The Candymakers

by Wendy Mass

  “Hello?”

  “Back here,” a woman’s voice called out. “Behind the armchair.”

  Miles left his backpack by the door and made his way toward the voice. He wound through the stacks of books till he found a brown leather armchair and a white-haired woman sitting on the floor behind it. She had books spread around her like a fan and was stamping PROPERTY OF Life Is Sweet inside their front covers.

  She looked up, rubber stamp in hand. “Hello there, can I help you?”

  “Hi. I’m Miles, one of the, um, contestants for the candy contest this weekend? I was wondering if I could just look at some books. I wouldn’t need to take them out or anything.”

  “Certainly, Miles,” she said with a smile. “Can I help you find anything?”

  Miles shook his head. “I already know what I’m looking for.”

  “Okay. I’m Mrs. Gepheart if you need anything.”

  She resumed her stamping. It was really very rhythmic. Open, stamp, close, slide. Open, stamp, close, slide.

  Miles thanked her and headed back to the shelves. As soon as he was far enough away, he closed his eyes, reached out, and grabbed a book. Then he went a few feet farther, turned to the opposite shelf, and grabbed another. He went to the next aisle and did the same thing. He did this until he had a total of five books in his arms.

  He spread the books out on a small wooden desk to see what he’d come up with. This was his favorite part.

  THE HISTORY OF THE CONFECTIONARY ARTS, VOLUME 2: FROM BEETS TO CANDY CORN

  THE HOLOGRAPHIC UNIVERSE

  MY LIFE AS A PROFESSIONAL POOPER SCOOPER

  CHARLOTTE’S WEB

  I’M A MONKEY’S UNCLE… AND SO ARE YOU!

  Miles rubbed his hands together with excitement and dug into his shorts pocket for a pencil and notepad. One by one, he opened each book to a random place, closed his eyes, and let his finger drop onto the page. Then he wrote down whatever sentence his finger landed on. When he’d done this with all five books, he returned them to their rightful places on the shelves.

  Only then did he read what he’d written.

  Butterscotch was first created in England two hundred years ago. The universe, and everything in it, might not actually exist. Over time, I’ve learned to tell the breed of the dog by the appearance of its bowel movements. “You have been my friend; that in itself is a tremendous thing.” Humans and chimpanzees share over 98 percent of their DNA; humans and butterflies share at least 25 percent.

  Miles flipped the notepad closed and held it tight to his chest. He felt much better now. He knew that sometime soon at least one of those sentences would help him in some mysterious way. He called out a goodbye to Mrs. Gepheart, who was still busy opening, stamping, closing, and sliding.

  The directions Max had written were to someplace called the Tropical Room. As he walked, the halls got emptier and emptier and hotter and hotter. Was he going toward the boiler room? He was about to double-check the instructions when he turned one more corner and found himself in front of a huge, steamed-up glass door. To the side of the door a red button marked OPEN flashed at him. He pressed it and admired the slow but smooth path of the door as it slid into the wall.

  He stood with wide eyes as the heat wrapped around him like a blanket. He could easily imagine that he’d left Spring Haven and stepped right into a real jungle. At the top of a tall tree with very wide branches, a guy with a bandana around his forehead swooped from branch to branch. Miles wondered if perhaps some humans shared more than 98 percent of their DNA with monkeys!

  He was so busy looking up as he walked that he didn’t see the vines at his feet until he got stuck. Logan came to his rescue and expertly untangled him.

  “So what do you think?” Logan asked eagerly.

  “S’ti elbidercni!”

  Logan tilted his head. “What did you say?”

  Oops! Miles recovered quickly. “I meant to say, it’s incredible!”

  Logan shivered with obvious glee, even though it must have been 90 degrees in the room.

  Max gave a little lecture about the cocoa beans, then went over to the far wall and pulled a big lever. The huge metal slats on the roof began to open. Sunlight flooded in through the glass ceiling, but instead of feeling even warmer, Miles felt a cold chill run down his spine as another scene of shadow and sun, from a little over a year ago, filled his mind. His mother had just passed the oars of the rowboat over to his father when the sun appeared from behind thick clouds. They’d all tilted their faces up toward it. He’d never forget the peacefulness of that moment—the sun warming their cheeks, the light breeze swaying their boat—because it was in such stark contrast to what came next.

  The buzz of Max’s walkie-talkie cleared Miles’s head. He needed to shake off the memory, to focus on the here and now. Think about all the candy he sampled that morning! Think about what his books told him. Think about holograms! Think about dog droppings. (No, don’t think about dog droppings!)

  He breathed in the warm, humid air and reached out to touch the rough bark of the nearest tree. Just the solidity of the tree made him felt better. That is, until Max announced that a problem had arisen with the nougat, and Logan, who seemed to know everything about the factory, said, “I bet it was the honey!”

  So now they were all supposed to go see the bees. Bees! Of all things!

  The memories flooded back again. How the bees had swarmed over their boat and then over the shore. How the girl sitting on the shore had run into the lake to escape them. She didn’t flail around, she didn’t duck or scream, she just ran straight into the water until it covered her head. And then she didn’t come back up.

  It all happened so fast, and so quietly, that his parents didn’t even see it happen. By the time they reached the shore, there wasn’t even a bubble on the water. Only a pink ribbon that the police kept as evidence. Other people had been on the shore of the lake earlier—a couple holding hands and an older woman—but they had left by the time he and his parents rowed frantically ashore.

  The merry-go-round in the center of the park was still full of kids, and the pretzel vendors had long lines, but no one had seen the girl run into the water. Why had she been all alone on the shore? Why had no one come to look for her?

  He’d asked himself those questions over and over and had come up with all sorts of answers. At one time or another, the girl was an orphan or had run away from a hard life in the circus. And once, after a particularly tough day at school, Miles convinced himself that she was from another planet and that the portal back to her own world had been under the lake.

  His parents had ever so gently suggested that perhaps the shadows had played tricks on him, that what he’d seen was nothing more than a pile of leaves blowing into the water. But he knew the difference between a girl with long brown hair and a pile of leaves. He knew what he had seen.

  A room full of bees was just about the last place Miles wanted to go. He tried to get out of it, and when he couldn’t, he lingered as long as he dared with the protective gear. He trailed behind once they got inside the Bee Room, not eager to surround himself with them, no matter how well protected he might be.

  The plants and flowers provided a good excuse to stop, so he pretended to be fascinated by them. His gaze lit upon a particularly full plant covered with heads of tiny white flowers. But it wasn’t the plant itself that caught his attention. It was the yellow, black, and red butterfly flapping its wings above it.

  Miles glanced around. The others were all occupied with the beekeeper. He crept closer. He knew it couldn’t be the same butterfly he’d seen on the garage roof earlier, since that would be impossible. Still, the resemblance couldn’t be denied.

  He crept closer. And then—he could swear it—the butterfly landed right on his nose!

  He shouted in surprise, backed up, and fell right into another row of plants. Flat on his back, he stared up at the leaves and tiny flowers and considered his situation. A butterfly, one that looked exactly like t
he one from his roof, had just landed on his nose.

  In the last year, Miles had become a master at finding hidden meanings, in his books and in the world around him. A few minutes ago he’d learned that people and butterflies really weren’t that different. Then he was visited by a butterfly for the second time in one day? And it happened here in this room full of bees. Definitely a sign.

  This butterfly had clearly been sent from the afterlife to give him a message from the girl. And the fact that it had landed on his nose here in the Bee Room of the candy factory could mean only one thing: the girl wanted him to win the competition. In honor of the girl who never came out of the lake, he would make the best candy the world had ever seen. It would be black and yellow, like a bee. Then the girl would be at rest because, as Charlotte’s Web had told him, he was her friend, and that was a big deal.

  “Are you all right?” Logan asked, appearing at his side and startling him.

  Miles figured he must look pretty weird, splayed out on the floor half under a bush. “I’m okay,” he said, blushing, as the others joined Logan in a circle around him. “I bent down to look at this butterfly, and then it landed on… I mean, then I sort of tripped.”

  Daisy rapped her knuckles on Miles’s helmet. “Good thing you had this on.”

  He gave her a small smile.

  “I don’t see any butterfly,” Philip said, clearly doubting his story.

  Miles didn’t see it anymore either. But that’s how it always was with signs. Very fleeting.

  After promising Max he wouldn’t shout at random anymore, he went to watch Logan charm some bees. As interesting as that was, Miles’s head was elsewhere.

  He was armed with a new purpose and something he hadn’t truly possessed until that moment, the desire to win the contest. And he knew that if he really put his mind to it, he could do it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miles learned three things at lunchtime:

  HE COULD EAT NOTHING BUT CHOCOLATE PIZZA FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE AND BE TOTALLY HAPPY.

  DAISY READ ROMANCE NOVELS—OUT LOUD!

  ANOTHER BUTTERFLY WITH RED WINGS WOULD SOON BE BORN.

  And he learned one thing after lunch:

  UNLESS HE STOPPED THINKING ABOUT THESE THINGS AND FOCUSED ON PAYING ATTENTION IN THE LAB, HE MIGHT BURN HIS EYEBROWS OFF WITH THE BUNSEN BURNER.

  So he focused his attention on examining the equipment at his station, marveling at how each object served a unique function. They practiced weighing and measuring various ingredients while Max rotated around the room, observing each of them individually.

  “You have a very light touch,” Max said as he watched Miles sift powdered sugar into a small bowl. “Have you ever baked before?”

  Miles shook his head, a little embarrassed at being praised in front of everyone. “I had a chemistry set when I was younger that I used to play with a lot. You know, mixing things and watching them turn into other things.”

  “Is that what got you interested in creating a new candy?”

  Miles knew the others could hear everything. How could he explain the real reason he had entered the contest? But he couldn’t lie either. He still felt bad about saying he was allergic to rowboats at lunch. And all those other things, too. How could someone be allergic to rowboats? And the color pink?

  But again, how could he explain how each one reminded him of that day at the lake? The pancakes he’d had for breakfast before the boat trip that later sat in his stomach like a rock. The merry-go-round at the park, whose music kept going even after the police had cleared the area. If Max hadn’t asked if he was allergic to bees earlier, he never would have thought of claiming allergies to any of those things.

  Max was waiting patiently for a response, so Miles just said, “The librarian at my school knew I liked chemistry and told me about the contest.” There. That may not have been the whole truth, but all of it was true.

  “Excellent!” Max said. “Now, are you all ready to boil some sugar?” Everyone nodded except Logan, who, Miles figured, had been boiling sugar for years.

  “Good,” Max said, stepping over to the burners in the front of the room to demonstrate. “Now, this is the first step in candymaking. It may look easy, but I assure you, it requires careful attention. If you get the sugar too hot, it will melt; too low, and it will harden. The difference between a jawbreaker and a piece of caramel is all about the temperature of the sugar.”

  Each of them followed along, trying to keep the temperature steady. Logan kept taking his thermometer out and shaking it, and once his sugar mixture boiled over the side of his pot. Maybe, Miles thought, Logan was just pretending to struggle to make the rest of them feel better. He probably wasn’t pretending, though, when a measuring spoon or a piece of cinnamon bark slipped through his fingers and fell to the floor. Every time something fell, Miles quickly pretended to be absorbed in his own work so Logan wouldn’t know he’d noticed.

  He heated his second batch of sugar until he could make flat, bendable sheets out of it. He had just stood up to admire his handiwork when a cloud of powdered sugar flew up into the air at Philip’s station. This was followed by a few choice words from Philip as the white dust fluttered down like snow onto his head and shoulders. Unable to help himself, Miles started giggling.

  Logan and Daisy laughed, too. For a split second it seemed Philip would join in, but then he scowled and began wiping at the mess with his handkerchief. Daisy launched into a sneezing fit as the sugar wafted over to her station, and she had to leave the room.

  Max hurried over to the sink and wet a few pieces of paper towel. He handed them to Philip.

  “No thanks,” Philip said, grabbing his briefcase from the tabletop and wiping a layer of powdered sugar off it. “I’ll go to the bathroom and do it properly. If this stains, you’ll be getting my dry-cleaning bill.” With that, he stormed out.

  Max told them to keep working, but Logan kept blowing powdered sugar into the air and cracking Miles up. When Daisy returned, her nose was so red from sneezing it looked swollen. She kept touching it and wincing.

  When it was time to leave for the day, Daisy stopped by Miles’s station to say goodbye. “Thanks for driving Philip crazy with all that afterlife stuff.”

  He laughed. “No problem. I’ve got a lot more where that came from.”

  “Good!” Daisy said. “See you tomorrow.”

  Miles wondered if he should mention that his shin still ached where she had kicked him at lunch when he made fun of her book, but he didn’t want to make her feel bad. She just didn’t know her own strength. Daisy said goodbye to Logan, then gave Max a hug and skipped out of the room. Although the lab’s white walls and overhead fluorescent lights made the room extremely bright, it seemed to grow dimmer after Daisy left.

  “I have to do some homework,” Logan told Miles. “But if there’s anything else you want to see again, like the Gummy Dinosaurs Room, I can take you there.”

  Miles shook his head reluctantly. “My parents are probably waiting for me.”

  “Okay, see you tomorrow, then,” Logan said, waving goodbye.

  Miles recognized the look on Max’s face when Logan left the room. It was a combination of fierce loyalty, genuine affection, sympathy, and concern. He had seen it on many of the faces of the people they’d met that day. Miles felt that same way about Logan, and he’d only met him that day! No wonder he didn’t leave the factory very often. Living here was like living inside a well-protected cocoon.

  The whole ride home Miles couldn’t stop talking about the factory and how the air itself tasted like candy and how the next day they’d be making their own. His father kept interrupting and making him start over.

  “What do you mean Logan charmed bees?”

  “He just talked to them in this, like, soothing kind of voice, and they listened to him. Even though Paulo still had to use this smoke machine thing, I think Logan really did it.”

  “What again did he do exactly?”

  “He made the bees
accept the new queen.”

  “Uh-huh,” his dad said, clearly a little skeptical.

  Undeterred, Miles continued. “The thing that’s most amazing? Logan doesn’t even seem to notice his scars. Like they don’t even matter.”

  “Maybe they don’t,” his father said, pulling into their driveway. He turned off the car, but neither of them got out.

  “But, Dad, they’re really bad. There’s one down the side of his face, like by his ear. And his arms and his hands… sometimes he can’t hold on to things.”

  “It must be very difficult for him.”

  Miles nodded. They sat in silence for a few minutes, the breeze coming through the open car windows. Then Miles climbed out and said, “I’ll be on the roof if you need me.”

  “Be careful,” his dad replied automatically.

  “I lliw.”

  His father groaned.

  Miles raced upstairs and climbed out onto the roof. He needed some good-quality thinking time. Using his backpack as a pillow, he stared up at the trees that overhung a portion of the roof. The sky, now a pale blue, shimmered between the leaves. He thought about how his dad had said to be careful. How could a kid who carried a life jacket with him all the time be any more careful?

  Leaning up on his elbows, he searched the edge of the roof for the butterfly. He didn’t see it. He hadn’t really expected to. So he stared up at the sky and began to talk to the girl, as he often did. He did it out loud only if no one else was around.

  “I got your message from the butterfly,” he whispered. “I’m going to come up with a really good candy for you.” Then he added, “Of course, if you’d like to help me, you know, to think of one, that would be cool. I’ll watch for another sign.”

  But when it came, he almost missed it.