Contest (chapter 1;part 3)

“Excuse me ladies,” he pipes in the rehearsed voice that most sales people share. “You may go in now.” He opens the door to let some people out, and then we step into candy land. I walk onto a glass floor that is hollow, and filled with candies underneath. Shelves overflowing with sour worms, kisses, eggs, pizzas, and sweet worms in every size and color cover the back wall while to the left there is a counter that says Ice Cream and a freezer crammed with brightly colored ice creams. To my right there is a staircase that descends, but I don’t get to look around more because the mass of people is moving me with them towards the stairs. I decide that it is better to go with the flow, and informing the plan to Rita who smiles in return, I allow people to shove and push me onto the lower floor, a bigger and less packed space in which you can actually breath and walk in the direction you choose to go. This level has a more divided system. Towards the far end there is a section with clothes, cushions, and other candy labeled or candy related merchandise. Before that there is a section with big posters of Harry Potter so I’m guessing it has all the movie candy, like the magic jelly beans, etc. Then there is the section where I’m standing, which contains a wall filled with jelly beans of an assortment of flavors. I walked towards it and started reading some of the labels that lined the containers. Popcorn, earthworm, soap, cheesecake, lime, liver, there was every possible savor in the world. Anything I came up with I was sure I would find, but sadly there was no time for that, so I continued my scan of the place, Rita at my heels with every step I took. At the other wall there was a rainbow with almost every shade of all the ROY G VIB colors, and as I got closer I saw that they were M&M’s. I was amazed. My mouth probably dropped open and I took some time to recover but when that eventually happened I turned to face Rita. She might not be a lot of help but it was defiantly better than going at this alone.

“So, we are supposed to find one thing to give Laura Singer out of this massive store, and do it fast. What was your idea again?”

“Well, maybe we could ask someone here. I’m sure they have to have some sort of directions to help us out right?” She looked at me with hope, probably wishing I would jump up and down complementing her genius plan. Unfortunately for her I didn’t do any such thing. “You know, you are probably right. Let’s go ask that woman over there.” I point at a woman with long, bleached, blond hair and dark roots.

“Um excuse me,” Rita says to the woman who turns around with a frown on her face.

“Yeah,” she answers as if she wanted to kill us for interrupting her fun task of putting prices on T-Shirts.

“I was wondering if maybe you would happen to know what we should take to Laura Singer.”

“Who’s that?” The lady said with plain indifference in her voice.

“She is this famous actress,” Rita flashed her million watt smile at the lady. “You know the one who was on-” Yet again however Rita was interrupted by a sharp “Over there,” accompanied by a hand stretched to the center of the room where a big gold star with candies and little labels inside the glass layers could be seen. As if that was enough of an answer the woman turned back to her pricing. I shrugged and Rita rolled her eyes and pointed in a mock of the lady that looked pretty authentic. For what was probably the third time in the week with Rita, I genuinely laughed and the headed towards the star.

“It’s a place where the stars say what they’re favorite candy is. You see here are the Olsen Twin’s and Dakota Fanning, and here is Jason Biggs. Let’s look for Laura, okay?” I say without turning away from the display. After a couple of minutes of scanning all the choices Rita claps eagerly. “Here it is, it says Laura Signer and there is a Hershey Kiss right above the name. That must be what we’re looking for.” I smile at her and say “Yeah, great job.” I can see she is very proud of her discovery because of the way she is beaming, and decided to let her lead the way to the Hershey Kisses. We find them without a problem, take a bag to the cashier, and pay. Giving the beautiful and colorful store a last glance, trying to fit everything into our almost full memories, we walk up the stairs, through the crowded fist floor, and out into the hot, noisy, crowded New York day.