“Actually, most people wash too much. See, bacteria—”

“Would you please spin?” Josh begged. His legs were shaking.

“Hold your horses!” Harley took another bite of pupusa, sucked his fingertips, and gave the arrow a flick.

“I told him not to bring that thing,” someone said behind me. I’d have known who it was even if I hadn’t heard her rattling the Tic Tacs.

I turned to find Winnie, head back, pouring Tic Tacs into her mouth.

“What’s wrong with Twister?” I asked. “He thought it’d be fun.”

“Fun.” Winnie rolled her eyes, then whipped her yellow-white braid over her shoulder and waved me in close like she had a secret to tell.

Her breath was so cinnamon-y, my nose burned when I inhaled.

“Wake up, Slick. Harley Turnby doesn’t care about people having fun. This is marketing, pure and simple. Some toy store in Albany was going out of business. He bought a carload full of Twisters for nothing. See?” She pointed to a stack of the games under Harley’s chair. “The man is selling, which brings me to my question for you: Why aren’t we? How come The Doughnut Stop’s not open? Look at all these people shoving their faces. Why aren’t they shoving them with doughnuts?”

I should have seen this coming. “We sold out.”

“So!” she spat.

“So, we can’t sell doughnuts we don’t have, right?”

“Don’t get smart with me, Slick. I meant, so what are we doing? We can’t grow the business if we keep selling out.”

“I know. I know!”

“Well, excuse me. If you know what the problem is, then fix it.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Oh, yeah, how?” Winnie saw right through me.

“I’m thinking about it, okay?”

“Well, think faster.”

“Thanks. That’s helpful.”

“Anytime,” she said and shook some more Tic Tacs into her mouth.

A few minutes later, Jim climbed on a chair and yelled for everybody to sit.

Eventually everyone did, but they were still chatting, and Jim’s “quiet downs” weren’t making any difference. Then Walter clanged two pans together, and the room went silent.

“So when are we getting the rink?” someone called from the back of the room. People cheered. I turned around.

Andy Hubbard, Josh, and the other Ice Kings lined the back wall and were giving each other high fives.

This was not going to go well. Jim had better have a plan for a quick getaway.

“We’ll get to the…surprise soon.” Jim pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and smoothed it on his chest. “But before we get to that, I just wanted to say, this is the first ever Petersville town meeting, as most of you know because, well, you’ve never been to one before, but I just thought I should say it because a first ever anything is a big deal, right?”

“If he’s going to be making these meetings a regular thing, he should really consider public speaking classes,” Jeanine said.

“Ice rink. Ice rink…” the Ice Kings began to chant.