• tab I hate the sun. Seriously, it’s what caused this entire mess. What mess, you may be asking yourself, can a mere eleven year old boy get into on a blazing hot summer afternoon? It starts with Shakespeare. Somewhere at my school, some pure genius of a teacher decided that, over the summer, to improve our classes reading skills, we’d have to read some Shakespeare book. Honestly, in this heat, I can’t even concentrate.
    tab Then, like the music of an angel, I can hear it. The distant tinkling song of an ice cream truck. An ice cream truck was coming. I had three dollars in my pocket and a giant book of Shakespeare. This was going to be awesome.
    tab So I quickly scramble down from my porch after yelling a quick message to my mom. I think she told me not to go, but I wasn’t listening, there was ice cream! I chase after the sound of the truck like a wild animal stalking it’s prey. I didn’t even notice that I still had that bulky, large book. After two or three endless blocks, I can see the truck! I wave, I jump, I yell, all as I’m still running, and I think it might have slowed. But the truck never seemed to get closer. It turned the corner, and as I did as well a few seconds later, I was faced with a large problem. “Don’t-You-Dare-Cross-This-Street-Alone-Mister!” Street. The one my mom always had snarled warnings to me about when I tried to walk anywhere on my own. I felt like I was being torn in two. On the one hand, I knew my mom wouldn’t want me to be anywhere near here. On the other, there was ice cream.
    tab My desire for ice cream having won over my reluctance to cross, I took a step onto the street as the walk signal flashed, and was immediately almost hit by a truck driver. I could hear him raging in his truck as it zoomed away. This was going to be much harder then I had thought. So once again, I waited for my chance to cross. After ten minutes, I felt that this was getting ridiculous, so instead of waiting for the light, I ran.
    tab Now, by ran, I don’t mean that I ran across this street. One does not simply cross in a straight line at this street. No, I darted across, occasionally having to stop in the middle of the road and hearing the screech of metal as cars tried to stop and the swears and curses of their drivers trying to avoid hitting me. But that ice cream truck was in sight yet again, this time nothing was going to stop me, not if I could help it.
    tab Things never want to go right for me, because as I was thinking that, two more ice cream trucks appeared. At first, I was delighted. At least one of those would have to notice me! Much to my disappointment, they instead sped past me and started trying to get close to the original truck. To my horror, they began tying to ram into it. I mentally cheered my ice cream man on as he slowly made his way from the rival trucks. I did cheer out loud as he finally got away, and the rival trucks slowed to a crawl. One of them came up near me, but I didn’t trust this bozo. He’d been trying to hurt my ice cream man!
    tab The window rolled down, and to my confusion, there was a man in a black suit and black sunglasses staring at me.
    tab “Kid, were you following that truck?” he asked. His voice was cold and unfriendly. I didn’t like him, so I refused to reply.
    tab “Come on, you can trust me.” You can suck my-
    tab The man in black sighed.
    tab “I work for the government. Answer my question.”
    No answers for you, Mister Scary Man. If I hadn’t been more concerned with getting away from this guy to the good ice cream truck, this would have been funny. The man in black was getting red in the face, and he was glaring at me.
    tab “Kid this is your last warn- AUGH!”
    tab I was on my way, I’d had enough of this guy. I wanted this delicious cold treat for far too long now. I needed a distraction, so I threw my Shakespeare book at him. He opened the door to the truck, rubbing his head where the book had hit him, so I scrambled away, hiding behind a trash can as he looked around, fuming.
    tab “J-just be careful! That’s no man driving that ice cream truck!”
    tab I wasn’t listening, I was already running again. I was secretly very angry. How would I ever find him now?
    tab Wouldn’t my luck have it, I heard the music again. I glanced up, and, to my excitement, it was the ice cream truck! He was back! The ice cream man opened the door and ran to me, and me to him. It’s was like running through a field of flowers in slow motion, until I realized that this man’s face was familiar. My stomach lurched unpleasantly. That was no ice cream man. That was a zombie. As he lunged out of the truck at me, I noticed that he had an ice cream cone in his hand. So, while he slowly devoured my arm, I ate my ice cream. My last thought before I passed out from the pain/brain freeze/blood loss was "Wow, this sure beats Romeo and Juliet."