by Wendy Mass
“I liked the egg toss best,” Daisy said a bit breathlessly as she rejoined the group. She must have been running—an activity highly frowned upon in the factory because of the likelihood of bumping into someone carrying trays filled with freshly made candy. Not that that ever stopped Logan.
“Finally,” Philip grumbled, glancing at his watch. “Can we get on with the tour now?”
“Sorry,” Daisy said, addressing her apology to Max, not Philip. “I got lost, and when I stopped at the Some More S’mores Room to ask how to get back here, well, it was hard to leave that place. All that silky, warm chocolate and those buckets of gooey marshmallows and those freshly baked graham crackers…” her voice trailed off, the longing evident.
“You should try one straight out of the oven,” Logan said earnestly.
“You’ll soon get your chance,” Max said. “We’ll be sampling everything today as part of your training.”
Daisy and Miles cheered. Philip twisted his watch back and forth anxiously. Logan wondered if that boy ever relaxed for even a minute.
Max clapped his hands and said, “Now let’s get to work, people!”
They all lined up along the window and watched the chocolate-making process unfold. Logan had seen it every day of his life (except Sundays, when the machines were cleaned out) but never tired of it. The Cocoa Room was the domain of Lenny and Steve, brothers who had been at the factory for ten years. They had grown up on a real cocoa plantation and loved chocolate so much they were always the first people in the doors in the morning and the last to leave.
Lenny tied on his apron (which would stay white for about three seconds) and waved at them. They all waved back except for Philip, who apparently couldn’t be bothered. Lenny then grabbed a hatchet from a hook on the wall and began to break open the large yellow pods, spilling gooey white beans on the counter. Steve gathered the beans in his gloved hands, rinsed them off in a big metal sink, and tossed them into a giant revolving cylinder. The waves of heat rising from the beans as they roasted mesmerized all of them. Max had to snap his fingers in front of their faces to regain their attention. He led them to the other end of the window to watch the hulling machine crack the beans in half.
“Cool!” Miles said as tiny bean nibs popped out of the shells.
Logan wondered what it must feel like to be seeing this for the first time. He tried to pretend he’d never seen the machine that was now compressing the nibs (along with milk from Bessie and sugar from the factory’s sugarcane crop) into a gooey cocoa butter. Or the one that ground up the rest of the bean into a fine brown powder. Alas, he couldn’t do it.
“This is my favorite part,” he whispered to Miles.
They watched as the cocoa butter was blended with the cocoa powder to make a thick paste. Then, for the final touch, Steve pulled out a square tin from the cabinet above him, peered inside, then sprinkled a pinch into the mixture. The result? Nothing less than the best-tasting chocolate in the world. At least Logan thought it was the best, and he’d tasted a LOT of chocolate in his lifetime.
“What’s in that tin?” Daisy asked, pointing to the last ingredient the brothers had used.
Max smiled. “Ah, my dear. You have stumbled upon one of the Candymaker’s few trade secrets.”
She tilted her head. “What’s a trade secret?”
Philip rolled his eyes again. Logan wondered if the boy needed to see a doctor about that. Maybe his eyeballs were loose or something.
“A trade secret,” Philip explained, tucking his pen behind his ear, “is something that a businessman does not reveal. If everyone knew about it, they’d be able to duplicate his product.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Max said. “That’s how we protect our recipe.”
Daisy glanced back at the cabinet where the tin was now tucked away again. She turned to Logan. “You must know all these secrets, living here and all.”
“You’d think so,” he replied, pretending to glare at Max. He’d been asking about that secret ingredient since he learned how to talk, but Max steadfastly refused to answer. It was the one ingredient in all of their products that Logan couldn’t identify by taste. He turned back to Daisy. “Believe it or not, I don’t know either.”
“Dad’s afraid you’ll sell it to a competitor, eh?” She gave him a playful nudge.
Logan grinned. “That must be it.” Truthfully, though, the unwritten code of honor among candymakers would never allow that to happen.
Max patted his shoulder. “All will be revealed the day you officially come on board, my boy. That’s the tradition.”
Logan swallowed hard. Everyone took for granted that he could follow in his father’s sizable footsteps. He forced a smile and took some deep breaths. He wished he could get outside for a few minutes. His mind always felt clearer under the sky. He took one last peek through the glass ceiling before Max led them deeper into the factory. He only had time to look for one cloud, one shape.
A monkey riding a bike, he thought. While eating a grape Blast-o-Bit. He instantly felt better.
But not for long.
CHAPTER THREE
Hi, everyone! Come in, come in!” Fran, the superenergetic head taffy maker, welcomed them to their next stop on the tour. Her muscles rippled as she motioned them inside the Taffy Room. Fran could probably have won an arm-wrestling contest with any of the men in the factory, except maybe Avery in the Tropical Room. Climbing trees all day made you even stronger than stretching taffy.
Daisy’s and Miles’s eyes widened as they took it all in. Even Philip couldn’t stop looking around. The Taffy Room held the unofficial title of Most Colorful Place in the Factory; only the Cotton Candy Room came close. Rows of liquid-filled jugs lined the walls, representing every color of the rainbow and every color that should be in the rainbow but isn’t. Each flavor had been lovingly created from fruits and vegetables grown right on the factory grounds.
“Look around, children,” Fran said, spreading her arms wide. “You can see taffy in every stage of creation. Those kettles over there? Cane sugar and butterfat, boiling at exactly 238 degrees. That table to your right is called a cooling table. That’s where the taffy hardens. Water circulates underneath to keep the surface at the correct temperature. How cool is that? Pun intended!”
They all agreed it was very cool.
They watched assistant taffy makers roll a huge blob of yellow taffy back and forth between them until it took on a thick snakelike shape. It even curled and twisted like a real snake. Next to them a machine sliced purple taffy into perfect squares, and another wrapped the squares in small pieces of wax paper faster than you could blink. Bags of sugar and large containers of corn syrup, cornstarch, and butter passed from worker to worker.
“My best friend, Magpie, would love this place,” Daisy said, whistling appreciatively.
“Who would like to pull some taffy?” Fran asked, slinging the roll of yellow taffy—now as thick as Logan’s leg and twice as long—onto a metal hook on the wall. She made it look easy, but the last time Logan tried to lift a roll onto the hook by himself, he’d sunk down to his knees under the weight. Pretty embarrassing.
“I’ll help!” Daisy offered. She laid her pocketbook on the floor and hurried forward. Fran handed her a pair of rubber gloves and then instructed her to hold on to each end of the taffy roll, sling the middle over the hook, then mush the two ends together. Daisy did it with ease. Fran showed her how to pull the taffy until it was taut, then to sling it back over the hook until it softened up.
“This will put air into the taffy to give it a lighter texture,” Max explained as they watched Daisy, who didn’t seem to be struggling under the weight of the taffy at all. “And the friction helps deepen the flavor.”
Daisy kept pulling and slinging as if she could do it all day. Logan put his hand on his upper arm and squeezed. Not mushy exactly, but not rock-hard either. He made a mental note to start doing push-ups.
Max must have been thinking the same thing (abou
t Daisy, not the push-ups) because he said, “You’re stronger than you look, young lady. That’s backbreaking work!”
Daisy rested her arms for a second, the taffy dangling precariously close to the floor, and said, “It is pretty heavy. Maybe someone else should take over?”
Fran quickly stepped up. “Great start, young lady. You may have a career in taffy pulling in your future.”
For a second Daisy beamed, then with a little shrug said, “Thanks. It was fun.” As she returned to the group, she picked off tiny scraps of taffy that had stuck to her dress. Logan didn’t know why she bothered. It was the exact same yellow.
Max handed them each a freshly wrapped piece of still-warm purple taffy. Miles and Daisy unwrapped theirs eagerly and tossed the mushy squares into their mouths. Logan was about to instruct them on how you can get more taste out of something if you place it on just the right part of your tongue, but he never got the chance. The unthinkable was unfolding right in front of his eyes. He saw, as if in slow motion, Philip tossing his unopened piece of taffy back to Max.
“No thanks,” he told the world-famous confectionary scientist. “I don’t like candy. It rots your teeth.”
All voices and chewing and rolling and pulling came to a halt. Only the whirring and slicing and wrapping of the automatic machines still echoed through the room. Every face turned to gape at the boy in the suit, who busily clicked the latches open and shut on his man-sized briefcase.
Logan’s mind simply could not process what had just happened. Never, not even once, had he seen someone turn down candy fresh off the line. And to be so rude about it, too. Rudeness did not have a place at Life Is Sweet. Who could be rude when the very air molecules pulsed with sugar?
No one spoke. Taffy hung loosely on the hooks, slowly congealing.
“In the afterlife,” Miles said, breaking the silence, “no one gets cavities.”
His comment hung in the air. The boy certainly knew a lot about the afterlife.
Daisy stepped forward until she was only a few inches from Philip’s face. He took a step backward, sending a rack of wooden mixing spoons toppling to the floor. “Why would you want to create the world’s best new candy,” she demanded, “if you don’t even eat candy?”
Philip shrugged, grabbed his briefcase, and headed toward the door. “A contest is a contest. You never want to get too close to your subject, anyway. You’d all be wise to follow that advice. It might even give you a chance at winning something one day.”
The door swung closed behind him. A few seconds later, activity resumed, as if a switch had been turned on again.
“Wow,” Fran said, staring after him. “Where’d ya dig up that kid?”
Max shook his head. “I’m not sure that is a kid!”
“More for the rest of us,” Daisy said with a shrug, grabbing two more pieces of taffy from the wrapping machine.
“That’s the spirit,” Max replied. Resting his hand on Logan’s shoulder, he asked, “You all right, son?”
Philip’s words were still swimming around Logan’s head, but another thought began to push through. Did he want to win just to win? His top priority, of course, was to create something that would bring people joy. But his motives weren’t entirely unselfish either. Maybe that made him no better than Philip. A depressing thought.
When Logan didn’t answer right away, Miles grabbed him by the arm and tugged. “Logan!” he cried. “Are you all right?”
“Um, Miles?” Daisy said. “I think you’re going to pull his arm out of the socket.”
Miles’s anxious expression (and vigorous shaking) snapped Logan out of his trance. “I’m fine, sorry. Let’s just keep going on the tour, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Max declared enthusiastically. “Onward and upward, young candymakers-in-training! We’re off to the Cotton Candy Room!” With a quick goodbye and muttered apologies to Fran and the other taffy makers, they hurried from the room. Philip was waiting for them in the hall, seemingly oblivious to the drama he had just caused.
As they headed toward the next wing, Miles kept up a stream of steady questions. How did the fruits and vegetables turn into food coloring? Did Fran make taffy all night, too? Why didn’t everyone at the factory weigh five hundred pounds? Max answered cheerfully (compressed and mixed with water; all the machines are turned off at five; exercise and restraint), but the others remained quiet with their thoughts.
As soon as they turned the corner, the unmistakable smell of spun sugar filled the air. Logan inhaled deeply. He saw the others do the same, even Philip. Filing inside, they watched the granules of colored sugar dance in the air inside huge wind-tunnel machines. Slowly the streams of sugar transformed themselves into massive cottony balls of fluff.
“It’s like magic,” Miles breathed.
Logan nodded in agreement. He’d always thought so, too.
After they had sampled each of the five flavors being created that morning—chocolate, pineapple, blueberry, lemon-lime, and carrot (which tasted better than it sounded)—the tour continued. They visited the Icy Mint Blob Room, the Oozing Crunchorama Room, and the Leapin’ Lollies Room (which shared space with the Blast-o-Bits and the High-Jumping Jelly Beans). Max nearly had to drag Miles out of the Gummy Dinosaurs Room, and Daisy from Some More S’mores.
In each room Philip would ignore the offer of candy and jot something down in his book before shutting it tight.
After a quick stop at the Neon Yellow Lightning Chews Room (currently not operating because of an overproduction the day before), Miles asked Max why the factory didn’t offer regular tours to the public. “I bet it would be a good way to make money,” he said. “Not, I mean, that you need more money or anything. I mean, I’m sure you guys do great.” Miles reddened. “Er… you know what I mean.”
Max laughed. “I do know what you mean. For years we did offer tours during the annual picnic. One day a plastic toy truck wound up in a vat of chocolate, and we had to dismantle the whole piping system to retrieve it.” He pointed up at the ceiling, where thick white pipes sent the molten chocolate, caramel, and cream to different parts of the factory throughout the day. “After that, we had to stop giving tours. Things have been so busy around here that we never started them back up again.”
“That’s too bad,” Daisy said. “I bet a lot of people would want to visit.”
Logan thought so, too, but whenever he brought it up to his parents, they changed the subject. Just like with the annual picnic.
“In the afterlife,” Miles said, “all the candy factories are open to the public and you can eat as much as—”
Philip (who clearly hated it when the conversation turned to the afterlife) interrupted Miles with a sharp cough. The cough turned into a wheeze, which became a really bad case of the hiccups. His whole face turned as red as if he’d just sampled a Fireball Supernova. It would be funny if he didn’t look so uncomfortable.
Max ducked back into the Lightning Chews Room and came out with a cup of water. “Drink,” he commanded.
Philip didn’t hesitate. He gulped down the whole thing and handed it back.
“Better?” Max asked.
Philip gave a single nod. The hiccups seemed to have stopped. His face soon faded to the less extreme color of a cherry-flavored High-Jumping Jelly Bean.
“Serves you right,” Daisy whispered under her breath.
Philip ignored her.
“Let’s keep going,” Max said, ushering them all down the hall.
Logan turned his attention away from Philip, anxious to move along to the next stop. He couldn’t wait for the others to see this one. They passed the cafeteria (where delicious smells were already starting to fill the hall) and the offices where the “suits” worked. The suits were the people in the marketing, advertising, and sales departments. They didn’t really wear suits, but they didn’t wear the white shirt/tan pants combination either. “Business casual,” they called it, which meant nice clothes, basically. Adults had strange names for things.
The factory’s library was right across the hall from the offices. Seeing it reminded Logan that he had a report due on Plato, the ancient philosopher, for Mrs. Gepheart. He gave the room a wide berth as they passed. Miles, however, stopped so abruptly that the others walked right into him.
Philip scowled.
Miles stood, transfixed, in front of the library’s glass walls. “You have a library here?” he asked, his voice high, his eyes so round they looked like an owl’s.
Before anyone could confirm that, yes, the rows and rows of books, the oak-paneled walls, desks, and comfortable chairs did indicate the presence of a library, Miles began to drift toward the door as though pulled by some invisible force. His feet barely touched the ground. Max laughed and reached out his arm to halt him. “You’ll have plenty of time to explore the library after lunch. We have a lot of ground still to cover.”
But Miles didn’t tear his eyes away. “Can’t I just go in for a few minutes? I’ll meet you at the next place, I promise.”
Max hesitated, then said, “Well, I guess that’s all right. Far be it from me to keep anyone from a library.” He scribbled down the directions, and Miles shoved the paper into his pocket without a glance.
Logan felt a pang of sadness that he wouldn’t get to show Miles the Tropical Room. He certainly couldn’t imagine feeling drawn to a library the way Miles seemed to be. The Cotton Candy Room, yes, but a library? No.
As the group got farther away from the central part of the factory, the temperature became progressively warmer. As used to it as he was, Logan found himself flapping the bottom of his shirt in a futile attempt to generate a breeze. Daisy tugged at the collar of her sundress. Philip, who was wearing the most clothes by far, pretended not to be bothered by it. But the beads of sweat on his forehead gave him away.
Though tempted to explain the rise in temperature, Logan didn’t want to give away the surprise. And it was an excellent surprise. Max didn’t explain either. A shared glance between them confirmed that he had no plans to.
By the time they reached the enormous glass door at the very end of the longest hallway, they were all full-on sweating. Even Philip openly mopped his brow. The humidity inside the room fogged up the door, fully hiding the treasures within.