Invisible Inkling

It works. People come. Starting around one o’clock each day, babies waking from their naps come in to see Teakettle, read some picture books, and eat dishes of vanilla ice cream. Starting at three, kids stop in after school to see him. They buy cones. Their parents buy espresso. Pretty often they take home pints—especially the holiday flavors.

A couple days after Teakettle comes to the shop, Big Round Pumpkin starts selling its first-ever Hanukkah ice cream: geshmack doughnut. It’s caramel-swirl ice cream with tiny spherical doughnuts, served with a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar across the top of every cone.

Inkling thought of the name. Geshmack means “tasty” in Yiddish.

Kim thought of doughnuts. Fried foods like latkes are traditional at Hanukkah, because of the oil. Kim told us not just latkes. Doughnuts, too.

I thought of adding the caramel swirl.

Chin thought of sprinkling the cinnamon-sugar across the top, which makes it seem more special than an ordinary ice-cream cone.

Dad found a local bakery that would make tiny organic doughnuts, and then he put it all together.

Patne helped eat several test batches and made suggestions.

Nadia wrote Geshmack Doughnut on the board in beautiful handwriting.

Mom didn’t really do anything. But that’s okay. The shop is full. It feels like a holiday in there.

On December 15, Betty-Ann and her whoopie pie truck disappear from our corner. Maybe she is defeated by the awesome power of a pygmy hedgehog and a Hanukkah ice-cream flavor. Or maybe it’s just too cold to eat whoopie pies out on the street. Maybe she always shuts down once winter comes around.

I’ll never know. But it doesn’t matter much.

What matters is, we are selling ice cream again.

I have a new job. In addition to being in charge of recycling, I have to feed and water Teakettle every day, plus go to the store to buy his food. (Nadia has to clean out the cage. Ha!)

This means I get paid more money each week, and it also means that I can actually use my money for paying off my Lego airport, for paying Nadia back money she’s loaned me, and for candy. Because you know what vegetable Teakettle gets served, but doesn’t actually eat much of?

Squash.

Raw squash.

I can now stock the ice-cream-shop fridge with acorn, butternut, and delicata, as well as carrots, cucumbers, and celery for Teakettle to munch on.

He likes cucumbers best.

Inkling eats almost all the squash.

One weekend morning, I wake up and Inkling is not in my laundry basket. I feel all around the bedroom in case he’s sleeping somewhere unusual. He’s not there.

I get up, eat some leftover Thai food, and put on clothes. Nadia’s still asleep. Mom left a note that she and Dad are down at Big Round Pumpkin, working early to fill special orders for holiday ice-cream cakes. I take my key and head to the shop. I call to my folks that I’m here, but we’re not open to the public yet, so they’re back in the kitchen, decorating cakes.

Sure enough, I find Inkling leaning against Teakettle’s cage. I’ve found him here a couple times lately, after school, usually next to a pile of squash rinds.

But today, there’s no squash.

Inkling pats my arm when I reach down to scratch his neck, and he accepts the waffle cone I give him—but he doesn’t climb on my shoulder or say anything to me. It seems like he’s busy.

Teakettle is on an upper level of his habitat, looking right at the place where Inkling is sitting. His nose is twitching. His ears are perky.

And suddenly, I get it.

Teakettle has been listening. To Inkling. Maybe he doesn’t understand English. Or Yiddish or Mandarin. Probably he understands Inkling in some animal language shared by bandapats and hedgies, some smell-touch-grunt mix.

Inkling is teaching Teakettle what he knows. Bandapat stuff. How to drop on enemies from high branches. How to eat pumpkin without getting strings in his teeth. How to backstroke and catch Oatie Puffs in midair.

Inkling breaks off a bit of waffle cone and pokes it through to Teakettle.

Teakettle sniffs it but doesn’t eat. Hedgies don’t like waffle cones, apparently.

“Look at him. Isn’t he a little cute one?” says Inkling, reaching in to take the bit of cone back.

As if to prove it, Teakettle rolls himself into a ball and falls over on one side.

“He really is,” I say.

“He climbed under my floppy bits yesterday when it was cold in here,” Inkling says. “I kept him warm!”

All that’s left to tell you is that for the next two weeks, when Mom drags me to swim class, I actually think about swimming.

I rotate my feet. I lift my elbows. I loosen my knees.

I remember that Chin and I built a Great Wall of China once. And now we’re building the Taj Mahal. I remember that Kim, Chin, Patne, and I invented an ice-cream flavor. Kim and I will probably never be more than halfway friends, but I remember that all four of us are supervillains scheming together to take over the food trucks of Manhattan and make them servants of our evil ice-cream empire.

I remember we can all fit on the tire swing together if we try.