3 Don't Tease a Snake Barefoot

Several days passed and nothing special happened. Matt seemed to have the desire to bundle Cheryl away from the house because he bought her another chocolate bar – for birthday, he said, which was accidentally in a quarter year's time. Of course there was no ticket in it either. The press came with a lot of information about the first two winners, but hardly anything about Wonka himself. Most of it was speculations and rumours. When the media seemed to fable, salvation came in the form of a third finder of a golden ticket. Her name was Tara Norden.

"Please tell us something about you," asked the journalists who crammed into a pitifully tiny flat on the Amsterdam suburb.

"Well," said Tara and drew her hair aside. "I am a gym teacher and I organize free-time activities for children, mainly trips and tours, you know, I love sport. I used to go to the mountains with my husband but he died five years ago. He fell off a rock. I have only Erik now," she patted her ten years old son. "We live quite happily but he misses his dad."

"How did you get the ticket?"

"It was Erik's work," Tara smiled. "Yesterday he bought a chocolate bar with the ticket and gave it to me. He'd love to have a new father. Now we may be lucky.

"What do you think about Willy Wonka?"

"It is an unknown person to me, I don't know. He looks fine but I don't dare to guess his nature."

"What if he chose right you?" It was another question given to all of them. Tara smiled and shook her head.

"That's too soon to ask now. We'll wait and see, also what Erik will say."

"How about having Mr Wonka as a dad?" a reporter asked Erik who was apparently bored and would prefer to go out and play football.

"I dunno," he said. "But I would like to see the factory."

"I am afraid that the admittance is allowed only to Erik's mother, so he has to hope Mr Wonka will choose right her. Then the factory will surely be like their home. Anita Lekker, Duna television," said the reporter.

Willy Wonka thought that the tickets maybe wasn't a good idea after all.

"Storm is a moron," said Cheryl to Amy after returning from work. A meddler appeared and pointed out the fact the Wonka poster is there, and said it troubled him. The boss came fuming with anger and accused Cheryl of disturbing the work discipline; he said that she knew he wished it to be removed. She did her best to explain it to him, but in vain. She was forced to remove the poster, though she didn't approve of that. Such a fuss about a piece of paper. For a few days Cheryl tried not to meet her boss, if she could. She noticed the readers (mostly females) began asking where they put it, why it is gone etc.

"The management wishes it not to be here," Cheryl answered, smiling.

"What a pity," was the usual reaction. "Why do they mind?"

"I don't know," said Cheryl mechanically and retrieved codes from the books. They are right, she thought. I will say it is my private decoration and I can let Storm natter. When the last reader left, she took some sellotape and fixed the poster to the wall again. Anything to make our readers happier.

Four days passed and it happened.

"What did I tell you?" roared the boss and waved with a written complaint before Cheryl's eyes. "I've warned you and it is here. The readers are displeased. They have a feeling we sell the chocolate here or what." Cheryl stood in front of a superb oak table in Storm's office, where she had been invited, and really couldn't believe her ears. Isn't it a bit overdone?

"If I made a mistake, I am sorry," she said calmly.

"You won't provoke me much longer," said Storm in a dangerous voice. "You are doing damage to the name of our library."

"May I say something? I think it is unnecessarily..." she began but the boss interrupted her.

"What you think is not significant. You heard; I will not tolerate this here."

"All right, I will not do it again."

"Too right; you won't," said Storm. "Tomorrow you don't have to bother to come. You are fired."

Cheryl stood silent with her mouth open.

When she came home, Matt, Amy and Deborah were watching a TV competition and had a great time. She had no idea how she would tell them.

"Hey look, Cheryl's here," exclaimed Deborah who noticed her first. "Come and watch, we're playing who guesses more and Matt's winning."

"Try to guess what happened to me," said Cheryl. "But you won't hit it." She said it with such an odd voice so that all of them stopped watching TV.

"Someone asked you out for a dinner," Deborah made her guess. Cheryl shook her head.

"You found a golden ticket!" shouted Matt. "No? Oh... and what is it, then?"

Cheryl sat down in an armchair and slinged her legs over the elbow. "I was fired."

"You don't say!" said Amy, appalled.

"And guess why? I told you once before." Amy thought for a while.

"Because of – no, this is silly... I don't know."

"Yes, you're right – it's silly. It was for the Wonka poster. It annoyed him. I put it up again because people were excited about it and they behaved better. It was proved." Nobody spoke a word for a while.

"You must be kidding," said Deborah but it was clear to her that Cheryl is not joking.

"It's unfair" said Matt. "I hope you've told him?"

"Course I have. But you think he listened to me? He told me not to take personal things to work and hang it up above my bed instead. It was purposely, I think he was just looking for an excuse how to get rid of me."

"What did you do to him he hates you so much?" Cheryl shrugged. She was down because she loved her work. "I really have no idea."

"Wait, I'll be back in a minute," said Amy and ran away.

"Storm got a written complaint from a reader."

"Did he?" said Deborah. "What was in it?"

"I don't know; he didn't show me."

"That's a bit strange," Deborah scratched her chin. "You should have wanted to see it. It may have been a fake, not a real complaint." Cheryl put her legs down and leaned forward. "You think if we poked into it, the dismissal could be invalid?"

"Maybe we could find something," her friend nodded.

"But what does he have against you?" Matt still didn't understand.

"Maybe he didn't like my new shoelaces," said Cheryl airily. "Storm is a swine, he would do with anything."

Deborah looked thoughtful. "Did you say Storm? Do you know where his wife works?"

"No, why?"

"A colleague of mine is called Storm," said Debbie with a smile. "I've told you already about her, she's the one who buys the chocolate constantly and rhapsodizes about Wonka." Oh, so this may be it, thought Cheryl. The husband probably knows otherwise he wouldn't go berserk every time he sees a Wonka picture. "Debbie, you are ingenious! That may be it!"

"But it could be only a namesake."

"Could be."

Amy just got back and put a Wonka chocolate bar in Cheryl's hand. "Here, to repair your nerves. Everything will be fine again."

"Thanks," said Cheryl. "We'll share it. Listen, what we discovered," she began to paint Deborah's hot shot revelation when something golden fell into her lap from underneath the wrapper. She stopped in the middle of a word and stared at the thing. "My god, it is a golden ticket!" She lifted it and held it in front of her eyes. All of them were dumbfounded, only Matt jumped two metres high in the air. "Yes, yes, YES!" he exclaimed. "I knew you'd find it, Cheryl!"

Funeral mood changed rapidly into a hilarious glee. "Maybe I will marry after all. Anyway, I definitely don't have to buy any chocolate till the end of my life," said Cheryl. "You had a lucky hand, Amy."

"Yeah, I did," Amy forced out, just when the parents came home and wanted to know what happened. Amy edged away to her room and didn't show up until next morning.