everything is better with ice cream. [shelby]

july 2003

"Hey Shelby," Benny said as he stepped inside the Mess hall and joined her at the back of the line. He peered around her, counting the number of students in front of them (five!) as they waited in line for the coveted Ice Cream Sundae machine (and all of the toppings that followed!). Sliding his hands into the pockets of his shorts he turned back to her and tried to be patient. Someone had broken the machine two days ago and the twelve-year-old had missed the never-ending ice cream sundaes. He was still sore about it, but at least it was fixed now. Briefly, he wondered if the adults had just not fixed it, realizing too many students were eating ice cream for dinner (Benny included) but as soon as it was up and running all of his ice cream conspiracy theories seemed to melt away.

"Good thing they fixed the machine, right? I'm going to add caramel and pineapples and candies and..." He looked around her again, excited by the mere prospect of it, and that another student had finished putting ice cream into their bowl, "Oh and definitely gummy bears." He watched the student move down the line and start scooping toppings from the counter into his bowl and licked his lips. Leaning back again he gave her another dimpled smile.

"What about you?"

@Shelby Trickett

Benny pulled up behind her, and Shelby already felt better. The ice cream line had been taunting her for days, and when she had finally worked up the nerve to have ice cream for dinner, the machine had gone ahead and broke! It was fixed now, and Shelby had dared herself to get in line. Benny being here was good. Better. Maybe he could make all the decisions for her. There were too many toppings! What the hell were gummy worms? Were they made of worms?

Shelby nodded, getting excited from Benny's energy. Caramel, pineapples... "Which candies?" she asked. Benny had been eating this for every meal since day one, he probably knew what was good. Gummy bears. Should she be taking notes? Shelby reverse-cut the line, letting Benny go in front for her so she could just copy all the toppings that he went for. Oh, the almonds looked good too - but Benny wasn't listing them, so that seemed like an idea.

Shelby frowned. "Maybe... fruit? Bananas?" Wow, that sounded lame. "Probably just what you are getting." She still had to think about what flavour of base icecream to get - probably vanilla? It was too many choices.

"Whichever ones they have? All of them?" Benny answered honestly, thinking very little about the answer, and then beaming at her. He'd pile the thing so high full of candies his teeth would probably scream at him from inside of his mouth. But that was the point though right! He never got to eat things like this at home, and certainly not every night for dinner, so while he was here he was going to keep splurging. Those two days without an ice cream machine had been hard on him, he had a lot of time to make up for.

Benny took a step to the side when she moved behind him and finished the little dance they were doing with a shrug and a smile. He would go first if she wanted, and he certainly wasn't going to put up a fight about it. The twelve-year-old wizard stood in his new place in line (another student finished! they were getting closer now!) but turned around to face her so they could keep chatting as the waited in line.

"Oh bananas are a good choice," he agreed with a solitary nod, hands still in his pocket, growing hungrier by the second. "Don't worry I will help you make a great sundae." Not that she had asked, but he still offered, it was the friendly thing to do right?

Benny was going for complete topping anarchy. Shelby looked over his head - weren't those muggle Pop Rocks? The idea of adding that to a perfectly harmless ice cream filled her with fear. This was truly the peak of Gryffindor bravery. Ahead of them, two more people were scooping treats onto their ice cream. There were some pieces of what looked like cake - that seemed nice. An unthreatening flavour and texture. She could do little cubes of cake.

Shelby was surprised to look down and hear Benny approve of fruit. Fruit was healthy! Wasn't the whole point of ice cream to not be healthy? But If Benny approved... Another person with their bowl filled, moved to the topping line. Was it embarrassing that Shelby so obviously needed help making decisions? Yes. Was she going to turn down Benny's offer? Absolutely not. "Your turn, I think," Shelby said, gesturing ahead of them. "Tell me what's good!"

Another student moved along, and they inched closer to the beautiful ice cream dispensing machine, and Benny was wild with excitement. He knew it might have seemed silly to be so eager to eat a big bowl of sugar but after the last few weeks at camp, he was quite legitimately addicted to it. They had sweets at home, sure, but he was never allowed to just eat as much as he wanted. Benny was the sort who wouldn't stop until he had gotten a stomach ache, and then he'd take a small break, and start over again. Those few nights without the sundae machine had been awful really.

Moving up in the line until they were next Benny felt jittery, hopping a little on the ball of his feet and grinning ear to ear. He turned around from facing Shelby as he approached the ice cream machine. Reaching for one of the clean bowls on the left he stepped up to the plate and cranked the lever down. In a second the machine churned, and beautiful, tasty, chocolate-flavored sugar goodness filled up his bowl. He swirled the bowl underneath like he'd seen the older kids do, getting that swirly coned shape in his bowl instead of an unassuming blob of chocolate. He lifted the lever and stepped to the side, eyeing the toppings. He waited for Shelby to finish adding ice cream to her bowl, wondering if she'd pick vanilla or chocolate or one of the stranger flavors. There was a lot to chose from, too much almost.

"Okay so," he started, a serious tone in his small voice because this was real business now, "Some wizards put all sorts of toppings all over but I have a different method." Benny tried to sound like a professional, using words like Method, that he might not otherwise. "I do little corners of different kinds of toppings, so the fruits go on this corner, the sprinkles and sugar cookies over here, and gummy bats here alongside the soft chocolates," Benny told her as he plopping heavy scoops of each thing into different quadrants of his bowl until they were nearly overflowing off of all sides. "And the caramel syrup just... well it goes everywhere." Because of course it does, Benny shrugged his shoulders and laughed a little as he poured so much syrup into his bowl the gummy snacks started floating. It was at the brim, getting the fingers closest a bit sticky, but he was undeterred by it.

"Your turn?"

Benny kept bouncing on his toes as they approached the front of the line. Shelby wished that she could be as single-mindedly excited about ice cream as he was. It reminded her of when she was little and Mum took her shopping at the big Korean market in London. She had been so overwhelmed by the displays and the lights and sounds. She distinctly remembered Ingvar having to drag her away from the crab tank. She hadn't been able to stop staring.

The ice cream machine was itself pretty fascinating, though. There was a lever, not a big scoop like the one at home, and it came out in a weird tube of cream. Benny had managed to get his to look like the picture on the machine, a cone of milk and sugar, but Shelby hadn't paid close enough attention to the technique and was now the proud owner of a bowl of blobby vanilla ice cream. Oh well.

She listened attentively as Benny suddenly got serious. Corners? That appealed to her - it was bad enough everything would be touching the ice cream, but also touching each other? What if two toppings didn't go together? That all made sense. "I dunno if I want syrup," Shelby said, starting to section off her bowl. The little cake pieces on the right top, the fruits on the bottom left, gummy bats to the top left... there was only room for a couple more. She looked back and forth. "Caramel chips or Oreos?"

Benny shrugged when Shelby wasn't sure about syrup, he wasn't going to pressure her into it or anything. And Merlin knew he had enough syrup for the both of them (more probably) and so he kept moving down the line. He noted that she'd picked vanilla, and when he saw her putting cake pieces on the top, he doubled back. "Good choice!" The preteen wizard exclaimed, but his shouts were just as loud as the commotion in the rest of the mess hall. It was ice cream night, it was always more lively, and it just got more hyper the more sugar was consumed. Benny followed after her for a moment and loaded some cake pieces on to his already too full bowl. They floated on the caramel river, dangerously close to water falling off the rim, but Benny wasn't worried.

"Oreos, definitely. These ones have soooo much sugar, nothing like what they sell at Tomie's parent's shop." Benny informed the Ravenclaw with another brilliant smile. He may have sampled some of the caramel syrup that was sticking to his fingers, he was getting bouncier by the second. Tomie's parents ran a little stand nearby the apartment building they all lived. They sold all sorts of things, groceries, magazines, even muggle light bulbs, but Benny always loved sampling the Asian snacks. And they had different flavors of Oreos, kinds you couldn't find in other London shops, but they had considerably less sugar. Benny had realized it the first night he'd added the oreo bits to his sundae.

Bubbly and excited the small Gryffindor leaned against the glass, holding his bowl toward her. "Dooo you think I have enough?" The wizard asked in a sing-song kind of voice, still smiling ear to ear.

Shelby had to supress a little chortle as Benny looped back to copy her - it was funny that Benny would be copying her at all, especially where dessert was concerned. His bowl seemed like a ticking time bomb of its own, though. Shelby gingerly stepped around a piece of caramel coated cake as it fell from his bowl onto the floor. Benny seemed to be getting a sugar high by proxy. A small giggle escaped as she leaned over the oreo crumbs. "I'll try some," the girl decided, adding a small scoop to her bowl, then feeling like a coward, added two more.

She couldn't help but grin as Benny shoved his concoction towards her face. "Do you really think you can fit anything else?" Shelby asked. "That's a giant sundae. Massive." She paused. "A mundae," she said, proud of her combination pun-portmanteau. There was cream starting to melt off the side of both their bowls. "Come on, let's hurry and eat," the Ravenclaw suggested, pulling out of the line and into the dining hall. There was a pair of seats near the end of a table, right next to the napkin dispenser. Shelby was sure they would need it.

Benny beamed at her when she decided to add another two scoops of oreo crumbs onto her sundae. There was something extra fun about putting way too many toppings on the dessert; he honestly probably should not have been eating this close to bedtime. He'd be bouncing off the walls like a dodo bird by the time he got back to the cabin he shared with JR. That was a later problem, though. Benny answered, laughing and shrugging (and letting more gloop waterfall over the rim of his overfilled bowl). "Probably not, huh?" Sure he could try, but he was pretty much already at the breaking point. Eventually, everything would start slipping out and onto the floor, and then he'd feel bad about making a mess and enjoy the sundae a lot less. No, he was good, but that didn't mean he couldn't come back for seconds!

Benny licked a little bit of the caramel syrup off of his sticky fingers, following her out of the line as they looked for a place to sit. Sometimes it made him nervous, finding a seat in the crowded mess all, but when he was with a friend, it was always so much easier. The young boy felt less awkward, less on the spot when he wasn't alone, and the pair quickly found two seats toward the end. Practically galumphing toward the table, it was a wonder he barely spilled any more of his bowl during the journey. Sliding into a chair, he set in on taking a bite almost immediately and smiled between the bits that followed. "So, so good," He said quietly before shifting in his seat to look at her directly. "Having a good summer?" The wizard asked, hoping the answer was a yes, and took another bite.

Benny was filling Shelby with fear, the way he was bouncing around. She could almost see the future, she thought, of Benny slipping and falling in his own ice cream. Miraculously, they both made it unharmed to the table.

Benny suddenly looked at her with such seriousness. Shelby panicked - was he about to, like, dump her as a friend? Tell her that he hated her? Neither. She laughed suddenly, nervousness evaporating. Why was that her thought, immediately? Shelby thought she must be going crazy, mad as a hatter, to have that sort of weird fearful reaction. "It's been lovely. Except getting lost. But even that was fun?" She gave Benny a soft smile, stirring her spoon contrary-wise in the much of ice cream before going for a bite. "Ow!" She put a hand to her forehead. "Brainfreeze!" She winced as it passed, gave Benny a wry grin. "Is ice cream supposed to hurt?"

"Yeah, that was crazy," Benny said with a smile as they both recalled getting lost in the woods. He blamed JR, of course, but there was a decent chance that he was supposed to have brought the map and forgot. Not that it mattered. The four of them had carved their names into the tree, well initials anyway, and Benny had liked that. It was cool to think that their initials would be there for a long time. They would return to England, Hogwarts, and leave Vermont and the United States in the dust, but some would always remain here. It was too easy to go down the rabbit hole thinking about it, so the chocolate faced Benny snapped back to the present and chuckled.

Laughing a bit more when Shelby got brain freeze, Benny made sure to swallow his bite before it shot across the table at her. "Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth!" He offered as she asked if it was supposed to hurt. Shaking his head Benny was adamant about the answer to that question. His love for sugary snacks (at least this summer) knew no bounds. "No, not really," He said with another laugh and waited to see if her brain freeze had passed. Like a march hare, Benny hopped around on his seat, thighs hitting the table a little, as the sugar began to kick in.

"Is it going away yet?" He asked, a twinge of concern in his eyes, "Want a glass of water?"