Emily Jenkins: Invisible Inkling

Patne leans out. He launches the Ziploc onto the sidewalk.

“Splat!” he yells.

The bag bursts. Orange mush sprays out across the sidewalk like an explosion—

—and all across Seth Mnookin, my neighbor.

We Thought It Would Make a Good Splat

Mnookin is wearing a suit. I have never seen him in a suit. Usually he looks like he just got up from a nap.

Now his suit is covered in pumpkin up to the knees.

His dog is, too. Rootbeer is barking and jumping at us, as if she could bite four stories up.

“Is that you, Nadia?” Mnookin calls, shading his eyes.

“No, sir. It’s Hank, sir,” I say.

“Did you just throw—oh, heck, what is that—did you just throw orange paint at me?” Mnookin asks.

“It’s only cooked pumpkin. I’m really sorry. My friend Patne is sorry too.”

“This is my only suit, Hank.” Mnookin sounds upset. “I have to be at a funeral in an hour.”

“I didn’t throw it on purpose,” I say. “My friend Patne didn’t throw it on purpose, either. It just slipped out of our hands.”

“I don’t have another suit,” Mnookin repeats, in a daze.

Suddenly, a hand grips the back of my shirt. Mom. “What’s going on, boys?”

“Our hands slipped,” I say. “Mnookin’s suit got splashed by accident.”

“What?” She leans out the window. “Seth! Are you okay?” She turns on me. “What’s on him, Hank? What did you throw?”

“Canned pumpkin.” I can’t look her in the eye.

“Come up to the apartment, Seth,” Mom calls down. “I can clean your suit if it’s only pumpkin. It shouldn’t stain.” Then she turns to me and Patne. “I will talk to you boys later .”

Mnookin and Rootbeer come up. Mom wipes the suit with a damp rag and a little dish soap. She makes me and Patne rinse Rootbeer in the tub, which is a lot harder than you’d think. The dog scrabbles so we can’t rinse her back feet. Then she runs away and won’t let us dry her. She leaves wet footprints in the kitchen as she snarfles around looking for scraps of food.

Mom gives us a bucket and scrub brush. We have to clean the sidewalk, too. “Sorry my mom is so cranky,” I say to Patne as we pour water on the cement.

“My mom is cranky, too,” he says. “Maybe even more than yours.”

I’m grateful to him for saying that.

After Patne goes home and Mnookin heads off, Mom sits me down on the couch. “Anything you want to say to me about what happened today?”

Sheesh. Why do grown-ups always ask that? Of course there’s not anything I want to say. I never want to talk about it again. I was hoping she’d forgotten about it by now.

I look at my thumbs.

“Hank, I asked if there was anything you want to say,” Mom prompts.

“Do you think we’ll ever make a good pumpkin ice cream?” I ask her. “The flavors we made with Dad came out gross. And do you know why there are no orange ice-cream flavors? Is it the color? Because back when I was trying to invent Halloween flavors in my flavor notebook, I realized: there’s no orange ice cream. Orange sherbet doesn’t count. It’s a flavor from the olden days. Maybe no one liked it even then. Except! Listen to this! I bet Martians would like orange sherbet. Did you know Mars isn’t called orange even though it looks orange? It’s ‘the red planet.’ But when you look at pictures of Mars, it for-serious looks orange, so I think their food is probably orange, too. Only of course, since they’re Martians they wouldn’t call it orange ’cause their whole world is orange. To them it’s just normal. Also, they don’t speak English.”

“Hank!” Mom is shouting now.

“What?”

“Why did you throw canned pumpkin out the window?”

Oh.

That’s what she wanted me to talk about.

“We thought it would make a good splat,” I say, my voice small.

“You admit you dropped it on purpose.”

“Kind of.”

“You planned ahead, then. You went into Nadia’s room to get a good spot over the street.”

“Kind of.”

“You did.”

“Yes.”

“Earlier, you said your hands slipped. That was not the truth.”

“Right.”

“You can’t drop things out the window!” yells Mom. “We are pacifists!”

My parents being pacifists means I’m not allowed to play Grand Theft Auto, watch South Park , or learn martial arts. It also means they always want me to find a peaceable solution to my problems. And not drop stuff out the window. “Kill them with kindness” is Mom’s new favorite phrase. She means, defeat your enemy by being a kinder, better person than he is.

“You can’t lie to me!” Mom is still yelling. “What on earth were you thinking, Hank?”

I was thinking about making Patne like me, I guess.

I can’t make myself say that out loud.

The Technical Term Is Floppy Bits

While Mom is yelling, I let my brain do something else. I’m thinking, Maybe I can make some bathrooms for my Lego airport. They could be red. I’ve used most of the gray, brown, black, and white bricks, so I have to use a bright color. Red walls could look good with orange sinks, maybe.

I head into my room as soon as she’s done with me. From under the bed, I drag out the airport. Then I pat inside my laundry basket for Inkling. “Wake up!” I say when my hand connects with his soft ears.

“I’m awake.” The clothes shift around.

Pruhtutututututut. Inkling shakes himself like a dog. It’s a thing he does when he’s first getting up.

“You want to build our airport bathrooms red?” I ask. “With orange sinks?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I said I don’t.”

“Okay, fine. Do you want to do them yellow? We have almost as many yellow pieces as red.”

“No.”

“Green?”

“No.”

“Orange?”

“I don’t want to do the airport bathrooms at all,” Inkling snaps.

“How will people use the bathroom, then?”

“You splatted my pumpkin!” he yells.

Huh? Oh yeah. “I’m sorry.”

“That was my lunch.”

“I know, I just—”

“You tell me you’ll bring me canned pumpkin. I wait all morning for it. Finally, I get tired of waiting. I go into Nadia’s room to fix my fur. I’m only in there a couple minutes when you come in with that guy who isn’t even nice to you.”

“Joe Patne.”

“Joe Patne, right. And it’s not like he’s even funny or anything, but you give him my pumpkin!”

“He is too funny,” I say.

“Maybe,” says Inkling. “Maybe he’s funny, but he’s not nice. Anyway, Patne didn’t even eat the pumpkin. You guys just splatted it. Like it wasn’t important to anyone. I’d been waiting for it all morning.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know what, Wolowitz? Think before you act. Before you go splatting someone’s special treat across the pavement.”

I don’t know what to say.

I did splat his treat across the pavement.

I did.

“Come on,” I say. “Can’t we just forget it and work on the airport?”

“I have problems, Wolowitz,” Inkling says. “Problems you wouldn’t understand. Problems that would have seemed a lot better with a belly full of pumpkin.”

“What problems?”

“Personal ones.” The laundry basket tips over, and Inkling bounds out.

“What personal ones?” I call.

His voice is coming from the top of my dresser now. “You’re not going to understand, and you can’t help.”