The Burns We Carry (Lost and Found in Wallowpine #1)

by Marae Good

As a parent, it’s your duty to thoroughly inspect your child’s Halloween candy, right? My mom never had, but one Halloween I’d gone out with a friend, and her parents had rifled through our candy. Searching for needles and wrappers laced in who knows what. If they found something, I didn’t know, though my candy pile was suspiciously smaller than before. It was why I was twelve—fine, fourteen—mini Snickers deep into a bag. I’d done it for the children. Not you, Timmy. Kidding. “Shay?” I scrambled and shuffled through the wrappers on the floor as I tried to stand. Why had I plopped down in the middle of the aisle in the first place? I swallowed the last of the nougat as Levi stumbled upon me. His eyes were wide, staring at the treacherous empty wrappers at my feet. “What did you do? Get bored and have a snack?” “No,” I mumbled, running my tongue over my teeth. “We were robbed.” “Robbed?” he scoffed with a laugh, walking down the aisle to me. “Who would steal—” He fell silent, as if the horrid orange-and-black shelves had stunned him with a spell. “Did you do this?” “Eat half a bag of candy?” I hung my head in playful shame. “Yes, I did.”

Hahaha!