“Nadia goes in my room all the time,” I say.
“Maybe, but—”
“You always listen to her,” I interrupt. “You believe what she says even when she’s lying. You take her side whenever we argue. You make the ice-cream flavors she invents, even when they’re boring.”
Dad is quiet for a long time. Then he gets out of the truck and starts unloading it.
Inkling climbs on my back. None of us says a word.
We lug everything up to my third-floor classroom. Say hello to Ms. Cherry.
Kids start coming in. When Dad sees Chin, he jumps up and down. Chin jumps up and down back at Dad, but she doesn’t look me in the eye.
Our beet argument was only yesterday afternoon.
“You should make up with her,” Inkling whispers, close to my ear. I told him everything, early this morning. “Chin is, like, your only friend.”
“That’s not true!” I whisper back. “I’m friends with Patne.” Kids are still coming in and putting their things away, so the classroom is pretty loud.
“Patne?” Inkling scoffs. “I’ve never even heard of Patne. How friends can you be if I’ve never even heard of the guy?”
“He was there when you ate that jack-o’-lantern on the stoop!”
“I don’t remember.”
“Because you were inside a pumpkin,” I say. “Patne is totally my friend. He’s been to my house before. I might even decide to trick-or-treat with him.” I head to where Patne is hanging his coat on a hook. “My dad’s gonna make ice cream,” I say. “Come look in the cooler.”
Patne pushes his glasses onto his nose and squints at me. “Lucky you,” he says. “My dad would never make ice cream. My dad doesn’t believe in dessert.”
“What?” I can’t imagine a dad who doesn’t believe in dessert. Dessert is, like, the main thing my dad believes in.
“My dad believes in fruit,” says Patne. “My dad believes fruit is dessert.”
“What about strawberry Twizzlers?” I ask. “Or Starbursts?”
Patne shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. Just fruit fruit.”
I never knew this about Patne. “Come look in the cooler,” I repeat. And for a second, it looks like he’s coming.
Then Henry Kim takes his arm. “Joe, come sit by me! Everyone’s going to the rug!”
“He’s coming with me to look in the cooler,” I say.
“Come on, Joe!” says Kim to Patne. “Before the good spots are gone.”
And Patne goes.
He doesn’t say, “Hank, why don’t you sit with us?” And Kim doesn’t either.
I think about going to sit with them anyway. Just acting like I belong. Saying, “Hey, maybe we should all trick-or-treat together this Halloween.”
But I don’t.
I stand there, stupid, waiting for Inkling to make some snappy comment about Patne.
He doesn’t.
Instead, I feel his rough, padded paw stroking my hair. And the warmth of his furry body on my back like a hug.
Dad heats sugar and cream on the hot plate. He has me crack whole eggs into a small bowl and add them to the warm sugar and cream. He stirs with a wooden spoon.
Then we add bitter but sweet-smelling vanilla extract and stir more.
“The raw eggs taste slimy and gross,” Dad says. “The vanilla isn’t good on its own, either. But this is the magic of the kitchen. We put them together—the bitter, the slimy, plus the sweet sugar and the cream—and we heat them until a small miracle occurs.”
The classroom smells amazing.
“Oh! I need to add a pinch of salt! I can’t believe I almost forgot!” Dad makes a comical show of searching for his salt shaker, finds it in the cooler, then shakes a bit into the pot. “You wouldn’t think you’d have salt in ice cream,” he goes on. “But you need it. That bit of saltiness, just like the bitterness from the vanilla—that’s what makes the flavor.” Everyone is standing, clustered around Dad’s table. “I think that’s true of life, too,” says Dad. “You have, let’s say, a family. And some parts of that family are sweet as sugar—but some parts are bitter or salty or slimy. You might think, If only I could take out those yucky bits, this family would be perfect.”
He lifts up the wooden spoon and changes the subject, explaining to the kids, “I’m looking for the custard to form. Did you know ice cream is a custard?”
“Do you need a cleansing wipe, Mr. Wolowitz?” asks Ms. Cherry.
“I’m fine.” Dad stirs again. “Like I was saying, if I made this ice cream with nothing but sugar and cream, it wouldn’t be that great. You wouldn’t want to eat a whole bowl. You want a bit of bitter, salt, and slime—that’s what makes it all-the-way delicious.”
Suddenly I feel choked in my throat. The warm smell of the custard washes over Ms. Cherry’s cold classroom.
My dad is making ice cream.
And it really is a kind of magic.
While the ice cream is churning in the machine, we do Everyday Math. When it’s ready, everyone rushes to get a taste. Dad gives each kid a big serving, and we settle on the rug to eat.
I’m not really sure who to sit with.
I mean, I don’t have anybody to sit with.
I stand by Dad and talk to him while he cleans off the machine with a damp rag.
Then, as if by magic, Kim’s bowl tips out of his hands. His ice cream slides onto the rug, oozing a creamy white stain.
Patne’s does the same. Tips over.
They barely get to eat anything.
Other than that, Inkling behaves himself.
Can’t I Be an Art Lover?
Nadia isn’t able to redo her pumpkins on Wednesday because of PSAT study group; she can’t do it Thursday, either. She has to work at Big Round Pumpkin till closing.
She and I either don’t talk to each other. Or else we yell.
Silence, yelling. Silence, yelling.
That’s how the next two days go.
Friday afternoon, I work at Big Round Pumpkin for a bit after school. I get paid—five dollars for the week.
Inkling comes by, and I let him have a waffle cone. On the way home, I buy a tiny pumpkin at the corner market and tell Dad it’s for my squash project. It costs $4.76, which doesn’t leave me enough to buy even the cheapest kind of candy.
It’s a good thing I got paid today, though, because it’s the day of the dangerous pumpkin contest. Nadia’s got two more jumbo pumpkins on the table when Dad and I walk through the door. I need that tiny, expensive pumpkin to distract Inkling. I put it on a tray in my closet for him and come back to the dining area to watch Nadia work. She’s hollowing out the second pumpkin. The first one is finished already. It’s a witch’s face, etched into the white of the peeled squash.
“These are going to be even better than the ones you did before,” I say.
Nadia turns and puts her hands on her hips. “This contest is important to me. Did you even think of that when you ruined everything? If I win, I can put it on my application to the Parsons summer art program. And on my college applications, too. Now look. I only have two entries, instead of four.”
“Sheesh!” I say. “I’m trying to be nice!”
“Here’s a hint,” Nadia says. “I don’t care what you think about my sculptures. And I don’t care what you say.”
“But—”
“I only care what you do. Like, when you smash them all, or don’t smash them.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“That’s my point!” cries Nadia. “Don’t tell me you like them and don’t tell me you’re sorry. It’s all just words. The eyeball, that might have won, but can I make it again? No. All those veins took forever, and the contest starts at seven thirty.”
“But what am I supposed to do?” I whine. “There’s nothing for me to do to fix things!”
“Then don’t do anything.”
Dad hangs out with Nadia while I do schoolwork in my bedroom. Mom comes home and makes everybody eat something healthy. Nadia finishes her second pumpkin—a silhouette of a striped dragon with a long wavy body and a scary, beady eye.