Rocky Road Ahead

by Coco Simon

  “Yes. I mean, I would assume so,” said my mom, shrugging.

  “Me too?” asked my little brother, Tanner.

  “Of course. You’re my best customer!” said my mom.

  Tanner wiggled happily in his seat and wiped his saucy cheek with his shirt.

  “Tanner!” I cried. He had the most disgusting manners. “That is NOT the kind of thing you can do when the reporter and photographer are there!”

  “What?” he asked.

  “Ack!” I was so exasperated. Tanner had such bad manners, he didn’t even know what he was doing wrong. I turned back to my mother. “Okay, Mom, so let me get this straight. We’re going to help prepare the things to be photographed, so they need to look perfect and delicious. We’re going to be in some of the photos, so we have to look awesome. They’ll photograph the store, so it needs to look amazing, and we have to carefully plan what we will say, so that they don’t get anything wrong or misquote us in any way.”

  “Yes,” said my mom, looking slightly less enthusiastic than before. “And I have firmly made up my mind to enjoy it.”

  “Right,” I said, raising an eyebrow at her.

  After dinner I raced upstairs to try another video chat with my besties. This time I got them.

  “Hey, y’all!”

  “Howdy!” said Sierra.

  “What up,” said Tamiko.

  “The date is set for Yay Gourmet,” I said flatly.

  “Wait, are you not psyched anymore?” asked Sierra, her eyebrows knit in concern.

  I sighed. “Well, the thing is, I’ve just realized this week how much can go wrong.”

  “Like what? The freezer breaks down?” Tamiko said, and then cackled.

  “Don’t joke!” I said.

  “Well, what?” asked Sierra.

  I listed my many concerns and sat there glumly while they considered them all.

  “Hmm, you do have a point,” admitted Sierra.

  “Nah, stop worrying,” said Tamiko. “We just have to be super-prepared, super-organized. We need to make a list!” she crowed. “Get a pen, writer-girl.”

  I grabbed a pen and some paper and sat there, poised to write down Tamiko’s thoughts.

  “Okay. In no particular order, here goes! We need outfits; we have to decide on a look for each of us. It should be edgy but not weird, or we’ll turn people off. We need to consider your mom’s outfit and incorporate that. What is she wearing? She’ll need to get her hair and makeup done professionally. For our own hair, makeup, and clothing, I will be in charge, of course. The store needs to be cleaned from top to bottom that morning. We can do that. Get your mom to have the windows washed too. All the ice cream buckets need to be fresh and full in the freezer bins. Then we need to practice making the best-selling items this Sunday. What else? Read the list back to me.”

  My pen was flying over the paper. Now I stopped and read. “Our outfits. My mom’s outfit. Hair and makeup. Clean store. Window washer. Full bins. Practice sundaes.” I looked up. Tamiko was nodding.

  “Good. Good start. What else?”

  “What about a soundtrack?” I asked. Tamiko liked to “curate” our playlist for the store. My mom let her do it because she was good at it.

  “Ooh! Wait, wait! I know! Can we have the Wildflowers playing?” asked Sierra. “Pretty please?” She batted her long, dark eyelashes at us hopefully.

  “Yeah, of course,” said Tamiko, right as I said, “No!” forcefully.

  They both stared at me like I’d lost my mind.

  I shrugged. “I’m sorry, Sierra, but the last thing I need is for Colin’s girlfriend to get discovered while my family’s shop is being discovered.”

  “Colin and Tessa are going out?” blurted Tamiko.

  “She didn’t say anything to me at practice today!” Sierra was shocked.

  “Well, I mean . . . I don’t know if they’re actually boyfriend-girlfriend. Yet,” I added darkly.

  “So he told you he liked her?” asked Tamiko.

  “Not exactly,” I admitted.

  Sierra looked at me. “Well, what did he say about her?”

  “Um, actually . . . nothing.”

  Tamiko let out a short burst of air. “So why are you calling them boyfriend and girlfriend, then?”

  I took a deep breath in through my nose. “I don’t know. Patrick said something at school about them. I just assumed . . .”

  Sierra was shaking her head. “She would have said something, I’m sure. We all know she has a crush on him.”

  I cringed inside, just hearing those words.

  “Okay. Let’s deal with the soundtrack issue closer to the date,” said Tamiko.

  But after we hung up, Sierra texted me. Do you want me to ask Tessa if anything is going on?

  I waited exactly zero seconds before replying NO! and hitting send.

  Then I added, Thanks. And sent that, too.

  Sierra did not reply.

  I avoided Colin for the rest of the week. I knew it was chicken of me, but I couldn’t face him. On Thursday night I gave myself a good talking-to. Did I like Colin? Yes. Did I like Colin as a crush? Maybe. Every time my brain tried to answer that question, it would just freeze. I mean, I wasn’t ready to be dating, like boyfriend-girlfriend. I just didn’t want anyone else to date him. It sounded sort of crazy when I laid it all out like that, but what could I do? Anyway, it wasn’t up to me. I was pretty sure that by the end of that weekend I’d hear that Colin and Tessa were a couple.

  On Sunday morning Tamiko and Sierra met at my house well before we were due at work. Tamiko had brought a phone full of selfies of her in six different outfits, from every possible angle. (She’d used a tripod.) Sierra had an armload of outfits to try on, and she and Tamiko were set to attack my closet and my mom’s closet to arrange our outfits for the interview. Tamiko wanted a very basic theme—everything kind of had to go together, but not matchy-matchy like uniforms. One of her ideas was “cornucopia,” which meant “horn of plenty.” She wanted a look of “abundance,” so she wanted us all in splashy florals and bright colors. I had a Hawaiian-print dress I could wear for that theme, and my mom had a jazzy blouse with hot-pink cabbage roses all over it. Tamiko and Sierra each had bright floral looks that could go along with it too.

  Another theme Tamiko liked was “1980s retro,” which she said was trending right now. That meant black with pastels, or very bright solid colors contrasting with each other (like a hot-yellow shirt with electric-blue pants). I wasn’t as crazy about that theme because I didn’t think it went well with the look of Molly’s. Molly’s was all cream and pale blue and gold—kind of classic and old-fashioned-looking.

  Tamiko’s simplest theme was “disappear into the background,” which consisted of our most neutral clothes—anything in beige, cream, or gray. She said we’d look like ice cream scientists and that the ice cream and sundaes would stand out, with us as a pale backdrop. This made the most sense to me but was the least fun. We decided to let my mom decide.

  Downstairs my mom was doing her books, which meant balancing all her accounts—the money coming in and the money going out. She was happy for a quick break.

  “Hi, girls. Oh, Allie, don’t you look pretty in that dress!” I was still wearing the Hawaiian-print dress. My friends and I exchanged smiles.

  “That’s what we’re here to ask you,” I said. “We wanted to know what you’re thinking in terms of outfits for the Yay Gourmet interview next Sunday.”

  She lifted her reading glasses onto her head and put down her pen, then leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. “Hmmm. I hadn’t even given it a moment’s thought. What do you girls think?”

  “Well, we had a few different ideas . . . ,” I began, and then Tamiko took over. She could discuss this stuff for hours, so I was happy to have her take the lead. She flipped through her phone, showing my mom her ideas, and my mom smiled and nodded as she looked.

  After the mini fashion show, my mom was impressed, I could tell.

 
“Thank you all for taking this so seriously! It could be a really big break for Molly’s, and I am so grateful to you girls for realizing that.”

  Tamiko and Sierra beamed, and I felt really good.

  “I personally think the bright, happy colors and patterns are the most fun,” Mom said. “What did you call it? Cornucopia?”

  Tamiko nodded.

  “I think we should go with that. Why not have everything pretty and colorful, right?”

  “Great!” I said. That was my favorite look, anyway.

  “We had a few other thoughts,” said Tamiko, glancing at me to see if it was okay to read our to-do list to my mom. I nodded, and she worked her way through the list.

  My mom was nodding along. “Great point about the window washer. I’ll call them tomorrow.” She made a note on her pad. “For the hair and makeup, I’ll get my friend Annie from the Salon on the Square to come over that morning and help us out.”

  “All of us?” I said in surprise.

  “Sure. Why not? It will be fun!” said my mom. “If everyone can just arrive with wet hair, it will go faster. I’ll get a time from Annie and let you know.”

  My friends and I exchanged smiles again. This might be fun after all!

  “Another thing we have to work out is which flavors are being showcased, and what specialties we should make for the reporter and photographer,” Tamiko said.

  “Yes, great point,” my mom replied. “Maybe . . . Could you girls work on that while I finish the accounts here? Then we can discuss it at work today?”

  “Yup!” I said.

  My friends and I left my mom to her work and went back to my room to create a sample menu. The first thing I did was show them the food photography book.

  “Yummy!” said Tamiko, looking at the sundae on the cover. “Not too imaginative, but a good, basic-looking traditional hot fudge sundae.”

  “Yeah, but check this out,” I said. I took the book from Tamiko and opened to a bookmark I’d left in the ice cream chapter. Then I handed the book back to her, and Tamiko was silent as she pored over the pages.

  “Hmmm. Okay. Wow. Gross!” She looked up at me. “This sounds disgusting.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “What is it?” asked Sierra.

  I explained about the lard and the glue and the paint and all the other tricks of the trade. Sierra was grossed out too.

  “Well, we can’t do all that!” said Tamiko. “Maybe one or two things, but not the lard or whatever.”

  “I know,” I agreed glumly. “But it’s going to look bad.”

  “Not necessarily. Yay Gourmet seems to like a messy, natural look. See?”

  Tamiko pulled up the website on her phone and scrolled through some photos. “These look delish,” she said.

  I looked at the phone over her shoulder. “Yeah, but that could be glue, and that might have been shellacked, and that might be brown paint.” I pointed out a variety of details.

  Tamiko sagged a little on my bed. “I see what you mean. Well, you know what we have to do—work really hard today on practicing making sundaes that are beautiful.”

  “Yeah. And hope the photographer knows what they’re doing,” added Sierra.

  Tamiko nodded and reached out for a fist bump.

  Sierra said, “It’s funny how your mom doesn’t seem nervous about this at all. Are we overreacting?”

  I shook my head. “No. I think she’s underreacting.”

  Tamiko laughed and patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry, Ali-li. Miko is here now, and everything will be just fine.”

  “So what should we do for our featured flavors?” I asked.

  Tamiko pulled out her notebook. “Let’s look back at the taste test we did a while ago.” She flipped from page to page; then she found it. “Aha! Okay. Here we go. We decided our best flavor is Banana Pudding.”

  “Mmm. I love the Banana Pudding!” I agreed dreamily.

  “I wonder how it will look in photos, though. I mean, it doesn’t have a lot of ‘curb appeal,’ as they say on those real estate TV shows,” said Sierra.

  “I know what you mean. The goodness is invisible to the naked eye!” said Tamiko, wiggling her eyebrows up and down.

  “What were the runners-up?” I asked Tamiko, peeking at the book over her shoulder.

  The list said:

  • Kitchen Sink (vanilla ice cream with crumbled pretzels and potato chips)

  • Hokey Pokey (with bits of honeycomb toffee)

  • Strawberry Shortcake

  • Banana Pudding

  • Lavender Blackberry

  • Chocolate Mint Chip

  • Peppermint

  • Candy Bar

  • Lime Sorbet

  • Balsamic Strawberry

  • Butterscotch Chocolate Chunk

  • Rocky Road

  • Saint Louis Cake

  • Vanilla

  • Chocolate

  • Lemon Blueberry

  • Cereal Milk

  • Cinnamon (with crumbled lace butter cookies in it)

  “Hmmmm,” said Tamiko, scanning the list. “Which are the most photogenic flavors?”

  Sierra leaned in for a look. “Hey! I don’t see my favorite in there!”

  Tamiko laughed. “Which is your favorite today, Sierra?”

  Sierra was always changing her mind.

  “Cookies and Cream!”

  Tamiko tapped her foot on the floor as she thought. Then she said, “You know, this list wasn’t the list of all the flavors that Molly’s sells. It was just that week’s flavors. We need to create a master list and work from that.”

  Quickly we added about twenty more flavors that we could remember, including Cookies and Cream. I popped downstairs to show it to my mom, and she agreed that we had it all. Back upstairs, we began debating which flavors to showcase.

  “First of all,” Tamiko started, “we should print up the list of flavors on a really nice document and give it to the reporter for reference. Maybe they can run it as a sidebar to the piece.”

  I was nodding before Tamiko had even finished explaining her idea.

  “Brilliant,” I said.

  “Then let’s think about what would look good in photos and taste good. Also, we need some variety. Like, it can’t all be chocolaty flavors,” said Tamiko.

  We debated back and forth for a while. Sierra was really fixated on taste, but then I said, “Look, the reporter can sample anything he or she wants. It’s just what we’re going to feature and prepare for the photos.” That loosened things up, and we all rapidly agreed on three flavors to showcase: Lime Sorbet, Rockin’ Rocky Road, and, of course, Banana Pudding . . . but in a unicorn sundae (which was an invention of Tamiko’s and was the house specialty).

  “One chocolaty flavor, one fruity flavor, and one over-the-top sundae. Perfect!” said Sierra.

  With that decided, we all looked at one another and grinned. Then Tamiko high-fived me and Sierra. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Thanks for helping, you guys. It means a lot to me. And my mom, too, of course.”

  “We care about Molly’s just as much as you do!” said Tamiko.

  “You guys are the best!” My heart was warmed by my friends’ enthusiasm. Maybe this would all work out okay.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SCOOP PERFECTION

  We were slammed again at work that afternoon, but in a good way. With the weather heating up, people were thinking about ice cream more than ever. It was exhilarating to handle a rush. My besties and I—the Sprinkle Sundays sisters—handled it all with grace, but I still worried about the following week.

  “What if we drop a sundae next week while the reporter’s here?” I whispered to Tamiko as she handed a loaded bowl of ice cream and toppings over the counter to a customer.

  “Okay, now you’re just being a worrywart,” scolded Tamiko. “Dropping a sundae is not newsworthy. They will not cover that in the story, I can guarantee you.”

  I took a deep breat
h in through my nose and smiled for the next customer.

  When things quieted down during the pre-dinner lull, we started practicing our sample scoops and sundaes.

  “Okay, so I researched perfect ice cream scoops online . . . ,” began Tamiko.

  Sierra and I exchanged grins.

  “Of course she did!” said Sierra.

  “Laugh all you want. I’ll just keep my pro scooping advice to myself!” huffed Tamiko.

  “Just kidding, chica!” said Sierra. “Tell us.”

  Tamiko was, of course, dying to tell us what to do. It didn’t take any more prodding to get her to do it.

  “The trick, as you know, is a very hot scooper. Soak it in the hot water bin or run it under hot water for a minute.”

  “Right,” I said. We already knew that.

  “Also, it’s best if you store the ice cream very, very, very cold.”

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed.

  “Check,” said Sierra, peeping at our freezer thermostat setting.

  “And it’s best if you take out the ice cream a few minutes before you scoop it,” said Tamiko.

  I shook my head. “We can’t do that. It’s against the health code. Also, it ruins the ice cream—all that melting and refreezing.”

  “Right. But here’s the most important tip—something I’d never heard before, and it works like a charm. When you put your scoop into the ice cream, you want to carve out the ice cream in an S curve, like this, see?”

  Instead of the normal straight-down-and-out scoop (shaped like a big letter C going down), Tamiko reached down to the bucket of Rockin’ Rocky Road and curved the scooper to the left and then the right, creating a giant S-shaped trough in the ice cream’s surface.

  Then she released the scoop onto a cone with a flick of her thumb against the lever and pressed it into place.

  “Ta-da!” she said, holding the cone aloft in triumph.

  “Wow! That really does work!” I said.

  Sierra walked around the cone and admired it from every angle. It was a perfect, dense ball of brown-and-white ice cream. “Good job, Miko! It looks amazing!”

  Tamiko smiled. “I know. That’s how you guys need to do it.”

  Sierra and I each gave it a try (well, it took me two tries because I didn’t dig deep enough at the start), and our scoops came out great.