Let’s Dance by Deb Joelle

I love Halloween. With a background in theatre, a glue gun, and duct tape, I can make any costume. Whether it resembles what I had in mind or not, remains to be seen. I have dressed as a tree sprite, Pippi Longstocking, Tigger, a baseball clown, a cat, a butterfly, and more…and yes, this is all in the last fifteen years.

However, I thought for today’s post, it might be more fun to skip ahead to October of the year 2040, and see how my main character, Molly, might spend her Halloween in the future. This is before my book actually takes place (summer of 2041). For those of you who don’t know anything about the book, you can read something here, but I’ll also say that ten years before my book takes place, there has been a worldwide economic crash and oil has all but disappeared.  Molly lives on an island in B.C. where they have returned to a more agrarian way of life.

Without further ado, here’s Molly.

My sister Katie has been working on her princess dress for months now. We’re all going to a dance at the community hall and she plans to whirl around the room, the envy of every girl there. Just like Scarlett O’Hara in that really old book, she made the dress out of some old rose coloured silk curtains she found in the attic. In spite of the colour, it looks so much like a wedding dress that no one is fooled. She’s trying to get Nick to propose. I take it back, he might just be foolish enough to fall for it.

“Oh…Katie! You look beautiful. Like a real princess,” he’ll say.

“And you’re my Prince Charming,” she’ll coo. “We could live happily ever after…if only…” Then she’ll bat her long eyelashes and toss her dark curls and it will all be over for him.

My brother James thinks he’ll propose before the candles burn out in the jack-o-lanterns and the witches fly home on their broomsticks. Better her than me, that’s all I can say. I personally wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress. At least not in October. It’s going to rain, and the old barn that serves as the community hall is all the way at the other end of the island from our farm. Freezing my butt off in our wagon eighteen kilometers each way is not my idea of fun. I just hope my fiddle’s okay out in the cold like that. Dad says we’ll wrap the instruments in blankets.

I’ll be wearing James’ overalls, my work boots, and Dad’s flannel shirt. Everyone in the band is dressing that way. Katie says we’ll just look like the bunch of farmers we are, and it’s not a real costume, but it is. It’s our Old-time American String Band look. Dad, Big Earl, Macy and I have been practicing a bunch of tunes from the American South and we plan to blow the roof off that old barn.

Dad’s been trying out his Southern accent, and lucky for him, there aren’t any real southerners around to tell him if he’s any good or not. He can’t help but add a bit of Canadian to it too though, and he thinks he’s pretty funny. Yesterday, he totally embarrassed me when we took some pumpkins into the village store. Everyone he saw got the same greeting. Dad would give them a big smile and say, “How y’all doin’, eh?” And then he’d crack up. Parents. You can’t take them anywhere.

I plan to lose myself in the music and just ignore him! Since it’s not likely you all will make it to our dance (the ferry’s not running that day), I’ll leave you with a this really old picture my mom gave me.

It’s circa 2009 and it’s a country dance way back when we used to have a real community centre here on the island. Didn’t the men dress funny then?

And here’s me, playing Jewels, my fiddle.