Music floated through the trees.
It was faint at first, winding through the branches from the road above. It was that cheerful jingle every kid on the planet knows in their bones. I stood up and grinned because I’d missed the truck yesterday. It had come while I was in the cabin, and by the time I got outside it was gone. So today I was prepared. I had ten ones in the pocket of my swim trunks, bills I’d taken from my mom’s purse. She wouldn’t notice ten missing from the several hundred in there.
I took the money because of June.
She loved ice cream like it needed to be its own food group. She’d eat it too fast, get a headache, then eat more anyway. I wanted to buy it for her. I wanted to hand it over and watch her face light up, mouth opening before the smile caught up to the rest of her. I was nine years old and I was already building my life around making her happy.
“Let’s get some,” I said, grinning at June.
Eli shook his head. “I can’t eat it. Makes my stomach hurt.”
“Maybe they have fruit pops,” June said. She was already bouncing on her toes, scanning the tree line for the road.
“I don’t want to.” Eli pulled at the bark in his hands, shredding it.
June grabbed his arm. “Come on. They have fruit pops.”
“Yeah. Don’t be lame,” I said.
I said that to him. To Eli, who was nervous about everything but had the confidence to advocate for himself. And there I was trying to pressure him into going because I wanted to impress a girl and he was in the way of that.
Petit con.Little asshole. That’s what I was.
June and I badgered him with more words until he finally agreed to come along.
We scrambled up the slope from the shore, through the trees, then onto the gravel road. The music was louder. We followed it around a bend and found the van parked on the shoulder where the road widened near an empty lot.
I say van because that’s what it was.
Real ice cream trucks are square and boxy, actual food trucks plastered in decals and a full menu board. There’s a sliding order window and someone smiling down at you from inside. And speakers on the top that play the music.
The vehicle in front of us was a white van with faded pastel stripes spray-painted along the sides, sloppy enough that the pink bled into the blue. A few ice cream stickers pressed onto the paneling, peeling at the corners. No menu. No order window. Just a regular van somebody had tried to disguise, its back doors propped open, and a man standing behind them. Music came through the radio.
I didn’t notice all those differences; I only wanted to make June happy.
We were at a vacation spot full of kids who ran around unsupervised. Everyone trusted their neighbors. The nearest adults were back at the cabins, out of earshot.
Everyone trusted the world, including me.
I approached the van, touched the bills in my pocket and felt like a man who could provide. “Pick whatever you want,” I told June.
The man had a small cooler propped behind the open doors. He was average height, maybe thirties, wearing a baseball cap and a T-shirt with a faded logo. I remember his hands. Big with red knuckles. Nails bitten short.
June pointed at a chocolate-dipped bar. “That one.”
“Good choice,” the man said.
I paid the two dollars. I puffed up counting the bills, certain I looked like someone who did this every day. June was already unwrapping the bar, and the look on her face was exactly what I’d wanted.
Eli touched my shoulder and whispered, “Let’s go. I don’t like this guy.”
“Chill,” I said.
I asked the man for a strawberry fruit pop for my friend, because Eli likes strawberries.
“Sure,” he said. He climbed into the van and disappeared behind the doors, rustled around, then came back wearing an apologetic look. “Sorry, bud. I’m all out of those. How about a rocket pop? Come in and see what I’ve got.” He jerked his chin toward the van’s interior. “Your friend can come have a look, pick whatever he wants.”
Eli turned pale. He shook his head at me, a small frantic motion.
