The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase

by Wendy Mass

  “I’ll take my chances,” the nurse said, grabbing a comb and a magnifying glass.

  Daisy began to fling her hair back and forth so the nurse couldn’t get a good look. The woman took a step back, and Daisy’s hopes rose. Maybe Nurse Becky would actually let her go. But then the nurse’s face squished up and she sneezed. And sneezed. And sneezed again as the black pepper Daisy had shaken onto her scalp floated down around them.

  Daisy felt her own nose begin to tingle. Don’t sneeze, don’t sneeze, she told herself. Years of having to remain absolutely quiet on various secret missions had trained her well. She knew the steps. With her back still turned to the sneezing nurse, she pinched her nostrils, tugged on her nose, and pressed her tongue against her top teeth. With her free hand, she wiggled her earlobe.

  In between sneezes, the no-longer-even-pretending-to-be-nice nurse told Daisy that Aunt Jess would find her later to “discuss the situation.”

  Daisy had no choice but to rejoin her group, now having swim lessons down at the lake. She sat on the wooden dock, hugging her knees in frustration. In ten minutes flat she could swim under the entire lake, surface on the other side, have AJ meet her there, and never look back. It was extremely tempting, but she knew AJ was right. It was time to move on to plan B—getting kicked out. She had to tell AJ she needed a little more time.

  Even though her vid com was securely hidden inside the binding of a book (not the romance book she’d used at the factory; she’d gotten enough grief for that one from the boys), she still never risked carrying it around with her during the day. AJ had come up with a much safer way for them to communicate. She ran up to the hill behind the tennis courts and flashed her laser pointer onto the satellite dish. In Morse code she spelled out Need more time. Have plan. The tilt of the dish reflected the signal all the way to the driver’s-side mirror of AJ’s RV.

  A few seconds later, AJ replied. Hurry.

  Thanks to a particularly nasty stomach bug that went around the mansion when she was ten, leaving the kids with no choice but to sit around watching old movies, Daisy knew the perfect prank that would be guaranteed to get her kicked out of camp. It had backfired on the characters in the movie, but they didn’t have her training.

  It only took ten minutes to gather the supplies she needed. She still had the rope from the dead drop. The art room provided the little feathers (normally used to decorate art projects), and she had seen where the kitchen staff stored the honey when she was there earlier for the pepper.

  The plan would have worked, too, if her vid com hadn’t gone off just as she was about to string up the bucket of honey. It beeped so loudly that, even though the device was buried in her duffel bag, the sound was nearly ear piercing. She must have switched the volume all the way up by mistake while packing it away. She was so startled that she let go of the pulley that held the bucket of honey over the rafters. The bucket flew down toward her, spilling the honey as it went, splattering all over the floor of the cabin and leaving her soaked.

  She’d already packed her duffel and slipped it under the bed so she could grab it at a moment’s notice. Now she lunged for it, landing right on the bag of feathers behind her. The bag burst open with a loud poof. Just enough feathers rose up in the air to stick to her cheeks and hair. She wanted to cry. But spies don’t cry. They think on their feet and they move forward, always forward.

  She knew the noise would attract visitors any second, so she slid the duffel out and fumbled for the zipper. When she grabbed the vid com and flipped open the cover, she knew before looking who was on the other end. Even without being in the room, the boy managed to mess up her plans. Again.

  With sticky fingers, she turned on the audio feed but made sure the camera was off. She would never live it down if he saw her like this. “You have thirty seconds,” she snapped. She was definitely taking his vid com away when she saw him again. “This’d better be good.”

  Philip blurted out his problem of the day while Daisy knelt and scrubbed at the floor. He sounded so worked up that she finally agreed to help him. It may not have been the best advice, but she was not in a particularly helpful mood. Her bunkmates would return soon and find this mess. She spent one more minute on the vid com following up on what she promised Philip she’d do for him, then switched the camera back on and called AJ. “I know I’m not supposed to risk using this during the day,” she blurted out before he could comment. “But plan B was a bust.”

  “I guessed that from your appearance,” he said.

  She figured she deserved that, so she didn’t argue. “I’m initiating plan C. You’ll have to show up and tell them I’m needed at home.”

  “Cousin Bo to the rescue. Over and out.”

  She sighed and tucked the book back in the duffel. That Cousin Bo thing wasn’t showing any signs of going away. At least he didn’t give her a hard time. A few months ago he would have.

  After a glance around at the mess she’d made of the bunk, she closed her eyes. She could have skipped plans A and B and gone straight to C from the beginning. Why had she thought she needed to prove something? To her grandmother? To herself?

  She needed to calm down. She crossed her legs and took four deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way her grandmother had taught her. Soon enough they’d be sitting together in the Zen garden, and she hoped they’d be laughing about all this.

  Feeling a little bit better, she carefully tipped out some of the dissolving solution from her fake shampoo bottle, and the sticky honey sizzled and disappeared, taking a bit of the wooden flooring with it. Too bad it would also peel off a layer of skin if she tried it on herself. Maybe, in hindsight, it hadn’t been such a good idea to store it in the shampoo bottle, even though it had been reinforced with fireproof plastic. She debated taking a shower, but AJ always got places faster than she thought possible. He was probably already in the camp director’s office.

  She pulled the hood of her camp sweatshirt over her head to cover as much of her face as possible. It was an odd look in the heat of the day, but better than having to explain why Ava Simon was covered in honey and feathers.

  She slung her duffel bag over her shoulder and shoved the bucket and the feathers as far under the bunk bed as they would go. Hopefully they wouldn’t be discovered until the cleaning crew came at the end of the summer. Otherwise her fellow bunkmates would have fun trying to guess their purpose. She could wait in the bunk until AJ arrived or until she was called into Aunt Jess’s office, but she didn’t have it in her to be Ava Simon for even one more minute.

  Daisy took one last look at the place she’d called home for two weeks and opened the door to peek outside. One of the groups must have been toasting marshmallows, because a slightly sweet, slightly burned smell hung in the air. Camp Tumbleweed clearly didn’t get the message that campfires should be a nighttime thing. She inhaled deeply. It reminded her of the factory, and of Henry in particular. After the contest he had pulled her aside and thanked her for everything she’d done for the boys and for the factory. No one had ever thanked her after a job before, but of course no one had ever known she was a spy before. Still, it had meant a lot to her. Her throat tightened, and she felt a little pang in her chest. No need to have pretended earlier—she really was homesick!

  Campers were now approaching from all sides, streaming toward the dining hall. She scooted out and ducked behind various trees until she had a clear shot down the nature trail to the mound with the satellite dish. Besides being a great place to bounce signals off, it was the only place in camp where she could hide while still being able to see what was going on.

  Using her duffel as a pillow, she lay down in the shadow of the dish, waiting for AJ’s signal to flash. She hoped it would come soon or she just might fall asleep. When she didn’t have to sleep with one eye open, Daisy believed in getting a good, solid nine hours. The ride home would take a day or two, and then bed. Her own bed. Ah, how nice it would be to slip into her supersoft Egyptian cotton sheet
s, sink into the mattress that molded to her body, and hug the pillow that cradled her head so gently it felt like floating on a cloud.

  Her vid com screamed again, and her peaceful daydream burst. Hadn’t she turned the volume down? She really had to focus. She grabbed for it, being sure to keep the camera turned off on her end. She knew she should be annoyed that Philip was calling again, but she was in too good a mood. Even the fact that flies had begun circling her head couldn’t bother her. As long as they didn’t actually stick to the honey. That would take things to a whole new level.

  “What is the nature of your emergency?” she joked.

  But it turned out to be Miles’s face smiling back at her, not Philip’s. She sat up. She started to tell him about the scytale and the stick, but a loud noise on his end cut her off. It was just as well, because two counselors had just parked themselves on the nature trail not twenty feet behind her and were now arguing over who’d flirted with whom during the morning meeting. From what Daisy gathered, the guy had flirted with the drama counselor, who was also the girl’s best friend. Not cool, dude. But what did she know about the world of romance? Blissfully, nothing. (Except the occasional stories the older girls in the mansion whispered to each other late at night. They always stopped when she appeared, though, probably worried she’d go and tell her grandmother, who had a strict no-dating rule. Daisy wouldn’t tell, of course, but being the boss’s granddaughter was a burden she was well used to.)

  She told Miles how to switch his vid com to silent mode, and she pressed the button on her own. It was a good thing she could read lips, since every time Miles tried to say something, it came out garbled on her screen. When she pointed it out, he giggled and said, Sorry! Will tie farther. Here’s the bing, so you know how bee and my parents are cheese?

  Daisy would have laughed at how his words were translated, but she quickly realized the serious nature of his call when he started talking about his dad. She screened out the lovers’ squabble taking place between the counselors and focused on how to help Miles. She felt a little weird giving advice on family matters seeing as her own family situation was so unusual, but it seemed to be helping. She’d just thanked him for his great suggestion on how to break her out and sent the photo when AJ appeared at her side, causing her to yelp. How did he do that?

  He tipped his cowboy hat at her (yes, he was wearing a cowboy hat) and said, “Howdy, ma’am. Bo Dinkleman here to rescue you.”

  “One minute,” she whispered, pointing to her screen.

  AJ shooed the flies away while she finished up with Miles. After they hung up—or rather, after he tossed his book in the air and it shut off automatically—AJ grinned at her. “You have a soft spot for Miles. You knew we already had a plan to get you out of here, and yet you let him think he came up with it.”

  She tucked the book away and stood. “That kid built a whole world for me in the afterlife. Building up his confidence is the least I can do. So you sprang me?”

  “Yup. Wasn’t as hard as I’d expected.”

  She grinned. “I may have worn them down.”

  AJ opened his mouth to reply but sneezed twice instead. “I must be allergic to something.”

  “Could be the black pepper I sprinkled in my hair,” Daisy suggested.

  “Fake lice?” he asked, peering at her head.

  “Yup. I even added some salt. You know, for the eggs.”

  He nodded. “Very thorough.”

  “Didn’t work, though.” They made their way down the mound, back toward the nature trail. Daisy looked around. “What happened to Romeo and Juliet? Last I heard, the guy was declaring his undying love.”

  AJ shrugged. “The girl must have spotted me and dumped the poor guy. Being this handsome ain’t easy.” Daisy tried to kick him, but he was too fast for her.

  He grabbed her duffel from her shoulder and hoisted it onto his own. She almost complained—after all, she could carry ten of those and not break a sweat. But he was being nice, and that was rare enough.

  “C’mon, Oopsa,” he said. “Let’s go see what’s waiting for us inside that birdhouse.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Daisy sat on the edge of the surprisingly soft RV bed and ran a comb through her wet hair. She was not completely convinced that all the gooey honey and itchy salt and pepper had been rinsed out. She could have stayed in that shower for hours, but AJ had warned her the RV stored only enough hot water for ten minutes. Still, she felt much cleaner than at any time since her life as a camper had begun.

  Plus the honey made her hair feel really soft.

  AJ had left out a pair of his own sweatpants and a T-shirt for her so she wouldn’t have to put on any of her grimy camp clothes again. His clothes were too big, but they were soft and cozy and smelled like the fabric softener Mrs. Peterson used on their laundry back at the mansion.

  She allowed herself to flop backward, intending to rest for only a minute or two. But the plush mattress and the feather pillow proved impossible to resist, and her almost total lack of sleep the night before couldn’t be ignored. Her eyelids closed, and she didn’t fight it.

  It felt like only five minutes had passed when AJ’s voice over the intercom woke her, but a quick glance at the position of the sun outside her window told her she’d been asleep a few hours. It must be nearly dinnertime, and from what she could tell by the changing countryside, they had covered a lot of ground already.

  AJ’s voice came through the speaker again. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. Come out after you dry the drool off your chin.”

  Her eyes darted to the walls, then the ceiling. Was there a camera in the bedroom? Then she wiped at her chin. No drool. “Very funny,” she grumbled. But she got up and grabbed her backpack from where she’d stashed it in the closet. It took her a moment to find it among the shelves full of hats, glasses, wigs, fake beards, foam, shoes, dresses, suits, and everything in between. If they ever needed a snap cover (or what a non-spy would call a last-minute disguise), they would have plenty to choose from.

  The closet didn’t look large enough to hold as much as it did. But the whole RV was like that. It was much bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. When the vehicle was parked, a simple press of a button pushed out both side walls a good five feet, expanding the floor to twice its current width. AJ didn’t need anything so fancy for their straightforward dead-drop mission, but he’d convinced the guys in Research and Development that someone should take it for a test run before it was called into duty for a really big job. AJ could be very persuasive. She wasn’t surprised that they’d given it to him.

  She reached into the closet for an old stovepipe hat, the kind Abraham Lincoln was always pictured wearing. She plopped it on her head and headed out.

  To anyone driving by, the RV looked like an ordinary motorhome a family would take camping. But there was nothing ordinary about it. The ride was so smooth that even when zooming down the highway, they barely felt like they were moving at all. It had been fully outfitted with everything a spy could possibly need, as well as many things Daisy hoped they’d never need—like the tubes that could pump oil or smoke out behind them in case they were being chased, and the cabinet lined with five inches of steel in case they needed to defuse a suspicious package. She hesitated a moment, wondering if they should have put the birdhouse in the cabinet for safekeeping. Maybe the whole dead drop had been a trick to foil their plans by blowing them up! Well, too late now.

  The bedroom was all the way in the rear, so she needed to walk the length of the vehicle to reach AJ. She passed through the kitchen, with its gleaming, full-sized appliances and six-person booth for eating, followed by a small washer and dryer (which now held her honey-soaked clothes, and which she doubted AJ had used once in the whole two weeks), and then the bookshelves, where half of the books were real and the other half hid secret compartments of various sizes.

  The entertainment area, with a huge TV screen and gaming consoles and a long, comfy couch, came next, then a cli
mbing wall, which seemed like a strange thing to have, since the ceiling was only a few feet above their heads. Drawers and cabinets filled the rest of the empty space on the walls, probably filled with boring things like maps and spare parts and repair manuals. In the front, a wide, comfortable-looking seat sat next to the driver’s seat, with another row of two seats behind them.

  Other than the bedroom, she didn’t see anywhere to sleep, which didn’t seem very practical for long stakeouts with more than one person. Daisy swung her backpack onto the chair behind AJ and plopped down in the passenger seat. “Dibs on the bedroom tonight,” she said. “You can have the couch.”

  Without glancing away from the highway, AJ said, “There’s a rest stop coming up in a mile. I’ll pull in there, and we can open the box. We need to figure out the next part of the mission.”

  She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Aren’t we going home first?”

  He nodded. “Only for a day or two. I need to return this beast to R and D, and I’m sure your grandmother will want to see you. But then it’s back on the road.” He patted the steering wheel lovingly. “I’ll miss you, my cool little tricked-out RV.”

  “Hardly little,” she murmured as the RV made a wide turn into the rest stop. AJ pulled up alongside a big rig and turned off the engine.

  He stood up and stretched. “Okay, hand it over,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Hand what over?” she replied.

  “The birdhouse. I know you took it and hid it before your shower.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I’ve known you for thirteen years. It’s in your pack, isn’t it?”

  Daisy glanced over at her backpack, which indeed hid the birdhouse—and not very well, since the square edges clearly bulged out. She’d known AJ wouldn’t wait much longer to open it, and after all the trouble they’d gone to in order to get it, she hadn’t wanted to miss out on the best part.