Emily Jenkins - Invisible Inkling

Silence but for a few whoopie pies still rolling.

We stare at one another. Everyone is covered in cake and ice cream but me.

“What do you mean, halfway friend?” Chin finally asks. “That’s not a very nice thing to say, Hank.”

He’s Not a Nudnik

Istomped out of Chin’s apartment like an angry jerk. Now I am lying facedown on our couch. The door creaks open and shut. Inkling taps my leg.

“They’re having pizza downstairs, Wolowitz. With green peppers. But I came up here to be with you.”

“You biffed Patne!” I scold, pushing myself up on my elbows. “You can’t go biffing people!”

“What about you? You just screamed at everybody and left without helping clean up the mess. How is that a better solution?”

“I wouldn’t have needed to help clean up if you hadn’t biffed Patne and thrown whoopie pies.”

Inkling clucks his tongue. “I thought you’d be grateful.”

“Grateful?” I bury my face in the couch again. “Why would I be grateful?”

“You were grateful when I bit Gillicut on the ankle, back when he used to take your lunch. You were grateful when I bit Patne on the finger that time he tried to take your money. That’s what I do. When the situation calls for it, Inkling takes action.”

“This is not the outback!” I moan. “This is Brooklyn!”

“That Patne is a nudnik!” Inkling says. “He deserved the pop-out and biff.”

“He’s not a nudnik,” I say, sitting up. “He’s my halfway friend.”

“You just screamed at him.”

“I know I screamed at him, but the reason I was mad about the pies is ’cause he’s supposed to be my friend.”

“Really?” Inkling crawls onto the couch next to me. I try to explain.

“It’s true that Patne goes off with Kim at recess and in the locker room. It’s true he was a jerk about going in my pocket for my money. But I think he’s funny and sometimes he’s nice, like when he helped clean up the pumpkin splat,” I say. “And frankly, I could use a friend who isn’t a girl or a bandapat. You know? Also, Reptiliopolus would never beat Lord Baldy in a supervillain battle, so instead I am trying to kill him with kindness.”

There is silence. Inkling coughs. “Whatever makes you happy,” he says finally. “But he seems like a nudnik to me.”

I start laughing. I laugh and laugh.

It’s hard to stop, and I fall off the couch.

Inkling laughs, too.

“I think you really just wanted to pop out and biff somebody,” I say, lying on the floor. “After you couldn’t do Betty-Ann.”

He grunts.

“You had all this pop-out-and-biff energy stored up,” I explain. “You had to let it out, even if it wasn’t the right target.”

“No way,” says Inkling. But then he chuckles.

I want to go back downstairs now, but I can’t figure out what to say. I should apologize for screaming at everyone and not cleaning up, I know. But I’m also glad they know about the whoopie pies of evil. Truth is, I kind of want them to come upstairs and tell me they’re sorry they bought pies from Betty-Ann when Big Round Pumpkin needs customers.

Inkling flicks on the TV. We watch a bit of a documentary called Snakes of Terror . But it is nothing new to a guy who knows as much about venomous reptiles as I do, and I’m not even supposed to be home alone.

Eventually I get up. I have an idea of what I might say. “You coming?” I ask Inkling.

“Nah,” he says. “I want to see what they’re going to say about Peruvian snakes. I bet they don’t know half of what really lives in the Woods of Mystery.”

“I’ll bring you a piece of pizza if there’s any left over,” I tell him.

I walk downstairs and knock on Chin’s door. Bam bada bam! Bam bada bam bam! That’s how I always knock, so she knows it’s me. From the other side, she knocks back: Bam bada bam bam!

Then her dimply face is peeking out from behind the door.

“My dad is working at Big Round Pumpkin,” I tell her. “You and Patne wanna go down and get free ice cream?”

It’s as close as I can get to sorry .

“Sure,” she says. And I’m pretty sure it’s as close as she can get to sorry , too.

Fried Potato and Onion in Your Ice Cream

When we walk into Big Round Pumpkin, who is there but Henry Kim, The Holy Terror. He’s at the back table with his parents and two little sisters. They are the only customers, but they’re all eating sundaes with hot fudge and butterscotch sauce, whipped cream and pistachios, so Dad looks happy.

“You all had pizza without me?” Kim says, hitting his head with his palm. “That is so unfair. You would not believe how many vegetables I had to choke down before I was allowed to come here.”

He leaves his family and comes to sit with us at the front of the store. He’s full of questions for Dad. How is the ice cream stored? (There’s a walk-in freezer in the back.) How did Dad learn to make it? (It was his hobby in college; he learned from a book.) How do you make hot fudge? (Long boring explanation Dad gave that I won’t repeat here.)

Patne, Chin, and I order cookie-dough sundaes with fudge and pumpkin-colored sprinkles. Dad makes them. “Do you have special flavors for holidays?” Kim asks.

“Do we ever!” I say.

“But not for Thanksgiving,” Dad says from behind the counter. “We’ll have candy cane and eggnog for Christmas, though. I’m making them already. They go on the menu after Thanksgiving.”

“What about Hanukkah?” Kim asks. “’Cause I’m Jewish.”

Dad shakes his head. “No.”

“Latke and applesauce!” I yell.

Patne and Kim both laugh. Chin makes a gagging noise.

“It’s not going to be good,” says Dad. “You don’t want fried potato and onion in your ice cream. Do you, Henry?”

“No,” says Kim, suddenly looking serious. “But I bet we can think of a Hanukkah flavor that would be good.”

“Bring it on,” says Dad.

“Matzo ball!” I yell. Because how awesome would that be, tiny matzo balls inside your ice cream?

“Wouldn’t that be chicken-soup flavor, though?” asks Chin, sticking out her tongue.

“It could be vegetable soup,” I say.

“Matzo balls are for Passover, not Hanukkah,” says Kim.

Okay, fine. Not matzo ball.

“Maybe gelt?” Patne muses. “You could do something with the chocolate coins people get on Hanukkah.”

Now we’re getting somewhere! I get out my flavor notebook, which I tend to carry around with me now, and show it to Kim, Patne, and Chin. They lean in, looking at the pages.

They read my ideas and look at my drawings. They’ve got ideas of their own. Patne suggests different applesauce flavors. Kim flips back to see my Halloween ideas. Chin wants to talk about toppings and sprinkles and mix-ins.

We make notes. We make jokes. I do a couple sketches.

This killing-with-kindness thing? I think it might be working.

Next morning before school, I look for Inkling in my laundry basket. “Are you there?” I say, feeling around the clothes.

“Umumumumumum.” He makes a groggy noise.

“Perfect,” I say—and pour a jug of warm water over him.

Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that when he was in my laundry basket. Now all my dirty clothes are wet. But in my own defense, most of the time I don’t know where Inkling’s sitting. If he was awake, I couldn’t sneak up on him with the water.