Vanilla

Chapter Two

Dedicated to Tanner_ because I was speaking to him like 2 minutes ago and I'm too tired to think of who else I can give a dedication to.

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            Had it not been for her balloon-sized stomach, Nora probably would’ve skipped all the way down the street.

            Realising this actually made me kind of thankful for the eight-pound baby growing inside her – if nothing else, it saved me from being embarrassed by my sister’s immaturity. Still, I couldn’t deny that the prospect of ice cream was growing more appealing by the second; it’d only just occurred to me that I’d skipped lunch, and it had only been the excitement – ha – of my arrival in Walden that had distracted me from thoughts of food.

            I let her drag me the street, dodging the oncoming stream of people with a slightly embarrassing lack of agility and dignity. Passers-by tended to make way for Nora, for obvious reasons, but without the advantage of an obstacle-repelling balloon for a stomach, I had it significantly harder.

            True to her word, at the end of the row of seafront shops sat a miniature ice cream parlour. Its outer walls shone a sunny yellow, setting it well apart from its pastel neighbours. To call it small would be a major understatement; ducking under the striped awning and pushing through the door, I almost went face-first into Nora’s back. She’d come to an abrupt halt, pulling up the rear in a queue of tourists that wound all the way up to the counter and took up almost all of the shop’s available floor space.

            “So what do you think I should get?”

            I’d barely adjusted to the dimmer light of the shop’s interior, but Nora was already scanning the menu eagerly, her eyes glued to a large blackboard that covered the entire back wall.. On it was a long list of flavours, scrawled messily in chalk, but in a way that made the hurried scrawl seem intentional. Cartoon ice creams constituted the border, but my inner perfectionist was quick to pick up on how their cones were slightly too large to be proportionate, the hatched markings lacking the elements of a proper texture.

            “What do you reckon – chocolate fudge brownie or mango swirl?”

            “Um…” I blinked, momentarily struggling to find my sister’s whereabouts on the menu we were reading from. “Well, I guess mango sounds—”

            “Chocolate, yeah,” she interjected, robbing me of the chance to finish my sentence. Leaning forward, she continued squinting at the board, while I hoped in doing so her bump wouldn’t touch the back of the people in front of us. Said group was a family of four, their tourist status made obvious by their cheap beach shop flip-flops, huge bags and inflatable shark the dad had tucked under his armpit. “You can’t go wrong with chocolate.”

            “Whatever you want,” I told her, as the queue shifted forward a few paces. “Go wild.”

            She threw her arms up in the air. “See, but then there’s caramel. And I like that too.”

            By now, she’d begun shaking her head, submerged in thought inside her ice cream centred world. Had Nora not been eight months pregnant, her indecisiveness might’ve been irritating, but I’d grown used to it. The thing was, my sister liked anything as long as her hormones told her to, and I knew firsthand how bi-polar those things could be, One moment she’d have a hankering for peanut butter; the next she’d be gagging, claiming the taste made her feel sick.

            Needless to say, we hadn’t eaten a normal meal in months.

            Leaving her to it, my eyes began to wander around the shop, losing myself in its small details, the things I always seemed to pick up on. The walls, contrary to their exterior counterparts, were painted sky blue, while the tiles beneath our feet gleamed with fresh polish. Behind the counter was a little less organised; there seemed to be about ten different things happening simultaneously, unhindered by the fact there was only one member of staff in sight.