Izzy the ice cream truck had a job to do. Her freezer hummed a steady, low hum — mmmmmm — and inside, three trays of vanilla-twist cones stood in perfect rows, cold and ready. Tonight was the Midsummer Block Party on Maple Street, and every kid in the neighbourhood was waiting.
Whir, whir, ready. That was the sound of Izzy's soft-serve machine spinning up. It could squeeze out long, looping ropes of ice cream — thick as a garden hose, strong as a sailor's knot. Izzy was very proud of it.
She rumbled through town, past the bakery with its warm bread smell, past the fountain where pigeons were arguing about a pretzel. Her bells chimed ding-a-ling-a-ling as she turned onto Elm, then Oak, then nearly onto Maple — and stopped.
Whir, whir, ready. But Izzy couldn't move an inch.
There, rolling and wobbling and bumping slowly down the hill, was an enormous inflatable bouncy castle. Pink and yellow and the size of a small house. It had come loose from its stakes, and now it was headed straight for Mrs. Kowalski's prize rosebushes at the bottom of the hill.
Three grown-ups had tried to grab it. It was too slippery. A man in a hat had tried to push it sideways. It bounced him right off. The bouncy castle didn't mean any harm — it was just very, very round, and very, very determined.
Izzy revved her soft-serve machine. Whirrrr. She leaned out her window, took careful aim at the handle looped on the castle's side, and — FWOOMP — fired a long, spiralling rope of vanilla twist through the air. It looped once, twice, and caught the handle perfectly. The rope was cold and firm and smelled like a Sunday afternoon.
Izzy pulled. The castle slowed. The crowd on the lawn cheered.
Then something moved inside the castle. A small, round shape bounced up into view — then disappeared — then bounced up again, higher this time, with a very startled expression. It was a squirrel. A small, grey, deeply embarrassed squirrel who had crawled inside for a quiet nap and was now going BOING, BOING, BOING with absolutely no way out.
Izzy thought fast. Whir, whir, ready. She fed her soft-serve machine a little more slowly this time, pressing out a long, looping rope that curled and coiled all the way up to the castle's open window — just like a ladder. A cold, slightly sticky, vanilla-scented ladder.
The squirrel looked at it. The squirrel looked at Izzy. The squirrel grabbed on with both tiny paws and climbed — rung by rung by rung — all the way down to the grass. It sat for a moment, patted its own head, and scurried off behind the hedgerow without a single word.
Izzy tied the bouncy castle firmly to the lamp post with the last of her rope. It bobbed gently in the warm evening air, and somebody's dad said, "Can we go in?" and everybody said YES.
Whir, whir, ready. Izzy rolled into the driveway and served every last cone — chocolate chip, strawberry swirl, and seventeen vanillas — until her trays were empty and her freezer gave one long, satisfied sigh.
The block party went on without her. She could hear it — laughing, and the squeak of bouncing, and one small distant BOING that might have been the squirrel coming back for another go.
Izzy's engine slowed. Tick. Tick. Tick. Her bells hung still. The driveway was cool and quiet beneath her wheels, and the stars came out one by one above Maple Street.
