The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase Read online

  “Perhaps it wasn’t your best effort,” Henry agreed. “But most people don’t know that. All they know is that the kid who was rude to everyone won the contest, and you didn’t get what you wanted.”

  “But losing the contest actually is what I wanted,” Logan insisted. “I mean, not before it started, but once I got to know the others, everything changed. The Harmonicandy was really a team effort, even though Philip has to get the credit officially. You know he’s only half as obnoxious as he pretended to be while he was here, right? And then when we were able to save the factory, I really did win!” Logan shoved his marshmallow into his mouth to keep himself from rambling even more.

  “I know all of that,” Henry said gently. “And I understand your frustration. But you have to see it from the other side.”

  Logan let his shoulders slump and crossed his arms.

  Henry chewed his marshmallow and laid his stick next to Logan’s on the counter. He turned off the burner. “Perhaps you’re being oversensitive and a bit overdramatic.”

  Logan would have argued that perhaps he wasn’t being dramatic enough, but then Randall rapped on the glass door, and Logan immediately straightened up. He didn’t want Randall to see him sulking.

  Randall balanced a large brown box under one arm while he chomped on a green apple held in his free hand. He grimaced with every bite. He’d once confided to Logan that he didn’t like apples but had to eat them when he was taste-testing different candies. Sour apples neutralized chocolate. Bread neutralized hot, spicy foods, and fortunately, Randall liked bread.

  Randall could also always be counted on to have packets of crackers stuffed in his coat pockets because they neutralized almost any taste—spicy, sour, bitter, or sweet—just not as well as the apples. While Logan loved learning anything about the candy-testing process, he didn’t need to use any of those tricks. His taste buds were always on high alert.

  Logan jumped up to open the door.

  Randall tossed the apple core into the trash can. “I’m sorry to interrupt, gentlemen,” he said, laying the box on the counter beside the marshmallow sticks. “This package arrived a few minutes ago, so I offered to deliver it on my way to the Harmonicandy Room. Only a few more tests to go before the first one comes down the conveyor belt. Exciting, don’t you think?” He glanced at Logan, and his grin wobbled a bit.

  Logan looked pointedly at Henry. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been talking about.

  Henry leaned over to look at the shipping label. He squinted and mumbled that the return address was blurry. “Is this the new vanilla-bean grinder I ordered?” he asked Randall. Halfway out the door already, Randall called back, “Nope. It’s for Logan.”

  Logan and Henry looked at each other in surprise. “Me?” Logan asked.

  He pulled the box closer. The return label was printed in neat, even letters. Maybe Henry needed better glasses (even though his lenses must have been a half-inch thick already). The handwriting didn’t look familiar to Logan, and the address—a post office box a few states away—didn’t mean anything, either.

  “Maybe it’s from Daisy,” he suggested to Henry. “It doesn’t look like her handwriting, but maybe that’s on purpose to cover her tracks.” Henry was the only adult at the factory who knew Daisy’s true identity. He’d promised to keep her secret, and Henry always kept his promises.

  Logan pulled at the thick tape on the side of the box but couldn’t get a good grip. He would need scissors or a knife to cut through it. Logan and sharp instruments didn’t mix well. “Will you open it for me?” he asked.

  Henry nodded. “Certainly.”

  As Henry crossed the room to his metal supply cabinet, Logan thought how much he appreciated that Henry hadn’t jumped up to help before Logan even asked. He’d become very aware of people doing that for him.

  Henry returned and got to work cutting through the thick tape. He was very careful. When the flaps were loose enough, he stepped back to let Logan pull the box open.

  Logan thought maybe it might contain a game or a puzzle or something funny that Daisy had come across on her travels. She knew he didn’t leave the factory very often, so she liked surprising him with random things from the outside world. The week before, she’d sent him a (not very good) painting she had found at a rest stop on the highway. It showed a cat waving a magic wand while wearing polka-dot pajamas. The painting had a title (Abra-Cat-abra) and the signature of the artist (a woman named Ava Simon) in the lower right corner. It now hung proudly over his bed.

  “So what’s in there?” Henry asked.

  Logan carefully lifted out a thick stack of yellowed newspapers and dusty spiral notebooks tied together with brown twine. A folded-up map, the back yellowed with age, remained at the bottom of the box. “I don’t think it’s from Daisy,” he said, moving the contents from his arms to the counter. His new friends were well aware that he didn’t have much patience when it came to reading. He’d once told Miles that he usually read the last page of a book first, and Miles was so horrified he didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day. Talk about being overdramatic.

  “I bet this will tell us,” Henry said, pulling a long, thin envelope out from underneath the twine. He handed it to Logan, who turned it over in his hands. The envelope was new, while the rest of the stack looked as if it had been rescued from someone’s attic or basement. Logan tore open the envelope and unfolded a typewritten letter. He held it up so that he and Henry could read it together.

  Logan had only gotten as far as the first sentence when Henry asked if he minded reading the letter out loud, so Logan began again.

  Dear Logan,

  We have never met, but your grandfather—the one and only Samuel Sweet—and I spent our boyhoods together. We lived two houses away from each other, and I believe I spent more time at his home than at my own. I would be lured over by the most wonderful smells of whatever Sam was cooking up! (Unlike your great-grandmother’s cabbage, which did not smell good AT ALL!)

  I recently found a bunch of Sam’s old journals and candymaking research in my basement. I know he would want you to have them. Even though my life took a different path, I do keep up with candy news because it reminds me of my dear friend and the world he treasured. I heard that you were defeated at the candymaking contest and that your family’s factory was given the honor of producing the winning Harmonicandy. I hope you will be comforted by seeing all the notebooks your grandfather filled with ideas for candies that failed. Don’t give up! I am old and coming to the end of my days faster than I want to accept, but there is greatness ahead for you. I can smell it from here.

  Very sincerely yours,

  Franklin O. Griffin

  Logan stared down at the letter. “Even strangers feel sorry for me. Still think I’m being oversensitive?”

  When he got no answer, Logan looked up. Tears were streaming down Henry’s cheeks in two even rows until they dripped off his chin. When Logan thought about that moment a month later, after so much had happened and so much had changed, it felt like a turning point, with a clear before and after. But at the time it was happening, all he could think about was how unprepared he was to deal with Henry’s reaction. The random thought occurred to him that if they were eating slices of chocolate pizza, Henry wouldn’t be crying. No one could cry and eat chocolate pizza at the same time.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Logan shifted from foot to foot. Crying at the Life Is Sweet candy factory was usually reserved for the confectionary scientists after taste-testing a new batch of red-hot chili peppers. Randall went through two whole loaves of bread in one day before giving the final approval to begin production on the new Fireball Supernovas. (To make the candy, which would be labeled For Adults Only, the farmers had cross-bred two kinds of hot peppers to create something so fiery they had to handle it with gloves—and if they wiped their eyes by mistake, well, they’d have to go home for the rest of the day and soothe them with wet cotton balls.) Spontaneous eye-watering was common e