloring!”
“No food coloring,” Dad reminded me. “It has to be organic and locally made. That’s what we sell here. Ice cream for a happy world.”
“Did you have organic and local candy corn?”
“Yes, actually. From the chocolate shop on Court Street.”
Oh. I stepped on and off the curb near where the truck was parked. On and off. On and off.
“Kids would like loose tooth,” I said finally. “I still think you should make it. Or else Loch Ness monster slime.”
Dad shoved the last five-gallon tub of ice cream toward the back of the truck’s freezer and hopped out. “I don’t even want to know what that one is.”
“It might involve making, like, a green gummy muck,” I said, following him to the shop.
He opened the door and went through to the kitchen. He ran his hands under warm water and rubbed them with a rag. “Tell you what, Hank. Next year, I’ll ask for all your Halloween ideas. We’ll sit down and brainstorm something great. I promise, promise.”