Candy Lickers
A short story
It was the end of summer, the days shrinking to the past. Prison loomed ahead, its scheduled free time and its soggy lunch on plastic trays dwarfed the remaining days. Freedom had already been lost, not due to the walls of confinement, but by hyper fixating what may lay ahead.
Regret seeps in, as it always does. So many days squandered in the house, living life in the secure bubble of familiarity. The pleasure we sought just two months ago, naive in its simplicity. Now, with five days to go before the school year started, our freshman year, we were trying to find ways to salvage it. To go back to our cell blocks with a story, any story, of how we claimed victory over life.
“What if we rung the old church bell downtown? Remember how the cops used to chase us? That would be fun” Robby asked.
“Yeah, we thought that was cool in the sixth grade, man. Are we sixth graders?”
The day dragged. Each idea was shot down as either not being cool enough, not being tough enough, or us not having enough kahunas to pull it off. We were at Matt’s house. Both his parents worked, and it was the perfect place to set the stage for our master plan. The only problem, we were all out of ideas.
It wasn’t until five o’clock rolled around that Robby suggested we go to school street, the name of the candy store on school street. They had everything from malt balls, to Hubba Bubba, to Nerds Rope, to candy cigarettes. All the candy any kid could want. When we were little, we would collect the change from our parents and take our bikes down, a tradition lost to the complexities of middle school. We dropped our bikes out front, and sidled into the store.
I grab my candies and head to the counter. As the cashier is ringing up my Junior Mints, I hear the bell on the front door jingle. Then the voice of the cashier yelling “Hey, you gotta pay for those!” I turn just in time to see the back of Robbie’s baseball jersey disappearing past the window on the street. Matt follows, I see him turn and sprint, his candies all stuffed into his pockets. I was left alone, with the Juniors still in the man’s hand.
I grab the Rolos from the counter, and make a play for the Junior Mints. With the cashier caught by surprise, they slip in his hand, so that he is now holding the top of the box. Damn them if this idiocy steals me of my Juniors, I have time to think to myself, then it rips. It happened all at once. One second, the vice grip is on the box, the next, the man is stumbling back, holding nothing but a tiny piece of cardboard. My Juniors soar through the air, landing all over the counter. I grab it from the opening, squeezing shut, sweep the counter in an attempt to collect some more (I don’t), and sprint out the door.
By the time I get outside to my bike, they are already a football field ahead, heading straight for Matt’s house.
That was it, we found our summer thing. Over the next couple of days, we went to every place that sold candy in our town. We took our backpacks with us, filling them up at each stop, and emptying them before the next. We decided to only steal from the big places, the places where they wouldn’t feel the hit, and if they did, it wouldn’t be directly to our little hometown. We went to CVS, Walgreens, Stop & Shop, Market Basket, and many others.
It was the last day before school started. We had loads of candy, enough to last us until halloween. We stashed it in little piles throughout each of our houses, agreeing that it was all of ours. If the others came over, they could have free reign to it, too. We were at Matt’s house again, playing GameCube and eating candy when Matt had the idea of going back to school street.
“No but listen, do we have enough candy? Yes, absolutely. But I’m sitting here, and I’m figuring, well, where is the Fun Dip? What if I want some Pop Rocks, what do I do then, go and buy some from the store we just robbed a couple days ago? I don’t think so. Robbie, I know how much you love the Sour Powers, what happens when you want some of those? You going back to school street, showing your face there again? We have enough candy, but we don’t have all the candy, and by God do I want it all.”
Matt was right, and he knew that we knew it. The caches, gigantic in size two minutes before, shrunk in size due to his rationale. We needed them, lest we head into school tomorrow failures. We had no choice, we needed to have it all.
We planned the whole thing out. We would ride our bikes over, circle the neighborhood once making sure no other kids were there, and then go and park right next to the building. There we would put the ski masks on. The person staying behind would hold the bikes up right there, out of view from the window. We rip the door open, rush in, and go straight to the boxes of FunDip, Pop Rocks, and Sour Power’s. We get out, and bike like hell to Matt’s.
The thing went off without a hitch. He wasn’t even in the front when we went in. We decided to get a whole box of Ring Pops and Big League Chew while we were there. It being our first fully developed heist, we decided to stick to the plan, and threw the ski masks into a neighbors trash bin a couple streets over.
At homegroup the following day, not thirty minutes into it when we were receiving our schedules for the new year, and meeting the teacher, the intercom went off. “Matt Asterson, Robbie Blanch, and Charlie McCarthy, please report to the office.”
I looked to Mrs. Garcia, and she nodded. Once. Then continued on in her speech about the five minutes in the hall allotted between class. Matt and Robbie were in the same homeroom, had been since the sixth grade. They were somewhere out there, walking the halls together. I stepped out into the hall. The school was brand new, the walls and lockers painted in a slate gray. With nobody else out here, and the uniformity throughout the school, I forgot where I was. I wandered, got lost, and got redirected by one of the teacher hall monitors. The whole time, as I made my way through, the kids looked out from the slit windows in the doors with eyes wide as the lone freshman walked on by.
By the time I got to the office, Matt and Robbie were already there. They were talking to each other in conspiratorial whispers. Miss Masterson was there, too. She was the secretary and introduced herself, saying it was a pleasure to meet me so soon in the school year. I look over to the boys. They had both brought their backpacks, I left mine behind. Robbie was shaking his leg, it couldn’t or wouldn’t stop, looking between Matt and I with alarming speed. Matt, on the other hand, had his legs sprawling into the walkway, his arms up on the chairs beside him.
“I knew we shouldn’t have messed with the big dogs, they have cameras all over the joint, what were we thinking?” Robby asked nobody in particular, finally deciding to put his head on his hands.
It was an hour before anything happened. We just sat there, trying hard to not be too loud, not really succeeding. Miss Masterson kept telling us that everything will be fine. When it was thirty minutes into us waiting there, she pulled out a stash of candy, passing it around to us. “Take as much as you want, I have more than I could possibly need.” she said. We didn’t take a piece. When we were finally brought into the principal’s office, alongside the school’s stationed police officer, were all three of our moms.
Matt’s swagger dropped as he walked in. “Mom, what are you doing here, aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
Karen’s eyes bored into him. “When you get a call from the school officer that your son may be facing charges, you don’t much care for work.”
This set off the whole group. The moms yelling at us for being so stupid, us trying to defend the undefendable. The argument always came back to, “All you had to do was ask.”
The principal turned on the smartboard in his office. On it, there was a video with three kids huddling outside of a store. Then, it showed the ski masks going on. The video switched to the inside view where we rushed in. It shows how we stuttered when we didn’t see him behind the counter. It shows us taking our time in there, no longer in a rush to be gone. It was a crappy CCTV video. If we hadn’t gotten right underneath the thing, it never would have been able to identify us.
“Mr. Patel is a nice man, you boys should be grateful. He put the camera up after the first time you boys went in there. He decided that he didn’t want to press charges, but that he wanted your parents to know.” Mister Kinkle, the school principal said.
“Against my advice. The only way you all will learn is if you face the consequences.” Officer Ballistari said.
“Which is why we have decided to suspend you all for the first ten days of school. You will not be allowed on school grounds, and any work that you miss, you will not be able to make up.”
I was being escorted through the halls by officer Ballisteri to retrieve my bag on my way out when the bell rang signifying the end of second period. Students poured out through the classrooms, and the empty halls turned overcrowded. We got caught in the rush, but when the students saw officer Ballistari, they set a wide path for him to carry on. We got my bag, then descended the main stairway at the front of the building by the cafeteria. The whole school watched as he brought me out.
“I cannot believe you, Charlie. How could you do this? That man has been nothing but nice to all of you.” My mother said as I got in the car. I had nothing to say. “You are going to write that man an apology.You better not think this is a vacation, either. You are going to be doing all the chores every day. For the next month, I am going to drive you to that store, and you are going to hand over your allowance. How could you do this?”
We drove on in silence. By the time Friday came around, with all my siblings running around outside, my mother let me go out and play. “Don’t think this is indefinite, come Monday you are right back inside.” By the time Monday rolled around, I was back at Matt’s. Robbie was there, too. Sure, we had to return the stuff we got from school street, but we still had more than enough candy. It was gone by the time we got back to school. From then on, we were known as The Candy Lickers.
Thank you to Ravyne Hawke for the prompts from last week.
