Charlie And The Chocolate Factory - Male OC Insert

Chapter 7 - The Miracle

During the next two weeks, the weather became very cold.

There already was a decent amount of snow on the ground that had existed for the past month. However, the day after Nolan Connelly's finding, there came a freezing gale that blew for several days without stopping. Everything that Charlie touched seemed to be made of ice, and each time he stepped outside the door, the wind was like a long silver knife on his cheek.

Inside the house, little jets of freezing air came rushing in through the sides of the windows, under the doors, and the little hole in the roof, and there was no place to go to escape them. The four old ones lay huddled in their bed, trying to keep the cold out of their bones. The excitement over the Golden Tickets had long since been forgotten. Nobody in the family gave a thought now to anything except the two vital problems of trying to keep warm and trying to get enough to eat.

There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite. Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave rich steaming stews and hot apple pies and all other kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than we realise, we usually get what we want – or nearly enough. But Charlie Bucket never got what he wanted because the family just couldn't afford it, and as the cold weather went on and on he became ravenously and desperately hungry. Both bars of chocolate, the birthday one and the one Grandpa Joe used his secret savings to buy in order for Charlie to test his luck again, had long since been nibbled away, and all he got now were those thin cabbagy meals three times a day.

Then one afternoon, walking back home from school with the icy wind in his face and incidentally feeling hungrier than he had ever felt before, Charlie spotted something silvery lying in the snow. Charlie stepped off the curb and bent down to examine it. Part of it was buried under the snow, but he saw at once what it was.

It was a ten-pound bill! Quickly Charlie looked around him. Had someone just dropped it?

No, that wasn't possible due to the way part of it was buried.

Several pedestrians went hurrying past him on the pavement, their chins sunk deep in the collars of their coats, their feet crunching in the snow. None of them were searching for any money; none of them were taking even the slightest notice of the small boy crouched in the snow.

Then was it his, this ten-pound bill?

Could he have it?

Carefully, Charlie pulled the paper out from under the snow. It was damp and a little bit dirty, but otherwise perfect.

A whole ten-pound bill!

Charlie held it tightly between his shivering fingers, gazing down at it. It meant only one thing to him at that moment: food.

Automatically, Charlie turned and headed towards the nearest shop that was only ten paces away. It was a newspaper and stationery shop, the kind that sells almost everything including sweets and cigars.

Charlie was already planning what he would do: he would buy one luscious bar of chocolate and eat it all up, every bit of it, right then and there. The rest of the money he would take straight back home and give to his mother.

While he was contemplating this, two men walked past him, walking their dogs. It was clear they were in a homosexual relationship.

"Did you see that some kid in Russia found the last Golden Ticket?" One asked the other.

"Yes, it was in the paper this morning!" The other replied, and the two laughed as they passed Charlie.

Charlie entered the shop and laid the damp bill on the counter.

"One Wonka Whipple-scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight, please." He said, remembering how much he had loved the one he had on his birthday.

The shopkeeper, an older man with darker complexion, smiled and took the bill from him, handing him the bar and his change in coins.

As Charlie began to unwrap the bar, one woman reading the newspaper looked up. "Bill, did you see the headline?" She asked the shopkeeper. "The Russian ticket a fake! The nerve of some people!"

Bill rolled his eyes. "I know. Forging a ticket, come on."

Suddenly, from underneath the wrapper, there became a brilliant flash of gold.

Charlie's heart stood still.

He carefully removed the paper from the wrapper and examined it closely, his eyes bulging.

"It's a Golden Ticket!" Bill said, causing everyone in the shop to fixate their eyes on Charlie. "You found Wonka's last Golden Ticket!"

Just then, one of the townsfolk spoke up. "Listen, I'll buy it from you. I'll give you fifty pounds and a new bicycle."

"Are you crazy?" A woman interrupted. "I'd give him five hundred pounds for that ticket! You want to sell me your ticket for five hundred pounds, young man?"

"That's enough of that! Leave the kid alone!" Bill exclaimed, and he put a hand on Charlie's shoulder. "Listen. Don't let anyone have it! Take it straight home, you understand?"

Charlie looked up at the shopkeeper with a huge smile on his face. "Thank you!"

With that, he sprinted out of the shop and back to the Bucket house as fast as his little legs would go.