A Crisis of Carbonated Chocolate

Victoria’s greatest fear and the thing she hated most in life were one and the same. She was simultaneously terrified and filled with righteous hatred toward the idea of letting people down. It was a core pillar of her personality and she never compromised on it. This mindset applied to situations both large and small. From her hard-earned, never wavering spot on the high school honor roll to how she behaved around family, she always went in determined not to disappoint.

That was why when they were on the phone one right and her grandma first told her about the chocolate soda, she feigned polite interest. How could she risk being disrespectful toward an elder? She couldn’t disappoint in such a manner. Her grandma regaled her of stories of reminisced youth filled with soda shops and rollerblades. When her grandma brought up the chocolate soda—something that sounded quite unpleasant to Victoria’s ears and even more unpleasant to her tastebuds—she couldn’t help but smile at the love in her grandma’s voice.

She hadn’t lied, per se, but she did express a little too much interest in the soda. Truth be told, she was more interested in her grandma’s apparent love for it. It made her happy to hear someone so excited about something they enjoyed rarely. At the time of the phone call, they both thought chocolate soda was a bygone that was no longer manufactured.

That assumption sat right on Victoria’s face as she walked into her grandma’s kitchen within five minutes of their wintertime family visit.

“You will never believe what I found!” Grandma Maddy said excitedly. “I looked at every supermarket in town. Then I finally found it!”

Her grandma gestured excitedly at the massive, two-liter plastic bottle sitting alone on the pristinely clean countertop. Victoria found all dark-colored sodas distasteful, so the mere sign of the brown lurking inside the plastic like bog water left her with dread. Her gaze slid down the poorly-designed brown label that proudly revealed the flavor was none other… than chocolate soda.

“Oh wow,” she said, her reaction delayed by a fraction of a second, “you really found it.”

“I did! I haven’t this since I was a girl.”

“I can’t believe they still make it,” Victoria said with a polite smile.

She heard her parents making pleasant small talk with her grandfather in the next room over. They were discussing something about the neighbors and a sewer pipe that had been getting serviced for months—given their conspiratorial tones, there was very little chance they’d come strolling into the kitchen and create a distraction. She looked at the chocolate soda again.

“What do you say to trying some with me?” her grandma asked hopefully.

“Sure,” she said, forcing a bigger smile, “I do love chocolate.”

Her grandma busily went over to the cabinet to get glasses out. “I haven’t had this in so many years, I don’t know if I even like it anymore.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“I never thought it was strange when I was a kid. But chocolate soda does sound pretty nutty, doesn’t it?”

“There’s lots of unique flavors out there,” Victoria said, hoping she sounded optimistic.

She was not optimistic. Her grandma’s lack of confidence wasn’t helping, either. Victoria knew that no matter how much she was a chocoholic, she was going to abhor this soda. She didn’t want to let her grandma down and make any expressions of distaste, but even as her grandma opened up the freezer to fetch ice cubes, she wasn’t very hopeful that the soda would be even remotely decent.

“Alrighty,” her grandma said, setting down the two iced glasses on the counter. “Could you be a doll and open it for me?”

“Of course,” she said, reaching for the carbonated swamp water.

Victoria got both her short stature, her need for glasses, and her brown hair from her grandma’s side of the family. Fortunately, despite her height, she was strong from track and other overachiever sports and reached for the bottle without hesitation. She twisted the cap off with only a little bit of difficulty. She started to pour the glasses since it would be awkward to hand the bottle back to her grandma at this point. As she poured, calculations rooted in not disappointing her grandma swirled through her mind.

In one sense, she could fill the glasses up halfway, in case they both hated it. In another, she might seem disinterested or skeptical if she didn’t fill them up all the way.

Her fear and hatred of potentially disappointing someone kicked into full-steam and she heedlessly filled both glasses to the top.

“Here we go,” she said brightly.

Her grandma reached for her glass. “Cheers!”

They touched glasses and Victoria held the glass to her lips for a moment. She really, really didn’t want to drink the soda. It smelled overly sweet and nothing like chocolate. Her grandma seemed to be taking a long drink though, so she reluctantly parted her lips and took a small sip of the swamp water.

It tasted nothing like chocolate. In fact, it tasted like carbonated mud that was artificially flavored with a distant cousin of chocolate twice removed from the family line. It took every bit of willpower she had not to grimace as she forced herself to swallow the bizarre liquid. It was too sweet, the flavor was all wrong, and it was every bit as awful as she’d imagined.

Her grandma set her glass down first. Her expression was completely unreadable. Victoria set her glass down as well and launched into immediate mental arithmetic. Was Grandma Maddy lost in memories of the past? Was she having a near-religious experience from the chocolate soda? Was she perhaps as disgusted as Victoria was?

That didn’t seem likely. Victoria prayed her grandma would say give some kind of reaction first. If her grandma reacted negatively, then Victoria could be honest in her reaction without letting anyone down.

“What do you think of it?” Grandma Maddy asked.

Her stomach did somersaults in the swamp mud. Her hope was crushed. Her grandma’s expression was bizarrely unreadable and she had no data to go on. Victoria couldn’t tell the truth. She couldn’t risk disappointing her kind-hearted, well-meaning grandma.

She had to lie. There was no other option. It was a small, harmless lie, with little chance of significant ramifications.

“It was good,” she said with a small smile and nod.

“You liked it?”

“I did,” Victoria continued, feeling remarkably like she was digging her grave. “You know me, I’m such a chocoholic.”

“Mmm,” Grandma Maddy said, swirling the ice around in her glass. “I don’t think I like it. It’s kinda funky.”

Kinda funky. Kinda funky. 

The words echoed in Victoria’s mind like the gunshots of duck hunters in the marsh. Her smile became one completely at odds with the existential despair she was slipping into.

“Oh,” she said, unable to manage more.

“It’s not what remembered. You really like it though?”

Victoria was too deep in the lie to back out now—she took another sip. “Yeah, it’s good.”

Grandma Maddy shrugged. “I’m glad you like it. It’s too sweet for me.”

Her grandma abandoned her glass on the countertop. Victoria briefly hoped she’d dump it out, but luck was not on her side that day. Her grandma looked incredibly purposeful and busy as she scurried over to the cabinet and reached for the bottom shelf.

“I am actually really glad someone likes it,” Grandma Maddy went on, producing two more large bottles of the chocolate soda. “I got it on sale, so I bought a bunch. You can have them.”

Victoria hid her horror behind a smile. Her grandma went on to produce a fourth bottle of the accursed chocolate soda. Her grandma lined up all four of the bottles on the immaculate countertop, filling up a good percentage of it.

“Oh wow,” Victoria said lamely, her enthusiasm not quite high enough. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”

She stared at the mighty eight collective liters of chocolate soda and wondering where she went wrong.

“I’m going to see if your mom wants to try some,” she said, grabbing her glass and disappearing into the living room where the sewer pipe conspiracy continued to unravel. 

Victora pretending to take another sip from her glass before she swiftly but silently dashed over to the sink. She moved with the speed of a prime duck flying away from the hunter. She very carefully poured the chocolate soda down the drain, making sure it didn’t splatter over the side of the sink, revealing her wastefulness. She hated to waste food or drinks, but there was no way she could get the entire glass down without gagging.

She watched the overly-sweet, not-chocolate abomination disappear down the drain from whence it came. It definitely belonged in a sewer. If she didn’t know better, she’d think it came from the sewer. She finished her dark deed and decided that there just might be some worse things in life than disappointing people. Both seemingly harmless lies and chocolate soda now ranked on that list of things as awful as disappointing others.