The Chocolate Touch Read online

  John squeezed some more toothpaste onto his brush and continued to brush his teeth. Chocolate again! It was marvelous—rich, sweet, smooth chocolate, chocolately chocolate, like the single piece of chocolate from the box the night before.

  There seemed to be no further need for the toothbrush, so John rinsed it and hung it up. He squeezed out another bit of toothpaste, onto a fingertip this time. He put his finger in his mouth and ate the toothpaste off. When he took his finger out again, it was stained chocolate brown. John wasted no more time. He put the end of the toothpaste tube into his mouth and emptied the paste onto his tongue. It squeezed out like thick, creamy chocolate.

  Mary looked into the bathroom. “Hey, what are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Yummy!” was all John said.

  John and Mary were a little late getting to the dining room, and Mr. Midas was already on the way to his train when they sat down at the breakfast table.

  “John ate up all the toothpaste,” Mary told their mother.

  “Ooh, you sneak!” John whispered.

  “Well, you did,” Mary reminded him. “And that’s a waste. Isn’t it a waste, Mother, to eat up all the toothpaste in one day?”

  Mrs. Midas was serving their orange juice. “Mary really!” she said. “I’m sure John was only joking. He must have been pretending to eat the toothpaste.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Mary insisted. “I was watching, and I saw him squeeze it right into his mouth. He said it was chocolate.”

  “Oh, dear,” protested Mrs. Midas. “Chocolate again! Now I know it was just a joke. He just wished it were chocolate, Mary. Come now, drink up your orange juice, both of you. Your bacon and eggs will be ready in a minute.”

  As Mrs. Midas left the room, John took up his glass of orange juice and put it to his lips. As soon as he tilted it and the liquid began to flow into his mouth, a happy look came into his eyes. “Boy, that’s good,” he said at last, lowering the empty glass. “Chocolate juice.”

  Mary looked at John. Then she looked at her glass of orange juice. It was a bright orange color. She tasted it. It tasted like orange to her. “It is not chocolate juice,” she said. “It’s orange juice. Orange juice is good for you.”

  “Yes, John,” Mrs. Midas said, hearing the last few words as she carried in the tray of bacon and eggs. “You must drink your—” She caught sight of John’s empty glass. “John,” she said, “you good boy! That’s the first time in ages you’ve finished your orange juice without having to be told to.”

  “It tasted of chocolate,” John explained.

  “All right,” Mrs. Midas said. “Very funny. But don’t tease Mary too much. Remember—Mary’s younger than you are.”

  John silently picked up his fork and sliced the yolk of his fried egg. The yellow broke over the white and he shivered as he watched it, as he always did. “I can’t eat this,” he told his mother.

  “Of course you can,” Mrs. Midas said. “You drank your orange juice. Try to eat your bacon and egg.”

  John scraped up a small piece of egg and put it into his mouth. It immediately became chocolate—chocolate white and chocolate yolk. Both lovely, lovely chocolate. “Mmm!” John mumbled. “Chocolate egg!” In almost no time he had finished every scrap of egg on his plate. Then he tried the bacon. The bacon turned to chocolate, too.

  John had never before enjoyed his breakfast so much. After the orange juice that had turned to chocolate juice in his mouth and the fried bacon and egg that had turned to fried chocolate, he ate two slices of chocolate toast with chocolate butter and chocolate marmalade, washed down with a glass of chocolate milk.

  “I’m very pleased with you this morning,” Mrs. Midas said, as she helped John on with his coat. “If you promise to eat your lunch at school as well as you ate your breakfast, I’ll give you a dime to buy some chocolates with.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” John said. “I don’t think I’ll need it.”

  Mrs. Midas looked puzzled as she waved good-bye.

  4

  John had the bad habit of chewing things when he was thinking hard. This morning he had several things to think about. What had made the toothpaste taste like chocolate? What had made the orange juice taste like chocolate? What had made the bacon and egg taste like chocolate? What had made the toast and butter and marmalade taste like chocolate?

  Each one of these things had felt the way it had always felt before. The toothpaste had been soft and pasty. The bacon had been hot, crisp, and oily. The toast had been crunchy and the marmalade sticky and lumpy. But everything had tasted like the chocolate he had eaten in bed last night.

  John put a gloved thumb in his mouth and thoughtfully chewed. His mother had frequently pointed out to him that chewing his gloves made little holes that let in the cold air. But he chewed them just the same when he was thinking hard. This time he noticed something very queer about the thumb of his glove. Instead of tasting leathery, it tasted like chocolate. John pulled his thumb out of his mouth. The part of the glove that had been in his mouth was now brown, instead of black like the rest.

  He bit the end of the leather thumb again. It came right off in his mouth, leaving his own thumb bare. John chewed, and it was like chewing leather made of chocolate, leather that melted like chocolate. . . . In a second or two he swallowed it.

  The gloves were not new. John had had them quite a while. He couldn’t understand why he had never thought of eating them before. He tried to tear off one of the fingers, but the leather was too strong for him. He put it into his mouth, and it immediately turned into chocolate. Then he was able to break it off easily. He popped it into his mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it. It was delicious.

  Walking along devouring his glove, John did not notice one of his schoolfellows, Spider Wilson, until he heard his voice. “John’s gone crazy! John’s gone crazy!” Spider yelled. Then he turned on John. “Don’t they feed you where you live?” He sneered. Spider was in the grade just above John’s and was one of the meanest and slyest boys in the whole school.

  John gulped down a large piece of the second glove’s palm and looked pleased.

  “What’s the matter?” Spider demanded. “Do your people make you eat leather?”

  “This is special leather,” John replied. He licked his lips and sighed contentedly. “It turns into chocolate as soon as you put it into your mouth. Look.” John bit off the glove’s little finger and took it out of his mouth. “Now it’s chocolate.” He put it back into his mouth and gulped it down.

  “Give me a piece,” Spider said.

  “Why should I?” John wanted to know. “They’re my gloves.”

  “Hand over a piece,” Spider said.

  “Do I eat your gloves?” John asked reasonably, his mouth full of chocolate. “Why should you eat mine?”

  “Those aren’t real gloves,” Spider said. “Whenever one person has candy, he has to share it with the others. That’s the club rule.”

  “What club?” John asked.

  “Never mind what club,” Spider said. “But you’d better let me have some of that chocolate.”

  Without waiting longer, Spider snatched what was left of the second glove. John was too surprised to resist, and he didn’t want to, anyhow. He had a feeling that he’d had enough chocolate for a while. He was getting a bit thirsty.

  Spider ran only a little way ahead. When he saw that John wasn’t going to fight to get the glove back, he started to eat his prize. He stuffed the leather into his mouth and took a big bite. Spider stopped short in his tracks. He frowned and bit deep into the leather again. Disgusting! It tasted worse than just leather. It tasted like leather with which a boy had made mud pies and snowballs and patted old dogs.

  John thought perhaps he might be getting late for school, so he started running. He left Spider Wilson spitting the soggy remains of the glove into the gutter.

  Still giggling to himself about the defeat of the enemy, John walked between the great stone pillars at the entrance to th
e school grounds. He had gone no more than halfway to the main building when he heard Susan Buttercup calling him. She was standing near the jungle gym with some of her friends.

  “I’ve got something to show you, John,” she shouted.

  As she came running to meet him, he could see that she was waving something in her hand that flashed as it caught the rays of the sun. It was a silver dollar. “It’s a birthday present!” she explained, showing him the dollar. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  The sight of such wealth made John forget the triumphs of his own day. “It’s a good present,” he said. “Are you sure it’s made of silver, though? I once got a whole bag of gold coins in a Christmas stocking, only they were chocolate coins covered with gold paper.”

  “Of course it’s real, silly,” Susan said. “My daddy said so. You can feel it if you don’t believe me.” She handed him the coin.

  John looked at the coin suspiciously.

  “All right,” Susan said. “Bite it, if you think it isn’t real. Go on, bite it!”

  John felt rather silly. “I can see it’s real now,” he said. “I don’t have to bite it.”

  “But I want you to,” Susan insisted. “You weren’t sure. Well, make sure. That’s what they always do on television. When a cowboy wants to make sure a dollar’s real, he bites it.”

  John put the dollar about halfway into his mouth and reluctantly bit it. His teeth went right through the coin. The part that had passed between his lips was hard but sweet chocolate.

  Susan could hardly believe her eyes. She had given John a complete circle of silver. He sadly handed back a crescent.

  John didn’t know what to say. Susan couldn’t speak. Tears trickled down her cheeks like rain down a windowpane. She looked at the piece of dollar in her hand. She looked up at John, whose face was red with embarrassment. “John Midas,” Susan blurted out at last, “I hate you.” She turned and ran away before John could think of anything at all to say.

  5

  John hung up his coat, got his notebook and pencil out of his locker, and sat down at his small table just in time for the second bell, when Miss Plimsole walked silently into the classroom. As soon as she appeared in the doorway, all the chattering and scuffling stopped. The twenty boys and girls sat straight in their chairs and looked straight ahead at the clean blackboard.

  “Good morning, children,” Miss Plimsole said.

  “Good morning, Miss Plimsole,” the class answered respectfully.

  Miss Plimsole sat at her high desk, blinking her eyes as she surveyed the room. Then she opened a little drawer in her desk and pulled out a spectacles case, from which she took her reading glasses. She removed her long-distance glasses, put on her short-distance glasses, snapped shut the spectacles case, replaced it in the drawer, shut the drawer, tilted her head forward so that she could look over the glasses on her nose, and said, “This morning, children, we are going to have an important test.”

  There were some groans and a few “ooh’s” and “ah’s.”

  Miss Plimsole lifted up one of her hands and silence was restored instantly. “No complaining, please!” she said sternly. “This test will show me how well you have been learning your arithmetic this year. It will be a short one. I am going to write just four problems on the board. I shall expect you to solve them all swiftly and accurately and to write your answers neatly. You will place your paper in front of you now. You will write your name at the top right-hand corner. And then you will place your pencil beside your paper, sit back in your chair, and wait until I give the signal to begin work.” Miss Plimsole turned to the blackboard and began chalking up the test problems.

  Tests always made John nervous. Besides, his lips were feeling dry, and the taste of chocolate was strong in his mouth. He raised his hand.

  “Yes, John?” Miss Plimsole asked.

  “Please may I go and get a drink of water, please, Miss Plimsole?” he asked in a small voice.

  “Very well. Hurry back. We’re going to start in a few minutes.”

  John gratefully slipped out of the room and walked quickly down the quiet corridor to a water fountain. His tongue felt thick with chocolate. The cold water would be refreshing.

  He pressed his foot down on the fountain treadle, and a stream of clear, ice-cold water spurted up from the silver nozzle in the white enamel basin. He lowered his head until the jet of water reached his lips. The cold water splashed delightfully against the outside of his mouth. He opened his lips. As soon as the water gushed in, it turned into ice-cold chocolate water, thin and sweet.

  Quickly stopping the flow, John looked with dismay at the shallow puddle that had formed and was now draining away in the basin of the fountain. He hurried to another fountain, on the second floor of the building. But there the same thing happened. The clear, ice-cold water turned to liquid chocolate in his mouth.

  When John finally got back to his classroom, all the other pupils were bent over their tables, busily scratching away. Miss Plimsole looked up from her book as John tiptoed in. She looked at the clock on the wall, looked back at him, and wagged her finger reprovingly.

  John began on the first of the four problems, but he was so worried about the chocolate water that he couldn’t keep his mind on his work. By the time he was ready to start the fourth problem, the other boys and girls were already putting down their pencils and straightening up and smiling at each other.

  “Two minutes to go,” said Miss Plimsole.

  Concentrating hard, John took the end of his pencil between his teeth and began to nibble it. It immediately turned to chocolate. Then he noticed an even more disturbing change. Although he had taken the pencil out of his mouth as soon as the first piece of chocolate had crumbled off, the pencil was continuing to change to chocolate. The chocolate was slowly but steadily, moving down the pencil, replacing the wood and the lead inside, changing it into a chocolate pencil before John’s very eyes. The magic—for John now knew that his power must be magic—was apparently getting stronger.

  By the time the whole pencil had changed from red, yellow, and black to dark brown, Miss Plimsole was announcing that only a few seconds remained in which to write down the final answer.

  “Just a minute,” John pleaded.

  “Sh!” Miss Plimsole cautioned him, holding a finger up to her mouth.

  “Sh!” chorused the slow workers, who were becoming almost as excited as John. But John felt worst of all. He felt sure that he could finish the problem and write down the correct answer, if only he had something to write with.

  “But Miss Plimsole,” he begged in a loud whisper, “my pencil’s turned to chocolate!”

  “Hush, John!” Miss Plimsole said. “I’ll speak to you after the bell.”

  John tried to write with his changed pencil. But the point was too soft, and he only succeeded in making a chocolate smear where he should have written 72.

  6

  When the others had been excused to go out for midmorning play, John had to go and stand by Miss Plimsole’s desk.

  “John,” Miss Plimsole said, “you mustn’t make up silly stories to excuse your failures. I must have the truth. What did you do with your pencil?”

  “This is it,” John said, showing Miss Plimsole the pointed stick of chocolate. “Really it is. It’s changed.”

  “What do you mean, it’s changed?” Miss Plimsole demanded.

  “That’s my pencil,” John tried to explain, “only it isn’t the same anymore. Nothing stays the same today if I put it into my mouth. The same thing happened when I chewed my gloves. They were chocolate, too.”

  “John,” said Miss Plimsole slowly, “do . . . you . . . feel . . . all . . . right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” John said. “I feel all right. Except,” he added, “I’m getting so thirsty. The water from the water fountain turned to chocolate and so did the water upstairs. I would like a drink of cold water.”

  “Yes, John,” Miss Plimsole said. She suddenly looked pale. “You run out and
play with the others. I’m going to have a talk with the nurse. And John,” Miss Plimsole said, as he started toward the classroom door, “here’s another pencil. Be a good boy and try not to lose it. I’m afraid I’ll have to keep this piece of chocolate until school’s out. You know we don’t allow anyone to eat candy in class.”

  Miss Plimsole put the slightly chewed chocolate pencil in her desk drawer, and John went out to look for Susan. He found her skipping rope with two girls in his class.

  John usually scorned skipping rope. He preferred hide-and-seek, tag, F.B.I. and spies, kick the can, or any other good, exciting game. Jumping up and down in one place just to avoid being hit by a rope seemed silly to him. But he was sorry for having spoiled Susan’s silver dollar, and he was willing to make a sacrifice.

  “Susan,” he said.

  Susan continued to bounce on one foot as her two friends swung the rope, over and under, over and under, over and under her. She didn’t seem to notice John.

  “I’ll skip with you,” he offered.

  Susan stopped, and the rope was caught by her shins. “Let’s try doubles, backwards,” she said, but not to John. She ignored John. “You go first, Betty. Ellen, you go second. I’ll go last. The one who does it the most times gets the first slice of my birthday cake.”

  Susan looked at John, raised her eyebrows, shut her eyes, and stuck out the tip of her pink tongue. Then she turned back to the girls and smiled. Ellen whispered in Betty’s ear, and Betty whispered in Susan’s ear. Then all three of them looked at John and at each other again and burst out laughing.

  “Oh, Susan!” John protested. “I didn’t mean to do it. The trouble is there’s something magic about me today. Everything I put into my mouth turns to chocolate.”

  The girls giggled.

  “You wouldn’t like it,” said John, who was beginning to feel sorrier for himself than he had ever felt before. “I think it’s getting worse,” he added reproachfully. “At first just the part in my mouth turned to chocolate. But when I nibbled the end of my pencil, the whole pencil changed.”