Free Love? Maybe. by Heather Hepler Page A

locking the door on the way out.” He pulls his denim jacket off one of the pegs on the back wall. “I’ll be backin two hours,” he says. We begged him to let us have the kitchen to ourselves. We told him we wanted to try to create a new truffle (which is true) and that we wanted it to be a surprise. He pushes the back door open and steps out into the alley behind the shop. I start to pull the door closed, but he stops me. “Don’t answer the door or the phone.”
     
    “You worry too much,” I say. “We’ll be fine.” He lets the door shut and I hear him lock it from the outside. We can still get out, but no one without a key can get in. I gently push the door open to make sure he’s gone. I watch him climb into his car. I shut the door and walk back into the kitchen. Claire and Jillian are already unpacking the backpack that Jillian brought with her. A dozen baggies soon litter the counter. I pick up the nearest, a bright gold one, and read the label: Tumeric. I scan the others: crystallized ginger, curry, cat’s claw, fenugreek, burdock root, and several I can’t even pronounce. Along with the bags, there are several plastic tubs: raw honey, acai extract, rose water. “Promise me we aren’t going to poison anyone.”
     
    “I promise,” Jillian says, putting her hand over her heart just like I did with Jan. Hopefully I was a little more convincing.
     
    I pull two big bowls of the truffle base out of the refrigerator. Jan left us some of both the vanilla base and the chocolate base. He was really excited when I told him I wanted to try and develop a new flavor of truffles. Of course, developing the chocolates for Jan is just a cover. All we needed wasprivate access to a kitchen. Somewhere away from the prying eyes of parents and the two munchkins who live at my house.
     
    Jillian has the spell book on the counter in front of her. “There’s not much in the way of directions here,” she says. “I guess we just mix it all together?” She looks at Claire and me and we both shrug. She nods to herself like that settles it. Claire retrieves a big metal bowl from under the counter and we start adding all of the ingredients. A soft pattering sounds on the roof above us. Rain.
     
    “How much?” I ask, holding a bag full of dried raspberry leaf.
     
    Jillian shrugs. “All of it, I guess.” Once we’ve dumped everything in, Claire mixes it all with a long metal spoon.
     
    “It’s potent,” I say, catching a whiff of the mixture.
     
    Claire sneezes. I notice her eyes are watering. “It smells like Pit Pot, the Indian restaurant my parents always take me to.”
     
    “Maybe we added too much curry,” I say.
     
    Jillian bends and sniffs the mixture. “It’s perfect,” she says. I want to ask her how she knows, seeing as this is the first time any of us has ever done this, but I just let it go. Her confidence seems to bolster Claire, making her smile. “We’re supposed to let it
harmonize
for ten minutes,” she says, reading from the spell book again.
     
    “So, Pipe?” Claire says. “When are you going to show us?”
     
    “Show you what?” I ask, smiling. Claire tosses a towel atmy head, making me duck. I was just waiting for them to ask. I walk over to the storage shelves and pull down a huge bin filled almost to the brim with candy. I set it on the counter and open it. Claire and Jillian come over immediately and peer over my shoulder.
     
    “They’re exactly like the real ones,” Claire says, reaching into the bin and plucking a pink heart from the big mass. I nod. They came out amazing. I didn’t actually manufacture all of the candy myself this time. I made the prototype and Jan found a confectionary company with the right equipment to churn them out way faster than we could have.
     
    Jillian leans over and reads the heart Claire is holding. “ Not Likely .” She nods and leans over the bin, reading some of the others aloud. “ Yuck , Go Away , U Stink .” She looks over