When I wake up, the far side of my butterscotch-disc bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Gloyd's sticky-sweet warmth but finding only the waxy cellophane remnant of a piece of discarded taffy.

He must have had a bad dream.

Of course he did. This is the day of the Wrapping.

I swing my legs off the edge of the butterscotch and slide into my boots, hewn from silky-smooth chocolate kisses that have formed themselves to my feet over time. I pull on my peanut butter cup-wrapper skirt and an old hooded sweatshirt, and tie my long black hair back with a red licorice whip before I slip outside.

Our district of Sugar Rush, known as "Yellow" #5, is typically crawling with Nesquick-sand miners heading off to their shift at this hour. Candies with hunched-over shoulders and fragmented dreams, most of whom have long since stopped trying to scrub the chocolate dust from the weary lines of their once-sweet faces.

But today, the dusty chocolate streets are empty. Even the square Chiclet shutters on the squat, rotting brown gingerbread houses are closed tight.

The Wrapping isn't until midnight.

May as well sleep in, if you can.

I only have to pass through the sugar-free lollipops to reach the sticky field known as Candy Cane Meadow. Seperating the Meadow from the forest, in fact, enclosing the entirety of of District #5, is a tall fence topped with sour-straw loops. It's supposed to be a deterrent to predators, like rogue Devil Dogs that have gone feral and formed packs - or scavengers like me, doi - but as almost everyone around here knows, the sour candy whips have long since lost their flavor.

Still, to be safe, I squeeze myself under a small stretch of fence that has been loose for as long as my game has been plugged in.

Inside the Candy Cane Forest waits the only person in the Arcade with whom I can truly be myself. Gloyd. I feel a rare smile begin to form across my cheeks as I make my way, hand-over-hand, through the candy-cane trees - careful, as always to avoid the double-striped branches - toward our secret hideout where a thicket of gumdrop bushes shields us from unwanted eyes.

Gloyd says I never smile except in the Forest.

"Hey, Nilla," he says.

My name is actually Vanellope, but for some reason, Gloyd has always called me "Nilla." Blame it on his coding, I guess.

"Hey, Sergeant Stinkybritches," I reply without a second thought.

"Look what I got." Gloyd holds up a comically-oversized cherry, almost larger than his own head, and I laugh. This is an actual cherry, not just one of those saccharine-coated counterfeits that Jubileena and those other racers from District "Red" #40 try to pass off as the real deal.

I take the fruit in both of my hands and inhale its organic fragrance, my mouth flooding with pixelated saliva.

"Where did you get this?" I ask in awe. He must have gone out at the crack of closing to acquire it.

"Pac-Man," answers Gloyd with a mischevious smirk. "Think the old dot-muncher was feeling sentimental tonight."

"Ooh, I almoshhhhht forgot!" I try to deadpan, between mouthfuls of the the plump, delicious cherry. The sweet tartness explodes across my tongue and it's not until I finally manage to swallow that I can continue. "Happy Sugar Games, Gloyd!"

"And may the oddsh - " Gloyd adds, equally affected by the potency of the foreign fruit, " - be evah in your flavor!"

We have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of our code.