Invisible Inkling

We Can’t Have Blood Ice Cream

My family is the Wolowitz family and we run a shop called Big Round Pumpkin: Ice Cream for a Happy World. It’s a few doors down from the apartment where we live—Mom, Dad, me, my sixteen-year-old sister, Nadia, and seven hundred books.

Mom and Nadia work the counter. Mom does the bills. Nadia writes the signboards. She has pretty handwriting.

Dad makes all the ice cream himself and does cleanup duty.

I recycle and take out the trash.

Yeah.

You don’t need to tell me it’s the worst job in the family. I know it’s the worst job.

A thing about me is, I need a promotion.

Another thing about me is, I’ve invented hundreds of ice-cream flavors. Really, hundreds. Only there is not one single Hank Wolowitz flavor up on our chalkboard.

Nadia has two: espresso double shot and cinnamon mocha.

Dad and Mom are always inventing flavors to bring new customers into the shop. Besides all the usual kinds, we have white cherry white chocolate, nectarine swirl, even chocolate-covered pretzel.

So why not fruit punch? Why not pancakes and syrup? Why not green Jell-O pineapple?

Why won’t Dad even try making them?

(Don’t remind me about what happened that time with the Cheddar Bunnies. That has nothing to do with the fact that green Jell-O pineapple is really, truly worth a try.)

Every year, Dad makes a special Halloween flavor. Last year, third grade, it was candy corn.

Nadia’s idea. Vanilla ice cream with little candy corns in it.

Boring.

It didn’t sell well, either. We were stuck with gallons of candy corn ice cream that no one wanted. My parents ended up donating it to a family shelter.

“It didn’t sell because it was a dumb idea,” I told Dad, as he was packing it all into the refrigerated truck. He was wearing a dirty apron. “Next year you should make monster mash,” I went on. “You should make Frankenstein ice cream! You should make orange and licorice! Make loose tooth! Make—”

“Loose tooth?” Dad looked a bit ill, but maybe he was just cold from kneeling in the icy truck. “What would that be?”

“Red ice cream with candy teeth.”

“Red like what?” He frowned. “Because cherry ice cream comes out pink. So does raspberry.”

“Red like blood,” I said.

Dad shook his head. “We can’t have blood ice cream.”

“It would just be food coloring!”

“No food coloring,” Dad reminded me. “It has to be organic and locally made. That’s what we sell here. Ice cream for a happy world.”

“Did you have organic and local candy corn?”

“Yes, actually. From the chocolate shop on Court Street.”

Oh. I stepped on and off the curb near where the truck was parked. On and off. On and off.

“Kids would like loose tooth,” I said finally. “I still think you should make it. Or else Loch Ness monster slime.”

Dad shoved the last five-gallon tub of ice cream toward the back of the truck’s freezer and hopped out. “I don’t even want to know what that one is.”

“It might involve making, like, a green gummy muck,” I said, following him to the shop.

He opened the door and went through to the kitchen. He ran his hands under warm water and rubbed them with a rag. “Tell you what, Hank. Next year, I’ll ask for all your Halloween ideas. We’ll sit down and brainstorm something great. I promise, promise.”

“How ’bout mummy toenail?” I shouted. “How ’bout black spiderweb?”

“For now, though,” Dad went on, not answering me, “I need to figure out how the shop is going to earn back the money we lost on twenty gallons of unsold candy corn flavor. So we’ll have this conversation later, little dude. Fourth-grade Halloween’s your time. Okay?”

I said okay.

Now, fourth-grade Halloween is a week away.

I’ve been writing down my ideas in a notebook since the start of school. I’ll be ready whenever Dad asks me. I have so many ideas, there’s no way he won’t love at least one of them. Here’s a page from the notebook:

The Sunday morning before Halloween, Inkling and I go with Mom to Big Round Pumpkin. The store’s not open yet, but Dad’s been at the ice-cream shop since dawn. When we arrive, the first thing I see is him making a signboard.

Sample our special Halloween flavor:

CANDY CRUNCH,

invented by Brooklyn’s own NADIA WOLOWITZ.

Made with all local, organic ingredients!

A Halloween flavor.

That Nadia thought of.

I can’t believe Dad made this flavor without even asking to look at my notebook. After he said we’d brainstorm together. After he said, “Promise, promise.”

Fine then. Fine.

If Dad’s not interested, then I’m not interested. I don’t need to be a flavor inventor. I’ll just clean the recycling area forever. I’ll clean it until my hands are raw and my clothing stinks and I’m ninety-five years old. People will feel sorry for that old guy who still cleans the recycling area and never got to do anything else with his life. That guy whose dad forgot to ask for his ideas.

Dad is all happy about the candy crunch and scoops me a cone to try. It’s vanilla with chocolate chips and chunks of peanut brittle.

I take two bites of it, but I’m too upset to eat. I give my serving to Inkling while my parents are back in the kitchen.

“Ugh, it’s cold!” Inkling says, sounding startled.

“Duh.”

“It’s freezing my tongue off!”

“Haven’t you had ice cream before?”

“First time.”

“No! Really?”

“Really. Never had it. And you know what? Once is enough,” says Inkling. “You mind if I dump it and just eat the waffle cone?”

“Go ahead.”

I tip Nadia’s stupid candy crunch off the cone into the garbage bin and let Inkling eat the cone out of my hand.

I pull my flavor notebook out of my back pocket and scribble hard across its pages. My pen digs holes in the paper. There are big black X marks all over my ideas.

Good. That’s how it should be.

No one’s ever going to see it anyway.