Student story-Ice cream dash

By Courtney Johnson

She knew there wasn’t much time.

Panic filled the face of Paola senior Allison Wood as she saw two of her roommates contentedly stroll into her untidy hotel room. Each held two Styrofoam bowls of delight.

Wood’s eyes widened.

“Ice cream!” she shouted, as she leaped off of her full-sized bed.

She dashed to the door, leaping over and dodging clothes, hairbrushes, television remote controls and bags.

After finally fleeing the room, Wood sprinted down the fourth floor hall of the Holiday Inn.

“The elevator takes too long,” she shouted, while passing the elevator doors and maintaining her running pace. “I’ll take the stairs!”

She scurried down the four flights of stairs, her black flip-flops flipping and flopping all the way down.

She tore across the main lobby and reached the ballroom, her final destination.

It was a Monday night during the Flint Hills Publications Workshop, and that meant one thing for Wood: ice cream.

She broke up a group of fellow campers in the ballroom, who were gathered around a long table covered by a white tablecloth.

Wood’s eyes lit up as she spotted the dozens of bowls of chocolate and vanilla ice cream.

She took two bowls of chocolate to start, and doused each scoop of ice cream with chocolate syrup and whipped topping, still panting a bit from the sprint from the fourth floor to the ballroom.

Eventually, she had enough ice cream and toppings that she and her stomach were satisfied.

“It was like heaven,” she said. “I loved all of it.”

Courtney Johnson is a junior at Paola High School and a student in the advanced writing class at the Flint Hills Publication Workshop.