Free White Out by Michael W Clune Page B

certain suspicion of joy, already had a hold on even the youngest children of my block.
    “Candy Land isn’t real,” my little sister, Jenny, said doubtfully.
    But after a week I was still saying, “I know where Candy Land is.” We were gathered by the Henry tree in my backyard, about eight of us, all little, except two monstrous eight-year-olds lurking in the background.
    “Candy Land isn’t real,” Dan said doubtfully. The two older kids laughed, but they waited to hear what I’d say next.
    “Yes it is, it’s six blocks away from here.”
    “How do you know?” Marc asked.
    “Because I heard the mailman talking about it. He didn’t know I was there. He was talking to my mom. ‘I have to go deliver my mail to Candy Land now, Mrs. Clune, so I can’t talk to you anymore.’ I was hiding. Then I came out and he gave me a Tootsie Pop.”
    This story, so weighted with real things, such as the mailman’s known habit of distributing Tootsie Pops to children, was practically impossible for anyone to deny. Would saying my story wasn’t true involve saying that it wasn’t true that the mailman gave out Tootsie Pops? But we had all tasted those Tootsie Pops. We loved Tootsie Pops!
    “Then how do you get there?” Dan asked. This was the great turning point. It was at moments like this I realized the magic fact that the inside of my body is bigger than the outside. My heart expanded. I could see the sun, blinding white on the candy canes.
    “I told you and told you. It’s six blocks away. I’m going to go there tomorrow after breakfast. I’m going to go on my tricycle. Jenny, you can bring the wagon.”
    “Can I bring my soccer ball?”
    “Yes.”
    “Me too,” Dan said. I nodded.
    “Everyone can come, if you aren’t scared.”
    But it was something to be scared of, since none of us were allowed beyond the block we lived on. Marc and Eric lived just one block away, and they required special permission to visit my house. When it was time for them to leave, my mother had to go with them and watch them cross the dangerous intersection of Kedzie and Michigan. There was so much traffic at that intersection there was a traffic light. If you stood out there, you didn’t have wait too many minutes before a car or even a bus drove through.
    So the idea of us traveling six blocks on our own was just as difficult to believe as the idea of Candy Land. Marc and Eric, made acutely sensitive by their neurotic mother of the dangers of getting run over when crossing just one street, looked frankly stunned. The other kids shifted uncomfortably. The idea that we could cross six blocks on our own was turning out to be much more difficult to believe than the existence of Candy Land itself. In fact, it was impossible for anyone but Jenny to believe it. One of the eight-year-olds snorted. “You kids can’t go six blocks!”
    Perhaps originally I had put Candy Land at such a vast distance because if no one could go there, no one could prove it wasn’t real. But now I wanted to go to Candy Land so badly that no obstacle would stop me. I paused. I thought. Yes.
    “Candy Land is really only two blocks away.”
    Everyone looked at me. Marc and Eric suddenly smiled. Elizabeth, Dan, and the other Dan started smiling. “Yesssss!” Dan hissed, pumping his fist. Neal dropped the stick he was holding. Jenny began clapping insanely, then pushed my tricycle over. Ronald Reagan got shot, and my mother would be still crying about it when we went in for dinner a couple hours later. We were going to Candy Land.
    “Everyone meet in front of my house tomorrow after breakfast.” It would be almost impossible to wait.
    “You have to remember ,” Elizabeth whispered to the other Dan, poking a sharp stick deep into his side. In doing this, she showed an uncanny wisdom regarding memory. You can’t just expect to remember something, no matter how important it seems at the time. You have to make a place for it in your body. Elizabeth made a