This Book Is Not Good for You

by Pseudonymous Bosch

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2009 by Pseudonymous Bosch

  Illustrations copyright © 2009 by Gilbert Ford

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group • 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/littlebrown

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN 978-0-316-07139-0

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT

  DO NOT DISTURB

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  PART ONE: APPETIZERS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART TWO: THE MAIN COURSE

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  PART THREE: DESSERT

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  A CHAPTER WITHOUT NUMBER

  APPENDIX

  FOR

  INDIA AND NATALIA

  WHEN THEY’RE OLD ENOUGH

  Mmmmm… … good snap… melts a hint of blackberry… mmm… yes… strong is it cardamom? velvety mouth-feel… finish… mmm…

  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

  mmmmm… smoothly on the tongue… yet earthy underneath… note of… cinnamon and—or maybe licorice?… not too sweet… lovely must have another…

  AAAAAAAAAAAAK…!

  Oh. It’s you.

  Thank Goodness.

  For a second, I thought it was—well, never mind what I thought.

  The question is: what am I going to do with you?

  You see, I’m—nbot quhgbite rlaaeady—

  Sorry, my mouth was full. What I was trying to say was: I’m not quite ready for you. I’m very busy. Didn’t you see the DO NOT DISTURB sign?

  What am I doing? Something important. That’s what.

  Well, if you must know, I’m eating chocolate. But it’s not like it sounds! Trust me. It’s work. Research.

  This book is all about chocolate. And—ykuh wounbrldbnt wrannt—sorry, I couldn’t resist another bite—you wouldn’t want me to write about something I didn’t know about, would you?

  What’s that? You wouldn’t expect anything else from me?

  Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

  Let me tell you something: I’m not the same scared writer I used to be, and I’m not going to take any guff from you. I have other readers now. Grateful readers. Readers who know how to treat an author.

  Take this extra-large box of extra-dark, extra-expensive, extra-delicious chocolates that I’m eating right now. Not to toot my own horn but a fan sent it to me as a present.

  For P.B.—the best writer in the world, said the note.

  What? It must be a trick? Nobody would say that about me and mean it?

  OK, out—now! There’s no way I’m going to write this book with you sitting there insulting me.

  I’ll tell you what: on my desk, there’s a chapter I just finished. It’s supposed to come much later in the book, but you might as well read it now while I continue… researching.

  It will be like a prologue, an amuse-bouche, if you will—something to tickle your palate before the real meal arrives. *

  Speaking of meals, which chocolate shall I have next? The caramel nougat or the raspberry ganache…?

  Eeny meeny miny moe…

  A bird poked his head through the iron bars and nudged the arm of the girl on the other side. The bird was bright green with a red chest, yellow crest, and big, begging eyes.

  “Patience, my friend!” said the girl. “My gosh, you are a greedy bird!”

  (In reality, she was speaking French and what she said was: “Patience, mon ami! Zut alors, tu es un oiseau avide!” But the French version is a little less polite.)

  Laughing, the girl opened her hand and revealed a small broken piece of chocolate—the same color as her delicate skin.

  The bird swallowed it whole, then looked at her beseechingly.

  “Sorry, that’s all I could get today.”

  The bird squawked—whether in thanks or in protest, it was hard to tell—and then flew away, his long tail waving in the wind.

  “You should be bringing me food. I’m the one in the birdcage!” the girl called after him as he disappeared into the dense jungle.

  Glum, she sat down on the pile of old newspapers that served as her bed—and as the only source of entertainment in her cement cell. The bird was a pest but his visits were the highlight of her day. There was nothing to look forward to now.

  “Look alive, Simone!”

  One of the guards, the large humorless woman named Daisy, stepped up to her cage. “They want you again.”

  Already? Simone wondered. It had only been an hour since the last time.

  They were waiting for her in the Tasting Room.

  The three of them, as always, sitting in those tall silver chairs behind that long marble table. In their bright white lab coats. And bright white gloves.

  They’d never introduced themselves, but she had names for them: The tan man with the silver hair, she called him the Doctor. The beautiful blond woman with the frozen smile, she was the Barbie Doll. And the blind man behind the dark sunglasses, he was the Pirate.

  They were like a tribunal. Like judges.

  Only, weirdly, it was her judgment they were waiting for.

  She sat down opposite them on the low stone bench. The one that made her feel about two feet tall.

  Always the same routine. First, they made her drink a glass of water. Twice distilled water without any trace minerals, they’d explained. Absolutely tasteless. To cleanse her palate.

  Then the Pirate placed in front of her a small square of chocolate on a plain white plate.

  A Palet d’Or, he called it. A pillow of gold. *

  And then they waited in silence for her response.

  They said she was a supertaster. Somebody with double the usual number of taste buds in her tongue. But she knew it was more than that. **

  For as long as she remembered she’d been able to detect subtle differences in flavors.

  Was the honey made from orange blossoms or clover? Clover. Blackberry or boysenberry? Goo
seberry. Was that lemon thyme or lemon verbena? Neither, it was lemongrass.

  She was like one of those virtuosos who can play an entire symphony by ear the first time they sit at a piano. She had the taste equivalent of perfect pitch.

  Now, in this cold room so far from home, she looked down at the Palet d’Or. It was dark to the point of blackness, and it had a silky sheen.

  Carefully, she nibbled off a corner. And closed her eyes.

  For weeks they’d been making her try darker and darker pieces. Some so chocolaty and dense they were like dirt. Some so intensely flavorful they were like a jolt.

  But this was something else altogether. It was like ultra chocolate. The quintessence of chocolate.

  It was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

  And the worst.

  Tears streamed down her face as she experienced a lifetime of emotions all at once.

  The taste of the chocolate—the tastes, that is, because the chocolate tasted of so many things—took her back to her childhood. To her family’s old cacao farm in the rainforest.

  In flashes, she remembered the gnarled roots of the cacao trees and the damp, fragrant earth.…

  She remembered the flowers… those little pink flowers that bloomed year-round… not on branches… but right on the trunks of the cacao trees… as if each tree had come down with a case of flowery measles…

  And she remembered the pods… red and yellow… like fiery sunsets… they looked as if they might contain alien spores or perhaps hives of evil fairies… but inside was the sweet sticky pulp that she loved to squish and squeeze between her hands…

  And the seeds… she couldn’t believe people made something as wonderful as chocolate from those sour little seeds… but soon she could identify any variety at a glance… the fragile Criollos… the purple Forasteros… *

  How happy she’d felt on the farm…! How safe…!

  And then came that terrible day… the arrival of the three glamorous strangers… asking how she knew so much about chocolate… praising her tasting powers… promising a better future…

  And then the crying as she was taken from her parents…

  The gradual realization that she was a prisoner…

  That her life was not her own…

  “It’s working!” exulted the Barbie Doll. “Look at her face!”

  “She does seem to be… reacting,” said the Doctor more cautiously. “Simone, can you tell us what you are tasting? What you are seeing?”

  “Yes, tell us!” urged the Pirate, clenching his gloved fist. “Have I found my recipe at last? Is this my chocolate?”

  Simone opened her mouth to respond but—

  Suddenly, she couldn’t see. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t even feel her arm.

  All her senses were gone.

  She tried to scream but she made no sound.

  What was happening to her?

  What awful thing had she just eaten?

  Ka-chew!”

  Max-Ernest sneezed so violently his spiky hair quivered for a full five seconds after he was done.

  “Hey, did you notice—did I blink?”

  He looked down at his friend Cassandra, who was crouched next to him, her pointy ears sticking out above her long braids.

  “I read that every time you sneeze, you blink. So I always try to see if I can keep my eyes open.”

  “Sorry, wasn’t looking…,” Cass muttered.

  She had long ago learned to ignore half of what Max-Ernest said. A necessary survival skill if you were going to be best friends with the most talkative boy in town.

  “Now what do soup mix and pest control have to do with each other…?”

  She was trying to read words scrawled on a cardboard box, but most had been crossed out:

  PLUMBING EQUIPMENT

  TEDDY BEARS AND TOY MICE

  Catchers mitt and opera glasses

  Dried flowers, flies for fly fishing, dried flies (real)

  PARKING TICKETS

  Canned tuna/ soup mix/ pest control

  “Uh-oh, I think I have to—ka-chew!” Max-Ernest sneezed again. “It’s the dust mites, I’m allergic—”

  Cass pushed the box aside—it wasn’t the one she was looking for—and stood up. Suddenly, she was a good half foot taller than her companion.

  “Oh right, how could I forget a single one of your hundred allergies?”

  “What do you mean? There’s only sixty-three—that I know of,” Max-Ernest corrected, not picking up on her sarcasm. “Let’s see, there’s wheat, walnuts, peanuts, pecans, strawberries, shellfish… oh, and chocolate, of course!”

  “C’mon,” said Cass, moving on to a box behind the one she’d just been looking at. “Are you going to help me find this thing or what?”

  It was summertime and Cass was working afternoons at her grandfathers’ antiques store:

  THE FIRE SALE

  EVERYTHING YOU EVER NEVER WANTED!

  as it was identified on the front door.

  As readers of certain unmentionable books will recall, the store was housed on the bottom floor of an old redbrick fire station. Cass’s grandfathers, Larry and Wayne, lived upstairs, and every day they crammed their store with more and more stuff. Last year, Cass remembered, the store had already seemed like a maze, but at least there’d been enough space to walk between the shelves. Now you had to climb over piles of junk just to get from one part of the room to another.

  Cass had told her mother that she was working at the Fire Sale to save money for a new bicycle, but that wasn’t exactly true. It wasn’t her only reason for working anyway.

  In fact, she had an ulterior motive.

  She was looking for a box. A special box she knew to be somewhere in her grandfathers’ store. And considering there were at least a thousand boxes in the store, not to mention all the things that were unboxed, she figured she would need all summer to find the one she was looking for.

  Today, her grandfathers had taken their dog, Sebastian, to the vet, and Cass was taking advantage of the time to redouble her search. Max-Ernest had graciously agreed to assist.

  Or more precisely, had reluctantly agreed to keep her company.

  He was used to his survivalist friend’s quixotic quests, whether she was searching for toxic waste under the school yard or killer mold under the cafeteria sink. * But this particular search, he felt, was particularly hopeless.

  “What makes you think the box is still here?” he asked, not moving from his perch on top of a pile of old encyclopedias.

  “You know my grandfathers—they never throw anything away.” She closed up the next box and moved on to another.

  Max-Ernest looked around the store and shook his head. “I think they have an obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s clinical.”

  Cass bristled. She loved her grandfathers and couldn’t stand anyone criticizing them—except possibly herself. “Does everybody have to have a condition? Can’t they just like stuff?”

  “So why can’t you just ask them where it is?”

  “Are you crazy? They’d tell my mom for sure.”

  “But we don’t even know what it looks like. This whole thing doesn’t make any sense—”

  “I know it says, ‘Handle With Care.’ And there’s a hole cut in the cardboard.”

  “Like if you were carrying a cat?”

  “Max-Ernest!”

  “OK, OK.”

  Max-Ernest wasn’t very good at feelings, whether his own or anybody else’s. But he noticed that Cass’s ears—always a reliable emotional thermometer—were turning bright red.

  The box was obviously a sensitive subject.

  Indeed, it had been less than six months since Cass had discovered her mother’s secret:

  That her mother had not given birth to her.

  That she was adopted.

  That she was a “foundling,” as her grandfathers put it.

  That Cassandra wasn’t even her real name. *

  The story went like this:


  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  The Arrival of Baby Cassandra

  A not-so-long-ish time ago in a place not-so-farish away, there lived two not-so-very-old-ish men.

  These two men loved collecting things so much that their home filled to the brim with odds and ends and this and that and a lot of bric-a-brac, too.

  Knowing the men’s acquisitive habits, the neighboring townsfolk were always leaving boxes on their doorstep. Their home was the home of last resort.

  Usually, the boxes contained broken musical instruments or mismatched china or outgrown clothing.

  Objects. Things. Stuff.

  One fateful day, however, the men opened a box on their doorstep and discovered something altogether different. Instead of baby clothing, they found a baby.

  An actual. Living. Breathing. Baby.

  The men didn’t know what to do. Of course, of all things in the world, a baby is the one thing most people would want to keep. But as tenderhearted as these men were, they knew that their home was a difficult and dangerous place to raise a child. There were far too many things to pull and poke and break and burn and rip and ruin.

  Luckily, a friend was visiting at the time. This friend, a very smart and successful but also very lonely woman, had just been telling them how very, very much she wanted a baby of her own. They decided that the baby was meant to be hers.

  The friend was Mel, short for Melanie, the woman who would become Cass’s mother. That same day, the two men, a certain Larry and a certain Wayne, declared themselves Cass’s grandfathers.

  And they all lived happily ever after.

  Almost.

  When Cass first learned the truth about her origins, she’d been inclined to forgive her mother for not telling her sooner. She knew her mother hadn’t wanted even the littlest thing to come between them. And the fact that Cass was adopted was a pretty big thing.

  But as the weeks wore on, instead of softening, Cass’s feelings had grown increasingly hard. For most of her life, as the child of a single mom, Cass had wondered who her father was. Now she had to wonder who her mother was as well?

  The worst part was that her mother didn’t seem to have any sympathy for Cass wanting to know who her parents were. Her birth parents, Cass agreed to call them. Oh, her mother said she had sympathy. She said she understood. But she wouldn’t do anything about it.