The Summer of Cotton Candy Read online

  Tamara laughed. “Would it get you to bail on this whole Zone thing?”

  Candace scowled. “He’s my dad. What can I do?”

  “Nothing,” Tamara said, shaking her head. “Parents are so much work.”

  2

  The next morning at 7:42 a.m. Candace was wishing she had taken Tamara up on her offer. She stood with two dozen others as the early morning sun shone in their eyes. A short, wide man with a name tag that read Jay paced before them, extolling the virtues of working for The Zone. She could swear she saw flecks of foam at the corners of his mouth.

  In her hands Candace held another bundle of information that she was expected to familiarize herself with. She also had her name tag. She twisted it back and forth, refusing to put it on. At last Jay noticed.

  “Miss, is there a problem? You should be wearing your name tag.”

  “Well, I would, but it says Candy, and that’s not my name,” she explained.

  “What is your name?”

  “Candace.”

  “Close enough. Put it on.”

  “But —”

  “Before you go home you can fill out a form to get a new name tag, but for now, wear it.” He accompanied the order with a glare.

  Grimacing, Candace pinned it on her blouse over her heart. The blonde girl standing next to her leaned closer and whispered, “It could be worse. At least they got part of your name right.”

  Candace glanced at her name tag. “Mary?”

  “Not even,” the blonde answered. “Try Sue.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Tell me about it. Where are you working?”

  “Cotton candy operator,” Candace whispered.

  “Nice. I got janitorial — women’s restrooms.”

  Candace struggled to keep her expression neutral. “It could be worse.”

  “No, it really couldn’t. I came in yesterday afternoon, and it was the last job open.”

  Candace was suddenly very grateful that she had gone in to see the recruiter before eating lunch.

  After a minute, she realized that the group was moving. She hastened to follow, surprised that Jay could move so quickly. He led them at a breakneck pace around the vast areas behind the scenes where only employees were allowed to go, also known as “off field.”

  Just when she was good and lost, Jay led the group to a halt in front of an unassuming door. “All right, bunch up everyone. Smile, and remember you represent The Zone. Keep together and keep up.”

  He opened the door and they all walked through it… and into the park. Candace looked around in amazement. They had just walked through a door she had never noticed before in the back of the park in the Extreme Zone. Directly in front of her a bungee jumper dropped screaming from the sky.

  She flinched, and out of the corner of her eye she saw others do the same.

  “It’s like a miracle!” someone nearby squeaked. “We’re here, and we didn’t even go through the front gate!”

  “Yes, it’s just one of the many miracles you’ll experience working at The Zone,” Jay said, without even a hint of sarcasm.

  It creeped Candace out, the way Jay and some of the others acted, like The Zone was some sort of shrine to the god of entertainment. Worse than that, it was their holy grail.

  She shrugged it off and tried to pay attention to what Jay was saying. “… as you all should know, the theme park is divided into eight areas, or zones. There’s the Kids Zone, where the kiddie rides are. The History Zone covers many different time periods and famous people, both real and fictional. The Thrill Zone hosts all the roller coasters and big rides. The Extreme Zone is for extreme sports and activities, such as our bungee-jump attraction. The Splash Zone is full of water rides. The Exploration Zone is where you can find all the science-related rides and activities. The Holiday Zone is our seasonal holiday-themed area, and right now it’s a celebration of the Fourth of July. The Game Zone includes all our traditional sports activities, including our batting cages and carnival games. Leading to the eight zones is the Home Stretch, which includes the main gate and the shops in the front of the park.”

  None of this was news to Candace. Her family had been going to The Zone at least once a year for as long as she could remember. She knew that the park had been created by a retired football star, hence the sports terminology.

  “And what do we call the exit?” Jay asked.

  “End Zone,” Candace answered with everyone else.

  Candace felt self-conscious as they walked through the park. Everywhere they went people stared and pointed, many in admiration. Candace felt herself turning red. Attention was something she usually liked to avoid. That was one of the great things about being friends with Tamara — all eyes usually gravitated toward her and away from Candace. That was how Candace liked it.

  The group continued to walk, and Candace forced her eyes forward. Just keep walking, she told herself. They wound their way through each zone, Jay talking endlessly about things that Candace hoped she wouldn’t be quizzed about later.

  At last the tour was over, and they returned to the off-field area. They found their way to the Locker Room, which was the area where she would start each day. The Locker Room held lockers, time clocks, notices, and boxes where new schedules were put out. There Candace came upon her second surprise of the day when she picked up her schedule. She stared at it unbelievingly.

  “Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays eight thirty to five o’clock. Fridays and Saturdays one thirty to nine o’clock!”

  She ran over to Jay and showed it to him. “This is wrong. I was told I’d be working weekdays. I have church on Sundays. I don’t even have two consecutive days off! And besides, the hours aren’t even consistent.”

  Jay laughed and a chill went through her. “I don’t know what you were told, but you work the hours you’re needed. Schedules change every two weeks. You’re free to request specific days and hours, but being that you’re new here, you pretty much get whatever’s left over. Be grateful you’re not stuck with a closing shift and then an opening shift back-to-back… yet.”

  He turned and walked away to answer someone else’s question. Candace continued to stare at her card. This isn’t happening! she thought, panicking. By the time she got home on Fridays, she would just have time to eat dinner before going to bed. No youth group for her. And working on Saturdays! She might as well kiss her dreams of a social life good-bye.

  She had one faint hope, though. She pulled her cell out and called her dad.

  “Dad! They have me working Sundays during church! They won’t let me out of it,” she told him.

  “I’m sorry, Candace, but if that’s your schedule, I guess there’s nothing to do about it. You could always go to evening ser vices,” he suggested.

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said, her last chance at escaping her summer prison evaporating before her eyes.

  After visiting the wardrobe department and getting her uniform, Candace drove slowly home. She tried Tamara’s cell for the fifth time, hoping her friend would pick up.

  “Hello?” Tamara asked.

  Candace tried to speak, but burst into tears instead. “Candace, is that you?”

  She blubbered something that vaguely resembled a yes.

  “I’ll be home in five minutes. Meet me there,” Tamara instructed.

  Candace hung up and tried to dash away her tears. Driving while crying was never a good idea.

  Once in Tamara’s room, Candace broke down completely. She handed Tamara the copy of her schedule and just cried in misery. After a minute, Tamara put her arms around her.

  “Quit, Cand, just quit. We’ll work something out.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Listen, don’t cry. It’s going to be okay. This schedule isn’t so bad. You’ll be free all day Monday and all day Wednesday. We can do stuff those days.”

  Candace dried her tears. “I’m sorry, Tam. I just feel trapped, you know?”

  Tamara laughed. “Boy, do I ever,” she said,
glancing around her room.

  Candace laughed, remembering when Tamara’s father had hired a private investigator to follow a guy Tamara wanted to go out with. It had been funny to Candace, but she remembered how upset Tamara had been. She had given her father the silent treatment for a month over that one.

  “Okay, okay, so you get the whole trapped part. It’s just, if this is what growing up is like, I don’t want to.”

  “There are worse things than growing up,” Tamara said.

  “Name one,” Candace challenged.

  “Having your father tell you who you can and cannot date.”

  “You win,” Candace said with a laugh.

  “There you go. So what if you’re working a few hours every week. Maybe it will be kind of fun.”

  “Maybe,” Candace answered, even though she didn’t feel sure about it.

  “Enough of that, let’s figure out what we’re going to do tomorrow to celebrate your job.”

  “Don’t you mean mourn my loss of freedom?”

  Tamara shrugged, “Half full, half empty — it doesn’t matter. It’s the same glass of water.”

  Candace laughed, beginning to feel better.

  “All right, what are we going to do? Money is no object. It’s my treat.”

  Candace grinned. “No object?”

  “No object,” Tamara said firmly.

  The next day they road-tripped to Northgate, their favorite mall. It was a two-hour drive from home. By the time they parked, Candace was already feeling optimistic about the future. Shopping, or even the potential for shopping, could do that.

  Tamara wrinkled her nose. “Mom made me promise I’d pick up something for her in Bloomy’s.”

  Candace shook her head, “When I start getting paid, I still won’t be able to afford to even breathe in that place.”

  “Please, how many times do I have to tell you? The air in Bloomy’s is free. If you want to pay for such things, you’ll have to go to the Oxygen Bar.”

  “You know I don’t trust air I can’t see,” Candace joked.

  Tamara rolled her eyes. “Isn’t your mom supposed to be some sort of environmental activist?”

  “Something like that,” Candace said. “She hates it when I say things like that.”

  “I’ll bet.” Tamara lowered her voice, “The hottie at the pretzel counter is totally checking you out.”

  “As if! He’s scoping you. You’re the real scenery.”

  “Stop dragging yourself down, Cand. You’re every bit as pretty as I am. You just need to put the ‘tude with it. Then you’ll have to scrape them off.”

  Candace smiled. I don’t think I’ll ever turn heads like Tamara. Besides, I only need to turn one head. She stopped, startled when she realized she was thinking again of the guy in the Lone Ranger costume. I wonder if I’ll see him around the park? I wonder if he’ll remember me?

  She shook her head. This is crazy! I’m thinking about some guy whose face I haven’t even seen. How pathetic is that?

  “What is it?” Tamara asked.

  “Nothing,” Candace said, unwilling to share her fantasies about a mystery man she’d probably never see again. He probably doesn’t even have close to the same schedule that I do.

  The day went by too quickly, but in the end Candace had three new outfits to show for it, all thanks to Tamara. As they were driving home, Candace fell silent, thinking about the money that had been spent.

  “What is it?” Tamara asked.

  “I just feel bad, taking advantage of you like that.” “Advantage, how?” Tamara asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.

  “The clothes.”

  “Stop it,” Tamara snapped, her voice louder than usual. It made Candace jump, startled.

  “Look,” Tamara continued, her voice softer. “We’ve been friends since before money meant anything to either of us. So, I know it’s not about that. I know where I stand with you. That’s why I don’t have a problem paying for stuff for you too. It wouldn’t be as much fun shopping by myself or being the only one getting things.”

  “Thanks,” Candace said.

  “So, no more feeling guilty?”

  “No more.”

  “Does this mean you’ll quit your job?”

  “No.”

  “Dang it!” Tamara said, pounding her fist into the steering wheel. “Oh well, can’t blame me for trying.”

  That night Candace added her job to the list of things that she usually prayed for. Still, she felt uneasy and tossed and turned for hours, stressing about starting work in the morning. She whispered another prayer, begging for peace and enough sleep to make it through her first day. Then she crushed Mr. Huggles to her chest. She still slept with him, especially when she was stressed about something. “What do you think?” she asked the teddy bear.

  He was his characteristically silent, but supportive, self. She kissed his nose and closed her eyes, desperately hoping for sleep.

  3

  She was standing behind her cart, her name tag pinned crook-edly on her striped pink and white blouse. A line of people a mile long stood clamoring for cotton candy, their voices growing louder every second. At last she clapped her hands over her ears. Too late she realized that she had just matted her hair with sticky pink sugar. She began to back away from the cart, wishing she knew where a bathroom was.

  “Hey there, lady,” a voice behind her said.

  She twisted around and saw the Lone Ranger, standing with his hat in his hand. She stood gaping, sticky hands pressed to sticky hair.

  “You know, you shouldn’t go outside without your pants on.”

  “What are you talking about?” she shouted.

  Then he began to laugh. Everyone was laughing. She could hear the roar through hands and sugar and hair. Finally, she looked down and realized that she was completely naked from the waist down. She screamed and tried to run. Globs of sticky pink goo oozed around her feet, making them stick to the ground. She tried to move her hands to cover herself, but they were stuck to her hair. She screamed again and began to cry.

  She heard another voice and turned her head to see the recruiter leering at her from behind his desk. “You know, you should have started dressing hours ago. You need to wake up now.”

  Suddenly she woke and saw her mother staring at her. “Candace, you’re late, you should have already been dressed.”

  “Late for what, Mom?” she asked, still not sure where she was.

  “Work, you should have left five minutes ago.”

  “Work? Work!” she shouted and launched herself out of the bed, tripping when her left foot tangled in the sheets. She fell onto the floor in a pile of blankets.

  “Help me!”

  Her mother just raised an eyebrow. “It’s your job, your responsibility. You have to sink —”

  “Or swim on my own,” Candace finished in disgust. She had heard that all her life, and she swore that if she heard it one more time she was going to lose it.

  “So swim already,” her mother said, sarcasm dusting her voice. “I’m off to work.”

  Candace sat for a moment, frustrated and out of breath. When she heard the door close downstairs, she scrambled to her feet and raced to the bathroom. She grabbed her makeup kit and dashed a bit of blush across her cheekbones. Her hand shook as she applied a pale pink lipstick to her lips.

  She threw on her pink-striped blouse and white skirt. She ruined two pairs of nylons before she finally managed to get a pair all the way up. She slipped on her white shoes that reminded her of the ones the school nurse wore. The pin on her name tag stabbed her as she tried to push it through her shirt. She bit her lip and hoped that she wasn’t bleeding, but she didn’t have time to check. She grabbed her purse and flew out the door.

  Forty-five minutes after she woke up, she was standing behind her cart in the Kids Zone with a fake grin plastered on. Martha, a wizened old woman with a smoker’s cough, was her trainer. Actually Martha was a manager, but apparently the trainer was out sick.

/>   The Kids Zone had to be the most chaotic part of the park. There were a few traditional rides where kids would board vehicles and wind through tableaus from classic stories like The Little Mermaid, Princess and the Pea, and Little Red Riding Hood. For Little Red Riding Hood, the ride cars were shaped like baskets of goodies, and for Princess and the Pea, they looked like a giant stack of mattresses. A lot of the other games and rides, though, were far less contained. There was a huge finger-painting wall that started out white every morning and ended each day a mess of color. There were ball pits in several places. A huge set of tubes, like the Habitrail you’d see on a hamster’s cage, wound around the tops of several of the buildings, and you could see kids happily climbing and sliding all day long. A foresty maze with a gingerbread house in the center always reverberated with lots of high-pitched squeals of laughter. Perhaps messiest and craziest of all the games was Silly String Tag, a messy version of Laser Tag that had kids pouring out of the building, trailing Silly String everywhere. She didn’t know how the janitors kept up with it all.

  “All righty, missy, you think you got it?” Martha asked after an hour. Candace nodded, her mouth too dry to speak. Martha stepped back to let Candace handle the next customer.

  The sun came out with a vengeance, and scorched the black pavement. Candace’s red curls were plastered to her head, and she could feel sweat rolling down the small of her back. Her fingers were sticky from the cotton candy, and the background music that played on continuous loop in the Kids Zone was starting to drive her insane. The music was a high, tinny instrumental version of “I Want Candy.” She figured it was meant as a subliminal message to kids already hyped up on sugar to beg their parents for more.

  Several feet away, a man seemed to be arguing with his wife as his two little boys jumped up and down between them. At last, the man separated himself from his family and walked up to her cart.

  She plastered a smile on her face. “Hello, sir, what can I get for you?”

  He stared at her for a moment, and then a sly smile spread across his face. “Candy,” he answered, letting her know with his eyes that he wasn’t talking about the sticky sugary stuff that was coating her hands.