Holly was texting Danny Garland. Yeah, he thought he was talking to Elda, but she, Holly, was talking to him, as herself, really. Her stomach fluttered every time the phone buzzed with a new message. Holly lost track of time and space. She tuned out the sounds of her extended family playing cards downstairs. She forgot that Elda was in the room with her. All that mattered in the world was impressing Danny with her gif recall.
Holly ended the conversation by pulling out the big guns—Madeline Kahn from Clue saying, “Flames on the side of my face”—and handed the phone back to Elda, who had fallen asleep on the pull out couch during Holly and Danny’s text exchange. “You do not even think about texting him without consulting me first,” Holly’d said. “Got it?”
Elda had nodded. “You’re the boss.”
Correct. Holly was the boss.
“I think you’re right, though, about needing a buffer.” Holly checked out the other people walking up and down Main Street this morning. She guessed most of them were on candy-finding missions. “Maybe I should come with, at least on the first date. But I’m not going out with that Brian guy. We have to find somebody less objectively awful.” She was willing to do practically anything for her cousin, but dating Danny Garland’s brother was a bridge too far.
“I will help you find that guy,” Elda said. “I’ll be your wingwoman. I’m way better at talking to guys when I’m not pursuing them myself. I promise.”
“Fabulous.”
Holly pulled open the door to the candy shop, into which about half the population of North Pole had crammed itself. Yelling and screaming muffled the Bing Crosby Christmas soundtrack pumping through speakers on the walls. It was like the candy version of one of those wedding dress clearance sales on sitcoms. A girl with long, curly, blond hair had about sixteen packages of M&Ms in her arms, and she protected them like a running back, Heisman pose and all. Some guy was stuffing bags of gummy bears into a garbage bag. “Wow,” Holly said, as a box of Twinkies sailed past her face. Then she snapped into gear and tossed her coffee in the garbage. It would only slow her down. “Grab whatever you can.” She saluted Elda. “I’ll see you on the other side. Good luck!”
Holly dashed down the nearest aisle and started pulling stuff off the shelves, without stopping to think—she got the licorice she needed plus Skittles and Fun Dip and every color of Sixlet available. She hadn’t thought to bring a bag, so she pulled off her sweater to use as a sack.
She dodged a couple arguing about gimmicky Oreo flavors as she took a hard right into the next aisle. There she saw them. The Take 5 bars. They transported her back to the gingerbread contests from when she was a kid. Danny Garland had loved Take 5 bars. He’d said once, after receiving his blue ribbon, that he never used them in his showstoppers, but he’d always buy a few to eat. A full box of them sat on the shelf a few feet away.
She dove for them just as some guy—a dude in his twenties with acid-washed mom jeans that may or may not have been worn ironically, Holly couldn’t tell—lunged for the same box. Holly threw her body between the guy and the candy and grabbed the Take 5 bars.
“Off-sides!” he yelled, rolling away from her on the floor. “You can’t bogart all the supplies.”
“You snooze, you lose.” Holly tucked the box of Take 5 bars safely into her sweater.
A red flush of anger crept up his cheeks. “You’re going down, you know that?”
“Craig.”
Both Holly and the guy spun toward the end of the aisle. Another dude, about the same age as Craig but wearing a uniform from the arcade, stood there, hands on hips, one dark eyebrow raised. He looked like a superhero. A nerdy superhero, but a superhero nonetheless.
“She stole all the Take 5s, Dinesh,” Craig whined.
“She stole nothing. This is a store. Those bars don’t belong to you. Besides, I have some candy at home you can use.” Holly didn’t know who this Dinesh guy was, but thank goodness he showed up. Elda appeared behind Dinesh at the end of the aisle.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
Dinesh nodded. “Everything’s fine. Just keeping the peace.”
Craig and Dinesh left, and Elda came running over to Holly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Holly triumphantly held up the box of Take 5 bars. “I’ve got your ticket to Danny Garland success right here.”
The girls paid for their stuff, then they stopped at the grocery store and the bakery. By the time they’d gotten through all of Main Street, they had at least twenty pounds of candy. The girls brought it all back to Grandma’s garage, which they were going to use as a workshop. It was the most secluded place available, since the actual house was teeming with people and littered with boxes and garbage bags of Grandma’s old stuff.
While Elda swept the floor, trying to clean up the garage as best she could, Holly retrieved the Take 5 bars and arranged them on a sheet, which she’d draped over a few chairs like a photography studio backdrop. The dark brown wrappers popped against the stark, white fabric. She stood back and admired her work. Holly could arrange a kickass still life. She motioned to Elda. “Give me your phone.”
Elda handed it over, and Holly took the photo, which she sent to Danny. “I know these used to be your favorites.” She added a candy bar emoji for good measure.
As they waited for him to respond, Holly and Elda took inventory of their candy, spreading an old bed sheet over a banquet table. While Elda stared at her phone, Holly walked around the perimeter of the table, turning bags of Skittles and M&Ms over and around in her hands, feeling the pieces whoosh from one end of the bag to the other. She stood multi-flavored candy canes on end in a World’s Best Grandma mug. Then she separated the gumdrops by color into bowls—red, green, orange, yellow, purple, and white—popping a few into her mouth here and there for quality control. Once she had everything unbagged and organized the way she liked and had written a threatening note to her cousins and brother to stay away from their stash “OR ELSE,” she sat on a folding chair in front of the display with her raggedy old sketch pad and a pencil.
Holly drew in a deep, calming breath. Now was the time to brainstorm. She touched the tip of her pencil to the paper.
“Oh my God! He wrote back.” Elda tossed Holly the phone like it was a bomb.
Holly dropped her pencil and caught the phone. The moment for inspiration had vanished. She looked down at what Danny had written. “You remembered that?” the message said.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” Elda paced the garage floor, as she unwrapped one of the rainbow-colored lollipops from the bakery.
“We need that, Elda,” Holly said.
Elda shoved the lollipop right into her mouth.
Rolling her eyes, Holly turned her attention back to the phone. What to say to Danny? Did he think it was weird or cool that she remembered his candy preferences? Holly decided to play coy. “Of course I remembered. I have a dossier on every single North Pole gingerbread competitor. I’m very thorough.”
“Oh, really,” Danny said. “What else do you know about people?”