“In the town itself, actually within sight of the house in which Charlie lived, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY! Just imagine that! And it wasn’t simply an ordinary enormous chocolate factory, either. It was the largest and most famous in the whole world!”
“I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would’ve been Constantine’s voice singing. If singing was a color, it would’ve been the color of that chocolate.”
“As a kid I understood that people were different colors, but in my head white and black and brown were like types of chocolate. Dad was the white chocolate, mom was the dark chocolate, and I was the milk chocolate. But we were all just chocolate. I didn’t know any of it had anything to do with ‘race.’ I didn’t know what race was. My mother never referred to my dad as white or to me as mixed. So when the other kids in Soweto called me ‘white,’ even though I was light brown, I just thought they had their colors mixed up, like they hadn’t learned them properly. ‘Ah, yes, my friend. You’ve confused aqua with turquoise. I can see how you made that mistake. You’re not the first.’”
“When Pat arrived at the twins’ birthday party, with Sarah-Ann and the chocolates, Katy smiled properly for the first time that day. She hugged Sarah-Ann and Pat and Jess, and said, ‘Thank you’ to them all. It was a lovely party.”
“ ‘Poor Katy,’ said Pat, ‘and on her birthday, too. I’ll buy her a box of chocolates to cheer her up, as we haven’t found Sarah-Ann’. Pat took a box of chocolates from the shelf of the mobile shop.”
″‘My name is Jerry Renault and I’m not going to sell the chocolates,’ he said to the empty apartment. The word and his voice sounded strong and noble.”
″ ‘I guess some clam will find my tooth and get what I wished for,’ said Sal. ‘If we come back here tomorrow and I find a clam eating a chocolate ice-cream cone, why, we’ll have to take it away from him and make him give my tooth back too,’ she said.”