The Candymakers

  Logan knew what to do. He’d seen Max do it a hundred times. “Okay, everyone,” he announced, stepping away from the table. He waited before continuing until they were all facing him. “This is the plan. We lay out all the ingredients Philip used. We try each one separately, we try them together. We add new ones, we take some away. We write down how it tastes, how it feels on our tongues, how long it takes to chew. We rebuild it until it plays like a real harmonica.” Turning to Philip, he asked, “You’ll be in charge of that last part. Do you know anything about music?”

  Philip hesitated. “I know enough.”

  “That’ll have to do. Miles, you’ll work on the molds.” He pointed to a shelf lined with candymaking books. “Those will help you. Daisy, you’ll make up batches of chocolate. Sound good?”

  “Ready, boss!” Miles said with a wide grin.

  Logan felt his cheeks grow warm. “I’m not the boss, I just—”

  “You’re the Candymaker’s son,” Philip said. “If anyone can make this work, you can.”

  Logan looked down, both surprised at the compliment and afraid to admit it might not be true. “I’m not so sure,” he said. “I’ll try my best.”

  “You can do it,” Philip said confidently. “This is what you were born to do.”

  At those words, Logan felt a new determination rise up inside him. So what if he hadn’t always been the best at following through with things? So what if he sometimes got distracted and his attention wandered? Now was what mattered, and now he would give it all he had.

  “Well, well, Philip Ransford the Third,” Daisy said, nodding appreciatively. “You really are full of surprises.”

  Philip winked. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  Before anyone could ask what he meant by that, the door to the lab swung open, and they froze.

  “You all look like you’ve seen a ghost!” the Candymaker boomed.

  Logan glanced at the others. They wore identical expressions of shock and fear. He was sure he did, too.

  The Candymaker held up a plastic bag with something square inside. “I thought you might need a snack.”

  No one spoke. The others were still frozen in place. Logan snapped out of it first, his heart rate slowly lowering. “How did you, uh, know we were here?”

  The Candymaker laughed. “I went to the Tropical Room to see if you needed anything. You weren’t there, so I knew I’d find you here. This is exactly where I was the night before the contest thirty years ago!”

  Logan could sense the others relaxing a bit, but still no one moved.

  “I didn’t expect to find all four of you, but hey, the more the merrier. I’ll go rustle up some extra blankets.” To Philip and Daisy he asked, “You’re planning on staying the night, I presume?”

  When they didn’t answer, Logan said, “Yes, is that okay?”

  His dad handed him the big plastic bag and said, “Of course it’s okay. Just remember the contest rules. All contestants deserve privacy while they’re working on their entries.”

  Logan nodded, not daring to even glance at the others.

  The Candymaker turned to Philip and Daisy, who still hadn’t moved. “Hey, either of you want to share how you got in without showing up on the video monitor?”

  Philip began to stutter some sort of answer, then gave up. Daisy tugged on her ponytail so hard she let out a little yelp.

  The Candymaker laughed. “I figured as much. I’ll leave the blankets in the Tropical Room.” He turned to go, then glanced back at Philip, his head tilted as though trying to remember something. Then he shook it off and was gone.

  “Wow,” Miles said. “That was… unexpected.”

  Logan turned to Daisy. “You’re the expert at sneaking around. Wouldn’t it just be easier to tell my parents what’s going on?”

  She shook her head. “We can’t tell anyone else at the factory, because the only way to stop Philip’s dad is for the harmonica to win fair and square. That way no one can claim someone here influenced the judges.”

  “But they’d never do that,” Logan said.

  “Sometimes in business people are ruthless. They could make things up. We can’t take any chances.”

  Logan nodded. He knew she was right. But he didn’t have much practice lying to his parents. The one time he’d lied—about doing his homework when he hadn’t—his mom threatened to send him to a real school, with standardized tests! Logan didn’t know what standardized tests were, but he didn’t like the sound of them. He couldn’t even bring himself to think about how awful it would be to tell them he wasn’t submitting the Bubbletastic ChocoRocket after all.

  “Are you going to get in trouble for bringing us here?” Philip asked.

  Logan shook his head and lifted up the bag. “If I was in trouble, he wouldn’t have brought us chocolate pizza!”

  Miles lunged for it, but Logan held the bag over his head. Miles jumped for it but still couldn’t reach. “Sorry,” Logan said, “but we can’t eat it yet.”

  “Why not?” Miles cried.

  Logan stepped away from Miles and slid the bag under the lab table. “Because we can’t clutter up our taste buds.”

  “M’i gnilliw ot ekat eht ksir,” Miles grumbled.

  “I’m going to ignore that,” Logan said, using his foot to push the pizza even farther under the table.

  “C’mon, let’s get to work,” Philip said, heading toward the cabinets. “I’ll show you what I used.”

  The next hour flew by in a flurry of activity. Logan tasted different portions of the harmonica, focusing on the delicate balance of ingredients. He suggested adding a little dash of vanilla to the chocolate for a kick of sweetness, spreading a thin layer of caramel on top of the cookie for bulk and stability, and laying down the honeycomb in a crisscross pattern. This would strengthen the inside of the harmonica in case the person playing it gripped it too hard. He also thought they shouldn’t use the marshmallow chunks to block off sound in the ends of the tubes, because history (in the form of Life Is Sweet’s great Chick-in-the-Egg debacle) had taught them that packaging two different confections together was inevitably disastrous. One always melted or cracked before the other, or they got separated in shipping and the customer wound up with only half of what he’d been promised.

  Meanwhile, Daisy tempered the chocolate by hand, her considerable strength speeding the process along. She tapped her foot impatiently whenever the chocolate entered the cooling phase and she was left with nothing to stir.

  Philip spent a good ten minutes trying to explain that the different chambers of the harmonica had these things called reeds and that the air blowing through them was what made the different notes. Then there were reed plates and combs, which supported the whole structure. Logan wondered where Philip had learned so much about music. Even though he couldn’t follow half of what Philip was saying—stuff about how the reeds had to be open at one end and closed at the other, and some holes were for drawing in and others for exhaling, and the seventh hole was sometimes reversed—he was still impressed by Philip’s understanding of the instrument.

  Eventually Philip, growing weary of the others’ attention clearly drifting off, went to the back of the lab to prepare the honeycomb as Logan had shown him.

  Inside his cubicle, Miles pored over a book from Max’s shelf on how to make a mold. Logan had just finished adding a cup of flour to the cookie recipe when Miles reappeared, the book clutched in his hand. “I’m afraid what Max told Philip is right,” he announced. “There’s no way to make the molds in time. We’re going to have to do each one by hand.”

  Daisy lifted the glass thermometer out of her pot of chocolate, checked it, and slid it back in. “Not necessarily,” she said. “We could make the mold out of wax.”

  Miles shook his head. “Metal is the best, or plastic. Wax would melt when we poured the chocolate in.”

  Daisy grinned. “Not my wax.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Pssst, Miles,” Logan whispered. “Are yo
u awake?”

  “No,” Miles replied, his head almost completely hidden by the top of his sleeping bag.

  Logan smiled in the near darkness. “If you weren’t awake you wouldn’t have answered me.”

  “Maybe I’m talking in my sleep,” he mumbled.

  He lay only a few feet away, but Logan couldn’t tell if Miles’s eyes were open or closed. The moon cast only a pale light through the glass ceiling, and the trees threw shadows everywhere. There was nothing like the Tropical Room at night. Except, Logan assumed, the real tropics. Which had snakes.

  “I’m pretty sure you’re not,” Logan replied. He had tried to fall asleep himself, but after going through his gratitude list (which had grown considerably after recent events), he found himself more awake than ever. Some pretty big things hadn’t gotten settled, and the questions nagged at him.

  Logan pushed himself up on his elbows. “It’s just that we haven’t really talked about tomorrow,” he explained. “We’re supposed to show up with four new kinds of candy, not one.”

  Miles rolled over, pushing the sleeping bag away from his face. “You’re right. We have to come up with a really good reason why we’re dropping out. Let’s go ask Daisy.”

  They wiggled out of their sleeping bags. Miles leaned around the tree and called out for Philip.

  “He’s not here,” Logan said.

  “Not here? Where is he?”

  Logan shrugged. “He was writing in his notebook, and then the next time I looked, he was gone. Maybe he needed more light or something.”

  As they headed across the room to the cinnamon tree, Miles asked, “What do you think he writes in there?”

  Logan shook his head. “Whatever it is, he’s really secretive about it.”

  “Maybe he’s a spy, too!”

  Logan laughed. “I sure hope not. It’s hard enough with one!”

  Even from across the room Logan could see the glow of Daisy’s flashlight. As they got closer, he saw that she was holding her book, a red blanket draped over her shoulders. She was reading out loud again, but not loud enough for him to hear the words.

  She heard them approach and quickly closed the book.

  “Did the farmer’s daughter marry the rancher yet?” Miles joked.

  “The story’s turning out different from what I expected,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Nice pajamas, by the way.”

  Logan looked down at his familiar blue plaid pants and top. Miles was wearing an identical pair, except in green. His were a little big, though. He’d almost tripped twice.

  “What are you guys still doing up?” Daisy said. “It’s the middle of the night.”

  Logan squinted to read the clock on the wall above Avery’s office, but it was too dark to see. When they left the lab it was well past midnight. They’d worked for hours, trying to get the recipe exactly right. Miles had figured out a way to use Daisy’s seemingly magical wax to shape molds that looked exactly like real harmonicas. Well, like halves of real harmonicas. They’d have to freeze the molds overnight and then stick the halves together and enrobe the whole thing in chocolate. And they’d have to refreeze them on the way to the contest. But the final test would be blowing into it. A candy harmonica that didn’t actually play might as well be a lump of chocolate.

  “Can I use your flashlight to see what time it is?” Logan asked Daisy.

  “I don’t have one,” she said.

  “But weren’t you just using it? I saw it glowing.”

  She sighed and reached for her romance novel. “That would be this.”

  Miles reached for it first. “Your book has its own light? How cool!”

  “It’s not exactly like that,” she said at the same moment Miles opened the book.

  “No,” he agreed. “Not exactly like that.”

  Logan leaned over to see what Miles was seeing. At first he thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him in the dark. A screen? A bunch of keys with letters and numbers on them? Her romance novel was really… a computer? He looked quizzically at Daisy.

  “We call it a comm device. Short for communication device. I plug in someone’s exact coordinates, the person shows up on my screen, and we can talk or pass data back and forth. Pretty standard spy stuff.”

  Miles narrowed his eyes at her.

  “I know, I know, the book was another lie. Just remember how happy you are I’m not at the bottom of that lake.”

  Miles sighed. “I’ll try!”

  “So what do you guys want?” she asked, pulling the blanket tighter around her. “Not a bedtime story, I hope.”

  Logan laughed, although to be honest, he wouldn’t have minded one. “We just wondered what you thought we should say tomorrow. About why only Philip is going to be in the contest.”

  Her expression turned serious. “I was thinking about that. The best thing to do would be to each come up with a different, believable reason for dropping out. We don’t want anyone to link us together, if possible. Mine’s easy. I’ll just tell them my real age and they’ll have to disqualify me.”

  “That’s a good one,” Logan said with a nod. “What about for Miles?”

  “I know!” said Miles. “I can submit something against the rules, like a pie!”

  “Perfect!” Daisy said.

  Logan nodded. “We’d have to hide it from Max, though. If he saw it he’d know something was up.”

  Miles suddenly frowned. “Where will we get a pie by tomorrow morning?”

  Daisy patted her comm device. “Let me take care of that.”

  “What about you?” Miles asked Logan. “Yours is going to be the hardest to come up with.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” Logan admitted, a feeling of dread washing over him. “With my grandfather and my dad both winning, people are going to be talking about me.”

  “Hmm,” Daisy said. “Maybe you should still be in the competition.”

  “But what if he wound up winning,” Miles asked, “and then his family’s factory got sold anyway?”

  “I still don’t understand that part,” Logan said. “How can someone buy something that isn’t for sale?”

  “It’s complicated,” Philip’s voice came from behind, making both Logan and Miles jump. He was still wearing his suit, but the shirt was untucked and the jacket discarded. “There are many ways to force someone out of business,” he said without apologizing for sneaking up on them. “If the candy stores could be convinced to stop selling your candy, you’d last maybe a year or two, tops, before having to sell everything off.”

  “But why would the candy stores do that?”

  Daisy answered that one. “We suspect Philip’s dad is working with the owner of a rival candy factory. That owner could threaten to withdraw all his candy from the stores unless they agree to only sell his brand. And they could offer their candy at such a huge discount that the candy store couldn’t refuse.”

  “Oh,” Logan said. “That stinks.”

  “And that’s just one possible tactic,” she said.

  “To keep up your reputation as the Candymaker’s son, you’ll still have to submit something really good,” Philip said. “Only not as good as our harmonica.”

  “You mean your harmonica,” Logan said.

  Philip shook his head. “It’s all of ours. It would still be a brown glob of goop without you guys.”

  “True,” Daisy said happily.

  “We’ll all help you, too, Logan,” Miles said.

  But Logan shook his head. “If I’m really going to submit the Bubbletastic ChocoRocket, it has to be mine alone.”

  “Are you sure?” Daisy asked.

  “I think he’s right,” Philip said. “He needs to follow the rules completely. That way, if anyone questions him, he won’t have to lie. Something tells me he hasn’t had much practice doing that.”

  “We better go to sleep now,” Logan said, still feeling queasy. “It’s gonna be a big day tomorrow.”

  “Before you guys go,” Daisy said, “we still
need a name for the harmonica.”

  “Can’t we just call it the Chocolate Harmonica?” Philip asked.

  Logan shook his head. “It has to be really creative. The judges like to see that.”

  But no one could think of anything, so Daisy suggested they sleep on it and figure it out in the morning. She spread out her blanket and rested her head on the life preserver as a pillow.

  The boys said good night and headed back to their own tree. Not even ten minutes had passed before Miles sat bolt upright and shouted, “Harmonicandy!”

  Logan smiled in the dark. Perfect.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Miles dug into his chocolate-chip pancakes as if hadn’t seen one in years. Which, Logan recalled, he actually hadn’t.

  “These are really great, Mrs. Sweet,” Daisy said, spearing a second one from the platter. “Thank you for having all of us for breakfast.”

  “It’s my pleasure,” Logan’s mom replied, refilling their milk glasses. “It’s wonderful to see you all getting along so well. Competition sometimes brings out the worst in people.”

  “Or the best,” Daisy whispered when Mrs. Sweet stepped away. Philip shoveled the pancake in faster without looking up, but everyone knew Daisy was referring to him.

  After breakfast, Logan hurried off to shower. A quick glance in the mirror reminded him that he really should comb his hair for a day as important as this one. He gripped the comb tightly and ran it through his wet hair. Maybe a haircut wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  After that, he rubbed an aloe leaf up and down each arm and along the side of his face and neck. It always felt good to do that right after a hot shower. It helped the sap to penetrate deeper.

  He hurried back to his room and dressed quickly in his usual outfit, only instead of a white short-sleeved shirt, he put on a long-sleeved one, struggling to button each button. Usually his mother helped him when he wore shirts with a lot of buttons, but he didn’t want to bother her, since they had guests.

  He stood back and faced the long mirror built into the inside of his closet. The shirt was definitely dressier than his usual outfit, more appropriate for a big event. Even with the aloe, though, his arms itched where the shirt rubbed against them.