Miles gobbled down two slices of pizza before coming up for air. “Honestly, Mrs. Sweet, I could eat this at every single meal. My dad would love it, too. He says he’s a chocoholic.”
“Why don’t you invite your parents for dinner tonight at six?” she suggested. “We’d love to have them.”
Miles glanced at Logan, who nodded eagerly. “Okay, sounds great.” He went into the next room to call his parents.
“That’s okay with you, right, honey?” Logan’s mom asked.
He nodded, reaching for another slice. He ate it quickly, too excited to hear Miles’s mom’s answer to even taste it. The only guests they ever had for dinner were people from the candy business who had known the family forever. He vaguely remembered a time when his parents entertained a lot more, but that was years and years ago. He wondered why his mother suddenly wanted to invite new people. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t want her to change her mind.
“All set!” Miles said, returning to the kitchen. “My mom said she’d bring dessert, but I told her I thought you had that covered.”
They all laughed. For the first time in a long, long time, maybe ever, Logan felt like a normal kid, hanging out with a friend, eating chocolate pizza, and looking forward to later. After slurping down one of his mom’s famous all-natural milkshakes, it was time to get back to work. Miles went to use the bathroom as Logan helped his mom clean up.
“How are you doing with everything?” she asked him. “You’ve had a lot of new things to deal with all at once.”
“I’m good,” Logan said. “It’s been fun.” He thought of Philip. “Well, mostly fun.”
She gave his shoulders a squeeze. “You know it doesn’t matter if you win, don’t you? Your father and I couldn’t be more proud of you.”
“Sure.” Logan nodded. He hoped he sounded convincing.
Miles returned. “Hey, is it okay if I leave my backpack up here, since I’ll be back for dinner?”
“Of course,” Logan’s mom said. “Why don’t you go drop it on Logan’s bed? If you can find it, that is.”
“Ha ha,” Logan said, his cheeks growing hot.
It felt as if Miles was gone a long time, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute. All he said was “Cool room.”
“Um, thanks,” Logan said, relieved. He glanced over at his mother. She just smiled and pushed them toward the door. On the way down to the lab, they resumed their debate on who would emerge the victor in a fight between Gummzilla and Gummysaurus Rex. Since they couldn’t come to a conclusion, Miles suggested the two gummy dinos team up to end the reign of the giant monster Philipsaurus the Third, who threatened to rule the planet with the evil plans hidden inside his impenetrable Briefcase of Darkness.
They were still laughing over that idea when Logan pushed open the door to the lab. Daisy met them at the door, her face grim.
They stopped laughing. “What’s wrong?” Logan asked.
She gestured behind her with her thumb. “Welcome to Corporate America.”
She stepped aside, and Logan gasped.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The laboratory looked like an office in downtown Spring Haven! Temporary walls five feet high hid each of the stations, turning them into cubicles. Logan looked over at Philip’s area but couldn’t even tell if he was in there or not. Max approached from the back of the room, carrying a bucket of caramel in one hand and marshmallows in the other.
“I know, I know, it’s awful,” Max said wearily. “But Philip was correct. The rule book does say that each contestant’s privacy should be respected and all that.”
“You didn’t have to put them around my station,” Logan insisted. “I don’t need any privacy from you guys.”
“Me neither,” Daisy and Miles said in unison.
“Technically, I had to put them around everyone’s,” Max replied. Lowering his voice, he added, “If we want the factory to host another group in the future, I wouldn’t want anyone reporting that we didn’t follow the rules to the letter.”
None of them needed to ask which “anyone” he was referring to.
So off they went to their individual cubes. Logan instantly felt lonely. He peeked around the side of his cube, then giggled when he saw Daisy and Miles peeking around theirs. Nothing to do but get to work.
As promised, Max took his turn with each of them (even Philip, which was shocking after his insistence on being left alone). The thick walls muffled the conversations, so Logan could only catch bits and pieces. When it was his turn, he told Max what he’d tried already, and Max steered him in a few other directions.
The hours sped by as he mixed, mashed, rolled, and tasted, then started all over again. There was no denying that when he wasn’t worried about following directions, he loved the different shapes the candy took as he worked with it, the tastes that emerged when he added a pinch of one ingredient or another. But after a while, every bit of him itched to be outside under the wide sky, with the sun warming his skin. Every once in a while Max would stop by to see how things were going. Logan stuck on a smile and said, “Couldn’t be better!” He knew Max wasn’t fooled.
Once he heard Max threaten loudly to take away a certain romance novel if Daisy kept pulling it out of her bag. “It’s for your own good,” he insisted.
Daisy muttered something Logan couldn’t hear but went back to work. Every hour on the hour Philip left the room for ten minutes. (Logan knew the exact time because checking the clock gave him an excuse to poke his head out.)
At one point Paulo (whom Logan rarely saw outside of the Bee Room) delivered a jar of fresh honey to Miles, who gave a shy little wave, clutched the jar to his chest, and ducked back into his cube. Before leaving, Paulo made a second stop—at Philip’s station. Logan couldn’t tell what he dropped off, only that it was shaped like a square and wrapped in foil. You can’t wrap fresh honey in foil. Beeswax, maybe?
The last hour of the day was a frenzy of activity. All four took turns using the machines Max had set up in the center of the room—Philip had clearly decided he needed them after all. They crisscrossed the room, boiling candy in various-sized pots and kettles, putting trays in the fridge, grabbing more supplies.
They scribbled down recipes, then scratched them out. They baked candy in the ovens, they enrobed, they panned. They made a huge mess. With all the comings and goings, Logan couldn’t help catching glimpses now and then of the others’ work.
Philip’s idea involved chocolate in some capacity and whatever Paulo had brought him, but more than that Logan couldn’t guess.
All he knew about Miles’s idea was that it included honey, and Logan thought he smelled black licorice wafting from his cube now and again. Daisy’s… well, it looked like a glob of goop. A green glob of goop, to be precise.
As for his own, he’d managed to get the chocolate to turn to chocolate-flavored gum after inserting tiny pieces of chicle into blocks of cocoa and heating it at a very high temperature. But getting it to turn back again? Not so much.
At five o’clock the factory bell rang, and Logan jumped. He had just added carrageen and salt and was about to stir the final mixture.
“All right, everyone,” Max called out from the center of the room. “Let’s gather and discuss plans for tomorrow.”
Logan looked down at the tray in front of him, which was covered with pieces of this, clumps of that, nothing even remotely recognizable as a Bubbletastic ChocoRocket. His only hope (besides that whole miracle thing) was that some inspiration would hit him overnight. At least a little hope was better than no hope at all.
Never one to dwell on problems, Logan put the direness of the situation out of his mind. If he hurried, he’d have time to go outside before dinner. He had something to show Miles. So when the bell rang, Logan sprang up from his station, the first one to emerge.
Miles came next. His eyes were a little bloodshot—no doubt from the strain of the last few hours—but he gave Logan a thumbs-up. Daisy skipped over to them, her ponytail bopp
ing with each step. Logan guessed that meant her green glob of goop had actually transformed itself into some brand-new kind of candy. He was happy for her. For her and Miles both.
Philip emerged last, and Logan realized he hadn’t seen more than the back of his head since before lunch. His expression was a mixture of determination, weariness, and something that Logan couldn’t quite identify. He gave no indication that his candymaking efforts had been successful, and no one asked.
“Great job, everyone!” Max said. “You should all be proud of yourselves. You’ve had a crash course in being a candy scientist, and you all proved you have what it takes.”
Logan wasn’t so sure about that, but he didn’t interrupt.
“We’ll meet here in the lab at eight o’clock, and you’ll each make a fresh batch of candy to submit to the judges. We’ll leave promptly at ten for the drive up to the city. I’ll be taking us in one of the factory’s vans. Now, everyone get to bed early and eat a big breakfast. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day. Any questions?”
They all looked at Miles, who said, “Why is everyone looking at me?”
“Okay, then,” Max said, securing his clipboard. “If Miles doesn’t have any questions, I’ll see you all in fifteen hours.”
Philip wasted no time in bolting from the room.
“Let’s walk out together,” Daisy said. “I just need to grab my bag.”
As Daisy disappeared into her cube, Miles whispered, “Maybe we should invite Daisy to dinner tonight? I mean, I wouldn’t want her to feel left out.”
Logan nodded. “Good idea.” Just as he reached her cube, he heard her whisper, “All I’ll need is twenty minutes.” She reached over and gave a loving little pat to the green glob of goop, which honestly didn’t look any different from when Logan had seen it last.
“Twenty minutes for what?” he asked.
Daisy jumped a bit when she heard him, then glanced at the glob. She smiled. “Believe it or not, all this little guy needs is twenty minutes in the fridge, and it’ll turn the candy world on its head.”
“Really?” Logan asked, excited.
“Yup! I wanted to show you guys, but the whole privacy thing, I just don’t think we’re supposed to.”
Logan backed away, covering his eyes. “I didn’t see a thing. I didn’t hear a thing. I know nothing.”
Daisy swung her bag over her shoulder. “That’s not very convincing.”
“I’ll work on it.”
As the three of them left the room together, Miles turned to Daisy and asked, “So, are you coming?”
“Coming where?”
“I didn’t get a chance to ask her,” Logan explained.
“Ask me what?”
“If you wanted to come to dinner. You know, at our apartment. With my family. To um, eat. And Miles’s family. Did I say it’s at six?”
“Smooooth,” said Miles.
“I don’t have much practice inviting people to dinner,” Logan admitted. “You were my first.”
“You did just fine,” Daisy assured him. “And thank you, but I can’t come. My dad conducts an orchestra at the elementary school, and I promised I’d go to their recital tonight. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard third-graders perform Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.”
Logan and Miles laughed. “A bunch of the factory guys put a band together once,” Logan said. “They weren’t very good either, but they had a great time playing. All their instruments are still around somewhere, though, in one of the storerooms.”
“Did you ever try playing one of them?” Miles asked. “Like the guitar or keyboard or something?”
Logan shook his head. “I have a tendency to drop things. I think my instrument would wind up being played more by the floor than by me.”
“I haven’t seen you drop anything,” Daisy said kindly.
Logan smiled. “I hold on very tight.”
A car honked outside. “Well,” Daisy said, “that’s my ride. See you guys tomorrow, bright and early.”
They accompanied Daisy to the front step. “You arrive on horseback and leave in an old brown pickup?” Miles asked. “I was expecting something a lot more exciting than that. Hot-air balloon maybe.”
“Or a unicycle!” offered Logan. “That would have been cool.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said.
“Is that your dad?” Logan asked, peering at the driver’s seat. But instead of a dad, a boy around seventeen or eighteen was sitting behind the wheel, tapping on the dashboard as if he were playing a keyboard or trying to fix something that was stuck. Hard to tell.
Daisy opened the passenger-side door. “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’s eyes grew big. “Is that where they pull motorcycles with their teeth?”
“Well, with what was left of them after so many attempts,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Now all he can do is grunt until he gets his new teeth.”
Logan and Miles nearly fell off the stoop trying to see the boy better. Daisy got into the car and said, “Say hi, Bo.”
“Grunt,” said Bo.
“See?” Daisy said. “Sad.” She reached over to pinch his cheek. “Let this be a lesson to you boys.”
“What, not to pull a motorcycle with our teeth?” asked Miles.
“Exactly,” said Daisy.
“Grunt,” added Bo as Daisy shut the door with a final wave.
Logan and Miles stared after the truck as it rattled its way down the long driveway. “Do you think the motorcycle was running when he pulled it?” Logan asked.
“I sure hope not,” Miles said. “Hey, I bet tomorrow Daisy rides in on that unicycle.”
“Or flies in on a flying carpet!”
“Or glides down on a parachute!”
Logan nodded. “I bet that’ll be the one.” Instead of going back inside, Logan led Miles around the side of the factory. The scent of cow from the barn quickly faded as they approached the Peppermint Field.
“Where are we going?” Miles asked, glancing anxiously at the pond off to their left.
“There’s something I want you to see. It’s right over here, between the Strawberry Patch and the Orange Grove.”
“We don’t have to take a boat to get there, do we?”
Logan shook his head and led Miles away from the pond to the cornfields, where the stalks were taller than both of them. “You up for going straight through? We could go around, but it would take a lot longer.”
Miles glanced warily at the corn stalks but nodded. Logan turned and plowed through them, stopping every few feet to make sure Miles was behind him. Logan loved walking through the corn. Something about not being able to see where he was going or where he had come from gave him a little thrill. He also liked to imagine the view from above as he ran. What new shapes were formed by his path? And then the end, when he burst out of the corn into the openness of the Strawberry Patch, that was a good part, too. He did that now and waited for Miles.
For a few seconds, he worried that he’d lost Miles. Then out he burst, twenty feet down the field.
Logan ran to meet him. “Pretty cool, right?”
“Uh, sure,” Miles said with a wobbly smile.
“C’mon, we’re almost there.” Logan pointed toward the large clump of trees in front of them.
“Maybe on the way back we’ll walk around the corn?” Miles suggested.
“We better hurry, then,” Logan said, picking up speed. “We don’t have much time.” They ran through the perfect rows of strawberry plants, stopping only once to pick two berries. Before handing one to Miles, Logan asked, “You’re not allergic, are you?”
Miles shook his head and accepted the bright red strawberry.
Logan popped his into his mouth and took off again. “We’re almost there,” he called back to Miles, who was still standing in the same spot, munching his strawberry. “Hey, you’ve gotta learn to eat on the
move!”
Miles caught up and said, “Didn’t your mother ever teach you not to run with food in your mouth? You can choke and die that way!”
Logan almost laughed, but something in Miles’s expression warned him not to. “Of course she has. But I’m not afraid of choking. Or dying.”
Miles stopped walking. “You’re not afraid of dying?”
Logan shook his head and shrugged. “I figure when my number’s up, my number’s up.”
Miles squinted up at him. “What do you mean?”
Logan thought for a minute. “Well, if you enjoy life while you have it, then it doesn’t matter how long you have it for. No one knows how long they get to live. It’s like a deal you make when you’re born, you know, to accept what happens to you.”
“Is that what you do, just accept what happens?”
Logan shrugged. “I guess so. What else can you do?”
“Well, you can dwell on it and play it over in your head a hundred different ways.”
Logan tilted his head. “Does that help?”
Miles sighed. “No.”
“Well, c’mon.” Logan tugged on Miles’s arm. “We’ll both have to accept the wrath of my mom if we don’t hurry. She has a pet peeve about people being late for her cooking.”
After running along the short path beside the Orange Grove, they came to a small clearing. “Here we are,” said Logan. He watched Miles’s expression turn from anticipation to surprise to something like dread as the old merry-go-round came into view. Though the painted horses and elephants and giraffes were half buried in the tall grass, it was evident what they were.
“What’s wrong?” Logan asked as he watched Miles’s fear turn to shock. “I thought you’d think it was neat, since, you know, you used to love the annual picnic…”
Miles didn’t reply; he just stared at the broken merry-go-round. Then slowly his face began to change, and he started to smile.
Relieved, Logan said, “My parents must have wanted to keep it for some reason. Not too many people know it’s out here.”