Elizabella and the Great Tuckshop Takeover

by Zoe Norton Lodge

  Mr Gobblefrump hustled her to the assembly.

  “They’re not even opening till tomorrow. Can’t she have one last shot today?”

  It was pointless. He wasn’t listening one bit.

  The truth was that Mr Gobblefrump didn’t want to hear what Elizabella was saying. It really did break his heart to give the tuckshop over to Nutriicorp. However, he’d given it a lot of thought, and, having carefully studied all the promotional material they’d left behind, he had been compelled to act. Of course, he would miss Miss Duck terribly, though he was also a little bit excited about meeting this Grandpa Nutriicorp fellow, which the Nutriicorp representatives had told him would happen soon after Nutriicorp had taken over. He would make meeting Grandpa Nutriicorp and providing feedback about the spelling of “Nutriicorp” through the members’ feedback system a priority. Once profits were up, that is.

  Say . . . I never caught their names! Mr Gobblefrump realised, thinking about the two reps who had stopped by his office. They had said over and over how they were friends, even family, yet somehow he had missed their actual names. Strange . . .

  It was rather quiet in Miss Carrol’s class that day, because only about two thirds of the students were in attendance. Elizabella and Huck were there. And so was Minnie, with a big hat on that actually had a padlock on the front. Not a single strand of hair poked out of it. Ava and Evie were absent. It was probably harder to get it out of two heads of hair in the one house, Elizabella thought. Of course Sandy was there, with his completely nit-free shaved head.

  Miss Carrol had her hair tied up in a turban in a style no one had ever seen her wear before.

  “Now we were going to continue on with our three-dimensional shapes, but given so many people aren’t here today, we might do some other things instead.” Miss Carrol was hesitant to press on with the difficult shapes knowing she’d have to go back over it when everyone returned. Of course she didn’t realise quite so many kids were going to be away, so she hadn’t prepared for a change in lesson plan. She’d have to make it up on the spot. This was something teachers often had to do as circumstances changed in their classrooms. She wasn’t worried though, because Miss Carrol believed there were lessons everywhere.

  “Who knows how lice spread?” she asked the class. Huck went to scratch his head, absentmindedly.

  “Huck, is your head itchy?” asked Miss Carrol, worried.

  “No, I was just thinking.”

  “Okay. From now on when you’re thinking, I want you to pat your chest instead of scratching your head.”

  Miss Carrol really, really wanted to be sure that no one had lice.

  “So, how are they spread?”

  “Jumping from head to head?” Huck suggested.

  “Actually, lice can’t jump,” Miss Carrol corrected him. “That’s a common misconception. They can’t hop or fly. They crawl. If you come into head-to-head contact with another person whose hair is infested then you have the greatest chance of catching them.”

  “But I didn’t rub my head on anyone,” cried Elizabella, “and I had so many nits I had to lose my knot!”

  “Well, there are other ways too. They can also be spread through contact with clothing – maybe a hat or a scarf. Or other things like hairbrushes or towels.”

  “Dirty people get it worse,” Daphne chimed in.

  “Another misconception. Personal hygiene and the cleanliness of your house or school are not connected to getting head lice.”

  Miss Carrol taught them about the various stages of the species from nit or egg to nymph and finally to louse.

  Elizabella barely took any of it in, as her mind kept returning to poor Miss Duck. She stared up at the big crack in the ceiling again, willing it to give her an idea of how to help her friend.

  “It was so bad the whole school shut down for a day.”

  Toddberry held the torch under his face as he told the story. It was early evening, and dusk was settling in the garden, where a big, old tent had just been pitched.

  Leanne and Martin were off on their ice-skating date. They’d been starting to see each other more frequently and both Elizabella and Huck worried about how serious it was getting. Tonight they were at the Bilby Creek Ice-Skating Rink where there was a special night of Mega Mix Music from the nineties – their favourite era. Elizabella couldn’t think of anything worse.

  And while they were out on their date Toddberry had been put in charge. Elizabella thought this was pretty ridiculous considering how much more mature she was than him (at least twelve billion times, she estimated). And if she was annoyed, Toddberry was even more annoyed. Not only did he have to mind his little sister and her friend Huck – they both had nits! Or at least they’d had nits, and Toddberry wasn’t going to take any chances. It was one thing to get nits in primary school – there was no way on earth that Toddberry was going to show up to Bilby Creek High School with an itchy, crawly head.

  So he’d come up with a solution. He’d pulled out the big camping tent to quarantine Elizabella and Huck in. Larry the Lizard sat in there with them. Even if there was still a nit or louse lurking about, he’d rather sit with Elizabella and her friend inside than with that traitor Toddberry who Larry had become completely convinced could understand him and was pretending not to. Toddberry had positioned himself outside the tent and was telling them the story of the last time there was a severe outbreak of nits at Bilby Creek.

  “I was in Year Four when it happened,” said Toddberry, holding the torch under his chin as he spoke like a ghost story, “just like you.”

  Usually when people did this it lit up their eyes and cast scary shadows on their faces in the dark. But it didn’t quite have the same effect for Toddberry, partially because his hair curtains covered his features, making it difficult for scary shadows to form, and partially because it wasn’t dark yet.

  “Before that, everything was heaps chilled out at Bilby Creek Primary. There wasn’t even a Rule Book.”

  “What?” asked Huck, shocked. “No Rule Book?”

  “That’s right,” Toddberry continued. “Before that outbreak, there were some basic rules, sure – no hat, no play; no running; no bullying – but that was about it. Mr Gobblefrump had a whole different philosophy back then. He used to say that children were smart, and if you left them to their own devices, they’d usually do the right thing.”

  “No,” said Elizabella, shocked.

  “It’s true,” said Toddberry. “The Great Outbreak changed everything.” He brought the flashlight even closer to his face. “It was mayhem. Kids were swinging from the lights. Some of them climbed trees and started making monkey sounds, like the nits had got into their brains and were controlling how they thought!”

  Huck looked terrified. Elizabella was a bit more sceptical.

  “Pull the other one, Toddberry,” she said.

  “I’m just telling you what happened,” he said. “And Mr Gobblefrump didn’t know what to do. He spent about twenty minutes breathing deeply into a brown paper bag. Then he lay on the floor counting to one hundred. Then he tried to hide under a desk. And none of the other teachers wanted to have anything to do with it so they all drove off in their cars and with them gone and Mr Gobblefrump losing it, there was no one running the school at all. That night Mr Gobblefrump didn’t even go home. He sat in his office all night long and typed up the first ever edition of the Bilby Creek Primary School Rule Book.”

  “Woooooah!” said Huck. “So that’s why we have rules?”

  “Yes it is, child,” said Toddberry in an authoritative manner. “Yes it is.”

  As much as Elizabella’s instincts told her to be wary of basically anything her big brother said, this behaviour sounded like Mr Gobblefrump to a T.

  Leanne and Martin walked arm and arm down the street towards the house where Elizabella and Huck were still taking in the horror story of Bilby Creek Primary’s first major lice outbreak from Toddberry. Or at least the first one any of them were aware of. They’d had a won
derful time ice skating, and afterwards they had gone to all the restaurants and food shops in Bilby Creek to see if there was anything to spare. Martin was finding it harder and harder to make sure there was enough delicious food for everyone at the Bilby Creek Shelter for Citizens in Need, and Leanne had had the excellent idea of asking all the restaurants to pack up any food they were going to throw out to give to the shelter. They had dropped all the lovely food donations off and were now heading home.

  As they reached the front gate, Martin politely went to open it for Leanne, when she stopped him and attempted a massive leap over it. She threw her right leg in the air. It sailed over the gate, but then somehow her left leg missed the memo and stayed on the ground. This left Leanne rather awkwardly sitting on the gate.

  “What are you doing? Are you okay?” Martin asked Leanne, a twinge of genuine concern in his voice. Leanne burst out laughing.

  They were making such a racket they could be heard from all the way in the garden. Elizabella and Huck un-quarantined themselves and ran through the house to the front window where they looked out and saw their parents laughing and having loads of fun like children.

  “Gross!” said Elizabella.

  “I can’t watch!” said Huck, covering his eyes. The two adults were so engrossed in their own antics that they didn’t notice their horrified kids looking on.

  “I think I’m stuck!” Leanne yelled.

  Martin leaped into action. “I’ll give you a leg up!” he said, crouching on the ground and sliding his hands underneath Leanne’s left foot. He started pushing upwards, negotiating her over the gate.

  “What were you trying to do?” he asked.

  “I was trying to do that ice skating move that little boy was doing!”

  This time Martin cracked up.

  “You mean that five-year-old child prodigy in the silver sequins who was gliding over the ice as elegantly as a salmon in a stream?”

  “What?” she protested, through her own laughter. “I thought it would be easy!”

  Now Martin was simply in a fit of giggles. He hadn’t laughed this much in a long time.

  “Oh, Leanne!” he cried, still manoeuvring her over the gate. “You remind me so much of . . .” he trailed off.

  “Of who?” said Leanne as she finally made it all the way over. She suddenly realised who he was talking about: Audrey. Martin’s wife, and Elizabella and Toddberry’s mum. She had been just about the funniest and silliest person on the whole planet. Leanne didn’t push the matter, just smiled, stood up, opened the gate and let Martin in.

  Leanne had planned to collect Huck and go home. However, she was easily talked into a large hot chocolate.

  In the kitchen, Elizabella was making hot chocolates for everyone. Of course, they were epic. Bursting with marshmallows drizzled in caramel sauce and splattered with rainbow sprinkles and her signature flourish – hidden down the bottom of each mug, there was a big, thick pool of chocolate sludge.

  “Here you go, Leanne,” said Elizabella, handing her over a wobbly mug.

  Leanne looked at it. “Wow!” she said, and plunged her face in, drinking it so fast Elizabella thought she was going to throw up. When she came up for air she had a big, thick chocolate and sprinkles moustache.

  “This is the tastiest hot chocolate I’ve ever had!” she exclaimed.

  Elizabella beamed. “I also make a special adults’ one with coffee.”

  “What a great idea!” said Leanne. “I’ll have to have one of those next time.”

  “I can make you one now?”

  Leanne didn’t hesitate. “Thanks!”

  Having Leanne date her dad was far from ideal, but Elizabella could see how happy she was making him. And she admired a woman who could follow up a massive, epic hot chocolate with an even more extreme one.

  An hour later, Huck, Elizabella, Toddberry and Larry the Lizard sat speechless and blinking in the kitchen watching Martin and Leanne, who, pumped with hot chocolate, were performing all the “moves” they had learned at the rink. If there was one thing that could have made this event even more embarrassing, they were also singing the terrible nineties medleys that had been playing during the ice skating session.

  “Is this what it’s like for grown-ups when they have to watch our performances?” Huck whispered to Elizabella as his mother did some weird moves she called “the Macarena”.

  “Definitely not,” said Elizabella. “We know how to put on a show, this is–” she stopped mid-thought.

  Her dad had thrown himself on the floor and started to move his bum up and down, saying, “I’m doing a worm!”

  Elizabella looked at Huck. “Well, I don’t know what this is.”

  Much like their Feelings, Huck and Elizabella silently decided they would never speak of this again.

  The next morning, as she entered the school gates, Elizabella could sense something felt very different. Of course, there was the heatwave that had settled in at Bilby Creek, and this was a particularly hot and sticky morning. As well as that, there was a clinical and bland presence in the school, like it was being haunted by a very clean and very boring ghost. It felt even stranger than the day before when the school was half empty and reeked of lice conditioner. It didn’t take her long to figure out what it was.

  “Check that out!” cried Huck, pointing at the tuckshop. There was a big neon sign above the roller door that beamed out the word NUTRIICORP with the intensity of the flashing lights of a police car.

  It didn’t stop there. Elizabella and Huck took in their surroundings. Everywhere they turned they could see that word:

  NUTRIICORP.

  Nutriicorp labels were on the school bins, the benches, every few metres up and down the long buildings. Elizabella even saw one on the old oak tree. It reminded Elizabella of when Toddberry took the household’s label maker and plastered “TODDBERRY RULEZ” stickers on everything.

  But there was something else . . . Elizabella inspected one of the bins more closely. Not only did it have a Nutriicorp label on it, it was also new. In fact, all the bins were shiny and fresh.

  I guess we can make bin puppets now, Elizabella thought, although I don’t really feel like it . . .

  Ava and Evie skipped over to where Elizabella and Huck were.

  “Your heads!” Huck yelled. Sure enough, Ava and Evie had Nutriicorp stickers stuck on their foreheads.

  Elizabella gasped.

  “They gave us free stickers!” said Ava.

  “When we ordered our lunch!” Evie continued.

  Then the twins said in unison: “Nutriicorp is Nutriicool!”

  Elizabella felt a chill go right down her spine. She shuddered. Then decided to go and see this thing for herself.

  She walked over to the tuckshop and peeked inside. Music was playing. The sort she’d heard many times before when her dad was on hold to the bank for ages and put the phone on speaker so he could place it down. Boring. Boring and weird. Men and women were walking around inside the tuckshop wearing perfectly darned, tan slacks, navy blue blazers and crisp white shirts. Over everything they all wore Nutriicorp-branded white aprons and caps. All the women had their hair pulled back in buns and all the men had exactly the same haircut. It seemed Nutriicorp had brought in a whole Nutriicorp army to do the job Miss Duck had done so perfectly by herself for years.

  “They don’t blink.” Elizabella turned around. Minnie was standing next to her. “I’ve been observing them for several minutes. None of them have blinked.”

  Suddenly one of them spotted Minnie and Elizabella and started walking towards them. Her walk was so smooth it was almost as if she was on wheels. A giant, terrifying smile was forming on her face, getting bigger and wider as she got closer to the girls until it was so big, Elizabella thought the Nutriicorp woman might inhale and swallow them up whole, like a whale eating krill.

  “You ladies look very intelligent,” she said. “Have these MonteNutriicorpee Carlos.” She handed over the biscuits. Elizabella and Minnie stare
d at her, suspiciously, then down at the biscuits.

  “Dis ban’t be dood,” said Minnie, quietly under her breath. Elizabella nodded in agreement.

  But they were only human girls. It was hard to turn down free biscuits. Surely they wouldn’t poison us, thought Elizabella. Even if they were that evil, it would be a disaster for their profits. The girls started to eat them as they walked away.

  They didn’t realise that they now had big, shiny stickers stuck on their backs that said I’M A NUTRIICORP KID.

  At lunchtime, Mr Gobblefrump was by the monkey bars in the playground. Where there was just yesterday a rickety old bit of metal, cordoned off with tape, there was now a brand-new set of monkey bars that appeared so sturdy Mr Gobblefrump himself thought he could have a go on them. He did rather wish every single bar didn’t say THIS IS A NUTRIICORP BAR on it, however, this was the sacrifice he’d had to make. It really devastated him to let Miss Duck go and allow Bilby Creek Primary to be completely branded by Nutriicorp like a sports arena. But if it meant new textbooks, safe monkey bars and not rationing tea bags in the staffroom, it would have to be this way. He hoped the children would come to understand one day. Some of the children did seem, well, not happy exactly, but somewhat . . . changed?

  “Mr Gobblefrump, Mr Gobblefrump.” He realised Samuel from Kindy was tugging on one of his trouser legs in a slow, deliberate rhythm and speaking in a dull monotone. “Thank you for bringing Nutriicorp into our lives.”

  He peered down at Samuel.

  “You’re welcome,” he said with a smile, although something about the way the child had spoken didn’t seem quite right . . .

  Elizabella and Minnie had witnessed this exchange and looked at each other, worried. They kept watching.

  Mr Gobblefrump saw a passing Nutriicorp worker in tan slacks and a blazer and a big smile. He stopped her in her tracks. Was this the woman who had been in his office? It was hard to tell. All the Nutriicorp women looked very similar to one another. The men did too.