The Chase

• Georgie Geftakis, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

It was a hot and humid day in the distant western suburbs when a faint, familiar sound reached my ears. It was then when I noticed that the music had caught my sisters’ and parents’ attention. Just as I was about to speak, my dad sat up from the couch, took a few steps forward and said “is that..th- the ice cream truck?” Then in the blink of an eye my sisters and I jumped up off the couch, bouncing my other family members up and down while excitingly asking questions. “Can we get ice cream?” we asked. Without an answer we quickly ran to the door dodging the dogs and barely missing my nana with her walker.

We started running down the scorching hot footpath, our feet burning and our legs aching. The ice cream truck’s melody was getting fainter by the second. It was too late to turn back, our mouths were watering and the thought of having no ice cream made my mind boil hotter than the footpath. We suddenly stopped. “Why did we stop?” I asked in frustration. “The lights!” my sister said like it was the most obvious thing on the planet. Even though I knew to stop my mind was set on the ice cream. As soon as the lights turned green we raced across the road and we kept running until there was no sign of the ice cream truck and it’s tune was no longer playing. The smiles on our faces disappeared.

Just as we were about to turn around and go back to our stuffy, humid lounge room, we heard something. The expressions on our faces said it all so without saying anything we kept chasing the ice cream truck. We dodged pedestrians, hurdled newspapers left on the driveways of the neighbourhood whilst we also kept an eye on the ice cream truck. And then suddenly it came to a stop! This was our chance, we sprinted to the little window of the ice cream truck and scanned the menu.


Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, mint, sprinkles….. the words echoed in my mind even with my loud panting. “Umm.. hello, what would you like to order?” The ice cream man asked. I took one last look at the menu before saying “One vanilla scoop in a sprinkle cone please.” My eyes were fixed on the scoop, then the cone and then it was in my hand. Then my tongue touched the smooth, creamy vanilla ice cream, the colourful sprinkles from the cone crunched between my teeth, leaving my tongue rainbow. I smiled at my sister who had chocolate ice cream smeared around her mouth and we both walked home happily with our ice cream running down our hands.