Rufus Counts the Sprinkles — Under the glass dome of the dessert atlas, Rufus tapped a pencil against his teeth and invented a game called Probably Sprinkles. Read the full story →
Under the glass dome of the dessert atlas, Rufus tapped a pencil against his teeth and invented a game called Probably Sprinkles. Every dash counted as one, every dot counted as half, and any curl that looked suspiciously like a sprinkle counted double if he could say “suspiciously” without laughing. The room smelled of sugar paper and cold vanilla, and the great cone map glimmered with petals, swirls, borders, and one cherry standing like a little red flag at the north pole.
The game grew legs. Rufus followed the marks around the scoops, down the scalloped drips, along the cone’s flowered spine, and back through the beaded rings. He began whispering totals in groups of seven because sevens sounded official. Then the cherry stem twitched and pointed—not at a sprinkle, but at him. Rufus blinked. The atlas had not been asking him to count dessert at all; it was counting every time his curiosity ran off without permission. He bowed to the cherry, added one more point for mischief, and kept playing until the cold vanilla air hummed with Probably Sprinkles.
