Banana Splits

by Coco Simon

  “Going green? Stuff that is recycled but also the color green?” I shot out.

  “Maybe better for Saint Patrick’s Day. Or Earth Day,” Allie countered.

  I nodded. “Okay. What about a post on how to wear scarves? You know, like different ways to tie them . . .”

  Sierra frowned. “I think it’s already too hot for scarves. Even the kind you’re talking about.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “So, how about a tutorial on how to customize your toilet seat?”

  Allie laughed. “I don’t think the world is ready for that, Tamiko.”

  I knew Allie was right. But I was starting to worry. Sierra had told me that I’d never run out of ideas. But I was already stuck on an idea for my second blog post!

  Then a gray-haired couple walked into the shop.

  “Welcome to Molly’s. May I take your order?” I asked.

  “We will have one banana split, please, and two spoons,” the man said. “It’s our summer tradition. The first day we come to the beach, we get a banana split.”

  A banana split was ice cream served on a banana sliced in half lengthwise, but at Molly’s we always served the sundae in a dish shaped like a boat. And we put in three scoops of different-flavored ice creams. Then we added three sauces: chocolate, strawberry, and caramel. The whole thing got topped with crushed walnuts, whipped cream, and a cherry—and of course a sprinkle of happy.

  “What flavors would you like?” I asked.

  “Well, we usually get chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry,” the woman replied. “But I see you have so many unusual flavors here. What would you recommend?”

  “Hmm,” I said, looking at the flavor board. “It depends on how adventurous you feel. If you’re not feeling too adventurous, then I would replace the vanilla with our delicious Banana Pudding flavor, to make your banana split even more bananalicious.”

  “Oh my, that sounds delicious!” the woman replied. “I think that’s plenty adventurous.”

  I turned to Allie. “One banana split with Banana Pudding, chocolate, and strawberry,” I said. While she scooped the ice cream, I sliced the banana in half—and then I got an idea.

  “Bananas for bananas!” I cried. “Bananas are summery, and I talk about what colors to wear with yellow, and also make some fun banana accessories, and then show how Molly’s makes a banana split!”

  “That sounds perfect, Tamiko!” Allie said.

  “I like it!” Sierra agreed.

  And it was a great theme for a post, except I didn’t realize how much work it would take to get it together. I didn’t have any yellow clothes I could alter, so that meant I needed to take a trip to the thrift shop. And a trip to the craft shop to get supplies for banana-themed accessories. And I still had homework!

  It didn’t help that Kai made me feel pressured when I got home that night.

  “You should be making a new blog post at least once a week, on the same day, so that your readers will know when to expect it,” he told me after dinner (when I hadn’t even asked for his opinion). “And if your blog is linked to Molly’s, you should also post something smaller every day.”

  “I can’t do a new photo shoot every day!” I argued. “Especially when I’m in school.”

  “You don’t always have to post a photo shoot,” Kai said. “You’re funny, right? So just post what’s on your mind.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. I mean, people liked my sense of humor, but would they view or subscribe to my blog to hear it? Was I that good? I decided to give it a try.

  Kai had inspired me. That night I found a photo of the Coyotes, a baseball team. The team shirt had olive-green and white stripes, with green trim around the neck and arms. The pants were baggy on everyone who wore them. I played around with comments that I could write.

  “This fashion is hazardous to your health.”

  “It’s not easy being green.”

  “Who designed this, Oscar the Grouch?”

  I finally decided on, “Not coming to Fashion Week this year: the Coyotes baseball uniform.”

  I uploaded it and held my breath. I didn’t have to wait long for the comments.

  “LOL!”

  “I would never wear that!”

  I grinned. This was great! I was still excited to plan my photo shoot, but I could do funny photos with captions in between.

  And that’s what I did. During the next week, between studying and taking tests, I posted one photo a day. I kept it simple and funny. With a photo of chicken nuggets from the school cafeteria, I wrote: “School cafeteria says, ‘Eat all your nuggets!’ Any leftover nuggets will be served in September.” That one got a lot of laughing emojis.

  Another day, I posted a photo of the school mascot. It was supposed to be a raven, but the costume was ancient, and all of the feathers were falling off. I wrote: “I think the MLK Raven needs some conditioner!” That one got a smiley face from Carrie Preston, the girl who wore the costume.

  I wasn’t just getting comments online either. Lots of people were coming up to me IRL to tell me how funny I was. Or they had ideas for what I should post. People who almost never talked to me were offering me ideas.

  Pete Bradley came up to me during lunch, holding his lunch tray with mac and cheese. “You should take a picture of this, Tamiko,” he said. “You could say, like, ‘Gross! Is this supposed to be mac and cheese?’ ”

  He looked at me for approval. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he wasn’t being funny, so I just said, “Um, yeah, well, I’ll think about it.”

  Katie Phan slid into the seat next to me during study time. “Are you going to post about what a dork Mr. Walker is? I mean, he’s the worst teacher, right?”

  “I don’t think I should be bad-mouthing teachers on my blog,” I told her. “Although, off the record, I agree with you.”

  Connor Jackson stopped me as I was walking home. “You should make fun of how bad the football team at Jefferson is. You could post a photo of them and say, like, ‘Ready for the Stupid Bowl.’ ”

  “I don’t want to take sides,” I said. “And anyway, I’m not really into football.”

  Connor shrugged and jogged off.

  Some of the comments were annoying. But in a way, it was really flattering. It seemed like everybody in school was reading my blog.

  I was actually starting to feel like the queen of social media, and I liked it!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BANANAS!

  During lunch one day that week, I asked Victoria to be in my banana split photo shoot. Her green eyes got wide.

  “Seriously? I would love to!” she said. “I’m thinking about becoming a model, maybe, and this would really help my portfolio. I mean, I’m tall enough, right?”

  I’d always noticed that she was one of the tallest girls in our class, but I hadn’t thought much about it. “How tall are you?”

  “Five-six,” she said. “And I’m supposed to hit five-eleven by the time I’m done growing.”

  “Wow, that is tall!” Sierra said. “You should totally be a model.”

  Victoria blushed. “Thanks,” she said. “I mean, it’ll be fun to do it for Tamiko’s blog anyway.”

  “Can you do Saturday?” I asked. That meant that I could spend Friday night getting ready for the shoot.

  “Sure,” she said, and I typed “Shoot with Victoria” into my phone. Then I turned to Sierra. “Now I know what it’s like to be you. I’m so busy!”

  “I think you need to add, like, five more things to your schedule to compete with me,” Sierra said with a smile. “But you’re close.”

  “As close as I want to be!” I joked. “This is exhausting!”

  In art class Mr. Rivera handed back our graded sketches. Written neatly and circled at the top of the page was the number ninety-five. And then a note: “This would have been a one hundred if you’d handed it in on time!”

  I was not going to miss Mr. Rivera, that was for sure.

  After art class Ewan walked
up to me. “Your Chrysler Building sketch turned out great,” he said. “So I guess I’ll see you at the block party?”

  “Definitely,” I said, and this time I didn’t blush. I was pretty proud of myself for that!

  I stayed up late Friday, painting tiny bananas on a pair of white sneakers. I turned a basic white button-down shirt into a sleeveless shirt and added a cute yellow ruffle detail down the front. Then I sewed an embroidered banana patch onto a pair of jeans.

  On Saturday I met Victoria by the beach for the photo shoot. She changed inside the bathroom at Molly’s, and I got pictures of her on the boardwalk, with the ocean in the background. Then we went to Molly’s, where Allie had prepared a perfect banana split for the shoot. I took pictures of  Victoria eating it at one of the tables in the shop. “When you’re a famous model, you can tell everyone that you got paid with a banana split for your first job,” I joked.

  Victoria laughed. “This is awesome, Tamiko. Thanks,” she said. “I’m really glad you asked me to do this.”

  “I think the photos are going to look great,” I told her.

  “When will you be posting them?” she asked.

  “Tonight,” I said, hoping I could follow through. “I want to keep the momentum going.”

  After Victoria changed and gave me back the clothes from the shoot, I noticed that the shop was packed. Allie looked frantic behind the counter, even though the usual Saturday helpers, Rashid and Daphne, were there.

  “Need help?” I called over the counter.

  Allie nodded. “It’s crazy. It’s like the weather got a little bit warmer, and everybody came to Molly’s!”

  I laughed, washed up, put on an apron, and helped until I had to go home for dinner. Mrs. S. was grateful and paid me for my hours, which I hadn’t even been expecting.

  “You are a lifesaver, Tamiko,” she said. “And I know it’s been a busy week for you, but do you think you can answer the comments on the Molly’s page when you have a chance? I noticed there are a few of them that haven’t been answered in a couple of days.”

  “Sure thing, Mrs. S.!” I promised. I’d fallen behind on checking the Molly’s page during my crazy week. “I’ll do it as soon as I get home.”

  But I didn’t. I ate dinner, and then I started putting together my blog post. I still had to take photos of the banana sneakers and some banana earrings I had made. At around nine p.m. I put up the new post. Then I posted the link on SuperSnap, and I texted it to Sierra, Allie, and MacKenzie. And this time I included  Victoria.

  Finally I went to the Molly’s website and added a post about the Molly’s banana split with Banana Pudding ice cream, and linked to my blog. Perfect! Then I noticed a bunch of new questions in the comments section. Even though I was yawning, I knew I had to answer them before my shift the next day. I’d promised Mrs. S.

  I clicked on the first one.

  “Is your ice cream gluten free?”

  That question got asked a lot, and it was a complicated answer because some flavors had ingredients like cookies in them, or we used cookies as mix-ins. And our cones weren’t gluten free.

  Then I got a notification that I had received a new comment on my blog, so I switched over to the blog.

  “I am bananas for this blog post!” Allie had written.

  Next I went back to the Molly’s website to work on questions there. I also had to check the Molly’s SuperSnap page. But every time I got a notification about my blog, I checked it. I was so curious to see who was reading it and how they felt about it!

  Someone had left a comment on the most recent SuperSnap post for Molly’s. “I went to your store at ten p.m. and you were already closed. ”

  I literally face-palmed. Why couldn’t anyone read the hours on the website?

  “Sorry we missed you!” I typed. “Molly’s is open until eight p.m. Monday to Thursday, and until nine p.m. Friday to Sunday. But you can buy pints to store in your freezer in case you get another late-night craving!”

  My eyes were drooping, and I kept yawning, but I wanted to finish. Maybe I needed some late-night ice cream. I kept switching back from the Molly’s site to my blog.

  Then a post popped up on the Molly’s site from Jodie Thompson, a girl in my grade at MLK. She’d posted a photo of a banana split—a total disaster of a banana split. A food fail if I’d ever seen one. The whipped cream was sliding off the side; she’d added, like, twenty cherries, which was a ridiculous amount; and the chocolate sauce was in one big glob instead of spread out over all three scoops of ice cream.

  “Hey, Molly’s, what do you think?” she’d asked. I groaned. Did she really think that sundae was photo worthy? I tried to think of a funny way to answer her.

  “You call that a banana split?” I typed. “It’s more like banana SLOP! Stop trying to do things you don’t know anything about, and leave the ice cream making to Molly’s!”

  Normally I would have reread my comment before posting it. But it was late and I was tired, and I was especially tired of people asking ridiculous questions on the Molly’s website.

  I closed my laptop and started to drift off to sleep, but I didn’t sleep well. I woke up in the middle of the night and started thinking about my reply to Jodie. While I’d thought my comment was funny, calling her sundae a “banana slop” might have been too harsh.

  I climbed out of bed and opened the Molly’s web page. Then I deleted Jodie’s post and my response.

  Problem solved, I thought, and then I fell into a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FROM FAMOUS TO INFAMOUS OVERNIGHT

  I woke up and stretched the next morning. The sun was streaming through my window; it was a beautiful sunny Sunday. Today was going to be a great day!

  I looked at my notifications. Twenty comments on the blog, more than I had ever received! Excited, I opened the blog and scrolled through the comments.

  I gasped. One of the comments on my “Bananas” post was a screenshot of the exchange between me and Jodie on the Molly’s website. There was her horrible photo, and her comment, and there was my “banana slop” response.

  “We know this is you, Tamiko! Wow, how mean!” I looked at the commenter’s handle, but I didn’t recognize it.

  Some of the other commenters I did recognize as kids from my school.

  “That’s so mean!”

  “I like Jodie. Leave her alone!”  That one was from Jenna Horowitz!

  “Noooooooo!” I wailed.

  I ran into Kai’s room. He was awake and sitting at his desk, working on his laptop.

  “Kai, I have an emergency!” I said, and I handed him my phone.

  He looked at the screen and frowned. “Wow.  This is bad.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Everybody loves Tamiko’s Take because I am funny and I tell it like it is. And now everybody is going crazy because I made a little joke about somebody’s banana split?”

  I jabbed my finger at the photo on the screen. “Look at it! It’s a drippy, uneven mess. It IS banana slop!”

  Kai laughed. “Maybe so,” he said. “But on the internet, people can’t get your tone. They don’t know if you’re joking, being sarcastic, or being downright mean. You’ve got to be so careful about what you say. Unfortunately, there will always be people who think the worst.”

  “Maybe,” I said, and then I sighed. “Anyway, I already deleted the comment from the Molly’s website. I guess I should delete all these comments from my blog too. There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “I think you should put an apology on your blog too,” Kai said.

  “Wait, what?” I asked.

  “If you offended people, I think it only makes sense to apologize for it,” Kai pointed out.

  “I guess,” I said. “But it doesn’t seem fair. I need to think about it.”

  Kai shook his head, laughing. “You’re so stubborn, Tamiko,” he said. “Just be nice and say you’re sorry. For the good of Molly’s.”

  “I told you, I del
eted the comment from the Molly’s website,” I said.

  “Yeah, but that screenshot is out there,” Kai reminded me. “Who knows where else it’s been posted?”

  I groaned. “This is a nightmare.”

  “Look,” Kai said. “You’re getting more negative comments as we speak.”

  “So how do I stop them?” I asked. “Should I delete the post? Or block people? Or take the blog offline until this cools down?”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Kai said. “But you already know what I think. I think you should apologize.”

  “Yeah, I know that’s what you think,” I said testily. I took my phone from him and stomped back to my room. I regretted asking for his advice.

  What should have been a great day was getting off to a terrible start, and it wasn’t even my fault! Everybody was overreacting and being waaay too sensitive.

  Back in my room, I stared at my phone.

  “You are a rotten banana!” Connor Jackson had posted.

  Connor was the same guy who’d wanted me to call his football rivals “stupid”! How dare he call me a rotten banana. How DARE he!

  I scrolled through all the comments again and noticed that Jodie herself hadn’t said anything, which I thought was a little odd because this had all started with her post. Maybe she didn’t know about Tamiko’s Take, or she was still sleeping in. Then a new comment popped up. “Who do you think you are? I’m never going to Molly’s again!” Uh-oh. It was bad enough for these people to turn against me. Now they were going to turn against Molly’s, too? When I had linked my blog to the Molly’s website, I’d thought it would only help Molly’s. I had been totally wrong.

  And I couldn’t believe that someone had taken a screenshot of a comment as evidence, as if they were a private detective or something. If I was the queen of social media, these people were total drama queens. Although, I had to admit, I wasn’t really feeling like a queen at the moment.

  Why did I ever start this blog? I wondered. What is the point of working hard to entertain people if they’re just going to turn on you?