My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich by Ibi Zoboi

Author:Ibi Zoboi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2019-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

22

Bianca went all the way to the corner store—a “bodega” she calls it—to buy long tubes of red icees to soothe some of the soreness on my body. There’s one on my head, one on my back, and one on my butt as I lie facedown on Daddy’s beat-up, dusty couch. It smells just like him—car grease, cigarettes, beer, and Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder.

“That’s what you get for trying to make me fall again,” Bianca says as she tries to stop the cold, wet icees from sliding off my head and back. “Boomerang! What goes around comes around.”

“I wasn’t trying to make you fall,” I say. “I was just trying to save you.”

“I don’t need you to save me.”

“Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet.”

“Why are you so weird? And how come you didn’t grow up already? You still act like you’re nine.”

She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Her mind is gone. The Sonic Boom has taken control. Then I say, “If you’re so grown-up, then what were you doing jumping in that rope then? Is that your day job so you can pay your grown-up bills?”

“We’re playing, but it’s not like how you play. We’re actually doing something, not pretending to be on spaceships and going to other planets or whatever.”

“It’s my imagination . . . ,” I start to say, but I stop. It’s no use. Explaining any of this to her will be like screaming on the other side of a giant blast door. She can’t hear me. She can’t see me. “Bianca, you can go home now.”

“Okay. Adiós!” She gets up from the couch leaving me with my icy red alien receptors all along my back and on my head.

But when Bianca opens the front door, Daddy is on the other side holding out his keys. “Hey, Butter Pecan! I didn’t know you were here hanging out with Broomstick.”

“Hi, Mr. Julius. I was just leaving,” she says.

“Oh, wait a minute, now,” Daddy says, picking up a big, flat cardboard box from the ground and nudging Bianca to come back inside. “Got some pizza for lunch. You can help me and Broomstick finish it off.”

I watch Bianca’s eyes move from the box and then to me and back. “Did you get pepperoni, Mr. Freeman?” She closes the door and follows him into the living room.

“Sure did. And you can bring some to your grandmother if you like.”

“Abuela doesn’t eat pizza,” Bianca says, and walks right past me and into the kitchen with Daddy.

Daddy doesn’t even ask me what’s wrong when he passes. So I slowly get up from the couch, still feeling a little hurt, let the red icees fall to the floor, and sit with my sometimes–best friend at the small kitchen table.

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