Dante, momentarily taken aback by the sudden, serious critique from someone so small, blinked. "I did," he confirmed, his tone matching her gravity.
The girl shook her head slowly, her curls bouncing. A look of deep pity crossed her features. "That's the boring one," she said, not as an insult, but as a simple, tragic fact, like pointing out that it was raining.
Alina had to press her lips together to stop the laugh that bubbled up.
The girl then turned her enormous blue eyes on Alina. She tilted her head. "Did you want the boring one?"
Alina's eyes went wide. "Oh, um… well…"
The girl didn't wait for an answer. She leaned closer to Dante, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper that was still perfectly audible. "My daddy says you're s'posed to get the one with sprinkles for girls. That's the rule." She nodded once, decisively, as if this were an unbreakable law of the universe.
