Mr. Cheater and Ms.Valedictorian (20,000 words, English)

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This time for lunch, Erin invites Grayson to their house. Grayson accepts the invitation and informs his parents that they will be staying at the Nieveses’ for lunch. Grayson greets the Nieveses on his way in and is asked to sit with them at the dining table. They eat a good meal prepared by Mrs.Nieves, Grayson thanks and compliments his hosts.

“That sure was a great meal Tita, Tito. Thank you so much for having me over,” Grayson says.

“Thanks Grayson, It’s our pleasure,” Mrs. Nieves graciously says.

“We do miss you coming over,” she continues.

Grayson smiles.

“So, who wants ice cream?” Mr. Nieves says as he lays a gallon of delicious thick dark chocolate ice cream down on the table.

“Erin, would you be a dear and get the ice cream scoop. It’s in the kitchen drawer,” Mr. Nieves asks his daughter.

Coming back from the kitchen, Erin takes out a sugar cone from its box and tries to scoop out some ice cream to put on it. The ice cream has been staying overnight in the freezer and it’s frozen solid. Erin couldn’t get more than a thin sliver from the top with her scraping technique.

“Let me,” Grayson confidently offers after seeing her poor technique. Erin hands him the ice cream scoop.

Grayson thought it easy to take a perfect ice cream scoop out of the frozen ice cream. With the ice cream scoop in hand, he digs into the hard ice cream. He pushes it in as hard as he could and all he could get with his push with all your might technique is an uneven scoop, only a fourth the size of one full scoop.

“Whew— there you go,” Grayson says as he puts it on top of Erin’s sugar cone.

Mrs. Nieves smiles. “Here use this,” she says as she puts down a cup of hot water on the table. “You dip the ice cream scoop in; wait a few seconds until it’s warm and you scoop. To keep the metal scoop warm, just dip it back in in between scoops.”

“You guys are silly,” Erin’s mom laughs as she effortlessly makes a perfect scoop with her dip in hot water technique.

Grayson and Erin look at the perfect ice cream scoop on their cones and then each other. Her mom and dad laugh.

With the secret to making the perfect ice cream scoop now revealed to them, they easily each add one more scoop to their ice cream cones before going outside.

They stop by the curb where they used to sit during the hot summer days of their childhood. They didn’t have to talk, both had the same thing in mind. They sit down.

It’s just about half an hour past noon, it’s supposed to be unbearably hot but it’s not— there’s a cloud cover overhead making it perfect to sit outside and finish off the rest of their ice cream before heading back to Grayson’s to study.

“This takes me back,” Grayson says as he looks up into the cloudy sky, taking a bite out of his ice cream.

“Yeah, we used to do this in the summer,” Erin adds, now biting away at her sugar cone.

After finishing her ice cream, she stands up.

“Let’s go and study some more Grayson,” Erin tells the still seated boy.

Grayson is a couple of bites behind, but he puts the remainder of the ice cream filled cone in his mouth and quickly stands up.

“Ombfk Ermnbf, Lerbf gomf,” Grayson says as he finishes off his ice cream.