CHAPTER 4

For hours after the Random Roster Race, Taffyta drove aimlessly around the game. There were fifteen new tracks and she visited most of them, surveying them flatly and wondering how fast all the other racers were learning them. She wished she believed that King Candy actually had some way of knowing what she was doing, but that was a stupid, babyish thought.

The next day she raced, and if you'd asked anyone if something was wrong, they would have said, 'not when she's still driving like that.' At least, they would have, Taffyta figured, if they weren't scowling at her for beating them again. Normally she would have taken great pleasure in that fact. Winning for its own sake was great, but beating everyone else made it especially satisfying. But it was just a footnote now. She didn't really care how her repeated winning made anyone else feel.

After the following night's Random Roster Race, Candlehead asked again if she wanted to hang out, and again, Taffyta refused, leaving to drive circuits around the game. She fell into a lonely routine, talking to her coworkers only before and after races, and avoiding them if she happened to see them while the arcade was closed. The thing was, if she was around them, they wanted to talk—especially Rancis and Candlehead. She knew they were just trying to help, but she didn't want to talk about her feelings. She didn't want to talk about how she was sad, and how time would make it better. Time wouldn't make it better because nothing would make it better.

A week later, after her nightly drive, she trudged into the house and made herself a dinner of marshmallows and cake. As she sat at the table eating it, she stared morosely at the empty chair across from her. She began to sniffle, and then she planted her elbow on the table and covered her eyes with her hand. While she was racing, all the sadness faded away, but now it was back in full force, just as bad as it had been when she'd finally dragged herself out of bed.

She removed her hand from her face and stared at the chair. Suddenly her anger at Litwak and this stupid update bloomed red hot. Why had he done this to them? People played Sugar Rush, it wasn't like gamers were bored with it. They all did their jobs every single day and this was the reward they got? Someone who didn't know anything about them rewriting everything?

She shot to her feet and grabbed the chair, dragging it away from the table and to the closet. There was no point in having two chairs anymore, was there? It was just a horrible reminder that King Candy was gone and never coming back. Giving the chair a shove, she swung the door to shut the closet.

But the chair slid out before the door shut, bashing her shins with a crack of sharp pain. "Ouch!" she yelled, grabbing at her leg and hopping around on one foot. Tears stung at her eyes and before she could stop them, she was sobbing again. She hated this. She hated all of this and she just wanted everything to go back to the way it had been but it never was going to and she was going to have to spend the whole rest of her life feeling this way.

Then there was a knock on the door. Taffyta wiped her face on her hand, wondering if she could just yell at whoever it was to go away. She didn't need the other racers to check on her. Then again, they'd probably just come in anyway. Maybe it was time to start locking the door.

Still sniffling, she went to open the door. To her surprise, Felix was on the other side.

"Oh!" she said, letting her arm fall to her side. She could feel mascara plastered to her face where it had run. Something like that would have been mortifying before. Now she didn't really care.

Felix, on the other hand, looked horrified. "Oh my land, Taffyta, is everything okay here? Wait, no, what a dummy I am, of course it's not, here, let's get you comfortable—"

"No, Felix, it's fine, I don't need you to—"

But he was already ushering her back inside, bringing her to the couch solicitously, and then digging around in her kitchen, insisting that he was going to make her tea. "Have you eaten, kiddo? Oh, er, yes you have, I can see that…well nothing like a balanced, er, dinner."

"It's what we eat here, Felix," she said tiredly. They'd been having this argument for almost a year now, ever since he and Calhoun had taken in the homeless Sugar Rush racers.

"I know, I know, you keep telling me, but I still think it wouldn't hurt to have a a plate of vegetables now and then." He sat down next to her with a mug of tea and held it out. "Here, drink this. And here, blow your nose." He gave her a tissue and she laughed a little, then did as he said.

Patting her shoulder, Felix said, "Jiminy jaminy, I should have come earlier. I'm real sorry, Taffyta, I can only imagine how hard a time you've been having."

She thought about saying that he was right, the only thing he could do was imagine it, but she didn't. It wasn't Felix's fault. "Yeah," she said instead. Then, because she didn't know what else there was to say, she wrapped her hands around the mug of tea and sipped at it.

"So how are you holding up?" he asked hesitantly. "Candlehead and Rancis say your racing's been dynamite all week."

Well, yeah. When it was the only thing that gave you any kind of pleasure in life, you were going to do it well. All she'd done for a week was drive in her free time, so she knew all the new tracks pretty well now. "I guess," she said with a shrug, staring at the steam curling out of her mug.

Felix leaned forward to catch her eye, his brow furrowed. Oh, great. She knew that look. Snowanna had cornered her last night looking the exact same way and Taffyta had snarled at her before the other woman had given up and left. "Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush. Tammy and I are worried about you."

"You don't have to worry," Taffyta said, still staring at the curlicues of steam.

"'Fraid it's our job to worry, kiddo." Putting his hands on his legs, he asked, "How would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow at our place?"

Looking up at him, she said, "What? No, Felix, honestly, you guys don't have to do that. I don't want to like, put you out or anything."

"Why, it's no trouble at all," he said. "What do you say? Just the three of us? I'm making chili and cornbread. Blue ribbon recipe. It's been in the family for generations."

"Um—"

He put a hand on her shoulder. "It'll do you good, Taffyta." Then, in a parental tone, he added, "And I don't mean to criticize your cooking, sweetie, but we need to get some decent food in you."

That made her smile a little. As much as she didn't feel up to interacting with other people for more than a minute or two at a time, it might benefit her in the long run to prove that she could still function. People would probably be less likely to bug her later. And it had been awhile since she'd been over to Felix and Calhoun's place. With the update, spending time with them had gone completely out of her mind. "Okay," she said.

He beamed. "Fantastic! Why don't you come on over around midnight? That should give me enough time to get dinner on the table after the arcade closes."

Even though she nodded, his smile faded to a concerned look. Maybe she needed to do a better job proving she was fine, even though she most definitely wasn't. "Sure. Yep. That sounds great," she said.

There was a silence before Felix got to his feet. There was still a troubled look on his face. Obviously she hadn't been very convincing. "Well, okay then. I suppose we'll see you tomorrow."

Getting to her feet, Taffyta said, "Yeah. Looking forward to it." She wasn't, but that was the kind of thing you needed to say, she knew that now that she was twenty-five instead of nine. "Thanks for the tea," she said.

"You're welcome," he said. He hesitated, then opened the door to let himself out. "Have a good day out there racing tomorrow."

She waved as he closed the door, trying to smile. As soon as it shut, the smile fell right off her face. Agreeing to that had probably been a mistake. The only times she'd managed to stop crying for more than fifteen minutes straight were when she was driving, and even that wasn't a sure bet. Putting a hand to her forehead, she went back to the couch and sat down heavily, burying her face in her hands.


"So, Taffyta, how was racing today?"

She shrugged. "Good."

Felix and Calhoun shared a look that they must have thought was surreptitious as she swallowed a spoonful of chili. They'd been doing it all night when they thought she wasn't looking. Most of the time, she really liked having pseudo-parents, but right now she couldn't help feeling like they were just…well, kind of in her face. On the way over to Fix-It Felix Jr., she'd wondered if it would be weird now that she was grown up. It turned out it really wasn't—in fact, they were still kind of treating her like a kid, which was weird in a different way.

"How many times did you win?" Calhoun asked.

Dipping a piece of cornbread in her chili, she said with another shrug, "A hundred and two. Gold ninety-six of them."

The two of them beamed and she thought about pointing out that this was pretty normal for her. She'd even had one or two days in the past twenty-two years where she'd had a perfect record, first place in every single race. It seemed to make them think that it was a sign of recovery. Like just because she could still drive meant everything was better.

"Why, that's great, Taffyta!" Felix said, his tone overly chipper. Which, considering it was Felix, was really saying a lot. Taffyta just kept her eyes downcast.

Calhoun leaned across the table. "You don't seem very proud of doing so well."

After swallowing another spoonful of chili, Taffyta said, "I don't know. It's normal for me. It's nothing to be proud of."

A dismayed look crossed Felix's face. "But, of course it is, Taff! Even if it's normal for you, you should still be proud of yourself! You're a great racer and you should take pride in that."

Deep down, she knew he was right. The weird thing was she always had been proud of it. But ever since King Candy had died, it had seemed simply like something she needed to do. She'd always demanded a high standard for herself, but now she couldn't do anything else. So she just made an inarticulate noise and ate some cornbread.

Felix and Calhoun looked at each other again and Taffyta realized how much it was setting her on edge. "Hey, maybe you guys can knock that off?" she said. "I'm not like, about to go postal or something."

To their credit, the two of them immediately looked guilty. "No, no, of course not!" Felix said hastily. "We're just…"

"We're just worried," Calhoun finished.

"Yeah, I know. You've said." A tendril of anger snaked through her and even though she knew it was irrational, she snapped, "Everyone's really worried about me. I get it, okay? You have to look out for Taffyta, she's so fragile, she's probably not gonna make it! What does everybody think I'm gonna do? I'm sad, okay? I just lost my best friend, I'm not going to be like, jumping around and partying and acting like nothing happened!"

"Of course not," Felix said in what he probably meant to be a soothing tone. "No one thinks—"

Tears came to her eyes and she didn't know if they were angry or sad. Probably some combination of both. "Then why do you all keep coming by to 'check up on me?' You're not going to be the one to turn everything around for me, okay? It's not going to happen! I keep hearing about how like, time heals all wounds, or whatever, but then you act like cooking me dinner or asking me to get a root beer or something is going to magically make me feel better. Newflash: nothing is ever going to make me feel better!"

The lump in her throat that had been growing during this speech finally caught up with her and overwhelmed her ability to speak, and she put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. She couldn't stop herself from crying. Of course she couldn't. It was all she did.

"I don't understand how I'm supposed to stop feeling like this," she said in defeat, her hair hanging in curtains over her face. "Is this just—just the way it's going to be for the rest of my life?"

A chair scraped back and suddenly Taffyta felt arms around her. She didn't want it to be comforting but it was, and with a whimper, she leaned into Calhoun. There was a long moment of silence while the other woman held her and stroked her hair slowly. Then, eventually, Calhoun said quietly, "Honey, I know it's not exactly the same thing, but I lost someone once, too."

Taffyta raised her eyes a little, peering through her hair at Calhoun. With a sniffle, she asked, "You—you did?"

With a nod, Calhoun replied, "Sure did, soldier. I was engaged to someone else once."

Raising her head and looking at Calhoun in surprise, Taffyta said, "You were? But what about Felix?"

Felix put a comforting hand on Calhoun's shoulder and said, "Oh, this was a long time before we met. A whole mess of years."

She smiled at him, then turned back to Taffyta. "His name was Brad. We met in the Space Corps, but on our wedding day—" For a moment, she had to stop and gather herself. Taffyta stared. Calhoun seemed so tough all the time, she never in a million years would have thought the other woman could be sad, like…well, like a normal person. "A Cy-bug got him on our wedding day, and it took me a long, long time to work through that."

Taffyta clapped her hands over her mouth. "Oh my god, that's…that's horrible, Tamora."

With a nod, Calhoun said, a bleakness in her tone that Taffyta hadn't ever heard before, "It was tough. I'm not going to lie to you, Taffyta, losing someone you love, no matter how you love them, that's never going to be anything but tough. There's no magic fix. That was the hardest thing for me. When you're used to solving all your problems with a plasma rifle, that kind of emotional stuff, it's…well, it doesn't come easy."

Looking back down at her lap, Taffyta said quietly, "I wish I could just turn it off."

"So did I."

She twined her fingers together in her lap. "I guess that's why I've been putting so much into racing. I mean, even more than usual. It's the only time I can feel something besides sad." Saying this, putting it into words to other people, and to someone who understood what she was going through, felt freeing.

Squeezing her shoulder, Calhoun said, "I know. It's probably going to be that way for a long time. But you know we're always here for you whenever you need us."

"And even when you think you don't need us," Felix added with a smile.

Taffyta managed to crack a small smile back at him. "I wish your hammer could fix all of this. Or any of it."

He looked sad. How many times must he have thought that through the years, about all sorts of different things? What good was a magic hammer, really, when the only things it could fix were the things that didn't really matter? "Me too, kiddo," he said.

Standing back up, Calhoun said, "Now, how about you finish your dinner? Felix tells me you're eating candy all the time?"

This startled a watery laugh out of her. "Guilty, I guess," she said. "But I mean, I do live in Sugar Rush. Eating candy all the time is kind of just what we do."

"Maybe we need to see about getting regular deliveries of vegetables sent over there," Felix said, mock sternness in his tone.

Calhoun sat down in her chair again and pointed her spoon at Taffyta. "Otherwise, we're going to make you come over here for dinner once a week."

Taking another spoonful of chili, Taffyta said, "I mean, maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world." The two of them looked delighted by this, and for the first time she was struck by how they must have felt. They'd taken the racers into their home, prepared to parent all fifteen of them (well, fourteen, since Vanellope had run off), and then, once Sugar Rush had been plugged back in, all of them had just gone back home. Felix and Calhoun hadn't had kids of their own since then. Taffyta didn't even know if that was possible. But it must have been pretty bittersweet to see all your sort-of-kids suddenly grown up and not needing you anymore.

Though, Taffyta did need them, didn't she? Even if she wasn't going to say it out loud.

Once dinner was over, she headed back to Sugar Rush. Game Central Station was busy as she walked through it, bustling with characters talking and laughing. A couple Madden players were tossing a football around, and a group of Hero's Duty soldiers were having a shouted conversation as they jogged in a circuit around the hall. Paperboy was doing tricks on his bike, entertaining a few Sugar Rush NPCs. Everyone was so happy. Everything was…normal. And she felt disconnected from all of it, walking along in her own lonely bubble. She didn't know if she was unable or just unwilling to penetrate it.

It was weird how something as simple as walking didn't come naturally in her new body. At least after two weeks, it felt more like her own, but she still wasn't used to the length of her stride or the size of her feet. Plus her arms kept banging her hips. She wasn't used to those being there.

Suddenly, someone whistled at her, shrill and sharp and unpleasant. No, it wasn't just a whistle. Someone wolf-whistled at her. She stopped dead in her tracks and tried to spot where it was coming from. After a second, her eyes landed on Ken from Street Fighter, elbowing Zangief and pointing at her.

Taffyta turned bright red and looked at the ground, hurrying away. She may have only been twenty-five for two weeks, but she knew what that meant, and she didn't like it one bit. To his credit, Zangief batted Ken's arm down and glared at him, but it didn't do much to assuage Taffyta's mortification. Was this how guys were going to treat her now?

To her relief, she made it back to the Sugar Rush outlet without further incident. If that was the kind of thing she was going to have to put up with, she wasn't interested in ever coming out to Game Central Station again. With a sigh, she climbed into her kart and sat there for a moment, her chest hurting and every part of her just…tired. She was tired of feeling like she didn't know her own body anymore, but most of all, she was tired of feeling sad, and tired of knowing that she was always going to feel sad. It wasn't fair that it could hurt this much to lose someone.

Sighing again, she started her kart and steered into the tunnel that would bring her home. Once back inside Sugar Rush, she began her usual circuit of the whole game, eventually ending up in the Candy Cane Forest. It wasn't one of her favorite places. She didn't like the taffy swamps, possibly because Swizzle had gone through a period of calling her Taffy Swamp to tease her, a name which she hadn't found particularly funny but everyone else had. At least until she reminded them who was queen bee of the game, then they'd stopped laughing.

But she hadn't really explored it since the upgrade. That was probably a good enough reason to check it out.

The road through the forest was in way worse repair than it had been before the upgrade, but there were also parts of it with guardrails, as well as a couple jumps. Maybe this had been meant to be a new track and had then been abandoned. Well, none of them were really missing out on much. The view was boring, the terrain was a snooze-fest, and—

Pink Lightning's front tire hit a pothole and stuck. "What the—?" Taffyta muttered. She jammed down on the accelerator and her kart's wheels spun, then sank into the road several inches. "Ugh, you have to be kidding me!" she said, getting out. Her shoes squelched as she circled her kart, inspecting the hole she'd managed to get herself trapped in. After several seconds, Pink Lightning rose again to the surface of the road. Another part of that half-finished track—an obnoxious hazard to slow you down.

Well, now that she knew about it, she had to admit it was pretty good. If there was ever another update and they finished this track, she'd be the only one to know about it. That made her smile a little.

She put a hand on the side of her kart, about to jump back inside, when she heard a—well, a noise.

That was the only way she could describe it, even though it wasn't really a noise. It was something…different. Something weirdly sub-sonic and ultra-sonic at the same time, something at the edge of both her hearing and senses. Slowly, she turned around, trying to figure out where it was coming from. That was, if there was even an it to come from somewhere. Her eyes scanned the forest. Nothing. Was she imagining it? She couldn't hear it anymore. Well, she'd never really been able to hear it. But it seemed like it was gone now.

Then it came back. Taffyta whipped her head around to face in the direction she somehow knew it was coming from. Ugh, of course. She made a face, then stepped off the road into the taffy swamp.

Immediately, she sank in up to her knees. She groaned and twisted her face in revulsion again, but she pulled one leg out with a thick squelch and took a step. The sound pulled her onward until, breathing heavily, she reached the place where it seemed loudest. Or—strongest? There was nothing there, though.

Taffyta looked around. Whatever it was had to be coming from around here somewhere. No way had she walked through this disgusting swamp only to not find anything.

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of light. She slogged in that direction, stumbling out of the swamp onto a dry island. Gross, her legs were totally caked in taffy. Wrinkling her nose, she glanced around again, and then—there! There was that flash of light again. There was one tree growing on the island, forked at the bottom into two trunks. She covered the distance to it and knelt down, the taffy on her legs instantly glueing her to the ground. At the bottom of the trunk, where the stripes should have been, there was a glitching, gridded space. Purple, blue, and pink light was pulsing out of it and its borders were indistinct and constantly shifting. Below the gridded surface was blackness.

For several moments, Taffyta just watched the space, mesmerized. What was she looking at? The candy cane tree was all there like normal, but then, suddenly, it just stopped, and there was this glitchy looking hole in the middle of it. She peered into the hole, but all she could see was the blue grid over the surface.

She reached out a hand, then stopped. What are you doing, don't touch it! What a stupid thing to do. She didn't know what she was looking at or what this was.

Oh well. With a shrug, she put her hand on the gridded blackness.

There was a garbling sound as she glitched, and when she looked down at herself, her entire body had dissolved into blue binary.

She withdrew her hand. So yeah. This must be the game's exposed code. Whoever had worked on this section of the game hadn't done a very good job patching it up when they'd decided not to finish the track.

Then her hand flickered and she glanced down at it, startled. Binary was scrolling across her palm.

For a moment she watched it, transfixed. She'd never seen anything like it before, not any of the times she'd glitched through contact with Vanellope or King Candy. When that had happened, as soon as she'd stopped touching them, the glitching had stopped too. But this just kept going, despite the fact that she wasn't in contact with the exposed code anymore. Then, slowly, as she watched, the binary faded.

She stayed kneeling there, staring at her hand. Without thinking, she reached out and touched the exposed code again. The same binary appeared on her hand, scrolling across in a repeating line of code.

Wait. Why was there one line of binary repeating on her hand? She'd seen her own code, and she didn't remember this part. Only then did it occur to her that she needed to write this down. Frantically, she looked around for something to write on and immediately felt stupid. Something to write on? Like what, she kept a pen and paper with her while she raced?

She spotted the lowest branch of the candy cane tree. That would work. She jumped straight up in the air, the taffy on her legs squelching, grabbed a twig from the larger branch, and broke it off. Then, staring at the fading binary on her hand, she wrote it down in the soft cocoa powder ground. When she was done, she rocked back, her knees folded underneath her.

01010011 01001111 01010011.

It repeated a few times, and then another, longer string of binary followed it. None of it meant anything to her. But she had a feeling, burgeoning in her heart, that it meant something. Something good—something possibly amazing.

She jumped to her feet and leapt back into the swamp to get back to her kart. She didn't know what it meant, but she knew there was someone in the arcade who would.