Chapter 4 #3
June, of course, never shared what specifically the stars had in store for anyone.
Especially when they predicted the lottery, which apparently they often did.
June had bragged several times that she could have won the jackpot, but that it didn’t seem fair to use the energy of the universe to her advantage.
Besides, she wasn’t a material woman. (All of her designer clothes were thrifted.)
‘He’s a catch, for a farmer,’ mused June. ‘If I didn’t have Nate, I’d so go there.’
‘Nate,’ echoed both Zoey and Darina, because honestly, his name was the only nice thing you could say about the guy.
Nate was the very definition of a hater.
He was a black cloud of a human being, just skulking around and complaining about how unoriginal and derivative everything was.
Except for his novel, of course, which he’d been working on approximately a decade, with very little to show for it other than being able to say that he was working on a novel.
Zoey suspected that June was mostly keeping him around because she’d put so much work into him and deserved some of the kudos if he ever hit it big.
‘Anyway, we’ll have a Brain Mush for each of us,’ said June decisively. Darina gave a thumbs up, her thumb topped with a nail shaped like a mermaid’s tail. ‘And a dragon-fruit latte for me, just in case. Plus my influencer discount.’
The shop didn’t offer an influencer discount, but June had never noticed. She always just jabbed at the screen, pressing the largest possible tip whenever anyone else was standing over her shoulder. (And the middle one when she was flying solo.)
‘Thanks, babe.’ She scrawled a mystical signature on the iPad.
The blenders roared as Zoey whipped up the smoothies for them, pushing the lime-green cups across the counter when she was done.
June raised a dipbrow eyebrow. ‘Wow, did you blend up Kermit in here?’ Nails rattling an ASMR production against the container, she took a peace-sign selfie against the decorative plant wall, pursing her lips so expressively that it had to hurt.
The duo clacked their biodegradable cornstarch cups and drank – tentatively at first, and then deeply.
June made a noise of delight that sounded not unlike the voicemail Ainsley had played back earlier. But at least she was enjoying it.
‘Old people are gross,’ muttered Terriffany. Zoey was inclined to agree.
‘Babe, this is amaze.’ But then June frowned. ‘Ow!’
She massaged her forehead, wincing.
Darina did the same, snapping off one of her mermaid acrylics from the pressure. ‘Talk about a brain freeze. That’s how you know it’s good.’
June blinked. ‘Really good. It’s been so long since I’ve had a brain freeze—’
Being vegan and all, thought Zoey.
‘—being vegan and all,’ June finished.
‘It’s the ice,’ said Zoey automatically, because it was always the ice. (Unlike Terriffany, Zoey always added ice.)
‘This one’s going on the main grid,’ promised June, as she guided Darina out the door. ‘Oh my goddess, Darina,’ she muttered, as Darina launched into a cartwheel, almost landing on a corgi on its way to the Doggish Greedly pet salon a few shops down.
‘Cast-iron stomach!’ chirped Darina.
Hours later, Zoey flopped down on one of the bench seats by the plant wall. She’d tallied up the day’s sales so far, and Brain Mush was performing, as Maeve would’ve said, great guns.
Not only were sales strong, but said smoothie was apparently garnering some online interest. June had posted a video of herself rubbing furiously at her temple, with an accompanying voiceover: Y’all, you have to try this new recipe from The Smoothie Maven.
It goes straight to your brain in all the right ways.
‘It’s the brain freeze.’ Terriffany paused Atomic Habits. ‘It’s like … retail theatre. It makes the experience memorable. Like how toothpaste makes your gums burn so you know your teeth are clean.’
Zoey mused on this. ‘Or like how …’
She’d been about to mention the buzz of a strong cocktail or the fuzzy feeling of an edible, but maybe not with a teenager in the room. Anyway, she got the point. The brain freeze was the thing. They could use that as a selling point.
And it wasn’t too late to change the name, either.
‘Ready to feel the freeze of a Brain Freeze?’ she called, as an older woman dressed in head-to-toe purple struggled through the front door.
She carried a purse that looked suspiciously like a tortoise.
Because it was a tortoise, Zoey saw, as the creature extended its neck to regard the leafy greens in their baskets.
‘I love a good freeze.’ The woman had a lisp from an oversized tongue ring. ‘I’m desperate for the rains to start. All this sun is creeping me out. How am I meant to paint moody landscapes when it’s so bright outside?’
Zoey loaded her up with a Brain Freeze, then the group of students who came in after her, then a trio of bartenders who’d overindulged on post-shift shots last night and needed some actual vitamins in their systems. By the time she’d served these and some tourists from Australia who kept warning her about an allergy to something called a capsicum (she’d crossed her fingers when she said her smoothies didn’t contain whatever that was), she was running low on the strange orange cordyceps.
Darn, now she’d have to call Nick.