by Sarah Ellis
Dodger Boy
Sarah Ellis
Groundwood Books
House of Anansi Press
Toronto Berkeley
Copyright © 2018 by Sarah Ellis
Published in Canada and the USA in 2018 by Groundwood Books
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press
groundwoodbooks.com
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ellis, Sarah, author
Dodger boy / Sarah Ellis.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77306-072-9 (hardcover).—ISBN 978-1-77306-073-6 (HTML).—
ISBN 978-1-77306-092-7 (Kindle)
I. Title.
ps8559.l57d63 2018 jc813’.54 c2018-900057-0
c2018-900058-9
Cover design by Michael Solomon
Cover art copyright © 2018 by Aimée Sicuro
For Circle Dot with love and gratitude
One
It all started with Romeo and Juliet, the movie. It was Charlotte’s idea but Dawn took some convincing.
“Is it going to be weird English or normal?”
“Well, Shakespeare.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on, Dawn. It’s romance. You saw the poster. Greatest love story of all time and all that. Plus that theater has real butter on the popcorn.”
The popcorn did it.
The movie didn’t start out that well. The first problem was the way the men dressed, with leotards and those flaps covering their crotches. Charlotte was doing her best to be cool, but really! One nudge from Dawn and she was off into squished-down giggles.
Then there was a bunch of fighting, with idiot boys spitting on one another and then practically killing each other with swords. It was like the boys’ side of the playground at recess. Familiar but — snoresville.
Then Juliet’s mother appeared and she was wearing this silver helmet thing on her head. Dawn leaned over and whispered, “Bubblehead,” and that was it for Charlotte. Giggle explosion disguised as coughing. Charlotte could feel the dirty looks from other moviegoers beaming through the dark.
This was just the sort of thing that she hated — acting like an obnoxious teenager in public. This was just the sort of thing that had prompted the Unteen Pact, an agreement that she and Dawn made last January when they turned thirteen — an agreement to refuse to become teenagers.
Concentrating on the sadness of world hunger diluted the giggles for a few seconds, and then Juliet’s mother appeared in yet another metal beehive and Charlotte and Dawn were off again.
All that ended when Romeo went to a masked ball. It was eyes meeting across a crowded room and you could see them falling in love, every second of the slow fall. Romeo went round and round the room trying to catch a glimpse of Juliet and from that moment Charlotte was hooked. They were both so beautiful. Well, Juliet more than Romeo, actually. Romeo seemed a bit wimpy with odd hair. But Juliet! Charlotte had never really thought about what “heart-shaped face” meant before.
By the time it was over and practically everyone was dead, Charlotte was crying and she heard a little sob beside her. Luckily she was well stocked with Kleenex. Dawn was an elegant crier but Charlotte was a snotty one and needed to mop up.
It seemed all wrong to emerge into a glaring busy Saturday afternoon outside, car horns and sunshine and people who couldn’t care less about Romeo and Juliet and the terrible tragedy of love.
“I’m so glad you made me come,” said Dawn. “You know what’s the most amazing thing? She was thirteen. Did you get that?”
“But so Unteen.”
Dawn frowned. “You think?”
“Absolutely. Apply the formula.”
The formula had been invented by Charlotte, with Dawn’s input, to explain the bizarre behavior of boy-crazy girls acting fake-stupid — a phenomenon they had noticed at school and that was part of the motivation for the Unteen Pact.
Dawn pushed the Walk button. “Okay. Part one: obviously zero percent.”
Part one of the formula was status, the way you could show off if you had a boyfriend and get popularity points. Dawn and Charlotte figured that for most of the girls at school this was the whole deal. A high score on part one was clear proof of teen-silly.
“Right. Romeo and Juliet aren’t going around bragging to their friends. They can’t because of the whole family mess. Plus Juliet just isn’t the type. Remember that bit where she tells Romeo straight out that she isn’t going to flirt and play hard to get? She’s smart and she doesn’t pretend not to be. I think she might be the hero of the Unteen movement.”
“Right. Part two: ringy-dingy.”
Ringy-dingy was wanting to get married so you could have a house and babies and a dinette suite and all that. A high score on part two was pathetic.
Charlotte dodged a wheelchair barreling up the sidewalk. “But they do get married.”
“But not for the dinette suite. I think that’s zero percent as well.”
“Yeah. I mean, Bubblehead tries to marry her off but Juliet would rather die than marry that Paris guy. You’re right. Zero. So that leaves part three.”
Part three was kissing, etc., etc.
Dawn grinned. “I’d say one hundred percent! They were so hot for each other.”
“But then there’s no percent for the Big One.”
Part four, the Big One, was the once-in-a-lifetime romance, the lightning bolt that changed you forever and led to heroic acts, wild behavior and writing poetry.
“There was a lot about the Big One. They said they were each other’s souls. You have to give part four at least fifty percent.”
“Okay, sex and love. So the total score for Romeo and Juliet is zero, zero, fifty, fifty.”
“Perfect score.”
Dawn paused at a shoestore window. “Wouldn’t it be great to have somebody look at you like Romeo stared at Juliet?”
“I don’t know. I think it would make me feel like I had spinach between my teeth.”
“Charlotte Quintan! You’re a goof! It would be love, not spinach. The adoring gaze. That’s what everybody wants, deep down.”
Charlotte stared at the shoes and wondered. Was that what she wanted, deep down? Dawn was always so sure of herself. It was one of her best things.
“Okay, shopping game. You get to have any of the shoes in the window. One, two, three, point.”
“Hang on. Give me a minute to look!”
“One, two, three, go!”
Same choice. Separated at birth. Or it might have been Shakespeare. The green suede shoes with little green leather buttons were like something Juliet would wear.
“Want, want, double-want,” Dawn sighed. “Let’s go in and see how much they are.”
“No, if it’s the kind of place where they don’t put on the prices it will be way out of our zone.”
“Zone! We’re so broke
we don’t even have a zone.”
“Exactly. They’ll know we’re not serious.”
“So?”
“You go ahead. I’ll just stay out here.”
Charlotte looked through the window and across the display and saw Dawn chatting away to the sales clerk who actually took the shoes out of the display to show her. They talked for a few more minutes and then seemed to part best friends and Dawn reappeared on the sidewalk.
“So?”
“Don’t even ask. Italian. Hand-sewn. You should have seen them close up. They even smelled delicious. We have such good taste, you and me.”
Dawn could do that, thought Charlotte. She could walk into a store and talk to a sales clerk without rehearsing in her head. Charlotte couldn’t even imagine it.
* * *
Dawn was the one to spot the poster on the telephone pole.
“Hey, what’s that about?”
It was in bright psychedelic colors, crazy swoopy shapes and fat balloon lettering.
Easter Human Be-In
Second Beach
Easter Sunday
Ecto-Plasmic Assault Light Show
Mother Tucker’s Yellow Duck
Peace Love Music
Free to All Humans
Charlotte read it twice. Ecto-plasmic wasn’t the only mystery.
“What does be-in mean?”
“Charlotte, get with it, it’s a joke. Like human being, human be-in.”
“I get that. But what do you actually do at a be-in?”
“One way to find out. We should go. It says free.”
“What about if it’s just for hippies?”
“Look. Free to all humans. That means us. Plus, we could be hippies for the day. Why not? It’s all about the clothes.”
Why not was another of Dawn’s best things. By the time they turned off Robson Street they had a well-designed plan to spend the weekend on a hippie-disguise project.
Two
Groovy Tie-Dye Fun. Charlotte flipped through the library book.
“Is this the look we really want? We could just do normal plus a headband and beads or something.”
“But this is groovy! Look, it says so right on the cover. Library books don’t lie. Don’t you want to be groovy?”
“Oh, good grief. Who really says groovy?”
Dawn grinned. “Well, nobody. But maybe they do in, like, San Francisco and other real hippie places. Why not? It’s just for one day. And tie-dye looks like fun.”
It did look like fun. And making it didn’t mean you actually had to wear it. “Okay.”
“Great! Let’s make a list of what we need. Fabric, dye, salt, colored chalk, rubber gloves, elastic bands … Hmmmm. I think we’ll have to do it at your house.”
“Well, I guess!” Charlotte glanced around the Novaks’ living room. The coffee table matched the stereo matched the china cabinet. There was a color scheme of avocado green and harvest gold. There were ornaments. One perfect shiny philodendron sat in a perfect shiny pot. There was absolutely no clutter. Mr. and Mrs. Novak went in for interior decoration.
Charlotte’s parents had apparently never heard of interior decoration. There was furniture, obviously, and rugs and curtains and pictures on the walls, but it was hard to imagine that anybody had ever actually chosen the stuff. It just seemed to be there, a kind of festival of clutter. There were plants, of course — plants from asparagus to zebrina — but mostly they were ailing.
The family business was a plant store, Green Thumb. If a plant wasn’t doing well it came home to recover. It drove Charlotte’s brother crazy.
“Throw them out! It’s called stock shrinkage.” James was at university studying business and he liked to say things like “stock shrinkage.”
Charlotte loved the calm order of Dawn’s house. When she had her own place it was going to be matchy just like that. But she did have to admit that Villa Quintan was better for projects, especially messy ones.
She turned over a page in the book.
“White all-cotton fabric recommended. What are we going to use? T-shirts?”
“I don’t know. You don’t see hippie girls wearing T-shirts so much. They seem, you know, flouncier.”
Charlotte did a quick mental inventory of her closet.
“I don’t think I have flouncy.”
“Me neither. Time for a trip to the Sally Ann.”
* * *
The Salvation Army Thrift Store made Charlotte think of archeology. At first it looked like there was nothing there. A dusty hillside in Egypt. Just racks and racks of pilled brown cardigans and saggy shirts and that funny sweet smell.
But somewhere in there was King Tut’s golden treasure, especially if you were there with Dawn.
Flip, reject. Flip, reject. Flip, reject. Dawn walked her fingers through the hangers.
“Okay. Bad. Good but not for the be-in. Maybe. Ick. Polyester. Now here’s a possibility.”
Dawn held up a long white skirt with a row of small bells around the waist. “Indian cotton, unbleached, drawstring waist, not stinky, nice touch of hippie. Now we’re getting somewhere. Hold this.”
Charlotte took the skirt and wandered over to a shelf of books. She was just cracking one open when Dawn reappeared.
“Charlotte! Keep focused. Don’t start reading. Look what I found. Another perfect skirt. We’re set. We can pair the skirts with maybe a blouse or a plain T-shirt. Or maybe one each. We don’t want to look too twinny.”
“Do we need to try them on?”
“Nah. Drawstring waists. One size fits all.”
Charlotte followed Dawn to the cash desk. She was just digging out her wallet when Dawn stopped dead in her tracks.
“Is that …?” She grabbed Charlotte by the sleeve and pulled her toward a rack that was half-hidden behind the door.
“Holy cow!” she whispered. She pulled out a dress of layers of creamy lace and checked the label.
“I knew it! Laura Ashley. She shoots, she scores.”
She glanced around. “Look at the price. They don’t know what they’ve got. Be cool.”
Charlotte ran her hand over the fabric. It was beautiful, soft and heavy. She imagined how it would hang and move.
“Why would somebody even give this away?”
Dawn’s x-ray eyes found the answer. “Look. Stain. Somebody had an accident with a felt-tip marker.”
“But who cares? We’ll tie-dye over it. Right?”
“Exactly! So now we only need one of the skirts. Which one do you want, bells or no bells?”
A flicker of hurt flashed through Charlotte. The lace dress obviously wasn’t for her. “So. Um. Maybe I’ll wear the dress?”
Dawn shook her head and put her hand on Charlotte’s arm. “Oh, that wouldn’t work. Laura Ashley just isn’t you.”
“No?”
“Definitely not. You’re earthier. You should pick the skirt with the bells. I’ll lend you that peasant blouse I have, the one with the embroidery. That will be a much better look for you.”
Earthier? Oh, well. Dawn was probably right. She was good at fashion.
And at bargaining. Most people didn’t bargain at the Sally Ann. Things were cheap enough even for those with no zone. But Dawn pointed out the stain on the dress and got a cheerful discount.
* * *
The plan was to dye on Saturday morning. But Charlotte had not predicted a competing project of homemade lasagna noodles. She stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, to find her mother and Uncle Claude hanging sheets of pasta over the backs of chairs.
“Claude! You’re back.”
Claude clapped flour off his hands and surrounded Charlotte with a hug. His beard tickled. “Got in late last night.”
“You don’t want to take a rest from cooking?”
&nb
sp; Mom shook her head. “He’s crazy.”
“Lots of time to rest when you’re six feet under. I just got this idea to make lasagna noodles. The loggers don’t appreciate such subtleties.”
Uncle Claude worked as a cook in lumber camps and lived with Charlotte’s family when he wasn’t in the bush. Mom told Charlotte that he’d been in lots of trouble when he was young, in jail and all that.
“Nowadays they’d probably call him hyperactive but back then they just called him a juvenile delinquent.”
“So what’s my favorite niece up to today?”
“Um, Dawn and I were going to tie-dye.”
“Tie die. What’s that? No, let me guess.” Claude pretended to strangle himself. “That would be dying from being forced to wear a tie every day. Is there anything as ridiculous as a tie? Who invented it? What use is it?”
Charlotte remembered her Girl Guides first-aid training. “Well, in an emergency in the woods you can use it as a tourniquet, or to make a temporary splint with a branch. If you break your leg or something.”
“But who would be out in the woods wearing a tie?”
In a piece of perfect comic timing, James walked into the kitchen. He was wearing chinos, a button-down shirt and a tie.
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “Um.” Mom and Claude laughed.
“What?” said James, frowning.
“Nothing,” said Claude. “Where are you off to today?”
“Hey, Claude. Welcome home. I’m going out to school. Saturday seminar in business math. Is there any coffee?”
Charlotte stared at James as he took a mug off the drainboard. Coffee and ties. He had become a mysterious stranger since he started university
“Anyway,” said Claude. “Death by ties. I get it.”
“Actually it’s not dying as in death but dyeing as in adding color.”
“What are you planning to dye?” asked Mom.
“A skirt and a dress. Dawn and me? We’re making costumes for the Human Be-In next weekend in Stanley Park.”