The candy in the dime store looked so inviting. It was piled in neat heaps on the candy counter. There were chocolate drops with a dark brown color, looking good enough to melt in your mouth. Droozy could feel her mouth water. There were red and white mints in cartwheel shapes, little flat chocolates sprinkled with white sugar dots, and yellow lemon wedges, soft and chewy. In a corner there was a sizable mountain of peanut candy, all wrapped in white transparent paper enabling one to see the creamy caramel-like peanut kisses underneath.

Droozy stood there for a while almost able to taste the pointy sweetness of these delicacies, as it would pass over her lips melting deliciously on her tongue. Eight cents per pound, read the large hand-made sign. Automatically Droozy reached into the half torn pocket of her cotton dress and withdrew her empty hand. Droozy looked all around and noticed the salesgirl was at the other end of the counter weighing large white bags of goodies for a very obese lady. Droozy quickly placed both hands on the peanut kiss mountain and came away with them full of the tempting sweets. “Stop thief, stop,” called out the saleslady in a loud, clear, threatening voice. Droozy ran out of the store, as fast as she could, colliding with people. Her feet flew across the brown wooden dime-store floor, out the glass doors, down the grey streets, faster, faster, and still faster. “Run thief run,” an inner voice shrieked. Around the corner, across the street, between whizzing cars she dashed, still hearing the horrible voice of her pursuer following her everywhere. For miles and miles, so it seemed, she ran, panting and quaking to run from the crime. Droozy’s heart pounded harder and harder in her chest, her breath came in short spurts. She did not stop until she was inside the door of her parents’ home, where she quickly turned the key to lock herself in. “They can’t get me now,” she thought. She looked at her hands and they were empty. She had lost all of the candy along the way.