The Candymakers Read online

  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