Cracks in the Cone

by Coco Simon

  She was also just way more interesting than Mr. Rivera. And I don’t mean flashy interesting, like Allie’s new English teacher, who started each class with a one-minute disco dance, complete with a disco ball. No, I mean genuinely interesting. She had traveled all over the world and had a real-life story to tell us every time we read a new book. And when she talked about books, she really got them. And then she made you get them.

  Ms. Johnson started class by passing out vocabulary worksheets (no laptops at MLK).

  “These words are from your novels,” she said. “Today I’d like everyone to write a short story using five words from the list.”

  I scanned the list. One word popped out at me.

  “Perspective (n), a point of view on a topic or idea; also, a drawing technique on a two-dimensional surface depicting three-dimensional objects.”

  I tapped my pen on the desk, something I did when I was thinking. Here was that word again: “perspective.” Well, my perspective was that this assignment was going to be a good one.

  I finished by the end of class, feeling pretty good about it, and then MacKenzie and I walked to the cafeteria together and I got in line.

  I did not love our cafeteria food, but I also didn’t hate it. The salad bar was decent, and the greasy veggie burgers on Tuesdays didn’t bother me, though they could definitely have been a lot tastier. For the first five years of my school career, Mom had crafted perfect Japanese-style bento box lunches for me every single day, complete with hard-boiled eggs molded into heart and star shapes, and sometimes even a homemade card. Everyone was jealous of me, but it didn’t stop me from wanting that French bread pizza they sometimes served on Fridays.

  Then one day she just gave up. “I can’t do this anymore!” she announced one morning, and handed me a lunch card. And that was it.

  Sierra and MacKenzie were both lunch-bringers, so by the time I brought my tray of applesauce, salad, and falafel patty to the table, they were already eating and talking.

  I nodded to the other girls at our table—Kyra, Victoria, and Claire—and sat down next to Sierra. MacKenzie looked really happy.

  “Sierra was just telling me that the unicorn sundaes were a big hit,” she said.

  “Hey! I wanted to tell her,” I said.

  “Sorry,” Sierra said with a shrug.

  “I’m glad they sold well,” MacKenzie said. “They looked so pretty in the picture. I’m going to have to get one on Sunday.”

  “I hope Mrs. S. puts it on the menu,” I said. “She is not always open to new ideas. But she seemed to like that we sold a lot of sundaes.”

  “I think she has to put it on the menu,” Sierra said. “I’m sure people will be asking for it again.”

  “It must be so much fun working there,” MacKenzie said.

  I looked at Sierra. “Well, mostly fun,” I said. “I mean, I love Allie, but she is way too uptight working at the shop.”

  “What do you mean?” MacKenzie asked.

  “Well, Tamiko accidentally dropped a sundae,” Sierra replied, “and I came up short a dollar on the register. And the samples we gave out were too big.”

  “And Allie freaked out!” I said. “And when we offered to pay for it out of our wages, she didn’t tell us no. I mean, it’s not fair! I was up-selling product for her all day. What’s one dropped sundae? She just needs to relax.”

  I was expecting MacKenzie to agree with me, but instead she got a thoughtful look on her face.

  “Well, you know that my mom owns a homemade jewelry business, right?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I did not know that. Why would you keep that a secret? That is so cool.”

  “Well, she’s looking for a place in town to open up a shop, or a shop that will sell her stuff,” MacKenzie went on. “For now she’s just been selling it online. And I know that every penny counts! She has this computer program that does profit and loss, and she says that even a few cents can make a huge difference, especially at first.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  MacKenzie nodded. “It’s one reason why Mom has been able to make a living doing what she loves. Because she’s really careful with the money she spends on the business.”

  “I think Allie tried to tell us the same thing,” Sierra said thoughtfully. “I guess we just needed to see things from a different point of view.”

  There it was. “Perspective!” I said, so loudly that a few kids turned to stare at me. So I lowered my voice.

  “What was that about?” Sierra asked, laughing.

  “It means that the universe is telling us that we must forgive Allie and make up with her,” I said. I quickly took out my phone. “Sierra, selfie, now!”

  I mean, if an emergency selfie didn’t defuse any drama, what would? Sierra and I put our heads together. I made my standard selfie face and snapped the photo. Then I added tons of hearts and some text.

  WE MISS YOU, ALLIE! XOXO!

  Then I sent it to her and stared at my phone.

  “What if she’s not looking at her phone right now?” Sierra asked. “She might not be able to respond right away.”

  But she did. Allie sent a photo of herself smiling right back.

  I MISS U TOO!

  “Done!” I said, and then I gazed up at the ceiling. “Thank you, universe.”

  My friendship problems were solved. The Sprinkle Sundays sisters were back on track!

  CHAPTER SIX

  TOO SWEET!

  School dragged on pretty slowly that week, but I guess not too slowly, because suddenly it was Saturday. I was in the back seat of the car when I noticed that Mom had turned around and was facing me. And her lips were moving.

  With a sigh I took off my headphones.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “I was just asking you and Kai if you were excited to be seeing your friends from Japanese school today,” she said.

  “Mom, you always ask us the same thing,” I complained.

  Kai’s response was much more charming. “Sachi and Mike have been texting about it since last week,” he said. “I haven’t seen them in months!”

  “And I haven’t seen Keiko and Ken in months either, so of course I’m excited to see them,” I said, and then I put my headphones back on.

  It was an hour-and-a-half drive from Bayville to Green Point, the site of the Japanese Cultural Center—the only one in our whole state. My parents had been taking Kai and me to events there since we’d been born, and I honestly loved it there. The center was always having festivals—music festivals, food festivals, holiday festivals—and Japanese Americans from all over our state and beyond would go to them.

  Keiko and Ken were my two best Japanese friends. Before I’d started cross-country, we’d all gone to Japanese school together, where we’d learned the language. In fact, Keiko and Ken were the only Japanese American kids I knew well. While MLK was a pretty diverse school, I was the only Japanese kid there. I was friends with a few of the Korean American kids, and the Chinese American kids, and Katie Phan was Vietnamese American, and I was friends with her, too. And while I guessed we had some things in common that I didn’t have in common with Sierra and Allie, there was nobody other than me at the school who understood exactly what it was like to be Japanese.

  That was why I liked having Keiko and Ken in my life. I was five years old when I met them, when we were little kids running around like maniacs at one of the outdoor festivals. Keiko was chasing me and Ken, and we were trying to hide from her. This freaked out our parents, who thought we were lost, and they were mad at first when they found us. But when they saw how well we were all getting along, they became friends with each other too. And then for every festival after that, Keiko, Ken, and I hung out together, so we were pretty close—as close as you could be without being best friends, like me and Allie and Sierra were.

  As we got older, we were able to use social media to keep in touch, so we didn’t have to wait for festivals to “see” each other. I mostly communicated with Kei
ko on SuperSnap, because we were both into street fashion and were always exchanging outfit ideas. Keiko had helped me customize a scarf that I’d worn to the Winter Bash the previous year.

  While at first I’d been thinking that I might wear something flowy to the festival, I had recently been inspired by photos of girls wearing different kinds of plaid. So I’d chopped off the sleeves of a baggy plaid shirt and now wore it on top of a T-shirt with a kawaii (that meant “cute”) frog on it. I’d paired that with skinny black jeans and black sneakers. I’d put my hair into a high ponytail and wrapped another scrap of plaid fabric around it.

  The parking lot was already very crowded when we pulled in. It was a beautiful day, not too hot and not too cold. Colorful tents dotted the green lawn outside the white, one-story Japanese Cultural Center building.

  When I stepped out of the car, a million different delicious smells hit my nose. My stomach rumbled.

  “I am soooo hungry!” I said, stretching.

  Mom gave me some money. “Get real food,” she said. “Not just sweets.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though we both knew I was going to get something yummy and definitely sugary, and then I ran off to find Keiko and Ken. I knew from Keiko’s texts that she and Ken had been there for an hour already. I scanned the crowd of mostly Japanese people—but not all Japanese people, because all kinds of people will go to a festival when there’s really good food—until I spotted an explosion of color and knew it had to be Keiko.

  “Keiko!” I yelled.

  She spun around. Keiko wore her glossy black hair in a chin-length bob, with perfect bangs. She’d wanted to dye her hair pink for a year now, I knew, but her parents wouldn’t let her. But she’d made up for it with a super-colorful outfit. She wore a cute, short-sleeved dress with a bright, cartoony print on it, purple tights, and black boots.

  “Tamiko!” She ran toward me, and we hugged. “Love the plaid,” she said. “That is very in right now.”

  “And I love your dress,” I replied. “Where did you get it?”

  “I found it online,” she said. “Used up all my birthday money.”

  “It is fabulous!” I said. “Spin around!”

  She happily did so, and her skirt twirled perfectly.

  I looked around. “Where’s Ken?”

  Her cheeks turned a little bit pink. “He’s getting me a banana,” she said.

  “Wait, what?” I asked. “Since when does Ken ever get us stuff?”

  Keiko shrugged and looked like she might answer, but then Ken walked up holding two chocolate-and-sprinkle-covered bananas on sticks. He handed one to Keiko.

  “Oh, hey, Tamiko,” he said

  “Hey, Ken,” I said. “Chocolate-covered bananas? That’s new. Where’s mine?”

  He nodded. “The guy selling them says he used to sell them at food festivals in Japan.” He took a bite. “Pretty good. You should get one.”

  I noticed that he hadn’t offered to get me one, like he’d done with Keiko, and he had ignored my question. I didn’t pursue the topic.

  “I need to eat some real food first, or Mom will freak,” I said. I sniffed the air. “Is that yakitori I smell?”

  “You know it is,” Keiko said. “Come on. We’ll walk with you.”

  We walked across the grounds toward the yakitori stand, which was easy to spot because of the smoke rising from it. Yakitori was grilled meat on a stick, and it was really yummy, but since I only ate veggies, they had this Americanized version of it made with tempeh, a kind of soy product.

  “So, I’m really excited about that new anime dub coming out, Warrior Spawn,” Keiko said.

  I stopped. Anime was what the Japanese called animation, and we did it better than anybody else. All of my favorite cartoon shows were anime. I absolutely loved fantasy anime, stories about magical creatures and mermaid girls and stuff like that, and so did Keiko. Ken had always been a fan of the fighting stuff like Warrior Spawn—but Keiko? This caught me off guard.

  “Since when do you like that kind of anime?” I asked Keiko.

  She blushed a little again and shrugged. “Ken told me about it, and I like it.”

  Ken smiled at her, and she smiled back. I looked at them. They smiled a little too long at each other, almost like they knew something that I didn’t. I started to get a weird feeling about them, but I pushed it aside. I was too hungry.

  We passed by several food stands on our way to the yakitori tent. There was a booth selling rice balls, of course. And a guy making takoyaki dumplings, which were basically dough balls filled with chopped-up octopus and other stuff and topped with sauce and mayo. I didn’t eat them, but Kai loved them. I wondered if he’d bought some dumplings yet.

  Then there was a vegetable tempura stand, and a new booth selling something called rice burgers.

  I stepped up for a closer look. “Oh my gosh! The buns are made of rice!”

  Instead of bread buns, the katsu—a fried chicken cutlet, or a fried tofu option, which they had—was sandwiched inside a bun made of pressed-together rice.

  “Hmm, should I try that instead of the yakitori?” I asked.

  “Go for it!” Keiko said.

  We got in line to order.

  “Are you thirsty, Keiko?” Ken asked. “I could go in that other line and get some water.”

  “No, thanks,” Keiko replied.

  “Oh, thanks for offering. I’m as thirsty as a dog,” I said. “Could you please get me some water?”

  Ken looked like he was about to say no, but then Keiko gave him a look.

  “Sure,” he said, and he ran off.

  Now was my time to ask Keiko all of the questions.

  “All right, missy,” I said when Ken was out of earshot. “What is going on between you two?”

  Keiko blushed again. “It’s just, well, we like each other,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “We all like each other.”

  “No, I mean we like each other,” she repeated, emphasizing the word “like” this time.

  “Like, boyfriend and girlfriend?” I asked.  Although it had started to seem kind of obvious, I still did not quite believe what I was hearing.

  She shook her head. “No. I mean, our parents won’t let us date yet. They say we’re too young. But maybe when we’re sixteen . . .”

  “Oh no!” I said. I knew how this worked. Someone—me—became the third wheel, and I was not about that life. “You cannot do this. The three of us are a team. Keiko, Ken, and Tamiko. You can’t start messing with the friendship formula. It will ruin everything!”

  Keiko frowned. “Don’t be like this, Tamiko,” she said. “Ken and I can’t help it if we like each other that way. Someday you will have someone you like too, and we’ll be supportive, no matter who he or she is.”

  At that moment Ken returned.

  “Here you go, Tamiko,” he said. Then he gave a bottle of water to Keiko, too. “And I got you one anyway.”

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling at him.

  “Ugh! It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten yet, or I would be gagging right now,” I said loudly, and a few people in line turned to stare at me.

  Now it was Ken’s turn to blush.

  A few minutes later I had a tofu katsu rice burger with chili sauce in my hand. I ate it standing up as we walked around the festival. I would have enjoyed it more if Ken and Keiko hadn’t been looking at each other with dopey eyes the whole time.

  “You should get dessert,” Keiko said. “That banana was awesome.”

  “I’m not sure if I want dessert, because it’s already too sweet around here,” I said, glaring at them. Normally they would have laughed at me for the pun, but they didn’t seem to understand that I was insulting them.

  But of course I didn’t really mean what I said—obviously, I wanted dessert.

  “Where’s the taiyaki stand?” I asked.

  “Over there,” Ken said, pointing to the stand with the longest line at the festival.

  I was a fien
d for taiyaki—a golden brown, doughy pancake-like cake filled with stuff like red bean paste, custard, or sweet potato. What made taiyaki so fun was that it was shaped like a fish. There was no fish in it, though. Taiyaki meant “baked fish” in Japanese. As we got in the line, I tried to decide which kind I would get.

  Then I saw someone walking by me biting into a taiyaki topped with something that looked like chocolate ice cream! But that couldn’t be. Who’d ever heard of taiyaki topped with ice cream?

  “Excuse me,” I said to the man biting into his cake. “What kind of taiyaki is that?”

  “It’s red bean on the inside and ice cream on top,” he replied.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I turned to Keiko. “Did you know about this?”

  “No,” she replied.

  “It’s all the rage in New York City,” Ken said.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, and Ken pointed to a sign on the taiyaki booth.

  TRY OUR NEW ICE CREAM TAIYAKI!

  ALL THE RAGE IN NEW YORK CITY!

  Now there was no question about what I would order—red bean taiyaki with ice cream, just like the man had! When I finally got to the front of the line, I ordered a big one. Talk about a fishful of happy!

  I could see that two workers were busy behind the order counter. One was pouring the taiyaki batter inside the metal mold to make the cakes. She closed the lid to the mold and placed the mold over an electric burner to cook the cakes inside. Another worker was taking out the finished cakes, slicing into them into buns, filling them with red bean paste, and decorating them with chocolate sauce and candy. I asked if mine could look like that too.

  When I got my taiyaki, the cake was still warm and the ice cream was melty but still cold.

  “This is the best thing I have ever eaten,” I announced.

  Ken got one too, and he held it out to Keiko so that she could take a bite.

  Ew, I thought. I didn’t know how much more of the Keiko-Ken lovefest I could take.

  Keiko was just as impressed with the taiyaki.

  “If there was a taiyaki shop by me, I’d eat one of these a week,” she said.