Invisible Inkling

We Sounded Like

Secret Agents

A thing about me and Wainscotting was, we always called each other by last names. In fact, we called everyone by last names, ever since we went to Science Fellow camp the summer after second grade. It was last names all the time there.

Instead of Hank, I got to be Wolowitz.

Alexander got to be Wainscotting.

We thought we sounded like secret agents.

Only, yeah.

I forgot.

I don’t want to talk about Wainscotting.

I notice Inkling again the next day. During her afternoon break, Nadia convinces me to quiz her on her vocab words up in the Big Round Pumpkin overlook. She wants to know them by the start of eleventh grade because of all these tests she has to take for college. Nadia takes words and spelling very seriously. She used to win bees.

The overlook is a loft at the back of the ice-cream shop. My parents keep stuff there that they hardly ever need: holiday trim and spare parts for the machines. You climb up to it on a ladder. There’s not much room to stand, but there’s an old coffee table, a scrap of carpet, and a bookcase. Best, there’s a window that looks out on the store from above.

From the window, you can see that the shop floor and all the lamps are pumpkin orange, but the counters and tables are white. The walls have photographs of jack-o’-lanterns, blown up much larger than they are in life. The tubs of ice cream look like little spots of color in an orange and white world.

I like to guess what people will order, based on what they’re wearing, how they walk, what accent they have. “What about that guy with the long hair?” I ask Nadia as she’s climbing up the ladder.

She joins me at the window. “The one with the tan shorts?”

“Yeah. I think he’s cinnamon mocha.”

“He does look like he hangs around in coffee shops,” Nadia agrees. “Those guys usually go for coffee flavors. But I think he’s a vegan. He won’t want any milk. So . . . raspberry sorbet.”

“Raspberry is girlie,” I say.

Nadia smacks me on the arm. “Flavors are not girl flavors or boy flavors.”

“It’s pink. Men never order pink ice cream.”

“Really?”

I nod. I like to watch people. Notice things about them. It’s interesting. “Lots of the regular customers always get the same thing,” I tell Nadia.

“You always get the same thing.”

That’s true. I get cookie dough with chocolate sprinkles. But other people have favorites, too. “Wainscotting always got plain chocolate,” I say. “Chin from downstairs gets strawberry with hot fudge. Mom, lemon sorbet.”

“Dad?”

“Heath bar brownie with butterscotch sauce and hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. That’s his favorite. But he likes to mix it up.”

Nadia laughs. “All right, you little weirdo, quiz me on the vocab.” She moves away from the window and lies down on the floor of the overlook. That’s her favorite place to do serious word study.

“Okay,” I say—but I don’t quiz her just yet. I hold her list in my hand. I’m staring down into the shop, letting my mind go on the way it does, when—

I see a waffle cone scooting along the counter.

Not lying down and rolling, but scooting. Standing up, like it’s ready for a scoop of ice cream.

Moving like it has a will of its own.

Like it just thought, Oh, I’m tired of being here in this stack with the other cones. I think I’ll go for a walk down to the other end of the counter, see what’s doing with the sprinkles.

Then one, two, three—

It disappears.

As if it was never there.

“Did you see that waffle cone?” I ask Nadia.

“I’m lying on the floor.”

“That waffle cone was moving. And now it’s gone.”

“You and your brain,” she says. “Do you know the definition of the word hallucination?”

“No.”

“Look it up.”

I check her list and read aloud, stumbling over the big words. “‘Hallucination. An experience involving perception of something not present.’”

“And that means?”

“I think it means when you see something that’s not there.”

“Exactly,” says Nadia.

“But I saw it!”

“You think you saw it,” says Nadia. “That’s not the same as seeing it.”

“I know I saw it.”

“Okay, whatever. I don’t want to argue,” says Nadia. “Will you quiz me on my words now?”