The Dollar Kids

by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

  But Mum shook her head firmly. She wasn’t the quitting kind.

  The best thing about playing soccer was the bus rides to games. Lowen had never been on a school bus before. In Flintlock, if his class went on a field trip, they walked or took vans. But in Millville, buses had to travel great distances so the kids could play other schools. Dylan, Sami, Amber, Joey, Kyle, and Lowen were dismissed from class a half hour early to board, which made Lowen feel kind of important — even though most of his class went with him.

  It was always the same. The eighth-graders sat in the back of the bus. The seventh-graders sat as close as they could to the eighth-graders. The sixth-graders spread out over the front seats. Though Lowen could have sat with Sami, he chose to sit alone. Coach passed out snacks.

  There were sixteen kids on their team: eleven first-string and five second-string. Unless their team was way ahead, he and a seventh-grader nicknamed Rats got to sit out most of each game. That wasn’t so bad.

  Practices were much harder. Coach barked at them while they ran or performed repetitive drills, and there was always an audience, which made Lowen feel especially uncoordinated.

  One of the worst days was “left foot day.” Coach explained that soccer players who could kick using both their feet were far more successful, and since most of the team had a stronger right foot, he wouldn’t allow them to use it that day. They had to remove their right cleat. Lowen caught his socked toe in a chipmunk hole and went flying tail over teakettle.

  Of course, that was the same day that Luna happened to be standing on the sidelines watching.

  And the same day that Sami offered again to give him a tip.

  “Thanks, but —”

  She stepped in front of him. “People aren’t born knowing how to play soccer, you know.”

  “I didn’t say they were,” Lowen said. He could feel his annoyance rising. “But why does everyone feel the need to give me advice?”

  She hesitated. “Because . . . you need it?”

  “Ugh. I can’t be the only one on the team who needs help.”

  “I know. But I thought we were friends.”

  He scrambled for an answer. We’re not friends — too mean. I’m not friend material — that would only lead Sami to ask why. “All right. Show me,” he said, with a bit more annoyance in his voice than he meant.

  Sami went silent.

  “No. Sorry. I mean it. What’s your tip?”

  She stopped and placed the ball on the ground. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but you often treat the ball like it’s a bomb rolling toward you. You kick it away as quickly as possible.”

  “I’m defense,” he said, knowing that he was taking a similarly defensive position now.

  “Yes, but the ball often goes off in a direction that gives the other team an advantage.”

  Truthfully, he had no idea where the ball would go when he kicked it. He just wanted it to be someone else’s responsibility. But Sami was right: often it landed at the feet of an opposing player.

  “This will probably sound ridiculous,” she said, “but try to imagine the ball as, well, your loyal pet.”

  She demonstrated some footwork. “You don’t want it to be so close to your feet that you step on it,” she said as she tapped it along. “But you don’t want it to get too far away, either — not while you’re trying to control it. Then look up and spot the exact place you want it to go, and then, as if it were an extension of your own foot, send it there.”

  She ceased tapping. “Wow. Sorry. I never realized how stupid this sounds.”

  But he knew exactly what she meant. He could imagine interacting with the ball this way. “It’s like drawing,” he said. “It’s easier to imagine that your pencil is part of your arm, and that your arm knows exactly how to make the form; you just have to relax, stop thinking so much —”

  “I didn’t know that you drew.”

  Lowen nodded, but then corrected himself. “Used to draw.”

  “Will you show me sometime?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Sami smiled.

  He turned away. This lie felt an awful lot like the lies he used to tell Abe.

  The shower was out of commission for three weeks. Lowen got increasingly comfortable taking baths next door at Field’s Funeral Home. Invited to come and go as he pleased, he challenged himself to explore a little more of the funeral home on each visit. In the paneled basement, he discovered a large carpeted display room filled with caskets. There was a dark mahogany casket lined with red velvet pillows. Something about it made him want to crawl inside, lay his head on the cushion. What would it feel like? But then he imagined the top slamming down and latching, trapping him inside. He’d bang on the cover repeatedly, hoping to be heard. It reminded him of something his teacher, Mrs. K., had told them.

  Apparently, during the Victorian era, corpses had ropes tied to their fingers, head, and toes. These ropes led to a bell on the tombstone. If the body somehow revived, the not-really-deceased person could pull on the ropes and ring the bell. Hopefully a night watchman would hear the bell and the coffin would be dug up. “Had anyone actually been rescued by one of these safety coffins?” Sami had asked, but their teacher didn’t know.

  Next to the fancy mahogany casket was a tiny white casket lined with pink satin pillows. No doubt that one was for a baby. What had Abe’s family chosen?

  Clem never took another shower at Field’s. He showered at school after soccer practice or at one of his buds’ houses on Sunday mornings. Anneth, like Lowen, had no problem using the downstairs bath at Field’s. On her second visit she met Melinda, the makeup artist whose true calling was helping the deceased look their best. Melinda complimented Anneth on her lip gloss color, and Anneth, in turn, asked Melinda a million questions about foundations, eyeliners, and bronzing powders. Later, with permission, Anneth shared Melinda’s “Makeup Tips for the Living” on her channel. It was, so far, the posting that had received the most views.

  At one point, Lowen was tempted to share his explorations at Field’s with his classmates, thinking that they might see him as braver, more capable. But when Lowen told Dylan that he had explored the caskets in the basement, Dylan had said, “I don’t think it’s very respectful what you’re doing. All of us here in Millville have been to Field’s . . . you know . . . to say good-bye.”

  Lowen supposed that might be true in a place like Millville. Abe was the first person he knew who had died. All his grandparents were still alive. In fact, he’d never even had a pet that died (mostly because he’d never had a pet, period). But in Millville, everybody knew everybody. Chances are, every kid in Millville had attended a wake or a funeral next door. In fact, from the number of cars parked in front of their home every time there was a service, he suspected that everyone in town attended funerals.

  He recalled the deceased woman who was at Field’s that day Dylan surprised him, the one he wouldn’t look at. He tried to imagine her now. Was she wearing the clothes she died in? Probably not. Someone must have picked out her clothes. Someone else (he didn’t like thinking about who) dressed her.

  It was weird thinking about dressing the dead. Did you wear clothes in heaven? Did you wear the ones you died in? Or did you wear the clothes you were buried in? Maybe that was why people always pictured people in heaven wearing gowns, like angels. Anything else was just confusing.

  Lowen laughed at the thought of Abe wearing a gown. He thought of the teenage killer, whose name he suddenly remembered — Oliver, Oliver Jenson — wearing a gown. His mind entered back into his comic strip:

  Abe’s reaction, the imagined one in his head, reminded Lowen of his siblings’ comments when they first arrived in Millville: There’s nothing here! Eventually Clem and Anneth had ceased complaining about the lack of a movie theater, a Trader Joe’s, or a pizza place in town.

  That did not stop them, however, from putting up a huge fuss when, due to a lack of hair stylist or barber in town, Mum asked Rena (who
had assured them that she’d had plenty of experience cutting hair) to come to the Albatross to cut the family’s hair.

  Clem wasn’t home from practice yet, so Mum made Anneth go first. She sat up on a barstool that Rena brought. Rena wrapped an old sheet over her shoulders and, with a comb in one hand and a pair of pointy scissors in the other, proceeded to give her a trim.

  “Don’t leave it too long here,” Anneth said, pointing to hair resting on her shoulders in back, “or my hair will flip up!”

  Lowen stood nearby, waiting to see if Rena really knew what she was doing. Sami, who was used to watching her mother cut her sisters’ hair, was hanging out at the table with Mum, who was, as usual, looking for interesting recipes online.

  “So,” Mum began, “I’ve finished designing the new menus and they should be arriving early next week. I figured you kids could also collect clothing donations for Restored Riches while you’re handing out menus.” Rena was due to open her used-clothing store in just three days, but so far very few people had brought in clothes to sell on consignment. “Two birds with one stone! What do you say?”

  Was Mum for real? He shot Sami a look of horror.

  “I hope you’re not including me as one of the kids,” said Clem, who had slipped in the door and was pausing to read his texts. “I have two papers due, and I still haven’t cut the boards for the porch, but I did get permission to use the workshop at school and I found a couple of kids who are willing to help me.”

  “There’s no way I can go around, either!” said Anneth, keeping her chin down as Rena directed. “I can hardly get both my vlog and my homework done on time as it is. Besides, we have none of the cute factor of the younger ones.”

  Sami’s sisters, who had been playing with Barbies on the couch, perked up. They knew they were cute, and going door-to-door probably sounded like fun to them.

  “Sorry, kiddos,” Rena said to the youngsters. “You are too little.”

  “Looks like it will be up to Lowen and Sami,” said Mum.

  “But we have soccer, too!” said Lowen. “And homework, and . . . and I’m supposed to be painting my room!” (He’d gone back and bought a gallon of the cheap Ambrosia Blue. He figured it would work in a bedroom.)

  “Besides, who wants kids knocking on their door?” Sami asked.

  Rena held the scissors in the air, as if she were about to stab someone. “Don’t you want to live here?” she said. She looked at Sami and then at Lowen. “I’m serious. Don’t you want to stay in Millville?”

  The room went quiet.

  Clem stopped guzzling orange juice from the carton. “I do.”

  “Me too,” Anneth mumbled.

  “If we want to stay in Millville,” said Mum, “Rena and I have to make a living. We have to fix up our homes. If our businesses don’t succeed, we Grovers will be heading back to Flintlock, and —”

  “We’ll be heading back to who-knows-where,” Sami said softly. She’d already told Lowen that her mom would never move back to the Bronx, so if Millville didn’t work out, there was no saying where the Doshis would end up.

  Lowen looked at Mum, saw the plea in her eyes.

  The Cornish Eatery had to succeed. It was the only way that Dad could give up the apartment, the only way they could have a house of their own, the only way Mum could have her dream. The only way they could stay where Clem and Anneth were so happy.

  “OK,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  It was a drizzly Saturday morning when Lowen and Sami trudged around Millville. Sami pushed a rusty wheelbarrow, one she’d found in the Doshis’ garage. Inside her raincoat pocket, she carried a receipt pad. “Remind me to record every single item that someone gives me,” she said, “so my mother can pay them later.”

  Lowen had Mum’s messenger bag flung over his shoulder. Inside the bag were take-out menus from the Cornish Eatery, featuring descriptions of her pasties. He felt ridiculous.

  They decided to start on the north end of town, where they’d run into fewer people (and would be least likely to run into Luna Muñoz, though Lowen didn’t share this fact with Sami), and work their way back to the center. The first house they came to, a double-wide trailer, looked deserted. The empty driveway was covered in wet leaves, and the curtains were pulled shut. Sami stepped onto the little front porch and knocked several times anyway. Just as they were about to give up and head to the next house, the door opened a crack.

  “Are you trick-or-treating for UNICEF?” came a frail voice. Lowen and Sami exchanged a look. Halloween was still a week away.

  “No,” said Sami. “We want to talk to you about making money, not donating it.”

  The door opened wider, revealing an old woman with blurry eyes. “Now, see here! I don’t want any part in a get-rich-quick scam! Our town may be down, but we Millvillians have never been stupid!”

  Lowen prepared to retreat.

  “No, no,” said Sami quickly. “My mom, Rena Doshi, is opening a consignment store on Main Street. She would like to help you sell clothes you no longer wear.”

  “Why would I stop wearing perfectly fine clothes at my age? I don’t care about trends!”

  “Let’s go,” whispered Lowen.

  Sami gave him a stern look. One that said, Come on. You’re in this, too.

  Lowen reached into his bag and pulled out a menu. “Have you ever had a Cornish pasty?”

  “What?”

  Lowen drifted closer. “A meat pie. Have you ever had one?”

  “My mama used to make tourtière pie.” The woman smiled for the first time. “It had pork, potatoes, and onions. Goodness, I hadn’t thought of that in ages!”

  Lowen had never heard of tourtière pies, but he said, “It sounds just like my mother’s pasties, though they have steak instead of pork.”

  The woman nodded. “English instead of French.”

  Sami stepped in. “I bet Mrs. Grover could make one of your tor — tor —”

  “Tourtière,” the woman said to Sami, and then looked back at Lowen. “If your mother makes one of those, bring it to me. I’ll pay her for it.”

  Lowen nodded, even though the restaurant didn’t have an official delivery service. But he’d bring the woman the pasty himself if it meant more business for Mum.

  The lines on the woman’s face softened. “You’re Dollar Kids, aren’t you?”

  So even the grown-ups called them that. Lowen nodded again, still holding out the menu. The wind nearly blew it out of his hand.

  “Oh, come in. Come in. I shouldn’t have made you stand outside in this damp weather.”

  Lowen looked at Sami, who shrugged. The rain was picking up.

  “I’ll make tea,” said the woman as the kids stepped inside, “and I just made cake.”

  He and Sami stepped inside a cozy living room and handed their coats to the woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. Lavasseur. Then they sat together on a mildly sagging couch that was covered in colorful afghans.

  “Does your mother accept men’s clothing?” Mrs. Lavasseur asked Sami, peering into her front closet.

  “Oh, yes!” said Sami. “Men’s, women’s, and children’s.”

  “Well, then, I do have some clothing for you to take along. You see, my husband died. . . .”

  A half hour later, Sami and Lowen were on the road with a wheelbarrow half full of men’s clothing and some women’s purses. All were stuffed into garbage bags to keep them dry.

  At the next house, they agreed that Lowen would talk about the pasties first, but the thin man who answered the door said he was gluten intolerant and couldn’t eat crust. Before he could shut the door, Sami called out, “Your neighbor decided to make money by selling clothes she no longer needed.”

  The man paused. “Come again?”

  Sami pointed out the bags of clothing they had collected so far and gave a brief pitch for Restored Riches.

  That’s when the man’s wife, a short woman with dark bangs, peeked out from around the door. “You’re that talented young soc
cer player!” she said to Sami. “I have some dresses I no longer have the opportunity to wear.” While she went to retrieve the dresses, Lowen handed the man a menu. “Look,” he said. “The Cornish Eatery has gluten-free crust. You just have to call ahead.”

  The man glanced at it for a moment and was about to give it back when he pointed to the classic Cornish pasty that not only had beef and onion and potato, but had rutabaga as well. “Rutabaga! I haven’t had rutabaga since —”

  “Since Janelle,” his wife interjected, handing Sami the dresses zipped into a garment bag. They smelled like vinegar.

  “Janelle used to live on the other side of us.” She pointed to the empty house next door. “But she moved away when the mill closed . . . she and her husband and their three extremely athletic kids — two of them were All-State, weren’t they, Dave? Their yard was always immaculate, wasn’t it, Dave?”

  Water dripped off the roof and down Lowen’s face.

  The man sighed. “As I was saying, I haven’t had a rutabaga since Janelle used to drive to a co-op in Ranger and bring us back fresh produce.”

  “Oh, I miss that produce,” said the woman. “Don’t you, Dave? Janelle —”

  “My mother gets a shipment of rutabagas from Canada every week,” said Lowen. He didn’t add that since the Cornish Eatery had so few customers, he and his brother and sister usually ended up eating most of those rutabagas in soups. In fact, all of the leftover meat and produce went into soups. He was really, really tired of soup.

  “Oh . . . your mother opened the new lunch place,” the woman said. “We always eat at the Busy Bee, don’t we, Dave? We’re predictable that way. Plus, we do like to give our business to Virginia Corbeau. Virginia and I go all the way back to — when did we meet the Corbeaus, Dave? Was it 1973?”

  The man looked up at the sky. “Looks like we’re going to have another shower,” he said. “You probably want to get going.”

  “Thanks,” said Sami, handing him a receipt.

  The man nodded, folded the menu and receipt, and tucked them into the back pocket of his trousers.