The Chocopocalypse

by Chris Callaghan

  “We spent all last night attaching those security tags to bars of chocolate,” Mum told Jelly as the light went on. “People were fighting over the chocolate—if they can’t buy any, they might steal it. It’s a nightmare. When we ran out of tags, we had to take them off clothes and razor blades. I shudder to think what I’m going to find tonight!”

  “I shudder at the thought of ravioli on toast again tonight,” muttered Jelly.

  Dad came to the doorway. “Oi! I heard that,” he said. “Well, we’re not having ravioli on toast, you’ll be pleased to hear. Mum’s having the last of the toast for her breakfast, and we’re going to have something a bit more exotic.”

  “Ooooh!” said Jelly, cheering up. “I like exotic.”

  “We’re having ravioli with naan bread,” Dad announced. “And on your toast,” he said to Mum, “would you like lemon curd or strawberry jam?”

  “Strawberry jam?” replied Mum, looking surprised. “Do we have jam?”

  “Er, no,” said Dad. “I was kind of hoping you were going to say lemon curd. And as there’s no orange juice left, I found some of that melon-and-watercress cordial in the back of the cupboard. We had it a while back, and I’m sure it was lovely….” Mum’s and Jelly’s faces scrunched up, telling him that they didn’t quite agree. He shrugged. “Well, it’s all there is.”

  Mum nodded into the mirror with a sigh as Dad disappeared back into the kitchen. She piled the tubes and bottles into her makeup bag, which was far too small for all the stuff in it, and twirled a little twirl. “Will I do?” she asked.

  “You look beautiful,” Jelly said with a smile, and got a kiss on the forehead.

  Jelly worried about her mum. She did look beautiful, but she also had bags under her eyes.

  “Here you go, Princess Welly,” said Dad, handing Jelly a plate of ravioli with naan bread and Mum her lemon curd toast.

  The toast was cut into dainty diagonal quarters, and Jelly’s plate was laid out in a way that was supposed to be either a face or a dinosaur—she wasn’t sure.

  “Sorry there are no cheese slices left,” he added.

  “That’s all right, Dad,” said Jelly. “It looks lovely, thanks.”

  They all munched on their breakfast/dinner combinations while swaying along to the familiar Seven Show theme song.

  “Tonight,” said a grinning Alice, who had obviously put fake tanner on her face but completely forgotten about her neck, which made her head look like a toffee apple on a stick, “we’ll be going live again to Easter Egg Island to find out more about the controversial Chocopocalpyse. But in the meantime, it’s National Sock Day, and to celebrate, we’d like you to send in pictures of yourselves wearing your favorite socks.”

  Dad wriggled his feet proudly, his big toes poking through his stripy pink socks.

  “Don’t even think about it,” warned Mum. “I’m not having your cheesy feet being beamed to every home throughout the nation. It’s bad enough that they’re in this one!”

  After photos of lots of socks, Alice introduced a singer called Donny Daydream, who had the twinkliest eyes and more rings on his fingers than Jelly had ever seen. She quickly sent a text to Gran, who she knew was a huge fan:

  Donny Daydream on 7 Show

  Gran replied instantaneously:

  Oh my giddy girl!

  Seconds later they heard the front door open, and Gran came puffing into the room.

  “Wow,” laughed Dad, “you can move quickly when you need to!”

  Gran squeezed between Jelly and Mum, her eyes fixed on the screen.

  “Do you wear socks?” Alice was asking Donny.

  The singer laughed and pulled up his pant leg.

  Gran’s eyes widened at the sight of Donny’s ankle.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, “even someone as rock ’n’ roll as me wears socks. But I never wear the same pair twice.”

  Dad almost choked on his melon-and-watercress cordial. “That’s proper rich, that,” he said.

  “What do you do with your old socks?” asked Alice. “Oh, I know—do you make sock puppets out of them?”

  “Er, no.” The singer frowned. “I give them to charity.”

  The studio audience burst into applause, and Jelly wondered if she would be able to get some of Donny’s donated socks as a Christmas present for Gran, and maybe some for Dad too—because he obviously needed new ones…badly.

  “And now to Easter Egg Island. Hello, Professor!” shouted Alice, as if she was trying to speak directly over the Atlantic. “We’ve been asking viewers to send in their questions, and we’ve had tons. We’ll try to fly through them. First one is: On Sunday—will existing chocolate still be here or will that disappear too?”

  Professor Fizziwicks, who was now sitting in front of a tent next to the giant egg monument, nodded as if he was thinking deeply. “My understanding of the inscriptions is that all cacao material, which is the fundamental product in chocolate, will break down,” he said, his tongue flapping about as he grappled with the long words. “In modern scientific terms, the molecules will degrade in a similar manner to radioactive particles, which decay over a precise timeline.”

  “That’s complete nonsense,” muttered Gran. “Scientific codswallop.” But she didn’t sound sure.

  “So this bar will disappear on Sunday?” asked Alice, holding up some chocolate with the brand name taped over.

  “It may become some basic particulate matter,” spat the professor, “like dust or powder or something similar. We do not know exactly how the transformation will occur. But it will not be anything like chocolate at all.”

  Jelly picked up her tablet and typed a question adding #AskChocProf at the end, so that Alice might see.

  “Here’s a question just in from @jellywellington,” said Alice, checking a tablet on the desk nearby. “What about the cacao tree—will it still grow?”

  Jelly’s mouth dropped wide open. Had they actually said her name? She had only just pressed “send.” Awesome!

  Mum, Dad and Gran oooooooooh’d in unison. “What an instant world we live in,” Gran said, shaking her head admiringly.

  “Apart from Sunday mornings,” said Mum. She didn’t work on Saturday nights, so she looked forward to sleeping in late on Sunday mornings.

  “And Tuesday afternoons,” added Dad.

  “There are only a small number of areas of the world that have the correct conditions for the cacao tree to grow,” the professor explained. “Usually in parts of South America and Africa—we call it the Chocolate Belt. Over the last few years, these places have suffered very poor harvests indeed. The basic ingredients for chocolate have been dwindling for a while now. Whether that is due to global warming or over-farming—or something else—is unknown right now. It seems very unlikely the cacao tree will still grow.” The words “something else” jumped into Jelly’s head and bounced around annoyingly. What could that “something else” be? she wondered.

  “And what time will the Chocopocalypse happen here?” Alice asked.

  “The inscriptions refer to the first sunlight on the Ceremony of the Solstice,” spluttered the professor, “which will happen at 5:09 a.m. on Sunday morning on Easter Egg Island. Your time difference is plus two hours,” he calculated out loud. “So this means the corresponding time where you are will be 7:09 a.m. on Sunday morning.”

  “Oh, my brain’s in bits!” said Alice. “I don’t know what to think, but we are out of time tonight.” She leaned away from the camera and toward Donny. “Can I have your socks when you’ve finished with them?”

  Donny’s cheeks reddened. “That’s a bit weird, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, of course it is,” chuckled Alice. “Forget I said that!”

  Then the show went to the commercial break with the Wellington family sitting in stunned silence.

  Bogie and his dog were in their usual spot near the school gates the next morning.

  “Any spare chocolate, Twinkle?” he asked Jelly as she approached.

&nb
sp; Jelly had been searching for a coin to throw in his cup, and this made her stop dead. Chocolate, not money? She did have the last of the Chocolate Walnut Mini Munches in her bag, and really, she hated nutty things. But it’s still chocolate, she thought. Two sets of pleading eyes were fixed on her. It was torture! But it was the dog’s tail that saddened her the most. The tail that never wagged.

  Reluctantly she reached into her bag and handed over her last Mini Munch, getting a whoop of delight and a sharp bark as a thank-you. As she turned to head into school, she wondered for a moment if she’d seen the dog’s tail twitch.

  Her class was even more chaotic than usual. Nobody was interested in Mr. Tatterly’s algebra lesson—they were all flitting around talking about chocolate. It reminded Jelly of that time an eleventh grader called Big Craig couldn’t stop throwing up on the teachers’ table in the cafeteria. Everyone had raced around in a mixture of confused delight and sheer panic.

  Potsy Potter leaned between Jelly and Maya, licking his chocolaty lips. “I’ve been eating so much chocolate, I’ve even got chocolate-colored poo!” he said.

  “Eww,” snorted Maya. “Hashtag overshare!”

  Jelly was about to point out the obvious when Mrs. Spinster, the head teacher, appeared in the room.

  “I have a message for the class, Mr. Tatterly.”

  Mr. Tatterly quickly removed his feet from the desk.

  “Due to recent events,” continued Mrs. Spinster, “and the insane madness that has infected the world, I have an announcement….” She paused dramatically.

  What on earth is she going to say? Jelly thought. Will she ever continue?

  “Tomorrow the school will be closed.” The class burst into cheers of joy.

  Mr. Tatterly punched the air and shouted, “Right on!”

  Jelly and Maya hugged each other in delight while Potsy Potter jumped onto the table and burst into an elaborate robot dance routine, which was so surprisingly good that Jelly and Maya joined in too!

  “What a night I had last night!” said Mum when Jelly got up late the next morning, ready for her day off school. Mum had just come in from work, and she looked exhausted. “It’s like the end of the world. There are security guards in the candy aisle now. And they’ve got those Taser things.”

  “Taser things?” asked Jelly.

  “You know, guns that shoot out wires and give you an electric shock.”

  Jelly shook her head. The world’s going bonkers! she thought.

  “Oh yes,” said Mum. “If you cause any trouble in the candy aisle in my shop, you’ll be electrocuted!”

  “Has anyone been electrocuted yet?”

  “Seven people! Including Darren from the fish counter. And he was only trying to break up a fight over a party pack of Chompy Chocs. We’ve had to close the whole Pick ’n’ Mix section down—it was too dangerous!”

  Jelly tutted and peered into an empty cupboard for some breakfast.

  “I spent hours on the phone and scoured the Internet trying to find more chocolate for the shop,” Mum continued, “and there is none! Once the supermarket is empty, that’s it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I get there tonight and we’re not selling any chocolate at all! I’ll be quite relieved, to be honest.”

  “B-but,” stuttered Jelly, realizing that this wasn’t just talk on the TV anymore, this was really happening, “but we have the most chocolate in the world in Chompton. We have the Big Choc Lot!”

  Mum nodded. “Well, none of it’s coming to my supermarket, that’s for sure. It’s like a plague of locusts have gone from one shop to another on a chocolate rampage. Panic-buying! I even heard the hospital is full up with people who’ve eaten too much chocolate—they’re calling it a-lotta-choca-litis.”

  She opened and closed various cupboard doors.

  “There’s probably nothing here either. Yep, it looks like we’re out of chocolate. And if what they say is true…no more chocolate for the Wellingtons, ever.”

  She slammed another cupboard door and wrenched open the cookie tin, shaking her head at a few custard creams and some granola cookies that nobody liked.

  “And there’s talk about job cuts happening next week,” she said, clattering the cookie tin back into the cupboard. “You can bet your backside I’ll be first on that list! Anyway, I’m sick of chocolate. I’m glad it’s gone. It was nothing but trouble. We’ll all be better off without it. I never want to see another chocolate thing in my life.”

  Dad walked in with a whoopie pie half hanging out of his mouth.

  Mum swiped it off him like a tiger.

  “What the—?”

  Mum threw the pie in her mouth, closed her eyes and chewed frantically, groaning like it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Then she opened her eyes and went bright red.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that. We should have shared it.” Then she turned on Jelly’s dad. “What were you doing with a chocolate whoopie pie, anyway?”

  “I just grabbed a couple to have with my coffee. I didn’t realize it was against the law!”

  “A couple?” squeaked Jelly.

  “You’ve had the last two chocolate whoopie pies?” screeched Mum.

  He held up another pie. “No, this is the last one!”

  This time Jelly snatched it from him. “We’ll do this properly this time, okay? We’ll split it three ways.”

  “That’s not fair,” said Dad. “Old whoopie-snatcher here has had most of the last one.”

  “Yeah, and you had the rest.”

  “I’ll have half,” said Jelly, “and you two can have a quarter each.”

  “What about your gran?” asked Dad, and got one of Mum’s looks.

  “Why did you have to bring her into this?” she snapped. “There’s little enough as it is!”

  “We’ll split it into quarters, okay?” Jelly pulled open a kitchen drawer and grabbed a plastic ruler. She laid the whoopie pie on a chopping board and used the ruler to measure out quarters, scoring the pie with a knife.

  Mum and Dad watched with their tongues sticking out.

  “It might crumble a bit,” said Jelly, and she sliced through the pie with a thud.

  Half of it shot straight into a dirty pot in the sink, which was full of last night’s dirty dishwater, and the other half escaped through an open window.

  Dad rushed out into the backyard. “It’s gone down the drain!” he yelled.

  Mum fished around in the pot before lifting out the mangled and sodden chocolaty remains. “Anyone want it?” she asked.

  Jelly and her dad shook their heads in disgust and watched in disbelief as Mum licked the mess off her fingers.

  “Morning, all,” said Gran, walking in. “Look what I found.” She held up half a loaf of bread and a jar of chocolate spread. “Chocolaty toast, anyone?”

  What followed was the best breakfast ever.

  —

  When they’d all finished, Mum yawned loud enough to scare a lion.

  “I’m off to bed,” she said. “What you up to today, then, munchkin? I hope you’re not worrying too much about all of this?”

  Jelly shook her head, but Mum kept frowning. “I know what a worry-pants you are. You should enjoy your day off from school.”

  “I’m going to check my experiment, then I’m meeting Maya on the High Street,” said Jelly. “She’s getting some new shoes and wants my fashion advice.”

  “Ooh, proper girlie shopping, eh?” Mum smiled. “Can you take Old Bum-stubble with you?” she whispered, pointing at next door. “I might actually get some sleep, then, without having to listen to her country western tunes blaring away.”

  She left the room, and as her heavy footsteps faded away upstairs, Dad pulled out his wallet. Jelly could see it was empty.

  “I’d give you money to get something for yourself if I could….”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Jelly said. “I don’t need new shoes anyway.”

  They both looked at her torn and grubby sneaker
s.

  “We’ll get you some soon, though. Promise,” he said. “Dave says he’s got a special job for me. Can I use your phone for a minute? I need to text him to let him know I’m coming. I don’t have any credit on mine.”

  Jelly decided to get straight to the point. “Is Dave’s job against the law?”

  Dad blinked fast. “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “Is it against the law?”

  He snuggled up beside her. “Sometimes, grown-ups have to do things we don’t always want to do.”

  “Is it against the law?” Jelly repeated again. She wasn’t going to put up with her dad speaking to her like a little girl.

  “Look,” said Dad quietly, putting his arm around her, “if I do this job, it’ll mean I’ll get quite a bit of money. More than usual. And it’ll mean that we can go shopping. You know, actual grocery shopping. Not just for ravioli.” They both chuckled, but Jelly felt tears pricking at her eyes. “There’s a few bills it’ll pay off as well.”

  “But I don’t mind about the ravioli,” Jelly lied.

  Dad laughed and kissed her on the head. “Well, I do. So, can I use your phone or what?”

  Jelly shook her head. “It’s out of battery,” she fibbed. She felt terrible about lying. But telling a lie for a good reason is okay, she told herself. Or is it still just as bad?

  He gave her another gentle squeeze. “Okay, I’ll figure something else out. But I don’t want you worrying about stuff like that. We’ll be fine.”

  Jelly nodded, and Dad went back to the kitchen. She froze as her phone beeped, but Dad didn’t seem to have heard it as he inspected the countertop for leftover cookie crumbs.

  It was a text from Maya.

  I’m @ High St—u gotta get down here. Town’s gone mad!!!!

  Jelly typed back:

  C u in 10 mins.

  —