“Now?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No way, we’re going here first.”

“Isn’t that like … against the rules?”

“There are no rules, Siri. Let go of your restrictive dystopian ice cream mindset!”

“But we haven’t really had lunch or dinner,” I explain.

Dawn serves me a hard look. “Ice cream is lunch.”

I hold back a smile, slipping my hands in my overall pockets. “Okay. Are we going in or do they like, throw the cones at us from the door?”

Dawn purses her lips, concealing a wicked grin. I can see it in her eyes as she looks me up and down.

The inside of Ulor’s is as hipster as the outside. Their logo is a line drawing of an ice cream cone, and they have flavors like balsamic blueberry date, honeysuckle raspberry, and lemon zest birthday flan. They actually have a flavor called chocolate chip cricket mint. There are crickets in one of their flavors!

I’ve never tried cricket. I’m kind of curious to know what they taste like, and how they might complement normal human food.

“Why are you looking at that one so hard? You are not getting ice cream with crickets in it.”

I look over at Dawn and shrug playfully. “I don’t know, I’m pondering it.”

“Wow.” She smiles and puts on a detective voice. “Are you some sort of ice cream adrenaline junkie?”

I grin. “Which are you going to get?”

“I don’t know. I’ve tried all of these, but never that one”—she taps on the glass—“because, well, it sounds nasty.”

I look back down at it. It’s really just a twist on chocolate chip mint. The crickets are covered in chocolate so there’s nothing to ogle at except the sign that pronounces it cricket-full.

“It matches your outfit.” I shoot her a smile. “Do you want to get it together? Then you can say you’ve tried every flavor.”

“What if we both don’t like it?” Dawn reasons. “Maybe we should share two ice creams—you get the disgusting bug-filled one and I get a delicious flavor to act as our control.”

Butterflies flurry to life in my stomach. “You’re going to eat this with me, and I’m going to share yours?” I clarify.

“It seems the only viable solution. I need you to understand what makes this ice cream place extremely superior, and if that bug flavor isn’t good, then you’ll get the wrong impression. But the bug flavor will be an adventure, and if you don’t get it now, we’ll be missing out on all the fun of seeing you eat a bug.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s get these pretty chocolate-dipped cones, we’re definitely Instagramming this momentous occasion.”