The Candymakers

Miles is on the roof of his garage when his father joins him. His father encourages him about the upcoming contest and thinks it will help him get over the moment at the lake where Miles believed he saw a girl drown. Miles isn’t sure it will help, but he’s willing to try. He sees a “yellow, black, and red butterfly” (127) flutter past him and is reminded of bees. Bees remind him of the drowned girl, and he feels anxious. He thinks about the afterlife, a “safe place” (128) he had imagined for the drowned girl to reside. It helps him cope with her death to imagine that she’s happy and safe somewhere.

Miles’s mother drops him off at the factory. He meets the other contestants and feels nervous, especially because Philip presents himself as arrogant and self-assured. He tries to ease the tension by saying that in the afterlife, “everyone is friends with everyone else,” (136) but everyone just looks at him strangely. 

Miles feels instantly drawn to Logan and hopes to be his friend. He feels childlike joy in the factory, but he is still anxious; he sees “death everywhere he look[s]” (140).