Cracks in the Cone

by Coco Simon

  I was starting to feel very un-fabulous. This was my third official Sprinkle Sunday, and for the third time, something was stepping all over my happy. First Allie had freaked about the dropped sundae. Then she and Mrs. S. had crushed my brilliant taiyaki idea. And now Allie was giving me a hard time for being late, and Sierra wasn’t backing me up. And Mrs. S. hadn’t said anything—

  But just as I was thinking this, Mrs. S. suddenly appeared at my side.

  “Sierra, you can cash out the register now,” she said. “And, Tamiko, can I talk to you in the back for a moment?”

  “Sure,” I said, and I had a feeling that my day was going to get even more un-fabulous.

  I went into the back room. Mrs. S. sat on the edge of her desk.

  “Tamiko, I appreciate all the hard work you put into the coupons,” she said. “But I have a problem with you being late today.”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry. I was finishing up the coupons.”

  “And they’re great,” she said. “But I gave Sierra a warning when she was late, and I’m going to give you one too. You can’t be late for your shift. If you’re going to work here, I need a commitment from you that you can be on time.”

  I felt like a slowly melting pool of ice cream.

  “I will be,” I promised. My voice sounded small and weird.

  “Good,” she said. “And please don’t get me wrong—I do need help with marketing. But maybe we can figure out a way for you to help me with that some other time, not during your shift. I can pay you separately for that.”

  That made me feel a teensy bit better. “So, you like the coupons?”

  “I think they’re a great idea,” she said. “I’m not sure if giving half off the second order will be profitable or not, but we’ll test them out. Since the customers had already seen them, I didn’t want to take them away.”

  That had been my fault too, I guessed, from the way she said it.

  Mrs. S. said, “Next time you have an idea, let me know, and we’ll discuss it when it’s good for both of us, before you do a lot of work and before we introduce it to the customers.”

  “Sure,” I said in my tiny voice. But I was steaming inside. Mrs. S. did not seem to appreciate all the hard work I’d put into those coupons—the coupons that the customers had gone absolutely nuts for!

  “Are you okay, Tamiko?” Mrs. S. asked.

  “Yes, I’m fine,” I lied.

  “Great,” Mrs. S. said. “Let’s get you paid. I’ll see you next week!”

  I walked out to the front. Allie was counting the tips.

  “Great day!” she said. “We made almost twenty-five dollars each just in tips!”

  “I shouldn’t get as much as you two,” I said, still in my flat, melted-ice-cream voice. “You know, for being late.”

  Allie and Sierra looked at each other.

  “Nah, don’t worry about it,” Allie said. “It’s fine.”

  Mrs. S. gave us our shift pay, and Sierra started talking about this fabulous dress she had seen at the mall that she was saving up for. Allie had a million questions about it, but I didn’t chime in. I put my money in my bag, said “See ya!” and then walked outside to wait for my mom to pick me up.

  A minute later Sierra came outside.

  “Tamiko, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Did Mrs. S. get on your case about being late? Don’t worry about it. She did that to me too.”

  “I’m fine,” I repeated.

  “You don’t sound fine,” Sierra said. “Not fine at all. If anything, you sound the opposite of fine.”

  “Fine,” I said in a singsong voice, and then, to my relief, Mom pulled up. “See you tomorrow.” I waved to Sierra, and she just looked at me with her big, brown, puppy-dog eyes.

  I climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Hello, Tamiko,” Mom said. “Did you get your sprinkle of happy today?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say. The promise I’d made to her came back to haunt me.

  When it stops being fun, I’ll quit.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AND

  Mom, thankfully, didn’t press me for an answer. When we got home, I took off my dirty clothes without being asked, showered, and changed into leggings and an oversize T-shirt. When I was done, my phone dinged.

  Please tell me what’s wrong! Sierra texted. I’m worried about you!

  I sighed and looked at my phone screen. I didn’t know what to say to Sierra. I honestly felt like quitting our Sprinkle Sundays crew, but I didn’t know how to tell her. I knew she’d try to talk me out of it. Plus, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to quit. I was so confused!

  The door to my room was open, and Kai poked his head in.

  “How did Mrs. Shear like the coupons?” he asked.

  I sighed. “She liked them. I guess. She was mad that I was late, and she said we should have discussed them with her first.”

  Kai nodded. “Well, you shouldn’t have been late. You should arrive early to your job if you want to make a good impression. Plus she’s right about showing them to her first. She should approve any kind of promotion. I mean, we thought it made sense, but she knows about her profits and what she can afford to offer. I should have told you that.”

  I flopped down onto my bed. “Well, thanks for telling me now!” I said, scowling. Then I sat up. “Kai, what do you do when you have a decision to make?”

  “A list of pros and cons,” he replied without hesitating. “I write them down, and then I compare them. The answer is usually pretty clear.”

  “Thanks!” I said, and as Kai walked away, I jumped up and went into my DIY room and found a piece of graph paper. I drew a line down the middle.

  I drew on the left and on the right.

  Working at the ice cream shop had seemed like a great idea at first. The shop was super-cool, and I liked the idea of earning money, and then there was the whole thing of not getting to see Allie at school anymore. But so far I had been mostly miserable there. I didn’t want to quit, but I didn’t really want to keep working there either.

  In the column I wrote:

  Being with Allie and Sierra

  Extra money

  I love ice cream

  In the column I wrote:

  Allie gets too uptight in the shop

  My ideas aren’t appreciated

  Mrs. S. lectures = not fun

  I stared at the two columns. They were even. How was I supposed to make a decision?

  I went to Kai’s room and knocked on his door.

  “What is it?” he replied.

  I pushed open the door. “What do you do if the two columns are even?” I asked.

  “Well,” he said, “you made your pros and cons awfully fast. Put some more thought into it, and I’m sure you’ll come up with some more pros or cons. Or consider if one of your pros or cons has more weight than the others.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well. For example, one pro of eating a bag of extra-hot taco chips might be that they taste good,” he said, “but one con is that your guts will burn for the next twelve hours. So even though there is one pro and one con, the burning-guts factor carries more weight. Or at least it does for me. I learned that the hard way.”

  “Got it,” I said, and I went back to my DIY room. I studied the list, and then I added one more in the column:

  Nice customers

  But then I added four more to the column:

  Mean customers

  Cleaning up hot-fudge spills

  Getting orders wrong

  No taiyaki

  The answer was clear. There were more cons than pros. Just then Sierra texted me again.

  Tamiko, u there?

  I texted her back. I have to quit Sprinkle Sundays. It’s making me .

  Noooooooooooooo!

  Then I heard my dad’s voice. “Tamiko! Kai! Please come down for dinner!”

  I left my phone in my room so that I wouldn’t get yelled at for using it at the dinner table.
Dad had cooked dinner for us: tofu, rice, miso soup, and pickled vegetables.

  We were just finishing dinner when I realized the time.

  “Grandpa’s up!” I cried, and jumped up from the table.

  Mom looked at Dad. “I thought you were going to talk to him about not interrupting dinner. If he just waited fifteen minutes . . .”

  “It’s his routine,” Dad said. “He likes to call as soon as he wakes up.”

  Grandpa Sato and I exchanged greetings.

  “Are you watching a game?” he asked.

  “It’s a night game tonight,” I informed him. “I’m going to watch it if Mom and Dad let me.”

  “We need to do a homework check first,” Mom chimed in.

  “What about you?” I asked. “Is your team playing?”

  “They played last night,” he said. “They won. Ryota Tanaka hit a three-run homer.”

  I searched my mind for the name. “The rookie?” I asked.

  Grandpa nodded. “Yes. He is a very interesting fellow,” he said. “Did you know that he wanted to quit the game in college? But his coach gave him an inspiring speech, and he stuck with the sport. He is no quitter, that Tanaka.”

  “Nope,” I said, and I was wondering if Grandpa Sato had some weird grandpa mojo that let him know that I had just unofficially quit my job at the ice cream shop.

  “Tamiko, come finish your dinner and let Kai talk to Grandpa,” Mom said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sayonara, Ojiichan!”

  “Sayonara, Tamiko-chan!” he said, and he waved at me.

  After dinner I went back up to my room and stared at my list. Clearly there were more cons than pros. I snapped a picture of the list to show Sierra the next day at school. Once she saw it, I knew she’d understand.

  “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I said, alone in my room. “I am no Tanaka.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  COLD TOTS, WARM HEART

  “Excellent work, Tamiko,” Mr. Rivera said. “Nice, clean lines.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  It was Monday morning, and in art class we were still working on perspective. The week before, Mr. Rivera had instructed us to take a photo of a room with furniture in it, and I’d chosen the ice cream parlor, of course. Then we’d used the photo as a guide for creating drawings with a 3-D effect.

  “Where is your vanishing point?” he asked.

  “Right here,” I said, and I put my finger on the spot where the counter met the adjoining wall.

  “Very good,” he said. “Keep going.”

  I stared at the vanishing point in my drawing of the empty ice cream parlor. Soon I would be vanishing from the ice cream parlor. Just as soon as I told Allie’s mom that I was quitting.

  I started adding details to the drawing. The hanging cone-shaped lights. The menu board. Then I added a stick-figure Allie behind the counter. And a stick-figure Sierra behind the register, with lots of wild hair. I drew a stick figure with a mustache and a frown sitting at one of the tables—Grumpy Guy.

  I didn’t add myself to the picture. I stared at it. Who would take the orders? Who would encourage customers to move beyond their prisons of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry? Not me.

  The bell rang, and I headed to English class. I kept waiting for MacKenzie to slide into the chair next to me, but she never showed up.

  That’s weird, I thought. I saw her in homeroom.

  And then it hit me—maybe MacKenzie’d had her testing and had been moved to a different class. I couldn’t wait to ask her at lunchtime.

  But when I got to the cafeteria, Sierra marched up to me as soon as I got in the lunch line.

  “We need to talk!” she said. “You are not going to quit!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I have something to show you. But wait till I get my food. It’s Tots today.”

  Say what you want about cafeteria food, but it is impossible to hate Tater Tots. I got my lunch and brought it back to the table, but Sierra didn’t give me a chance to eat one bite before she launched into me.

  “You can’t quit!” she said. “We can work it out, Tamiko. Me, you, and Allie need our Sprinkle Sundays! Without them, things just won’t be the same.”

  “But I have a list,” I said, and I scrolled through my phone to show her. “A list of pros and cons. And see? The cons outweigh the pros.”

  Sierra studied the list. “No, they don’t,” she said.

  “Of course they do,” I corrected her. “There are more cons than pros.”

  “Yes, but the cons don’t outweigh the pros,” she said. She took out her phone and started sending me photos. My phone kept beeping, and photos of me, Sierra, and Allie kept popping up. At the beach. In the bookstore. In Allie’s kitchen. At the mall. In the ice cream shop.

  “Okay, I get it!” I said.

  “Do you?” Sierra asked. “Because the first thing on your pros list is ‘being with Allie and Sierra.’ And that should count for, like, a million! Way more than cleaning up hot fudge. Wiping up hot fudge takes, what? Five minutes. But think of all the years we’ve got invested in our friendship. You can’t just throw that away.”

  It was exactly as Kai had said, about one of the pros or cons carrying more weight. So me, Allie, and Sierra were like Kai’s burning guts. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. Maybe I hadn’t thought this through. Because when I tried to imagine my life without Allie and Sierra in it, I just couldn’t. I mean, I could live without them. They weren’t like food and water; it’s not like I would die without them. But life definitely wouldn’t be as much fun.

  “Fine,” I said. “I won’t quit.”

  Sierra hugged me. “Yay! I knew I could convince you!”

  “But hear me out,” I said. “I mean, working at the shop doesn’t have to be the only time when we see Allie, does it? Because I think it’s better if she’s not always our boss. I need to see the relaxed, fun Allie sometimes.”

  “That makes sense,” Sierra said. She started texting. In a few seconds she got a text back.

  “We’re going to the movies on Saturday,” she said. “In the afternoon. That’s plenty of time after your track meet, right?”

  “It’s cross-country,” I corrected her. “But yes.”

  MacKenzie came running up with her lunch bag.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “I got moved to a different English class,” she said. “And then I stayed after to talk to the teacher about some stuff.”

  “So is it a good thing?” I asked.

  MacKenzie smiled. “Definitely a good thing.”

  I held up my phone. “Lunch squad selfie!”

  MacKenzie and Sierra squeezed in next to me. Sierra smiled, I made my perfect selfie face, and MacKenzie stuck out her tongue. It was a great picture. I posted it on SuperSnap with the caption: Lunch squad goals: Eat your Tots before they get cold!

  “Sorry, Tamiko. I forgot about your Tots,” Sierra said. “But I’m glad we talked.”

  “Me too,” I said, and I picked one up and took a bite. My Tots might have been cold, but I was feeling pretty warm and fuzzy inside.

  “That was the worst movie ever!” I complained as Sierra, Allie, and I walked out of Bayville Cinemas.

  “It was not!” Sierra said, but she was laughing.

  “Okay, Miss Drama Club, you don’t think the acting was terrible?” I asked. “Like when the guy was fake crying? ‘Noooo! Dr. Nebula! Don’t die!’ ”

  I did my best impression of the guy in the movie, and Sierra and Allie started cracking up. But Sierra still defended the movie.

  “Crying isn’t easy to do on cue,” she said.

  I turned to Allie. “And what about you, Miss Books? Did you think that plot made any sense at all?”

  She shook her head. “You’re right. That plot had more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese.”

  I nodded triumphantly. “Case closed.”

  We strolled down the street. There was a big multiplex in the mall, but Bayville still
had a tiny theater in the middle of town that catered to the beach crowd, mostly showing kids’ movies and superhero movies, which was what we had just seen.

  “What do you want to do now?” Allie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sierra said. “I’m kind of hungry.”

  “We should get something to eat,” I suggested.

  We glanced down the street at all of the shops. Harry’s Falafel, the Dunes Deli, Molly’s . . . Then we looked at one another, all thinking the same thing.

  “Ice cream!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SPRINKLE SISTERS FOR LIFE!

  I took Kai’s advice and showed up twenty minutes early to my shift the next day. I told myself that I wasn’t going to worry about coupons, or marketing, or coming up with new ideas. I was going to take orders and make ice cream cones. And I was going to do it better than anyone else in the history of ice cream shops.

  Mrs. S. was wiping down the counter when I came in.

  “I’m glad you’re early, Tamiko,” she said. “Can I talk to you in the back?”

  Oh no, I thought. For a second I was convinced that Mrs. S. was going to fire me! After I had already decided not to quit! But I glanced over at Allie, who was crushing candy behind the mix-ins, and her blue eyes were twinkling happily. Allie wouldn’t look happy if I were about to get fired. I was pretty sure of that.

  “Sure,” I said, and I followed Mrs. S. to her desk. She sat down and flipped open her laptop.

  “I have a few things to show you,” she said. “First, this.”

  A site popped up, and there it was—a page for the shop!

  “No way! You did it!” I cheered.

  “Allie helped me set it up,” she explained. “And I already started inviting people to like it.”

  “That is awesome,” I said.

  “I have set it up so that you can post photos to the page, Tamiko,” she went on. “I’d like that to be part of your job. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds great!” I said.

  Mrs. S. smiled. “Perfect,” she said. Then she flipped open a folder on her desk to reveal a stack of professionally printed Tuesday Treat coupons! They weren’t covered in glitter, but there was sprinkle art all over the coupon. I got that warm fuzzy feeling inside again. So Mrs. S. had liked my ideas after all! To think that I had almost quit this great job. I actually shuddered a little, thinking how close I had come to leaving, and what a mistake that would have been.