My Sweets

Where are the candles?

9 but-soon-to-be-10 year old Heidi Barnes was confused, and not pleased.

Finally, she could have two giant numbers on her cake.

She loved those bulky wax number candles, loved licking off the frosting glob that would cling to the butt end of them after she blew out their flame. And especially loved that mom would save them in the little drawer by the microwave. She’d often sneak into that drawer and look at her chunky number collection saved throughout the years. Some with teeny polka dots, some with big diagonal stripes. Her “7” was her favorite, if she was being honest. Bright yellow with flecks of hot pink glitter. It always made her think of the start of summer, the moment school was officially done and she had three full months of sunshine ahead. No matter her birthday was actually in January.

And January it was. January 10th. Her birthday. Her golden birthday. Her mom was running around upstairs, trying to find her continuously misplaced cell phone to snap the quintessential birthday girl and her cake pic. Crouton, her squirrely beagle, was right by her side, paws on her thigh and eyes as big as flying saucers. He was trying with all his might to convince her for a finger-swipe of the pink frosting. Or a pinch of her cake.

A beautiful strawberry layer cake with piped baby pink buttercream.

And no candles.

“FOUND IT,” her mother squawked from above, “Gah! In the laundry basket, of all places! Must have fallen in earlier. I swear, I need a tracker for this thing.

Ok, my sweets. Ready to sing?”

Heidi blinked two hard blinks. Her mom was suddenly there, already snapping pictures of the cake, and of Heidi. Bright flashes from the cell phone camera pulsed the room, blinding Heidi with each click. Crouton joined in the chorus with his own feverish yaps and whines.

“Wait, mom! We need the candles first, and light them before-”

“Not this year, my sweets, I’m afraid.”

Confusion again.

And a single tear popping out of Heidi’s right eye.

“Oh honey, oh my gosh don’t cry,” Her mother’s arms were around her now. “I’m sorry that came out fast. I figured, with everything going on, for safety reasons, you know, that we shouldn’t have you blow out the candles.”

This past year had already been so different, so entirely difficult and different. Heidi had hated it, and had waited with all the patience she could muster for the new year to come. Things would be back to normal then. But 10 days into the new year, and no. Things were still different.

“But hey! I have an idea,” her mother cut through. Heidi didn’t realize she had been in silent-thought this whole time.

Her mother ran back up the stairs. Quick footsteps pattered above, followed by a few-second scuffle, and then crescendoed with running steps back down the stairs.

Within her mother's hands was a little black book.

She extended the booklet forward.

“How about this year,” she began, “you write what your wish is. But don’t show me what you write, otherwise your wish won’t come true.” A hopeful smile slid across Heidi’s mother’s face.

Heidi loved her mother so much, and she felt so loved by her mother too.

Heidi wiped her eyes, grabbed the book from her mom and, with a giant smile, opened to a fresh page.

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The room was dark.

But filled with sweeping blue fog.

A giant yellow-gold chandelier swung high above.

Suddenly, the wall parted down the middle and began peeling apart, like slow, rickety elevator doors.

The fog rushed out of the opening crack, colliding with a glowing red figure.

Or person?

Or shape?

Whatever it was, it was coming into the room.

Heidi squinted her eyes.

As the final wisps of blue left the room, she saw it clearly.

A giant, glowing number 1.

She reached out her hand.

Within a crisp moment, the 1 morphed into a 3.

And then an 8.

And then two 0’s.

And then a terrifying and mesmerizing symphony of numbers: 6’s bled into 3’s which warped into 9's, 2's, and 4's.

With each changing twist, the red glow grew brighter, making the numbers appear even closer to Heidi.

She hadn’t realized she had been walking backwards until the clump of her heel on the back wall jolted her to attention.

And it was at that moment. The soft ding on the wall from her shoe, that everything stopped.

And then.

Pure white. No red no blue no yellow-gold.

Yet Heidi was not afraid. No, she was curious.

And patient. And silent.

And hopeful.

A small voice entered her ear.

“Happy Birthday.”

Heidi’s eyes bolted open.

The sunlight was harsh and hot on her face. Yet she was a shivering bundle inside her comforter cocoon. She needed to buy curtains, and beg her roommates to go splits on a heater. New York City mornings were brutal in January.

Her eyes scanned to her phone on her bedside table.

6:34am.

Fantastic. A time both too early and too late.

She stretched over herself and dismissed the reminder that had popped up on her phone’s calendar:

“my bday”

Today she would be celebrating with back to back nannying and a $7 designer cookie during her solo celebratory lunch hour.

Happy 29th to me.

She flipped her phone face side down, and floated her fingertips toward the edge of her bedside table.

There.

Her wishing booklet.

Swiping up her favorite purple pen, Heidi squinted in the unfriendly morning light as she opened her booklet to the earmarked page awaiting her 29th birthday wish.

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I

Wish

If she hadn’t been awake, Heidi would have never heard the soft chime of her doorbell.

If she hadn’t heard that chime, perhaps a porch pirate would have come along and Heidi would’ve never known the deepest, truest love her mother held for her.

Heidi shuffled across the apartment and opened her front door.

Atop the battered welcome mat sat a small, red box.

“To Heidi” was spiraled across the top in thin, black letters.

Without returning to the warmth of her covers, Heidi stood in the doorway of 767 Edgecomb Road, Apt. 23, and opened the red lid.

2 and 9

Her birthday candles.

She had let them go all those years ago, let go of her strange and extraordinary attachment to these little chubby number candles.

Or so she thought.

Tears filled her eyes.

Then, a slight pang of horror.

For, in 2040, things were in fact different. The air was constantly and continuously cleansed and recirculated for sanitation. The air inside your body, however, was a sin. Talking to anyone without a protective guard around your mouth was illegal. Kissing on naked lip to naked lip was forbidden, if not an utterly terrifying prospect.

But the biggest difference of all, her mother.

Not of illness, not of grief, but of a stupidly simple slip on icy park-path stairs did her mother’s time arrive.

And Heidi missed her mother more fiercely with every passing day.

Yes, things were different than when Heidi was 9.

And the idea of blowing out a candle on a cake was a long forgotten pastime.

Most people destroyed their candles, bubble wands, and metallic pinwheels back then. They were too painful to look at at first. Then, they were entirely against the law according to the Department of Air Quality. All objects that require the blowing of breath are forbidden. A detailed list may be found on our “List of Punishable Possessions”.

She had read somewhere back in high school that the “List of Punishable Possessions” estimated what particular objects would be worth (if restrictions were ever loosened in the future).

A piece of bubble gum - $2,000

A kazoo - $5,500

And a birthday candle…

$10,000

In Heidi’s hands sat twenty thousand dollars in the most meaningful currency the world could have ever created.

Questions flooded her head as Heidi rushed back into her room, cradling her curious red box.

If anyone saw these, they’d pounce.

She dove into her bed, sat up underneath her covers, and took out her gift.

The smooth wax in her hands, the small, raised polka dots tickling her fingertips…

It almost felt like she was touching her mother’s hands.

This just might be the best feeling in the whole world.

Then, Heidi spotted a folded note lying at the bottom of the box.

Confusion.

She tentatively reached for it, feeling the soft-jagged edge of where the sheet must have been ripped out of a booklet.

It looked to be the exact type of unruled paper found within her little black booklet.

Confusion again.

As she raised the note, just as she was beginning to unfold it, she spotted that familiar, purple ink.

Heidi took a breath, and flipped open the note:

1/10/2040

There’s a feeling you feel,

that buzzes inside you at the exact moment you are your happiest and brightest and highest,

all sky and warmth

and hope

and big and whole Love

and Mom.

Me and Mom.

I don’t remember that feeling.

I don’t remember what it feels like to be with my mom.

It must be the best feeling in the whole world.

I don’t think I've felt it for a long, long time.

I Wish to feel that again.

“I love you, my sweets.”

It was the slightest whisper in Heidi’s ear, but, unmistakably, her mother’s voice.

"Happy Birthday."