Goddess Boot Camp(32)

Better? What could be better?

“Try this,” he says. “On the house.”

I take the cone and eye it suspiciously. It looks like pretty average ice cream—vanilla colored with little white flecks.

“Thanks,” I say, a little defeated. But it’s not like I can resent free ice cream.

“Try it.”

With a shrug, I dart out my tongue for a quick sample. My taste buds explode with a long-forgotten flavor.

“Oh my gods,” I gasp, staring at Demetrius. “You didn’t!”

He smiles smugly. “I did.”

Nicole, tired of waiting for me, shouts out, “He did what?”

I stare, wide-eyed, at my new favorite person on the planet.

“This ice-cream genius,” I say between licks, “re-created Ben & Jerry’s White Russian. Perfectly.” I shake my head in awe. “My all-time favorite.”

Demetrius winks at me. “You’re welcome.”

“I could just jump over this counter and hug you.” I take another lick.

He actually blushes. “Go on,” he says, gesturing me away. “Your friends are waiting.”

“Thanks.”

As I slide into the sky-blue booth next to Nicole, Troy asks, “Why are you getting apoplectic over ice cream?”

“This isn’t just any ice cream,” I explain. “This is the best flavor ever invented. B&J discontinued it years ago and I haven’t had a taste since. Here,” I say, holding out the cone, “try it.”

Troy turns kind of green and shakes his head adamantly.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, jabbing the ice cream in his direction.

“Oh gods,” Troy yelps, then claps one hand over his mouth and the other over my wrist, shoving me away.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask Nicole.

“When he was in Athens last week,” she says, giving Troy a sympathetic look, “he finally told his parents he wants to be a musician.”

“Good for you!” I congratulate Troy, who still looks more green than not. We’ve been trying to get him to come clean for months. He’s from a long line of doctors—like millennia long—so of course that’s what his parents want him to be. But music is in his soul. He’d be miserable as a doctor, and I know his parents would understand that. “What does that have to do with ice cream?”

“It’s not the ice cream, exactly,” she explains. “It’s the sugar.”

I give her a look that repeats, So?

“His parents were not exactly thrilled by the news.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Troy adds, returning to a mostly normal, mostly pinky-tan color. “They hit the roof.” He shudders. “Literally.”

“I still don’t—”

“They cursed my taste buds.”

That sounds rotten. “What does that mean?”

“Until I agree to become a doctor,” he explains, “every time I eat something sweet, it tastes like . . . something not sweet.”

“That sucks.” If this were anything other than White Russian, I’d toss it out in friendship solidarity. But, as I said, it’s White Russian! I ignore my guilt, trying to be as discreet as possible about my ice-cream ecstasy.

“That’s not the worst of it,” he says, sounding even more dejected. “They enrolled me in SIPP.” When I look confused, he adds, “The Summer Intensive Pre-med Program. Instead of writing songs and practicing, I’ll spend all summer in class.”

Nicole pats his hand. “You’ll get through it, Travatas.”

“There’s a weeklong anatomy segment,” he complains. “Anatomy! We’re going to dissect . . . something. I just know it.”

“Maybe you can do a virtual dissection or something,” I suggest, taking a bite out of the sugar cone. “Nola and I did that in freshman biology.”

“Whatever,” he says, waving me off. “I don’t want to talk about it. What’d you do in camp today?”

Popping the tail end of the cone into my mouth, I reach into my pocket.

“I earned my first merit badge.”

I slap the little round patch onto the table.

At first I’d thought Stella was joking. A merit badge? For not cracking my skull on the tile? Wow, what an achievement. But then she’d handed this to me and said, “One down, eleven to go.”

Just like the ones that covered Nola’s Girl Scouts vest in elementary school, this merit badge is round with a thick ring of color surrounding the central picture. In this case, the ring is white, the background is sky blue, and the picture depicts a white whooshy wave of wind.

“Aerokinesis,” Troy says. “Cool.”