by Sarah Ellis
“Imaginary shark. My brother JJ and I, we used to sneak into this yard next to the railway track and climb up on the cotton bales and run around, jumping from one to another. We pretended the ground was shark-infested water. Once I fell off and landed on a sharp piece of metal.”
“We did that, too,” said Dawn. “We made like a course around Charlotte’s living room, jumping on all the furniture. We weren’t allowed to touch the floor. We used the leaves from the dining-room table as bridges. Then one day I over-jumped from chesterfield to armchair and went right through the window.”
“We didn’t imagine sharks, though,” said Charlotte.
Dawn frowned. “So I have a scar, too.”
Dawn’s scar was at the top of her leg. Was she going to offer to show it? And why was she hogging the conversation?
Tom Ed grinned. “Is a chesterfield a couch? I just love the words you use, all British-like.”
With the arrival of the breakfasts, heaped on huge plates, talk turned to school. Tom Ed described how they learned all kinds of Texas stuff, like how to read cattle brands and about the different kinds of fences on a ranch.
“What’s bob war?” said Dawn.
Charlotte laughed. Over the past week she had become good at translating Texan.
“He means barbed wire!”
“We also learned the positions in a cattle drive. You’ve got your trail boss, point man, swing, flank, drag rider and horse wrangler.”
Dawn nodded. “Like we learned about jobs in the bush.”
“Such as?” Tom Ed dipped toast into his sunny-side-up eggs.
“Um. High-rigger.”
“What do they do?”
Dawn did a “help me” thing with her mouth at Charlotte.
“They climb up and cut off the top of the tree. It’s the most dangerous job.”
“And what else?”
Charlotte tried to remember. Faller? Was faller one of them?
“Saw chief,” said Dawn. She winked at Charlotte. Dawn was an excellent winker. She could close one eye without moving any other part of her face. “He’s in charge of sharpening the saws.”
A giggle bubble rose up in Charlotte’s throat. “Ringer. He counts the rings.”
“Timber Voice, he yells ‘Timber!’”
Tom Ed raised his eyebrows but Charlotte and Dawn were on a roll.
“Branch Manager, he manages the branches.”
“Woody Woodpecker.”
At that one, which made no sense at all but struck both girls as completely hilarious, Coke went up Dawn’s nose and things got a bit loud and the baseball caps started to look over and the waitress brought Tom Ed’s pie and more napkins and the bill all at the same time.
Over pie, Dawn told the story of writing the same essay, “How Is Plywood Made,” for three grades in a row and Tom Ed admitted that he made do with reading the comic-book version of Great Expectations in high school.
“All right, you goofs,” said Tom Ed. “I think we should get going. The Super Bee awaits.”
Charlotte went to the bathroom. Everything was normal again. Dawn was back, saved by giggling. Two friends, one old, one new. Everybody eating bacon. What could be better?
She turned her wet hands under the roaring dryer.
There was one funny thing, though, about the last part of the breakfast conversation.
It wasn’t really Dawn who turned in that plywood essay three times.
It was her.
Eleven
As they left Red’s, Dawn stopped by a newspaper box to tie her shoelace.
“Charlotte! Look at this!”
Charlotte crouched down. There was Mrs. Radger. Smiling. Somehow smiling with no lips was even meaner-looking than frowning with no lips.
Councilwoman cleans up city libraries.
“Oh, yeah. It was in the paper yesterday, too. Monique told me. Mrs. Radger’s gone completely nutty. Now she’s trying to get O.O. fired.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tried to. Charlotte didn’t say it.
Tom Ed slid some coins into the slot and pulled a paper off the pile. “You can read it to me in the car.”
The wide seat was very handy. Charlotte and Dawn opened the paper out and reported in tandem.
Charlotte began. “Miss Oona McGough … Oona! I’d never have guessed Oona. I thought for sure it must be Olive or Olga.”
“We still don’t know what the second O is.”
“Prob’ly Opal,” Tom Ed chimed in. “So, this is the O.O. who was probably a spy in the war, right?”
“What?” said Dawn. “How do you know about that?”
“Charlotte filled me in.”
“That was my idea!”
Was it? Charlotte couldn’t remember. Together they had added up O.O.’s comments about growing up in England and how she knew Morse code and how she had a limp because she had once jumped out of a plane in a parachute and how she lit up when one of the back-row boys brought in a book about code-breaking. Who had first thought of the idea of a spy?
It wasn’t worth arguing about.
When they got back on the highway the wind threatened to snatch the paper out of their hands.
Dawn took over the reading. “Miss Oona McGough, at present on paid personal leave, has refused to remove the novel Catcher in the Rye from her classroom. Disciplinary action has been taken.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe she got a detention.”
“I think it means she’s going to get fired,” said Tom Ed from beyond the newspaper huddle.
Dawn turned to the next page. “There’s more. The teacher in question, with the support of her union, has threatened to take legal action. Wait! There’s going to be a public meeting. At the school board offices.”
Tom Ed pulled out to pass a camper. The Bee surged like a racehorse.
“You girls should go. Have your say.”
Dawn lowered the paper and tossed it in a crumple on the floor. “No way José will they let students go to that.”
“Why not?” said Tom Ed. “You’re the public, aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Charlotte. “But they think we’re just teenagers and adults hate teenagers.”
Tom Ed grinned. “But you’re not teenagers. You’re Unteens, right?”
A silence blew through the car. Charlotte didn’t want to look at Dawn. Dawn who had quit Unteens.
Had she?
Dawn leaned over and started to tidy up the sheets of newspaper on the floor.
Crinkle, crinkle. Fwap, crinkle.
Tom Ed shook his head. “Even if you went disguised as teens I think you’re wrong about adults. They don’t hate teenagers. They’re afraid of them.”
Dawn snorted. “Come on!”
“Adults think that teenagers are judging them. They think we think they’re boring and stupid and irrelevant. Of course sometimes we do think that. But it makes them scared because deep in their hearts they think it might be true. At least, that’s what I think that they think that we think.”
It took a minute for Charlotte to get the thinks sorted out, but then it rang true. “If we went, what would we do?”
“Use your unique strengths,” said Tom Ed. “Let’s make a list. Miz Novak, please take a memo.”
“Paper?” said Dawn.
Charlotte had taken a paper placemat from the restaurant because it had a funny map of British Columbia on it. She pulled it out of her bag.
“Okay,” said Dawn. “Charlotte. You start.”
“Unique strengths. Let’s see. I can sing all the verses of the Mr. Clean jingle.”
Charlotte sang Mr. Clean to the mountains and the clouds. “Floors, doors, walls, halls, white sidewall tires and old golf balls …”
“What’s the po
int of that?” said Dawn.
“Write it down,” said Tom Ed. “You never know. List absolutely everything. Okay, Dawn, your turn.”
“Um, violin. That’s about it.”
Was she sulking? “Come on, Dawn. You speak Croatian. That’s huge. Write it down.”
Once they started back-and-forthing, the unique strengths added up. By the time they ran out of room on the back of the placemat they had one pretty-good-at-badminton, experienced-at-tie-dye, jingle-singing reader and one ear-wiggling, winking, bilingual-English-and-Croatian, also-experienced-at-tie-dye violinist.
“You’re missing some obvious strengths,” said Tom Ed. “You have three powerful tools. You’re young, you’re smart and you’re pretty. Write that down.”
Pretty? Charlotte glanced at Dawn whose eyebrows were inching up toward her fallen-down bangs. They both started to giggle at the same moment. It was a complete, one hundred percent, classic teenage giggle. A proper Unteen would never have giggled that giggle. But it crashed over them like a wave.
Charlotte took immediate preventive action, grabbing the newspaper and putting it over their heads, holding it down as it flapped and snapped. In the privacy of their newsprint tent they rode the wave until it threw them up onto the beach of deep breaths and nose-blowing.
Tom Ed pretended not to notice. So polite.
“Let’s get down to basics. Y’all like this teacher, right?”
The girls nodded.
“Then you could just go to the meeting and say that she’s a good teacher and you want her back.”
“I can’t do public speaking like that,” said Charlotte. “Standing up in front of all those people looking at you. I’d freeze. But Dawn can do it. I can give advice and clap.”
“That would be good,” said Tom Ed. “What with the qualities that I just mentioned and won’t mention again it could be really effective. But I wonder if there’s a way to make it more dramatic, more theatrical, to get more of a media splash.”
“Theatrical? You mean with costumes and props like in a play?” Dawn was obviously thinking of dress-up.
“Kind of. I’m thinking of anti-war protests. Big numbers are good. Songs are good. But if you really want to get attention, something kind of jokey is even better.”
“Like what?”
“Have you ever heard of a guy called Jerry Rubin?”
Charlotte remembered something from when James first started at UBC.
“Maybe. Something about a sit-in. James thought it was stupid.”
“Ah, yes, James. Political protests aren’t his thing.”
How did Tom Ed know what was James’s thing or not-thing?
“Jerry Rubin is this anti-war protester guy who knows how to get in the news by doing absurd things. Once he dressed as Santa Claus when he was appearing before some hearing. Another time he and his friends ran a pig for president. We need something like that. Read out your list again.”
The group plan grew as the Super Bee purred through the tunnels of the Fraser Canyon.
Yale, Saddle Rock, Sailor Bar, Alexandra, Hell’s Gate, Ferrabee, China Bar. Two stops for bathrooms and chips and licorice.
It took all three minds but by the time they pulled into 100 Mile House, a hundred miles above the magma and below Sputnik, the plan was perfect.
Nobody was going to dress up as Santa. There would be no livestock. But what Charlotte was going to write for Dawn to say was going to save O.O. for sure.
They didn’t spend much time in 100 Mile House. They had lunch and then they set off for home. The drive back was in an ordinary boring Dad-type car, hard-top. There wasn’t room for three in the front seat and Charlotte was feeling sleepy after eating a big plate of spaghetti, so she chose the back and stayed there for the whole trip, leaning on the coats, falling in and out of sleep, lulled by the hum of the tires, snatches of conversation from the front seat, the sound of the radio and the prospect of a shared project with Dawn.
Twelve
When school started again there were no worries about teasing Dorcas because she wasn’t there. Rumor, in the voice of Sylvia who always had secret knowledge, was that Mrs. Radger had pulled her out of school and was going to do distance education for the rest of the year.
But O.O. wasn’t there either. First morning back, sitting all casual-like on the edge of the desk, was this skinny cute guy.
A sub.
Larry came right out with it. “Hey! Where’s O.O.?”
Nobody waited for the reply. More questions rained down.
“Did Dorcas’s mom get her fired?”
“Did she quit?”
“When’s she coming back?”
The sub looked kind of nervous. He had a little blink-blink thing going on.
“It’s my understanding that Miss McGough has taken personal leave.”
“For how long?”
“The length of leave is undetermined. And kindly raise your hands before asking a question. Please and thank you.” He sat down in the teacher chair and straightened some papers.
In other words, he wasn’t going to give them any real answers. Then he said, blink-blink, that it looked as though the class was rather far behind in the curriculum and needed to get right to work on the five-paragraph essay, which everyone would need to know for high school.
“What about my book?” Something had got into Larry.
“Your book?”
“Yeah. I read a whole book over Easter, every word, and it’s my turn to talk about it.”
There were groans from somewhere in the back. “Not world records again.”
“Shut up, skuzz,” said Larry. “It’s a whole different book.”
The Blinker cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. I’ve heard that you do a lot of extra-curricular reading in this class. So let’s build on your competencies and work on turning a book report into a five-paragraph essay.”
“No book reports.”
“Pardon?”
“We don’t do no stinkin’ book reports.”
Charlotte looked around. There was mumbling and nodding. Whatever had got into Larry had got into everyone, including her.
Who did this guy think he was, taking over O.O.’s class, making new rules? Even Sylvia had a stubborn look.
Without any planning, the class turned into a gang. It was a sit-in. They were not going to do book reports. And they wanted to hear what Larry had read over the holidays.
“Well,” said the Blinker. “Perhaps as a transitional strategy, we could hear from Larry today.”
Victory!
Charlotte tried to catch Dawn’s eye but Dawn was staring out the window.
Larry read a few paragraphs about bull terriers. The Blinker didn’t quite know what to say about The Big Book of Dog Breeds. But the class knew they could keep the discussion going if they used all of O.O.’s usual questions.
Neil jumped in. “Did you come across any new words, Larry?”
“Yeah. Pedigree.”
“I’ll look that up.” Sylvia bounced over to O.O.’s giant dictionary with the tiny type and took out the magnifying glass. “Pedicular … pediculous … pedicure. Hey! Weeeeird. Pedigree is something to do with a bird’s foot. How does that make sense?”
It was fifty percent sarcastic, fifty percent real and one hundred percent fun. The class managed to use up all the time until recess. At the bell, the Blinker looked like he didn’t know if the students were building on their competencies or if he had just been faked out.
* * *
The next day, Sylvia, insider informant, announced that the school board meeting about O.O. was going to be that very week, on Saturday afternoon.
Charlotte grabbed Dawn at the recess bell. “Three days! We need to get moving.”
“With what?”
“Dawn! Wakey, wakey. With the plan t
o save O.O.”
“Oh, yeah. There’s not that much to do, is there?”
“Are you kidding? I have to write the perfect thing and you have to read 350 pages to get ready.”
“I have to read?”
Had Dawn not been paying any attention at all on the car ride?
“Okay. Maybe not the whole 350 pages, but enough so that you sound like you mean it. I’ve got the book in my desk. You could start over lunch hour.”
“Yeah. All right.”
Dawn sat with the book over lunch hour but Charlotte didn’t see her turn many pages. Was it just too hard for her and she didn’t want to admit it? Maybe Charlotte should just read bits out loud, but what with homework and Dawn’s music lessons, where were they going to find time for that?
In the afternoon, while avoiding multiplying fractions, Charlotte figured out where the time would come from.
“Dawn. We need to cash in our skills points and we need to do it tomorrow.”
Skills points was a thing that the principal had invented. All grade sevens took five hours off regular class to learn a practical skill. You got to choose. The engineer taught some boys about the boiler. Somebody’s uncle knew about beekeeping. Donna’s mom came in and did a class on money and led a field trip to her bank.
“Book mending. James’s girlfriend Alisha did it when she was in grade seven. I’ll bet they still have it. You just fix beat-up textbooks. All day! I can read to you while you mend.”
Dawn shrugged. She seemed to be in a very shruggy mood.
Mr. Zinck, the librarian, was delighted. “Book mending is an excellent practical skill and nobody has volunteered for it for a couple of years.”
Wednesday morning, he took Charlotte and Dawn up to the attic of the school, to a mystery room piled with textbooks that had exploded their insides. There was a pot of glue and some paintbrushes and a box of elastic bands.
Mr. Zinck demonstrated. “You just slip the paintbrush inside the spine of the book like this. Wipe up any mess. Then an elastic band to secure it until it dries.”
It was certainly easier than banking and boilers and bees.