Outside, the exhaust from an old brown pickup truck greeted them. Miles wouldn’t have admitted it to the others, but he was glad that the horse hadn’t returned.
Daisy opened the door of the passenger seat. “This is my cousin, Bo. He bought this lovely truck with his winnings from the motorcycle-pulling contest at the state fair last year.”
Miles couldn’t wait to see what someone would look like who could pull a motorcycle with his teeth. He probably had bulging muscles and teeth the size of fingers!
He and Logan practically fell over each other to get a peek. Miles was disappointed to see that Bo looked like a regular guy. Too bad about the teeth, because otherwise he was good-looking enough to be on television.
After Daisy and Bo pulled away, Logan got that now-familiar gleam in his eye that meant he was excited to show Miles something. He led the way around to the back of the factory, and at first Miles thought he was going to suggest again that they go boating.
But he stopped in front of a huge cornfield instead. “You up for going straight through?” Logan asked. “We could go around, but it would take a lot longer.”
The pale yellow stalks swayed and rustled in the breeze, reaching a good foot above their heads. Miles didn’t want to disappoint Logan by chickening out, so he followed behind, trying not to bend the stalks as he squeezed between them.
At first it was fun making his way through the stalks, but then he fell too far behind and couldn’t see anything except the sky above his head. “Logan?” he called out.
He waited a few seconds for an answer, but none came. Nothing to do but keep going, so he pushed through the stalks, turning this way and that, and suddenly it felt like drowning. In all the times he’d thought of that day at the lake, he’d never allowed himself to imagine what the drowning part must have been like. It would have been too awful.
Gasping for breath, Miles swung his arms, and a long minute later he found himself flying out of the stalks and into rows of evenly spaced strawberry bushes.
“Pretty cool, right?” Logan asked, running up to him.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so he ate his strawberry, not tasting it.
He wished he could be more like Logan, accepting what came his way as just another part of life. He knew his parents wished that, too.
Was it really possible to simply accept that at any minute something terrible could happen to you or to someone you care about or to someone you saw across an empty lake? And what about the fact that once that person is gone, everyone after them goes, too, like bubbles popping?
What if the girl at the lake had grown up, gotten married, had kids and even grandkids? And what if one of those grandkids discovered a way to end world hunger? Now that kid would never get the chance—they’d all died before ever being born.
He wanted to explain this to Logan, to explain why a person shouldn’t run and chew at the same time. How he needed to take more care, how everything could change in an instant. But he couldn’t tell him that. Partly because he suspected that after his accident Logan must already know it and partly because he recognized the truth of Logan’s words. We don’t know how long we’ll get to live, so we might as well make the best of it while we’re here. Could it be that simple?
His head still full of these thoughts, Miles couldn’t understand at first what Logan was trying to show him in the clearing beyond the orange grove. When he saw the broken merry-go-round half buried in the tall grass, he instinctively shrank back as the image of the merry-go-round moving with no riders flashed in his mind.
“What’s wrong?” Logan asked, clearly concerned. “I thought you’d think it was neat, since, you know, you used to love the annual picnic…”
But Miles could only stare at the rusty poles, the flakes of yellow paint on the giraffe’s neck, the green peeling off the frog’s back. Then the late-day sun sent a beam of light directly onto the spire in the middle of the merry-go-round, and it came to him in a flash. The merry-go-round was a sign! If he was successful in creating the winning candy, he could make the girl live forever. The afterlife had a lot of merry-go-rounds, and he bet she was riding one right now, probably one of the horses or the zebras, her long, dark hair streaming out behind her.
With some kind of mutual understanding, he and Logan broke into a run. Running around the cornfield was exhilarating. All the fruits and vegetables smelled so fresh and ripe that his stomach growled. At the last minute, he turned toward the white clover bushes, thinking Logan might like to check on the butterfly.
But all that remained of the chrysalis lay broken on the ground. The butterfly had molted already.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Logan had followed the caterpillar and watched over it for so long. He handled it pretty well, but Miles could tell he was disappointed to have missed seeing the butterfly do its final molting.
When they got back up to the apartment, Miles wasn’t at all surprised to see that his parents had arrived early for dinner. He had a sneaking suspicion the adults had been talking about them, because they all had that slightly guilty look when he and Logan walked in.
Mrs. Sweet made her famous Sweet Family Sweet Stew for dinner. As far as Miles could tell, she gathered ingredients from every part of the factory, mixed them all together, and baked it.
As he ate the delicious meal, he was tempted to ask again if he could move in. It might insult his parents, though, to ask right in front of them. Logan must have read his mind when he invited him to sleep over. Of course it would have been preferable if he hadn’t mentioned Miles’s so-called pancake allergy. He tried not to meet his mom’s eyes for the rest of the meal.
When his mom hugged him goodbye, she whispered in his ear, “So now you’re allergic to pancakes?” He tried to end the hug, but she held tight. “I’m sure there’s a good reason you told him that, and I’ll look forward to hearing it.” All the while, she kept a smile on her face, finally letting go of the hug after what seemed like a really long time.
If there was anything cooler in the world than walking with flashlights through a darkened candy factory with all the smells of the day still hanging in the air, Miles couldn’t think what it might be. He felt so lucky. But that’s not all he felt. As he walked the halls, he sensed that the girl was with him.
He realized he’d felt her presence ever since arriving at the factory yesterday, but never as strongly as he did now. It gave him a strength he hadn’t had in a long time. In fact, it gave him the courage to admit to Logan that he couldn’t walk by the chocolate fountain without wanting to stick his hand in it. Fortunately, Logan didn’t laugh at him. Well, he laughed, but not in a mean way, and he didn’t insist on coming with him.
Walking the halls of a darkened candy factory all alone felt a little less cool. With Logan at his side, he hadn’t paid any attention to the creaks and groans of the factory settling down for the night, but now every sound seemed magnified. He didn’t dawdle and he was relieved when he reached the fountain. The moon shining through the glass ceiling provided only a tiny bit of light.
He put the flashlight down on the floor and flexed the fingers of both hands in preparation. Even though he was alone, and the fountain deep in shadow, he felt kind of silly for what he was about to do. Not silly enough to keep him from doing it, though.
One finger slid under the chocolate waterfall, then another and another, until the chocolate was cascading over his entire hand. Then his other hand. He splayed his fingers and watched the chocolate slide between them in perfect arcs. It felt just the way he’d imagined it would, warm and soft. And it shimmered like liquid gold.
It also felt sticky. Really, really sticky.
“Uh-oh…” He pulled his hands out from under the stream and shook them. Drops of chocolate splashed back into the fountain, but most of it remained stubbornly coating his hands. He briefly considered licking it off, but remembered Logan had said it was for display only, not eating.
The nearest bathroom was outside the Lightni
ng Chews Room, which meant he’d have to head in the opposite direction from the only person who knew where he was. Well, couldn’t be helped. He’d just have to be brave. He bent down and grabbed his flashlight. Or rather, tried to grab it. It flew right out of his chocolate-covered hands and into the fountain, where it managed to splash his face, neck, and one side of his glasses before sinking to the bottom.
Without thinking, Miles thrust his hand in after it, too intent on retrieving it to fully enjoy having his hand and forearm immersed in warm chocolate. His hand wrapped around something, but it didn’t feel like a flashlight.
He pulled his hand out and opened it. At first he couldn’t tell what the object was. He used the bottom of his shirt to rub some chocolate off until the thing revealed itself in the faint moonlight. A small rubber duck with a sailor’s hat! Just like the kind they’d used for the rubber-duck race. How had that gotten into the fountain? Maybe it had been hidden in there for years.
He shoved the duck into his pocket and reached in again for his flashlight. After feeling around in the fountain for a few seconds, his fingers tightened around it. He wiped it off as well as he could, held his breath, and turned it on. It still shone, although in a lightbulb-smeared-with-chocolate kind of way. It was, however, still bright enough to show Miles the mess he’d made on the floor. Not to mention the one on his arm, hands, and clothes.
“Great,” he muttered, stepping carefully to avoid making chocolate footprints. Perhaps this hadn’t been the brightest idea after all.
The bathroom door creaked when Miles pushed it open. It was the kind of creak you wouldn’t notice in the day, but in the dark it sounded REALLY LOUD. The moonlight filtering in from the windows sent an eerie kind of half-light bouncing off the white-tiled walls. Miles almost expected a ghost to charge out of one of the stalls, wailing. He’d read a lot of books. He knew it was possible.
Rather than waiting around to find out, he quickly scrubbed his arms, hands, face, neck, and eyeglasses and grabbed a roll of paper towels from the wall to take back.
His flashlight had now faded to the point of being barely usable. He could hardly see a foot in front of him the whole way back to the fountain. But as he got closer, it suddenly became easier to see. Had his eyes adjusted to the dark? He glanced up at the ceiling above the fountain. The lights were still off. Then he saw where the light was coming from. The Cocoa Room!
Miles froze. No one had been there just two minutes earlier, he was sure of it. But now someone was definitely shining a flashlight around the room. That could mean only one thing—an intruder had broken in!
His mind raced back to the sentences he’d copied from the books in the factory’s library. He hoped one of them would tell him what to do right now. One by one, he discarded them. No dogs doing their business here, thankfully. No monkeys swinging, and no butterscotch boiling. What about that universe one—something about things not really existing? He was pretty sure that whoever was wielding that flashlight existed. That line about friendship was the only one that fit. Again.
His hand tightened around the roll of paper towels. A flimsy weapon if ever there was one, but he had no choice. He had to protect the factory!
Holding tight to the paper-towel roll, he crept over to the door of the Cocoa Room. He planned to stay as low to the ground as possible until he saw what the intruder was doing. Then he’d make his move. He didn’t know what that move would be, but he knew he had to make one.
Bracing himself for whatever he’d find, Miles inched the door open until he could fit through. On his hands and knees, he crept a few feet into the room. Fortunately, the same tables and machines that blocked his view of the intruder also blocked the intruder’s view of him.
He hadn’t gone three feet when his elbow brushed against a huge mound of cocoa-bean pods piled on the floor. He reached out to steady them, not breathing. He didn’t breathe again until he was sure that not a single pod would slip from the pile and give him away.
Sweat had begun to roll down his forehead, sending his glasses on a one-way trip down his nose. He used the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat off them. This turned out to be a bad idea, since he’d forgotten that the bottom of his shirt was covered in chocolate.
He reluctantly abandoned his now useless glasses and continued crawling past the long metal table where earlier they’d watched the beans get stripped of their shells.
He’d crept about a foot past the table when a hand reached out, grabbed hold of his ankle, and yanked him underneath.
PART THREE
DAISY
CHAPTER ONE
Daisy snuggled deeper under her blanket and sank back into her favorite dream, the one where, as the best twelve-year-old spy in the biz, she lived in a mansion with ten of her best friends (all pretty and smart, although none as accomplished a spy as she). She dreamt that her closets were bursting with clothes of every color and design and that every day brought new and exciting adventures.
Her dream bedroom overflowed with all the newest high-tech gadgets. The tiny transceiver that fit into her ear and picked up the smallest whisper. The video communicator hidden inside what appeared to be a romance novel. The pen that not only wrote in invisible ink and shone a light so bright it could be seen from outer space but also could effortlessly slice through glass and metal. The block of wax that could reshape itself to match any object it came in contact with—especially useful for opening locked doors.
In her dream, her top rank among the girls guaranteed that the hardest jobs, the most grueling tasks, were given to her. She got the most important assignments because she never complained, always got the job done, and didn’t get emotionally involved.
The sound of her grandmother’s voice calling her name forced the dream to dissolve until only a feathery wisp remained. Clinging to it like a life preserver, Daisy opened her eyes and blinked. Grinning, she let go of the last wisp and laughed.
“What’s the joke?” her grandmother asked, her voice reaching Daisy through the tiny transceiver hidden deep in her left ear. She really had to remember to take that thing out when she slept—it both sent and received sounds. She wouldn’t want someone to hear her snoring! (Not that she snored… much.)
Daisy stretched and rubbed her eyes. “I was laughing because in my dream I didn’t complain about anything. Oh, and all the other girls in the mansion were my best friends.”
Her grandmother laughed. “That really is funny!”
When her grandmother laughed, it sounded like tinkling glass, like wind chimes. No wonder she was widely considered one of the best spies of her generation. Everyone who met her fell instantly in love. Daisy had been a spy since she could walk, and most of what she knew she’d learned by watching her grandmother work.
If she were being totally honest, she would have told her grandmother another difference from her real life. In the dream, she was always happy and couldn’t ask for anything more out of life. In reality, though, things weren’t so black and white.
Even though she couldn’t see her grandma at the moment, Daisy knew she was probably sitting cross-legged in the Zen garden behind the mansion, sipping tea. “Hold on, Grammy, let me turn on my book so I can see you.”
Daisy reached over to the night table and picked up her copy of Love’s Last Dance. She propped herself up on the pillows, switched on the screen, and typed in the coordinates for the Zen garden. No Grammy, only Mo, the gardener. Daisy pressed more buttons.
The screen zoomed in on the kitchen, where one of the older girls, Courtney, stood by the counter, holding her nose and guzzling down Grammy’s foul-tasting green instant-energy breakfast drink.
Courtney looked every inch the ballerina in her black leotard and pink tights, her hair pulled so tight into a bun that she wore an unintentional look of surprise. Daisy had been very relieved not to be given the assignment to infiltrate the Spring Haven Ballet Company. Although she was fully trained in almost every sport (including cricket and synchronized swimming), she
usually managed to have a stomach bug on the days she was scheduled to practice dancing.
Courtney gave a little shudder as she finished the drink and placed the glass on the counter. Her eyes rose to the wall screen. Daisy waved, and in response Courtney did some kind of ballet move, rising up on her tiptoes with her hands arched gracefully over her head. Daisy laughed.
Even though Courtney was a few years older, she never treated Daisy like a little kid, unlike most of the other older girls. Not that they were outright mean or anything. They couldn’t be, since Daisy’s grandmother ran the whole show. But still, she would hear them laughing in their rooms at night, and they never invited her to join them.
Daisy waved a quick goodbye to Courtney and typed in the coordinates for her grandmother’s car. Empty. She tried the office next. Nope. Just a stack of folders piled high on the desk. Odd. Those were Grammy’s regular early-morning haunts. “Okay, Grammy, I give up. Where are you?”
She could hear others in the background as her grandmother replied, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Put in coordinates Alpha Delta seven-five-one,” her grandmother instructed, “then hit the GPS button.”
A few seconds later, Grammy’s face flickered onto the screen. Behind her was a grassy field and a tall metal structure. Daisy squinted. “You’re in Paris?”
“Yes! I mean, oui!” she replied, tapping her purple beret.
“You always did look excellent in hats,” Daisy admitted, “but something tells me you’re not in Paris to go hat shopping!”
“Darling, Paris is one of the world’s top travel destinations.” For effect, she zoomed in on the Eiffel Tower, fifty yards behind her. “How do you know I’m not here on vacation? You and your parents are always after me to take one.”
Daisy yawned. It might be midday in Paris, but it was still near dawn on the outskirts of Spring Haven. “Maybe normal people go to Paris on vacation, but not you. You’re on a mission, aren’t you? Remember the whole delegating thing? You can’t take all the missions for yourself. You’re no spring chicken anymore.”