The Summer of Cotton Candy (7 page)

When he stopped beside her, she felt like she couldn’t breathe as she stared up at him.

“Milady,” he said, sweeping off his cap and giving her a courtly bow. When he straightened and put the cap on, his eyes met hers and she felt dizzy. “You are both fair and highly skilled,” he said, indicating the vat of cotton candy.

“Thank you, good sir,” she said, struggling to play along. She knew mascots were rigorously trained so that they could stay in character at all times. As a lowly cart operator, she lacked such training and realized she would be lucky to remember her own name. Fortunately his admiring female worshipers were standing far enough away that they couldn’t hear what was being said. Candace did have the distinct, unnerving sensation of being onstage, though.

“We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Kurt,” he said.

“Not Robin Hood, then?” she asked, beginning to relax a little.

He held his finger up to his lips. “Do not give away my secret identity.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” she said in an exaggerated whisper. “I’m Candace.”

“Not Candy, then?”

“No, Candace.”

“Very good, Lady Candace. It has been a pleasure, and we shall meet again soon.”

With that he swept off, and his admiring fans followed from afar.

“He’s something, isn’t he?” Jennifer, the girl who gave Candace her breaks, said as she walked up.

“Yes,” Candace said, not trusting herself to say more.

“It’s hard to believe a guy like that ever went out with Lisa.”

Candace felt something twist in her stomach. “Lisa, the cotton candy operator?”

“One and the same. There’s no accounting for taste. Rumor has it she wants to get back together.”

“What does he want?” Candace asked.

Jennifer shrugged. “He’s a guy. Who can tell?”

Jennifer stepped behind the machine. “I’ve got it. Go take your break.”

Candace remembered to grab her muffin, and she headed to the Locker Room. As soon as she was in a referee-only area, away from the eyes of the public, she tore into the muffin. It had little seeds sprinkled on the top of it and a nice lemony zest to the whole thing.

As she ate she thought about Kurt and Lisa. Lisa already didn’t like her. What if she found out Candace had a crush on her Kurt? But who would tell her? Nobody at work knew. Then again, Candace figured that anyone witnessing their little meeting would have to be blind not to see that she liked him. She sighed. Any way she looked at it, Kurt was trouble. Cute, adorable trouble, but trouble nonetheless.

She finished eating and had ten minutes left to her break, so she wandered over to one of the bulletin boards and began reading.

A huge sign reminded, Don’t Forget to Sign Up with Your Team for the Scavenger Hunt. Smaller notices, some handwritten and some printed, advertised everything from Roommate Wanted to TV for Sale. She turned away and saw Josh heading toward her. She waved and he trotted over.

He glanced at the bulletin board. “See anything you plan on buying?” he asked.

“Nope. Just looking. What’s the whole deal with the Scavenger Hunt thing?”

“It’s the big end-of-summer after-hours cast party. Everyone is divided up into teams of five. Team members are tied to each other with rope. You then run through the park following sets of clues and trying to beat the other teams. It’s awesome.”

It sounded kind of fun, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be tied to four other people. Plus, since she was already giving most of her summer to The Zone, she was pretty sure she didn’t want to give up one of her last nights before school started back up. “I guess I’ll pass,” she said.

Josh laughed out loud. “Think again. It’s mandatory. You
have
to go.”

“If it’s mandatory, then why do we have to sign up?” Candace asked.

Josh rolled his eyes. “You sign up with the people you want to be on your team.”

“What if you don’t have a team?”

“Then you pretty much get stuck with other people who don’t have a team.”

She made a face. “So, I could get stuck with someone totally random… like that guy?” she asked, pointing to a stranger a few feet away.

Josh laughed. “Nope, he’s already got a team.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Almost everyone does. Most of us signed up with our teams weeks ago,” he said.

“So, then, I guess that means there aren’t any slots on your team?” she asked, somewhat hopefully.

“Sorry. We signed up in March.”

March. It figures.
“What am I going to do?” she asked.

He shrugged. “You can try to find a couple of people who aren’t already on a team. Otherwise you’ll know in a couple of days who you’re stuck with. They’re posting teams on Tuesday.”

“And where do I sign up if I do manage to find a team?” she asked.

“The list is in the referee cantina, behind the Exploration Zone. You been there?”

“No, but I’ve walked past it,” she admitted.

“Well, I’m back on. Good luck,” he said.

Her break was nearly over, so she hurried back to her cart and took up her position once more. While she was working, she tried to think of who she could ask that might not already be on a team. From there her thoughts drifted to Kurt. Was he on a team? He had to be. He must have plenty of friends. Maybe he was on the same team as Lisa. They could have signed up together before they broke up. If they were on a team together, what better way to rekindle the spark? Moonlight, games, competition, close proximity to each other.

Stop it!
she told herself. Thinking about Kurt or Lisa — or Kurt
and
Lisa — was getting her nowhere. She needed to find team members who were as late signing up as she was. Who might be just as clueless as her?

Suddenly she got it. She just had to wait until her dinner break to act on it.

Candace found Sue in the last bathroom she checked. The other girl was busily cleaning up after the throngs of women who had trashed it. Candace shuddered as she remembered that it so easily could have been her cleaning bathrooms. But since Sue was the one person in The Zone who seemed to be always just a hair later than Candace, she thought she might have a winner.

Sue turned to her and gave her a bright smile. Candace noticed that her name tag said Sue and not Mary.

“Hey, Candy. Sorry, Candace,” Sue said, grimacing at her slip-up.

“Hey, Sue. I see you got your name tag fixed.”

“And I see you haven’t.”

“How is it you got yours already?”

Sue shrugged. “Lucky, I guess.”

“Must be. Man, it was hard to find you. There must be like a gazillion restrooms in this place.”

“Twenty-seven, but at the end of the day it might as well be a gazillion.” Sue laughed. “What’s up?”

“Have you signed up for the Scavenger Hunt yet?”

Sue shook her head. “I only just heard about it.”

“Me too. You want to be teammates? At least that way we’ll know each other.”

“That would be great,” Sue said, looking as relieved as Candace felt. “I was totally afraid I was going to get stuck with that crazy guy who drives the train.”

“And tries to run people down? Me too. This is great, I’ll go put our names down,” Candace said.

“Thanks. And thanks for thinking of me.”

“No problem,” Candace said as she exited the restroom. She was just relieved that once again Sue was just as behind as she was. Maybe if they stuck together, the two of them could make it through the summer.

Candace headed off-field and found her way to the referee cantina. There she found a sign-up sheet tacked to the wall. She put down her name and then realized that she didn’t know Sue’s last name. She stood for a moment trying to decide whether to go back and ask her before finally just writing down “Sue, Janitorial” on the page. How many Sues could there be cleaning restrooms?

“Hey, are you signing up for the scavenger hunt?” a voice asked beside her.

She turned and saw a guy her age with brown hair and puppy-dog eyes.

“Yes,” she said.

“Got room for one more on your team?” he asked, giving her a sheepish look. He looked like a nice-enough guy.

“Sure, you need a team?” she asked.

He nodded. “My name’s Roger. I’m a cashier at The Dug Out.”

“The baseball card shop in the Game Zone?” she asked.

He half nodded, half shook his head. “We carry cards for several sports: football, hockey. We also have other collectables like autographed balls, jerseys, that sort of thing. We can even take your picture and put it on a souvenir card for you, just like you were some big sports star.”

“That’s cool. I’m Candace. I work one of the cotton candy machines.”

His eyes widened, and he leaned forward conspiratorially. “Then I don’t have to tell you to watch out for Becca.”

She was about to ask him why people kept saying that, but he stepped back and coughed behind his hand. “So, uh, can I be on your team?”

“Sure.” She turned and wrote down his first name. “Roger what?” she asked.

“Crane,” he answered.

She wrote down his last name. “Cool. Now we only have to find two more people.”

He shrugged. “If you don’t have a full team, they’ll combine us with another team or put people who don’t have a team in those slots. That happened to me last year.”

She felt suddenly very sorry for him. How had he managed to be working here that long and still need to team up with a stranger? “Well, I’ll catch you later, Candace,” he said.

“Yeah, Roger,” she answered.

He turned around, took two steps, and promptly tripped over a chair and did a swan dive onto the floor. Instantly, the room broke out in applause, and several people hastily stood up with signs on which they had scribbled scores: 8.5, 9, 7, 9.5, and one particularly loud guy held up a perfect 10.

Roger stood up slowly, blushing fiercely before heading out the door. Candace turned to a girl sitting nearby, a terrible suspicion occurring to her. “Does this happen often?” she asked.

The girl smiled. “Roger falls down or trips over something at least twice a day. I think eleven times is his personal best.”

“Great,” Candace said. Now she knew why Roger didn’t already have a team. And come Scavenger Hunt, she was going to find herself tied to him, literally. She made a note to go home and ask her mom just how good her medical insurance was.

“It could be worse,” the girl said.

“How?”

“Pete could be on your team.”

“Who’s Pete?”

“The guy who tries to run everyone down with the train.”

“He has a name?” Candace asked, amazed.

“Other than Crazy Train Guy? Yeah, go figure. Good luck to you.”

“Thanks. I think we’re going to need it.”

The rest of that evening her cart was parked in the Splash Zone next to the entrance to Kowabunga. It was great because she was close enough to Josh that they found time to talk when things would slack a little. The more she got to know him, the more she found she liked him. He was friendly and easy to talk to.

“Okay, so who are you crushing on?” he asked after she had sent a little girl on her way with a fistful of cotton candy.

“Excuse me? Why on earth would I tell you something like that?” she asked.

“Because I can tell you whether or not he has a girlfriend already,” he said. “And because if we share and bond, it will make us like totally close.”

She couldn’t help it; she started laughing so hard she snorted. That got him laughing at her, and she couldn’t help but laugh at that. Pretty soon her stomach ached, and she thought she was going to burst. She held up a hand.

“Stop, please, it hurts to laugh.”

“Give me a name or I’ll totally tickle you,” he threatened.

She started laughing even harder — a shrill nervous laugh that was making people stop and stare. “Okay, I’ll tell,” she said, gasping. “Just don’t make me laugh anymore.”