by Wendy Mass
“Here we are,” Max announced, turning his back to the doors. “The jewel in the crown of the Life Is Sweet candy factory. Our pride and joy, the reason our candy tastes like no other—the Tropical Room!” He whirled around and tugged at the door handle, then sighed in defeat. Logan giggled. No one but Avery (and maybe Fran) was strong enough to open the heavy, pressure-sealed door without assistance. Still, he had to hand it to Max for trying.
Max pretended to glare at Logan, then pushed the red button on the side of the door, which then slid open easily. The humid air rushed out to greet them, a sensation Logan once compared to being hit in the face with a hot, wet washcloth—but in a good way.
They filed in, moving a bit more slowly as a result of the thick air. “Ahoy there!” Avery called down from the top of the sapodilla tree, where he was extracting chicle to make gum. “Can someone pass up the funnel? I left it down by the bucket.”
“Sure, Avery,” Logan said, scrambling over the tree’s roots to find the metal funnel. For a second he was tempted to shinny up the tree and hand it to him, but climbing the trees was against the rules. This was one of the hardest rules in the whole factory for Logan to obey. Every day he watched the workers slice the bark in crisscrosses until the yellowy goo (which later would be boiled and purified and transformed into gum) slid down into the cloth bags waiting at the bottom. Once the cuts stopped dripping, they hardened, leaving inch-wide diagonal tunnels on the trunk that were perfect for a boy’s toes to grip on to.
Logan had to admit, though, that after all the effort the factory had made—going to a real jungle at the equator to get the trees, transporting them here, replanting them, and imitating their natural surroundings well enough to ensure their continued survival—climbing them for sport probably wasn’t the best idea. Under the sapodilla tree was his favorite place to be in the whole factory. When he hugged the tree’s narrow trunk (which, admittedly, he did a lot), he swore he could feel its heart beating.
Plus it smelled like caramel.
Without his realizing it, his arms had begun to embrace the tree. Common sense quickly warned him that hugging the tree with the other three watching wouldn’t be a good idea. He quickly disentangled himself and attached the funnel to the pulley system. He then tugged on the rope until the funnel started moving up among the branches.
“Thanks, mate!” Avery called down as he plucked the funnel from the pulley.
From his position below, all Logan could see of Avery’s head was the blue bandana he wore to keep the sweat out of his eyes. The glass roof curved so high above their heads that on sunny days like this, the trees looked as if they could disappear into the blue sky of a real jungle.
A few seconds later, Avery swung his strong legs around a branch and popped his head through the leaves. “Who are your new friends?”
Logan stepped aside as the others tentatively approached the tree. Neither Daisy nor Philip volunteered their names—they were too busy staring, open-jawed. Avery laughed. “First time in the Tropical Room, eh?”
Logan nodded, proud that the room would elicit such a response. “These are two of the other kids in the candy competition with me,” he explained. “Daisy and Philip. Miles will be along soon. Max is giving them a tour of the factory.”
With the help of the harness around his waist, Avery twisted around until he was hanging completely upside down. He extended his hand, speckled with yellow goo, and the two visitors took turns shaking it. Daisy blushed. Philip, however, took out another handkerchief (Logan couldn’t help wondering how many he had in there) and wiped both hands, front and back.
“Have fun, kids,” Avery said, adjusting his bandana. “Make some good candy. We could use it around here.” He punched Logan good-naturedly on the arm and pulled himself back up the tree.
After a few minutes of letting them watch the gooey liquid darken as it made its way down the trunk, Max continued the tour of the Tropical Room. Daisy lingered so long at the cinnamon tree, stroking its soft bark and smelling it, that Max had to threaten to continue on to the cocoa trees without her. She tore herself away with a final deep inhale.
Stepping carefully over the vanilla vines and around the tall stalks of sugarcane, they approached the section of the room where the cocoa trees grew, under an elaborate sprinkler system that rained water on the trees every few hours. It must have just stopped, because the leaves and the reddish purple pods were still dripping. The cocoa trees, shrouded in shade, grew so much shorter than the other trees in the room that the kids could easily reach the pods on the lower branches.
Logan was about to demonstrate this when he caught sight of Miles trying to untangle a vine from around his ankle. He ran over to help him.
Once Miles’s ankle was freed, Logan asked, “So what do you think?” He hoped that Miles loved the room as much as he did.
“S’ti elbidercni!” Miles replied.
“What did you say?” Logan asked, wondering if Miles had spoken in another language. He hoped not. No one at the factory had taught him foreign languages yet.
“I meant to say, it’s incredible!” Miles exclaimed, beaming.
“Glad you could join us, Miles,” Max said, patting the nearest trunk. “This is where it all begins, my friends. A chocolate bar is only as good as the bean it comes from. These trees are cultivated in the finest soil and given the perfect amounts of shade, sun, heat, and rain.” He glanced at his watch and then up at the roof. “In fact, it’s just about time to let in the sun.”
A minute later they heard a grinding sound high above, as the long metal slats that covered the roof began to slide into grooves on the wall. Sunlight slowly filtered in, streaming through the leaves and sending a shiver of pleasure down Logan’s spine. He saw Miles shiver, too, and it made him wish again that the factory hadn’t stopped giving tours. Everyone should get to experience stuff like this. He’d even offer to lead the tours so no one would have to leave their posts.
“C’mon,” he said to the others. “I want to show you something really neat.”
He was about to lead them over to the long rows of drying cocoa beans when Max’s walkie-talkie crackled to life. Max slipped it off his belt, held up one finger for them to wait, and stepped a few feet away.
“Do you come down here a lot?” Miles asked Logan as they waited.
Logan nodded. “I like to check on the trees first thing in the morning. The sapodilla’s my favorite.”
“Are you allowed to climb them?” Daisy asked, glancing back at her beloved cinnamon tree.
Logan shook his head.
“Don’t you want to?” she asked.
“All the time. But only Avery and his crew are allowed. Someday I hope to work on the sapodilla.”
Philip made a noise that sounded halfway between a guffaw and a sneeze.
“Are you okay?” Logan asked warily. He hoped another hiccupping fit wasn’t on the way.
“You’re the heir to an entire candy factory, and all you want to do is drain sap from a tree?”
Before Logan could think of a response, Max returned with a worried expression on his face. “That was Randall in Quality Control,” he explained. “He’s concerned about the nougat. He said it tastes ‘off.’ ”
“Off?” Miles repeated.
Randall had been the factory’s quality-control guy for twenty years, and Logan admired him greatly. Randall’s taste buds were even more finely tuned than his own. If Randall said something tasted off, then it was off.
Logan silently checked the list of ingredients in nougat—sugar, corn syrup, vanilla, butter, salt, egg whites, and honey. Could there be an egg-quality issue? Their chickens were fed the highest-quality food, and the farmworkers monitored the health of all the animals very closely. Any problems would have been discovered before now. Then Logan remembered something that Paulo in Beekeeping had said a few days ago.
“I bet it was the honey!” he exclaimed. “Paulo told me the queen of the hive didn’t have long to live. If she die
d, the worker bees would be really depressed. Maybe that’s what happened.”
Max nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that would do it! This calls for a bit of a detour on the tour. Detour on the tour… that’s funny.” He shook his head at his own joke. This time it was Logan’s turn to roll his eyes.
“That was pretty bad, boss,” Daisy said, grinning.
“Let me get this straight,” Philip said, pushing low branches and leaves out of his way as they headed back toward the entrance. “Bees get depressed over another bee dying, and the honey somehow tastes different? Is that what you’re saying?”
“The queen’s not just any bee,” Logan said. “She’s the glue that holds the whole hive together.”
“Bees don’t make glue,” Philip pointed out. “They make honey.”
“You know what I mean,” Logan said calmly, refusing to rise to Philip’s bait. “Without the queen, the worker bees don’t know what to do. It’s like they forget how to make the honey. And we need a lot of honey here. We use it in about half our recipes.”
“So what are you supposed to do about it?” Philip asked Max. “Isn’t your job in the lab?”
“Well, Philip,” Max said as he pushed the button to open the door, “at Life Is Sweet, we all like to help out when we can. Logan here has a way with bees, don’t you, son?”
“A way with bees?” Miles repeated as they walked down the hallway. The moisture rising from his face made him look oddly pale.
Logan tried hard not to blush. “I don’t know. They seem to listen to me or something.”
“Now don’t be modest,” Max chastised as they hurried down the long corridor that led to the Bee Room. “Logan has a way of charming bees. And girls.” Max winked.
Logan’s cheeks burned. He kept his gaze forward, hoping Daisy hadn’t heard Max’s comment. As if he’d ever charmed a girl in his life!
They didn’t say much as they traveled through more long corridors, up one staircase and down another. By the time they reached the Bee Room, Logan’s embarrassment had faded enough that he was able to hand Daisy the required protective gear—helmet, goggles, and long gloves—without avoiding her eyes.
“Thanks,” she said, plopping the helmet on her head and adjusting the goggles. “Do I look like an alien?”
“Sort of,” Logan admitted.
“I’ll just wait here,” Miles said when Logan tried to hand him his gear.
“No need for concern,” Max assured him. “The bees aren’t dangerous at all. The gear is really only for insurance purposes.”
Miles still hesitated.
“Unless you’re allergic?” Max asked.
Miles glumly shook his head and held out his arms for the gear.
“We’re eventually going to learn how to make candy, right?” Philip asked. “The contest is in two days!”
“Yes, of course,” Max promised. “But this is part of your training, too. To understand how candy works, you have to know how the ingredients come together. Without honey, for instance, you’d be very limited in what you could make for the contest.”
Philip muttered something about not needing honey for his recipe.
With a nod from Max, Logan pushed the door open slowly, making sure none of the bees flew close enough to escape. As usual, the buzzing reached his ears before he actually saw any bees. The large room—the second largest in the whole factory—had two solid walls and two made of giant screens. Sunlight streamed through the screens and threw thousands of tiny crisscross shadows onto the opposite walls. Daisy gasped when they reached the huge garden that filled the center of the room.
Usually the bees hungrily sucked the nectar from the hundreds of colorful flowers to take back to the hive. Today only a few stragglers buzzed around the plants, flying lazily, as if their hearts just weren’t in it. Miles stopped near the first bed of flowers and seemed intent on going no farther.
As Logan wound his way through the flowers and shrubs, the buzzing became progressively louder. He found Paulo kneeling on the floor, peering into the largest of the hives, where the queen resided. Totally engrossed, Paulo didn’t even look up. He just kept making little clucking sounds as the bees flew in and out erratically, not in their usual smooth rotations.
Logan liked Paulo a lot. He was completely dedicated to the well-being of the bees, and, at twenty-five, he was one of the younger workers. He always called Logan “dude.” After a minute passed, Logan cleared his throat. Paulo jumped up, clearly surprised to find he was no longer alone in the big room.
“Oh, hey, dude,” he said, sounding more subdued than Logan had ever heard him. Noticing Daisy and Philip, he added, “And, um, other dude and dudette, who I don’t know.” To Logan he said, “The queen has passed. The worker bees are in mourning. Will you join me in a moment of silence?”
Logan nodded and knelt beside his friend. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daisy yanking Philip down. Logan knew his world differed from that of most other people. Most kids did not mourn the death of a honeybee, queen or no. But for two years that queen bee had been the reason the other bees had made the honey that flavored the candy at Life Is Sweet, indirectly bringing pleasure to thousands of kids.
Max joined them, and they all bowed their heads as Paulo gave a short prayer of thanks for the queen’s years of service. The other bees seemed to silence their buzzing, too. No one spoke (or buzzed) for a full minute.
Then Miles screamed.
CHAPTER FOUR
I’m okay,” Miles insisted as the others rushed around him. He lay sprawled on the ground, halfway between a marigold bush and a batch of white clover. “I bent down to look at this butterfly, and then it landed on… I mean, then I sort of tripped.”
Daisy leaned down to tap Miles’s helmet. “Good thing you had this on.”
Miles smiled weakly.
“I don’t see any butterfly,” Philip said, looking from side to side.
Miles pushed himself up on his elbows. “He must have gotten away.”
Logan reached past the marigold bush to help him up.
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Max asked, peering closely at Miles’s face. “When people scream in a factory, it’s often bad news.”
Miles nodded, straightening his helmet and goggles.
“In that case,” Max continued, “let’s agree to save the screaming for when an appendage gets caught where it shouldn’t. And since no one is going to stick a hand inside a moving blender, that means no screaming, period.”
Miles nodded. “Got it.”
Paulo joined them. “Everything okay here?”
“Nothing to worry about,” Max assured him. “Now, what can we do to help get your bees back on track?”
Paulo led them to the hives and pointed to the largest one. “The new queen is in there, but the colony hasn’t taken to her yet. They need to get their usual routine back in gear.”
“Isn’t Logan supposed to be some kind of bee charmer?” Philip asked. “Can’t he just tell them what to do?”
“Logan is indeed a friend to the bees,” Paulo said, waving him forward. “It’s worth a shot, dude.”
Logan had no choice but to kneel down in front of the hives. He cleared his throat. “Um, hi, bees,” he whispered, trying to ignore his audience. “I know this is a hard time for you, but cheer up. You’ll like the new queen. She’s, er, peppier than the old one. I mean, she’s alive and all. I’m sure she’ll take great care of you. All you have to do is keep bringing that nectar and, you know, mixing it with bee spit to make that tasty honey of yours.”
A few bees circled Logan’s head and then took off again.
Logan sighed. “Did you try the smoke machine yet?”
Paulo shook his head. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. It relaxes them, but it makes them eat their own honey. I didn’t want to use up our reserves.”
“It’s okay if we’re a little low on honey for a few days,” Max said. “Henry in Marshmallows has at least a few days’ worth stored up.
And the nougat can wait, too.”
Paulo nodded thoughtfully. “All right. Let’s do it.”
Max ducked out to tell Randall of their plans. The others helped haul the smoke machine out of the closet (except for Philip, who claimed that the cost of dry cleaning his suit would be prohibitive).
“He better put on an apron when he starts cooking,” Paulo muttered to the other kids as they bent over the equipment. “Wouldn’t want powdered sugar to get on that fine material.”
“Or bee spit!” Daisy said, and they all cracked up.
Paulo plugged in the machine, which looked like the mutant offspring of a vacuum cleaner and a toaster oven, and showed them how to place wood chips in the bottom. Then he lit the wood chips with a long match and aimed the metal contraption at the opening of the hive. Puffs of smoke wafted around the hive and then blew straight in.
Almost immediately the bees, which had been flying haphazardly around the room, raced back to the hive, and the buzzing inside grew louder and louder. In response, Philip, Daisy, and Miles retreated to the other side of the bushes, but Logan stayed to watch.
After a minute Paulo turned off the smoker. The bees soon began leaving the hive in a steady stream. Logan stepped back quickly to let them pass. It was never a good idea to get in their way when they were hungry. Soon the bees had returned to their usual routine—sucking nectar from flowers and carrying it to the hive, then going back to do it all over again. Paulo scraped some fresh honey off the comb with a wooden spatula and held it out for the kids to taste.
Philip declined, and Miles had disappeared to the marigold bushes again.
Daisy tried it. “Um, good, I guess?”
“Perfect,” Logan declared, licking his lips.
Max, who had just returned, gave his thumbs-up, too.
Paulo let out a long breath. “That’s a relief,” he said, stowing away the smoke machine. “You can tell Randall everything’s going to be fine. And I’ll bring some of the bees out to pollinate the vanilla vines this afternoon.”