Can a {Double Popsicle} Freeze Time?

As Shayna peels down the paper from her ice pop, it makes different sounds based on the moisture content. She pulls the popsicle out and almost bites into it, but then she reconsiders.

“I’ll bet you my second popsicle that you can’t do 50 pushups,” she says, holding one wooden stick of her electric green double pop. The double pop remains connected, in case Zaire can’t or won’t live up to the challenge.

“You’re on,” he says, wiping the palms of his hand as he gets on his knees on the blacktop. The baked-in summer heat kicks up from beneath him, but he doesn’t even notice, too focused on keeping his back straight, elbows wide, chin up, just like coach taught him.

Shay and Zay. It’s always been like this. Fierce competitors, bitter rivals, best friends.

Zay’s wiry frame pops up and down with a fury for the first 30, then gets progressively more tired and labored as he announces each pushup aloud. “Thirty-nine! Forty! Forty-one!”

They’re still real pushups. None of that head bobbing, bend only at the elbows, butt stuck in the air nonsense. Forty-five and a drip of sweat falls off his forehead onto the pavement. Forty-seven looks like he’s going to pop a blood vessel in his eye. Forty-nine and his shoulders are shaking so badly that he looks like he might collapse. But number fifty? A perfect dip, clean and crisp down, and a confident pop back up to the top, staring Shayna right in the eyes.

“You better give me that popsicle,” he says, wiping off his grimy palms and reaching for his prize.

Shayna, carefully for an 11 year-old, holds one stick in each hand and twists them towards each other. The sections come apart, more or less evenly, but kinda looking like the border of two states. She hands him Vermont and keeps New Hampshire for herself.

Zay flexes his skinny bicep at her and bites the top of the popsicle.

“I knew you could,” she says. “I just wanted to see you sweat for it.”

He clicks his teeth dismissively. “I didn’t sweat.”

“YES YOU DID!” she says, pointing her popsicle at the droplet before it fully expires.

“Whatever,” Zay says, his mouth full of bitten-off popsicle.

“I would have given it to you anyway.”

“I wouldn’t have taken it. I don’t even like green.”

“It’s lime.”

“Limes don’t taste like that.”

Push and pull. Poke and prod. Prank and punk.

At this age, people see a young boy and a young girl playing together and expect this kind of friendship to turn into young love. They can’t help but think it’s a crush. They whisper to their friends, Isn’t it cute? Look at how they look at each other! Maybe they’ll get married! They ooh and aww and fantasize about a happy ending. But for real, why is it always “maybe they’ll get married”? Why are grown-ups always so fixated on grown-up stuff?

Shayna doesn’t bite her popsicle. She sucks on it until it melts into a rounded point at the top and until the bottom half drips down her hand, leaving it sticky and streaked with green tributaries.

“That’s nasty,” Zay says.

As a matter of fact, Shayna likes Zay’s brother, Marcus. And only a little. She mostly doesn’t even really care about boys. She’s really into soccer and drawing aliens and swimming in the pool at the community center.

And as a matter of fact, Zay likes Kimberly. A lot. And Kimberly likes Zay. And they actually held hands at Marcus’s football game last week while they were sharing one of those little cardboard trays of tater tots with too much ketchup on them. It was kinda awkward, but also kinda awesome.

And Shayna’s the one who made it happen.

She’s good enough friends with Kimberly that it wasn’t, like, weird to let Kimberly sit between her and her best friend Zay. So, even though the whole town was there for the game, no one was even looking at them all. No one even wondered aloud what was happening. They were all so busy yelling, “GO COUGARS!” and rooting for Marcus that they missed the butterflies and dopey, starry-eyed looks exchanged between Kimberly and Zay. But Shanya knew. She set it all up.

So, anyway, shut up about the “maybe they’ll get married” stuff.

It’s already late September, but it’s still hotter than heck in Shreveport. So, it’s still very much popsicle and pool season, lucky for Shay. She lives for this time of year. Sure, the days are getting perceptibly shorter, but she still gets to spend all of her time outside. Aside from school, of course. And this year, she actually really likes her teacher, Mr. Franklin, because he wrote “These are cool!” next to the alien doodles in the left margin of her spelling test. Usually her teachers just tell her that she needs to focus better, and inside her brain she’s like, “I AM FOCUSED, I’M JUST DRAWING.”

And it’s true. Because she gets 100 percent on most of her tests. She just likes to doodle, so what?

“Shayna,” Zay says. It must be serious if he’s calling her by her full name.

He has a mouthful of cold, green popsicle. There’s only one bite left on his stick, and honestly, fifty-fifty chance that gravity takes that last bite before Zay gets the chance. He takes a deep breath and asks her a question with all his heart.

“If me and Kimberly get married, will you be my best woman?”

There’s a long pause, as if the question gets caught in the humid Louisiana air. But he said it, and she heard it, and it’s out there now.

Shayna clicks her tongue against her teeth and rolls her eyes.

“Come on, man! Not you too, Zaire.”

“What?”

“‘We’re only eleven.”

“Yeah, but this is special. I’ve never felt this way about anybody before.”

“Of course you haven’t, man! Like I said, we’re only eleven!”

“So what?”

She looks down at her green hands and his green tongue, then shakes her head because, like, isn’t that just a perfect example? And of course he doesn’t see it. Too blinded by those hearts in his eyeballs.

It’s not clear to Shay if she’s being the more mature or more immature one. She’s too young to be cynical, but too old to be that naive. So it all comes down to one thing, and the only thing she can possibly say at a time like this.

“Why does everything have to be so serious all the time?”

She slurps her popsicle, wipes her hand on her shorts, and hopes no one answers.