by Wendy Mass
CHAPTER THREE
Miles found his parents having lunch outside on the back porch. A place was set for him with a bowl of noodle soup and a grilled cheese sandwich under one of those tent things that keep flies off your food. His mother jumped up to hug him.
“Um, Mom? I was gone for less than two hours.”
“I know,” his mother said, smoothing down his hair. “I’m still not used to you being out on your own. It’s a mother’s job to worry.”
“I’m fine,” Miles insisted, pulling away a little. It wasn’t that he minded the hug, but he was afraid if she hugged him any harder, the bottle of disappearing ink would get squished. It would be fun to try it out on his parents, but his mom had zero sense of humor when it came to messes.
“Did you have fun at the park?” his father asked, gently prying them apart.
Miles scarfed down his sandwich (geocaching made him hungry!) while he filled them in on his adventure. When he got to the part about Fluffernutter beating him to the cache by a nose, his father shook his head and said, “Wouldn’t have happened if she was a cat.”
“I know, totally!” Miles said. “Something else kind of weird happened.”
“What?” His mother stopped eating her soup midslurp. He almost didn’t want to mention it now, but he knew she’d keep asking.
“You know that guy with the metal detector I told you about?”
They nodded.
“We saw him again today. He thought Arthur’s daughter, Jade, was my sister.”
His mother laid down her spoon. “Well, I suppose we can understand why he would think that.”
“I told Arthur he wasn’t tall enough to be my dad.”
Mr. O’Leary puffed out his chest. “I am blessed in the height department.”
“Your dad was a lot taller than you, though, right?” Miles asked. “I mean, it looks like that in the picture from your high school graduation.”
Dad looked momentarily unsure how to answer. He took a few sips of lemonade, then said, “Yes, your grandfather was similarly blessed. Over six feet two inches in his prime. He played college basketball.”
“Wow,” Miles said, sliding the noodles onto his spoon. “What else did he do?”
Once Miles’s dad started talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. Over the rest of lunch Miles heard more stories about his grandparents than over all the lunches that had come before, combined. His grandparents didn’t only grow vegetables and fruit for themselves; they donated most of it to the town’s food bank so people in need would have fresh food along with the canned goods. His grandfather was the town pediatrician, and his grandmother was his nurse. Miles hung on every word while his mom looked on with misty eyes.
“I wish I’d gotten to meet them,” Miles said.
“They would have been really proud of you,” his mother said.
His father tried to say something, but then his lip quivered and he reached for his lemonade instead. Miles looked back and forth between his parents. He’d gotten really good at reading their signals. For all the times they’d told him he needed to get out of the house last year, there were ten more times when they’d wanted to tell him to move on, to stop blaming himself. They wanted him to accept that he’d never know what really happened (turned out they were wrong about that part!), but most times they just busied themselves with some minor task rather than risk upsetting him. When his mother started quickly piling up the lunch plates, he knew for sure that’s what was happening. The conversation had ended.
And then it was just the two of them. Miles smiled at his dad, trying to send out telepathic vibes that he wanted to know more. Clearly his mind-to-mind powers weren’t very strong, because the only thing his dad said was “Don’t forget you have a meeting at the factory soon.”
On his way upstairs to get his notebook, Miles swung by the kitchen and grabbed two Blast-o-Bits from the treats drawer by the fridge. “Really, Miles?” his mom said. “You’re on your way to the factory and you still have to eat more candy?”
Miles looked down at the grape candies with their bright purple wrappers. “But, Mom, the factory only makes these every three days, and today is an off-day. Mondays are High-Jumping Jelly Beans, Tuesdays are Leapin’ Lollies, and then they convert the machines back to Blast-o-Bits on Wednesdays. Do you expect me to wait until then?”
She sighed. “Why am I not surprised that you know the candy production schedule?”
Miles grinned. “If you’d prefer, I can go back to talking about the afterlife.”
She leaned down and kissed him on the cheek. “No thank you. Now go on. I’d like to see what you came up with for the slogan.”
“Be right back.” Miles took off before she changed her mind. He stopped at his bedroom door and cringed before entering. He’d always kept his room relatively neat (at least compared to Logan’s room, where he sometimes couldn’t see the floor), but now sheets of paper covered not only his floor but the desk and even his bed. He’d been so focused on coming up with a creative slogan that researching it had taken over both his brain and his room.
Miles had let go of most of the habits he’d picked up after the girl-who-drowned incident (although he still sat out on the roof to think, and when he got superexcited, he still spoke backward, so maybe not most of the habits). But some had proven harder to break. He still tended to get very focused on one single thing to the point where he tuned out everything else. His father told him that wasn’t always a bad quality and that every new invention or discovery came from someone who was willing to put the time and effort into focusing on the solution. Most recently that one thing was the Harmonicandy slogan.
He wished he had a slogan he really loved, but none had made him jump up and shout, “This is it! This is The One!” He grabbed his notebook and added the new one he’d thought of (with Arthur’s help) when he left the park.
He found his parents still in the kitchen. They stopped talking as soon as he appeared, a fairly common occurrence in the O’Leary household. Usually he’d assume they were talking about boring, grown-up stuff like mortgages (whatever they were) or taxes or retirement plans or who to vote for in the school board elections. But now he was beginning to suspect otherwise.
“So what have you got for us?” Dad asked.
Miles flipped open his notebook. He took a deep breath and belted out, “In no special order: Tap your feet to the beat of this delicious treat!”
“Hey, that’s pretty good!” his dad said. “I like the rhyme. Are there more?”
Miles scanned the list in front of him. He flipped over the page and scanned again. He looked up and announced, “Thirty-one.”
“You have thirty-one different slogans?” his mother said, glancing at his father with that oh-so-familiar look of concern. “Didn’t they want you to bring two or three?”
Miles looked sheepish. “I couldn’t decide.”
His dad checked his watch. “We’d better get going. I need to drop you on the way to a meeting at the university.”
“Don’t you want to hear more?” Miles asked, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“You can tell me on the way,” his dad said, reaching for his briefcase.
Miles hadn’t expected to leave so soon. He still had one more thing he needed to do in his room. “Can I have ten more minutes?”
“Five,” his dad replied.
Miles turned toward the stairs.
“Can I read them over while you’re up there?” his mom asked.
Her offer made him feel a little better. “Sure, let me know your top three.” He handed her the notebook and bounded up the stairs, two at a time. He couldn’t believe he’d almost forgotten to check his books!
He had to scramble on the floor to find them under all the papers, but eventually he had five library books opened up to random pages. He closed his eyes and let his finger drop. Then he scribbled down a sentence from each on the last page of his school notebook.
Turtles can inhale
and exhale through their rear ends. It costs the U.S. Mint almost twice as much to mint each penny and nickel as the coins are actually worth. Nothing exists except atoms and empty space. Be where you are. Honey can prevent seasonal allergies, heal a cut, soothe a burn, and get rid of your pimples.
Miles felt the tip of his chin. He’d noticed a little bump growing there the last few days. He might be getting his first pimple! The universe had already spoken to him! He tore the page out of his notebook and shoved it into his pocket with the disappearing ink. His parents were sitting together on the bottom stair. They looked over their shoulders when they heard him coming down. His mother had eye makeup streaked on her cheeks. It was clear she’d been crying.
“Mom!” he called out, hurrying toward them. “What’s wrong?”
She pulled him into another hug. “I’m just so proud of you. You came up with all these clever ideas on your own? They’re brilliant. Every one.”
Miles doubted every one was brilliant, but he didn’t mind hearing it.
She pulled back and held his arms and looked him in the face. “Forget anything I ever said about your time at the candy factory not being well spent. Look what’s come out of it.” She dabbed the corner of one eye with her sleeve, then waved the list in the air.
His dad spoke up. “Well, three new friends and one award-winning candy bar, too.”
She handed Miles the notebook. “Go show ’em what you’ve got, sweetie. They’ll love them.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Miles said, tossing the notebook into his backpack. “I’ll let you know. By the way, do we have any honey?”
CHAPTER FOUR
Wow,” Miles said as their car wound through downtown Spring Haven. “I’ve never seen the streets so crowded before. Who are all these people?”
“I don’t know,” his dad replied. “Maybe a convention’s in town. Maybe they’re office supplies salespeople. Or exotic-flower dealers.”
“Or tightrope walkers in the circus!” Miles suggested.
“Yes, definitely carny folk,” his dad agreed with a wink.
“So did you have a favorite slogan?” Miles asked.
“I particularly liked Candy for your taste buds AND your earbuds! Also, Harmonicandy: A symphony of sweetness.”
Miles beamed. “Those were good, weren’t they?”
“Like your mom said, you’re a very talented writer. You could have a career in it one day if you wanted to.”
For a brief second Miles pictured himself grown up, scribbling away in a notebook, telling stories or writing about the world. But he also could envision maps spread out all around him and tacked up on the walls. How could he tell his dad he missed the time he’d spent creating his own version of the afterlife? He couldn’t. It would sound crazy.
“You miss it, don’t you?” his dad asked.
Miles’s pulse quickened. “Miss what?” he asked cautiously.
“The afterlife,” his dad replied, looking straight ahead. “You spent a year designing a place, visiting it in your mind, and now you’re supposed to put it aside like it never happened.”
Miles’s eyes grew big. “It’s like you read my mind!”
His dad smiled. “I just know you.”
Miles took a deep breath. “Part of why it’s hard to let it go is that my grandparents—your parents, I mean—are there. The girl and I used to play in their garden. They built a swing set for the two of us in their yard even though there are swing sets all over the afterlife.”
His dad was quiet for a minute. “I know,” he finally said. “I mean, I saw that on the map. I especially liked how you made their house on a hill, overlooking a river. Very different from the flat little town I grew up in. Your grandmother would have loved a view of water.”
Just ask him, Miles thought. Ask him now. But he couldn’t. He could see his dad’s lower lip begin to quiver again.
The car pulled through the factory gates, and Miles was surprised by the full parking lot. All the people they’d seen milling about in town must have come for the Kickoff tomorrow! Judging by all the cars here, many had come today, too. His dad pulled up to the front door, and Miles agreed to call his mom when he needed to be picked up.
He closed the door and waved, but his dad didn’t pull away. Miles walked slowly to the porch, glancing over his shoulder. His dad simply stared straight ahead, his hands still on the steering wheel. Finally, after another minute, the car began to move slowly down the circular driveway. Or did it just seem slow in comparison to how his mom exited driveways? No, it was definitely slow. Like, turtle slow.
A bit unnerved, he decided to wait before going inside until he felt able to shake off the uneasy feeling and bring his focus back to the Harmonicandy slogan. The meeting wouldn’t start for a little while anyway.
Now that Arthur had planted the idea in Miles’s head of one day hiding his own geocache for others to find, he couldn’t help approaching the factory with that in mind. The grounds weren’t public property, though, so he wouldn’t be able to actually hide one there unless he got the Candymaker’s permission.
His eyes landed on the large rosebushes to the right of the porch. They were dense enough that he could tie a bit of string to the end of a small container and hang it from a back branch so it wouldn’t be visible to people visiting the factory. Although on closer inspection, he wouldn’t want to stick his arm in between the branches and risk getting scratched by a thorn or two… or twelve.
The large old-fashioned milk can on the porch looked inviting. He could glue a magnet onto a cache and stick the whole thing on the back of the can. Although once again, as he got close enough to the can, he realized it wouldn’t work. He rapped his knuckles on the flat top and could tell by the resulting sound that the milk can was made of tin, with maybe a little copper mixed in. It would need to have iron in it for a magnet to stick. Finding a good hiding spot was harder than it seemed!
He felt better, but he still wasn’t ready to go inside. He couldn’t stop thinking about the things his dad had said—and hadn’t said—about his grandparents. Miles took a deep breath. He knew what he needed to do. He took off his backpack and held it in front of him, then sat down gently on top of the milk can. It was solid and had no trouble holding his weight. He reached into his backpack, grabbed his hardcover copy of How to Make Your Own Alphabet (he had it in paperback, too), and opened it up to the middle.
Only instead of seeing instructions on how to use vowels when creating your alphabet, he found himself looking at the blank screen of the vid com Daisy had given each of them. It was the next generation of her old video communicator and apparently could do all these superneat spy tricks that she had forbidden any of them to try out. Last week he had very carefully sliced out the pages of the book and attached the device to the inside covers with straps and staples. It wasn’t pretty, but it looked convincing. Ever since Daisy had revealed that she hid hers inside that romance book she was always pretending to read, Miles had wished he had something like that. And now he did!
He turned on the vid com and began punching in the series of numbers and letters Daisy had given him. This would allow Miles to reach her wherever she was. Unlike a mobile phone or tablet, Daisy’s device didn’t use radio waves to connect, or need cell towers to bounce a signal from place to place, or rely on the Internet, with its satellite links and tangle of copper and fiber optic cables. Hers also never ran out of power. He had been the only one to ask her for the details when she handed them out before her first post-contest mission. She refused to give specifics on how it did work, though, claiming that was on a need-to-know basis only. Miles respected that. A spy had to keep her secrets.
Since the contest four months ago, he had seen Daisy only a few times, when she’d been between jobs. She’d sent him postcards from around the world (which he was pretty sure she had someone else mail), but they hadn’t spoken for three weeks. He needed someone to talk to right now, and as great a friend as Logan was, this required someone with more lif
e experience.
As soon as he hit the last number, the screen flashed on. “What is the nature of your emergency?” Daisy chirped. He could hear her clearly, but the screen remained dark. He quickly held the fake book up to his face so it would look to any passersby like he was reading. He’d learned that trick from Daisy, too.
“Um, Daisy? Are you there? I can’t see you.”
“Oh, hi, Miles,” Daisy’s voice said, brightening up even more. “I thought you were Philip.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said, tilting the screen in different directions in the hope of getting Daisy’s face to appear.
“Trust me, you’re not,” she said. “In fact, I have something cool to tell you about a code we found that—”
Her words were drowned out by the loud screech of tires in the background. At first he thought it was on Daisy’s end, but the smell of exhaust made him peek over the top of the fake book. He could just see the rear of a black car zoom out of the factory’s long, circular driveway. Guess the driver was in a big hurry. He turned his attention back to his book. As curious as he was about what she was saying, he knew he had to talk fast. “I know you said only to call if I really needed something, and I really need your advice. I can’t see you, though.”
“Sorry about that,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “My location isn’t secure right now. These devices are equipped with the ability to read lips. We’ll need to put them on silent mode so that when I mouth the words, they will show up on your screen, and vice versa. Little red button, lower left corner.”
Miles nodded and pushed the button. “I won’t take long,” he mouthed, hoping the words were appearing on her screen, since he couldn’t see them on his.
A few seconds later, text from Daisy began to appear across the top of his screen: You won’t bake frogs? I would hope not! You have to mouth the words a little slower than normal talking, and it will pick it up better. I mean, unless you actually meant to discuss frogs.