The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase

by Wendy Mass

  According to Arthur, Fluffernutter was an “amazing” dog, so the name fit perfectly. Miles had yet to see proof of the dog’s amazingness (Miles was a cat person), but Arthur claimed that not only could Fluffernutter roll over on command already, but she’d sniffed out six geocaches on her own!

  Of the ones he and Arthur had found together, Arthur had spotted the first one (a small metal box hanging from a low tree branch), and yesterday Miles had found the second, inside a fallen log, after nearly an hour of searching the wooded area. That one—a large plastic bin—had rewarded his efforts with a small bottle of Hocus Pocus Disappearing Ink.

  Usually the trinkets hidden in the boxes were common objects—pencil toppers, plastic rings, rubber toys, dominoes, dice, key chains, stickers, crayons, that sort of thing. So to find something as exotic and unexpected as disappearing ink, even though the bottle was half-empty, well, it made Miles giddy with excitement. He couldn’t wait to show Logan and then try it out on Philip. Philip hadn’t shown much of a sense of humor and probably hated practical jokes. That would make it even sweeter when a stream of blue ink shot out onto his tie, only to disappear a minute later!

  Arthur finally showed up, out of breath from trying to keep Fluffernutter from pulling away on her leash. He had his three-year-old daughter, Jade, with him, too. She ran up to Miles as soon as she saw him and wrapped her arms around his waist.

  “Um… hello to you, too?” was all he could think to say. Now, Miles was a hugger himself. But he couldn’t recall a time when a young child had hugged him. It was… interesting. But not altogether bad. They’d met only once before, and that had been at the library when Arthur’s wife, Tina, had brought Jade to visit. Miles had been poring over a collection of old candy bar wrappers Arthur had found while cataloging a storage room. Life Is Sweet had donated them to the library twenty years earlier, but they had sat on a shelf since then. Arthur was planning to put together a display, and he let Miles and Jade organize the wrappers by color and shape. Mostly Miles organized and Jade threw them up in the air and laughed, even though you’re supposed to be quiet in a library and she should know that since her dad worked in one and some of the wrappers were really rare and should be handled with respect.

  Miles patted her awkwardly on the head a few times, and she finally let go.

  Arthur grinned. “What can I say? She likes you!”

  They eventually turned to the job at hand and began looking for anything out of the ordinary, like a random stack of branches, or a rock pile too orderly for nature to have built it. Those are easy places to hide a cache. But nothing like that jumped out at them.

  Miles returned to the water’s edge. He bent down to more closely inspect the rocks that formed a natural wall on one side of the stream. He slid his hand along the rocks, feeling for some sort of crevice or gap. If a cache was hidden there, it would have to be a small one. He moved his hand over to the next row, and instead of feeling the dry rock, he got a handful of wet nose!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Arthur laughed. “She beat you to it!”

  Okay, so Fluffernutter really did have a nose for geocaching! If this actually was the cache, the dog had found it only seconds before Miles. After a minute, she yanked her snout out of the hole and ran around happily in circles. Miles peeked in. It was too dark to see much, but he could spot something silver reflecting the sunlight. Yup, Fluffernutter had found the last cache in Verona Park, all right. He tried not to be resentful but couldn’t help thinking that this never would have happened if Fluffernutter had been a cat. Well, unless someone had hidden tuna in the cache!

  “I think Fluffernutter deserves a treat for that display of geocaching skill,” Arthur said, reaching into his pocket.

  “There’s a Pepsicle in my backpack,” Miles offered, proving he could accept defeat with grace. To date, the Pepsicle was the only candy approved for both people and animals. “My friend Daisy’s horse, Magpie, loves them, so maybe Fluffernutter will, too. I brought a few extra if Jade’s old enough for one.”

  “Thanks! Much better than a dog biscuit.” Arthur reached into the small cooler inside Miles’s backpack and pulled out a mostly frozen Pepsicle. Fluffernutter and Jade both immediately sat up at attention when they saw (or, in the dog’s case, smelled) the treat. Arthur grinned. “I think that’s a yes for both.”

  Miles showed Arthur how to pull out the stick before giving it to the dog. Fluffernutter gobbled it down in a few licks and a bite. Jade sniffed at hers, then gave a tentative lick. Miles could tell when the peppermint taste kicked in, because Jade’s eyes opened wide. She beamed and then plopped down on the grass to enjoy it at her leisure.

  While Fluffernutter happily slurped up the juice left behind on the ground and Arthur snapped pictures of Jade with blue ice dripping down her chin, Miles put a glove on and used the discarded Pepsicle stick to root around in the small hole. Daisy would probably have something to say about the fact that he didn’t just reach his hand in, but one never knew what might be lurking in a hole between damp rocks. Worm, spider, bee, snake, pointy nail. Better not to take chances. Certainly Daisy would agree with that. Or maybe not. She didn’t seem the type to look for long before leaping.

  A little more maneuvering with the stick, and the geocache slid out into his hand. It was cylindrical, made of black plastic with a silver lid, and only about two inches high. He rolled it on the ground to loosen the dirt that clung to the sides.

  Arthur chuckled. “That’s an old film canister, from back in the day when you had to get film developed. Imagine having to take pictures with your camera, being careful not to waste a single shot because film wasn’t cheap, waiting till you filled up a whole roll of film, which could take months, sticking it into one of those canisters, and delivering it to a store. Then waiting for the photos to be printed before you could see how they looked and by then you’d forgotten what you took pictures of in the first place.” He shook his head. “In the last two minutes I’ve taken thirty-six shots, deleted nine, cropped three, taken out a shadow in one, and sent them to six relatives with the caption Jade’s First Geocaching Pepsicle. Man, modern technology!”

  Miles had never owned a camera or a photo-taking phone, but all that waiting did sound awful. He flipped the rubber cap off the container and tipped it over in his hand. Two marbles and one rectangular wooden magnet with the words I LOVE GEOCACHING engraved on it fell out. He held up the magnet and admired the craftsmanship involved. Someone had clearly carved it by hand.

  “Cool,” Arthur said, admiring the magnet, too.

  “Do you want it?” Miles asked, offering it up to his friend. “I got the disappearing ink, so it’s your turn.”

  Arthur shook his head. “I’ll take a marble. The magnet will be a good keepsake of your first solo find.” Fluffernutter rolled onto her back and barked as if to say, “Hey, I helped, too!”

  They all laughed, even Jade. “Well, mostly solo,” Arthur corrected. He scratched Fluffernutter’s belly, and the dog’s legs kicked out like she was riding a bike.

  Miles traced his finger along the letters, then happily slipped the magnet into his pocket. “Thanks. Here’s the log.” He pulled out the rolled-up piece of notebook paper from the canister and handed it over. For these first three finds, they’d agreed that Arthur would write his own handle, StormingTheCastle, in the log, along with the date. Miles hadn’t yet chosen his own geocaching handle—the nickname he’d go by as long as he played the game. Even though he found it easy to name everything else, he was stumped trying to pick out a handle for himself. Nothing felt quite right. Apparently Arthur’s handle was based on a line from a famous movie that involved sword fighting, true love, a giant, and a man named Miracle Max. When he first heard that, Miles wondered if Max Pinkus, the head candy scientist at the factory, knew about this other Max, who could make miracles. But then again, Max made miracles himself every day with only a handful of ingredients!

  Miles pulled his swag bag out of his backpack and began r
ummaging through it. Each person to find the cache should take something and leave something. That was the geocaching motto. “What do you think the next person to locate this cache would hope to find inside it?”

  “Impossible to say. Could be anyone, of any age.” Arthur looked at the few items Miles had spread out and said, “We should restock the swag bag for next time. I’m sure I have some trinkets that Jade doesn’t need or want anymore.”

  “I’ll add some, too,” Miles said. His mother had packed away all his little-kid toys and stashed the box in the attic. Miles suspected she’d kept it because she thought Miles would have a little brother or sister one day, but that had never happened. He was sure she wouldn’t miss the stuff now.

  He spread out the few small items they had collected so far. First he stashed the disappearing ink in his pocket; that one was definitely a keeper. He looked over the remaining choices. They could leave the yellow plastic compass. When they’d found it in the first cache, they both doubted it would work. But Arthur had showed Miles the correct way to hold it (flat in his palm, chest height) and then how to use the position of the sun to orient himself. As Miles slowly turned, the arrow swung directly north. This led to a lively discussion about true north (the direction along Earth’s surface pointing toward the North Pole) versus magnetic north (the direction the north end of a compass needle points due to Earth’s magnetic field) and how you have to adjust for the difference if you use a compass to guide you somewhere. Miles placed the compass back down on the grass. It would be a tight squeeze, but it would fit in the container.

  For the second item, they could leave the sticker of a kitten in a basket. Other than the compass, it had been slim pickings in that first cache. His choices had been either the kitten sticker or a three of hearts playing card. He couldn’t think of anything he could do with one playing card, so he kept the sticker by default. He was torn. He kind of wanted to keep the compass, and what if the next person didn’t like kittens?

  “Go ahead and leave the coupons,” Arthur said. “You know you want to.”

  Miles grinned sheepishly. “Thanks.” He put the swag back in the bag and pulled out the same thing he’d left in the other caches—coupons for a free Oozing Crunchorama at any candy store across the country. Mr. Sweet had given him a whole stack a few weeks ago to thank him for working so hard on the new slogan. Miles had tried to hand them back, insisting that he was just happy his interest in playing with words had actually been helpful to somebody other than himself. But the Candymaker had pressed them into his hand, and he didn’t want to be rude. And, hey, they were free Oozing Crunchoramas! No one could say no to those twice.

  As he rolled up the coupons and slid them into the container, he felt himself shiver in anticipation.

  “Are you all right?” Arthur asked. “You did some weird shaky thing. Are you drinking enough? Have some water.” He handed Miles a water bottle. Jade, who still had half of her Pepsicle left, let it topple right out of her hand and came running to Miles’s side.

  Miles laughed. “I’m fine, I promise! I was just thinking that maybe one day a geocacher would find a coupon for a Harmonicandy. Something I named is going to be out in the world! It will exist as a real object.”

  As he said it out loud, though, he realized that all the places on his afterlife map felt real, too. But he couldn’t explain that to Arthur. Unless one of Miles’s parents had said something, Arthur didn’t know about any of the stuff that had happened with the girl who he thought had drowned (but was now one of his best friends), and he wanted to keep it that way. For one thing, it sounded crazy. And for another, Miles knew if he talked about it, he might slip back into that place halfway between fantasy and reality. It hadn’t always been such a bad place. Sometimes he even missed it.

  “Drink some water anyway” was all Arthur said, apparently unconvinced that Miles wasn’t actually suffering from dehydration.

  Miles obliged and drank, then pushed the film canister back into the hole. He stuffed it in deep enough that the next geocacher couldn’t see it sticking out, but not so deep that he or she wouldn’t be able to reach it easily.

  Arthur gathered up the Pepsicle wrappers. “There are sixteen more caches hidden around Spring Haven. Once you find all those, maybe you’ll want to hide your own.”

  Miles lit up. “I can do that?”

  “Definitely,” Arthur said. “Maybe you and your dad could start scoping out some spots.” He took Jade by the hand and passed Miles the end of the dog’s leash. “It’s a great family activity. Jade already helps me, right, honey?”

  But Jade had caught sight of a butterfly on a nearby bush and wasn’t listening. Miles watched it flutter from leaf to leaf for a moment, too, its yellow-and-black wings opening and closing lazily. Every time he saw a butterfly now, he checked to see if it had any red on its wings. But the butterflies never did.

  They started back down the path that led to the parking lot. “I’m not sure my dad’s that into it,” Miles said. “I think he was kind of bored last time.”

  “I sensed that when he started pulling the petals off a dandelion during our conversation about how the library prepares a book to go into circulation.”

  They both laughed. “Sorry about that,” Miles said. “He’s not as interested as I am in the art of bookbinding and bar codes.”

  “Not many are,” Arthur joked. “Your dad works at the college, right?”

  Miles nodded. “He’s the director of financial aid. He helps kids with their tuition if they can’t afford it.”

  “Cool,” Arthur said.

  “Cool beans!” Jade said, skipping ahead. “Cool beans, cool beans, cool beans!”

  Fluffernutter started barking and pulling on her leash. Miles had to strengthen his grip to keep it from being yanked out of his hand.

  “She doesn’t like Jade getting too far away,” Arthur explained.

  “Or maybe it’s because Metal Detector Boy is back!” Miles pointed through the trees toward the site of the recent 4-H carnival. The area was still marked off by temporary fences, and they could see that the grass was smooshed down from the rides and food booths. The guy they’d nicknamed Metal Detector Boy looked a lot like Daisy’s cousin Bo. Even though Miles had learned that Bo wasn’t really Daisy’s cousin, and that his real name was AJ, he would always think of him as Daisy’s tractor-pulling cousin Bo.

  They’d met Metal Detector Boy yesterday when hunting down cache number two. The Bo/AJ look-alike told them he was searching for coins dropped from the pockets of unsuspecting carnival-goers. Apparently right after a carnival left town was the best time to swoop in. Today he was crisscrossing the area, sweeping his metal detector back and forth in front of him as he walked.

  When he saw the three of them (four, including Fluff), he slipped off the headphones that were attached to the top of the metal detector by a thin cord. “Find any geocaches today?” he called out to them.

  “Just the one,” Miles replied. “Find any quarters today?”

  He held up three fingers. “Seventy-five cents. Enough to pay for another year of college.”

  They all laughed and waved goodbye as Fluff started barking again. This time she really was pulling Miles toward Jade, who was rooting around in the grass a few yards behind Metal Detector Boy. As they caught up with her, she picked up something shiny and held it high over her head. “Look what I found!” she squealed. “Can I keep it?”

  “Finders keepers,” Metal Detector Boy told her. He turned to Miles and said, “Your little sister’s a much better treasure hunter than I am. She found a silver dollar. That’s more than I made all day! Not too embarrassing.”

  “Oh, she’s not my sister,” Miles said quickly.

  Metal Detector Boy looked surprised, then glanced over at Jade and Arthur. “Oh, sorry. Just assumed that was your family. Well, see ya. I’d better make sure this thing’s working!” He knocked on the side of his metal detector.

  Jade pushed the silver dollar into the pock
et of her shorts before the guy could change his mind. They left him to get back to his work.

  “That was kind of a weird thing to say,” Miles said when they reached the spot where he’d tied up his bike. “About Jade being my sister.”

  Arthur chuckled. “She is fond of you.”

  Jade stuck out her tongue at Miles.

  “Hmm, I’m not so sure about that,” Miles said.

  “But seriously,” Arthur said, “don’t let it bother you. There aren’t a lot of people around here who look like us. As you know, of course, having lived here much longer than we have.”

  “I guess,” Miles admitted. “But still. My dad is much taller than you are.”

  Arthur laughed again. “True. He got all the height in the family.” He winked as he and Jade climbed into their car.

  “You have the same sense of humor, though!” Miles called out as he climbed on his bike.

  Arthur lowered his window and asked, “See you at the library tomorrow? I’m going to start putting up the candy wrapper display.”

  “I’d love to,” Miles replied honestly. “But tomorrow’s the big Kickoff at the candy factory. The first Harmonicandy will be made.”

  “Sounds great!”

  Miles smiled. “Tastes even better!”

  Arthur laughed. “Good one! I’ll look forward to finding out.”

  Miles made a mental note to add Sounds great, tastes even better! to his slogan list.

  Jade waved out of the backseat window, her newly found dollar clutched in her hand. Miles waited for the car to pull away before starting home himself. If he had to have a little sister, he supposed Jade wouldn’t be such a bad one. For the first time in his whole life, he wondered if his parents were disappointed that he was an only child. He’d never spoken to them about it, just as he’d never asked why Dad’s parents were Irish. Maybe it was time for a serious discussion.

  But first he wanted to try out the disappearing ink.