by Linda Johns
“Lily, will you hold my boys?” I handed the fish to her so I could bend down and get the ball from Mango. I clumsily helped him get back up on the dock, a chore that left me almost as wet as the shaggy, soaked dog. He tried to lick the water off me, which made me laugh so hard that he easily knocked me over. While I was being a total dog-loving klutz, the woman had somehow gotten herself and her kayak out of the water without so much as a drop of water getting on her.
“Thank you so much for your help,” Mom said to the woman. “I’m afraid we made a bit bigger splash than I’d hoped for when we arrived.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the mystery woman said. “Mango was just doing his job. It’s what he was bred to do. Or at least, it’s what half of him was bred to do. Jake gave me those tennis balls when I was dogsitting Mango.”
“They certainly came in handy today,” I said. “I really want to thank you for saving Vincent and Pollock.”
“Vincent and Pollock? What great names. Makes me think of two of my favorite artists,” she said. “Are you by chance an art lover?”
“I am,” I said.
“It’s not often that I meet a teenager who likes my two favorite artists,” she said.
I didn’t say anything because I was busy thinking how much I liked being called a teenager, which I’m not. Not yet. I’m still twelve.
“She’s an artist, too,” Lily piped in. “I’m her agent.”
“And I’m her mother,” Mom said. “Alice, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Hannah West, and her friend, Lily Shannon. Girls, this is Alice Campbell. Jake introduced me to her the first time I came to see him. He said that anything we want to know, we can just ask Alice.”
Alice smiled and held her hand out to shake. Her eyes twinkled as she looked directly at me. She looked Japanese, but I wasn’t sure. There wasn’t any clue in her name. Then again, there isn’t any real clue in my name that I’m Chinese, unless you associate my middle name, Jade, with China (which is exactly why it’s my middle name).
“I’m also a dog walker,” I said.
I handed her my card, which unfortunately was a little soggy:
“Delightful! Nice to meet you, too, Lily,” she said, shaking Lily’s hand.
I liked Alice Campbell immediately. Not only had she saved my fish, but she wasn’t treating us like little kids.
“Welcome to the Portage Bay Floating Home Association,” Alice said. “Maggie, I’m betting that what Jake really said is that I’m president of our little association here. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything. You’ll find that everyone on this particular dock is extremely friendly. We all look out for one another. Your next-door neighbors, Mike and Betsy, are on vacation right now. And so is Patrick down on this end. But everyone else is around and excited to meet you. I’d love to invite you in for tea, but I’m sure you want to get settled.”
“Hannah hasn’t even seen the inside of the houseboat yet,” Mom said.
“You’ll love it, I’m sure. Now, I hate to be bossy,” Alice continued in a tone of voice that people use when they say that they hate to be bossy, but then they act bossy anyway. “But before you leave, you need to bring Mango over to my porch so we can rinse him off. In fact, we’ll give him a full bath. Now, now, now. I insist.” I could tell there was no getting Mango out of this bath.
“Didn’t he just have a bath in the lake?” Lily asked.
“No!” Alice said sharply. “He must be thoroughly cleaned if he gets lake water on him. Jake may have neglected to tell you that, but I assure you, it’s terribly important. Hannah, please promise me that you’ll clean Mango thoroughly if he gets any lake water on him.”
“Um, okay,” I said, a bit confused about the sudden urgency in her voice.
“In fact, I encourage you to take a shower since he shook water all over you, too,” she said. I gave her a look that must have conveyed what was going through my head: Are you crazy? It’s just a little bit of water. She seemed to read my mind.
“Well, at least you should all wash your hands. Now, let’s get this dog hosed off,” she said. There didn’t seem to be any question that Mango was getting a full dockside scrub down, complete with some lavender-scented Buddy Wash dog soap.
“Do you have a dog?” I asked Alice.
“Oh, no,” she said, still intently scrubbing and rinsing Mango.
“I was just wondering why you have dog soap handy,” I said.
“Sometimes I give Mango a bath. Jake’s good about rinsing him off after muddy walks or when he gets in the water here, but I think he needs a little more.”
It seemed a little presumptuous for someone to give someone else’s dog a bath, but I was new here. Maybe it was the kind of place where bathing a dog is like baking brownies to show your neighbors you like them. Or maybe Alice was an obsessive clean freak and people happily left the pet bathing in her capable hands. It was curious but didn’t really matter. I just wanted to get this dog clean and toweled off so I could see our new house.
Okay, okay. It’s not really “our” house. And I’m not really homeless, either. Although technically I don’t have a permanent address. Don’t get all panicky like we’re cagey criminals or in the witness protection program or something. We’re professional house sitters, which sounds glamorous, but it means that we pack up and move every couple of weeks. This was our first time house-sitting in a houseboat, or a “floating home” as those in the know say. It was going to feel more like being on vacation than house-sitting. It was an extra bonus that the house came with a dog. I’ve done tons of dog walking before, but never round-the-clock doggy duty.
After two rounds of sudsing and three rinses, Alice deemed Mango clean and ready to go. Finally! “Let’s go home, boy,” I said, and Lily, Mom, and I followed Mango down the dock. I’d been so busy worrying about Vincent, Pollock, and Mango that I hadn’t really looked at the houseboats on our L-shaped dock. Each house was painted a fresh, warm color—vibrant blue, true red, a deep gray that somehow looked cheery—or a bright white. Windows and trim were painted a distinctly contrasting color, giving each little house a crisp, clean look. Window boxes and terra-cotta planters overflowed with flowers blooming in reds, purples, blues, hot pinks, and whites. I felt as if I was in a poster-sized print of a charming alley in a European village. Everything was fresh and gorgeous, complemented by the gentle lapping sound of the water under the dock. Mom had told me that Jake’s cottage had the best spot on the dock, since it was at the very end of the “L” with water surrounding it on three sides. The house was blue with white-and-purple trim.
A rustling noise caught my attention just before I got to our entrance. I turned to look. Two people dressed head to toe in black rain gear scurried out from the cottage porch next door. Each black-hooded figure carried two large white buckets as they practically trotted back toward the street. Weird. Alice Campbell had just told us that our next-door neighbors were on vacation. Maybe people rich enough for houseboats get their houses cleaned even when they’re not there.
“Welcome home!” Mom said as she opened the deep purple door of our houseboat. Her arms stretched wide. “Come inside and check it out!”
Mango obviously didn’t need an invitation. He barreled past Mom and up the first two rungs of a ladder-style staircase that went up to a sleeping loft above. I heard a cat meow from the loft area. “That must be Hank,” I said. Hank was Jake’s cat. I’d already heard that Mango loved Hank, but the cat was not returning the sentiment.
“This is fabulous!” Lily gushed. I walked into a small kitchen that opened up to a light-filled living room with wall-to-wall windows. A deck wrapped around the north and east sides of the living room, making it seem as if the whole house was floating on Lake Washington. Wait. What am I saying? The whole house was floating on Lake Washington. It was so quiet this morning that I could hear the water lapping gently under the dock. I felt surrounded by water, but not wobbly like I would be if I were on a raft or in a boat. I explored every
inch of the cottage, which didn’t take long. The house was teensy tiny, but each room was perfect. My bedroom, which was really a guest room and office, had two windows facing toward the street, but with lots of water between me and the street. Bright red geraniums, purple petunias, and cascading vines with little white flowers spilled out of the window boxes. I could crank open the windows and smell the fresh lake water below. Bookshelves and wood file cabinets lined the walls. A twin bed was shoved under a window, seeming more like a couch than a bed. But there was a laptop on the built-in desk and a small flat-screen TV on top of a dresser. Seemed like an ideal bedroom to me.
I followed Mom’s voice up a ladder to the loft bedroom, which she obviously claimed as her own. She was the adult, after all. There was a big bed with a fluffy white down comforter and a half-dozen pillows piled on top. The room was open to the living room and windows below. It reminded me of a crow’s nest on a big sailing ship.
Mango whined from down below. The ladder was too steep for him, a fact that obviously didn’t escape the agile cat. Hank taunted him from above.
“It’s okay, boy,” I said, climbing back down. “Where do you sleep? Can you show me your bed?”
His ears perked up when I said “bed.”
“Go to bed?” I asked hesitantly.
Mango trotted off to my bedroom and jumped up on the bed. He looked so proud of himself. “Good boy,” I said, giving him a scratch behind the ears. “I think I have a bunk mate,” I called up to Mom.
“Judging by all the cat hair, I think Hank likes to bunk up here,” Mom said. “Jake said he left information in your room to let you know all you need for Mango. Have you come across it yet?”
I scanned the desk, looking for a note about dog care. Instead I found a two-inch-wide purple three-ring binder with a carefully made spine label that read MANGO CARE AND OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION. I pulled it out. The front of the notebook had a large color photograph of Mango, with the same words printed over the photo. Inside was a table of contents and carefully labeled sections that included “Feeding Mango,” “Approved Training for Mango,” and “Suggested Walking Routes for Mango.” There were sections devoted to Mango’s coat, teeth, and eyes, as well as emergency information about his veterinarian. The last section included general information about labradoodles, most of which he’d already emailed to us. An article on crossbreeding talked about other hot poodle mixes. It seems lots of people were intrigued with the idea of getting nonshedding dogs. Mix a cocker spaniel with a poodle and you get a cockapoo; take a miniature schnauzer and a poodle and you have a schnoodle; add a golden retriever to a poodle for a goldendoodle. The shih tzu and poodle mix had a couple of pretty funny combinations, too.
I looked at Mango. He looked like a regular, sweet dog to me. And right now he was looking at me as if I could be his favorite person in the world, if only I’d get on top of the bed with him and snuggle for a little while. “Later, boy,” I said, giving him a big bear hug. He rewarded me with a moan of happiness.
“This is totally Sleepless in Seattle,” Lily said from the living room. I headed back to the waterside room. I looked outside and saw a motorboat slowly pass by and then pick up speed. A sailboat with its mast down and its motor on puttered slowly past. I pulled out the camera my photography teacher had lent me and took a few shots. A few more boats passed by. One stopped, and I used the telephoto lens to zoom in. Two people wearing black rain gear were fiddling with something in the back. The taller one raised a white five-gallon bucket upside down over the side of the boat. The way he was flinging it around made it seem as if it was empty, sort of how those two people on the dock had been swinging empty white buckets. Those two people on the dock had also been wearing black. Hmmm … I zoomed in as much as I could, but it didn’t do me much good because they weren’t facing me. I clicked anyway. Darn! I was at the end of a twenty-four-exposure roll of film and I’d wasted at least six shots on those bucket people. The engine on the boat started up again, and they motored off. I sighed and rewound my film.
I loved this 35-millimeter manual Konica camera. It belonged to Greg, my photography teacher at Coyote Central, this cool middle school arts camp where I had a scholarship. I’d just finished a three-week photography class at Coyote, and he had let me experiment with a couple of his cameras. Until then I’d used only disposable or digital cameras, or those kind that auto-focus, auto-advance, and auto-everything. Photography was so much more fun with a camera that allows you to experiment with the focus and the aperture (which controls the amount of light that comes through). In drawing, sometimes I have to stop and let my eyes relax so I can see things fresh. I was finding that the same thing helped in photography, because otherwise it’s too easy to get obsessed with looking at life through a lens. I closed my eyes and opened them to see if anything new appeared.
Nope. Just a bunch of boats. But soon a bit of a pattern emerged. Sailboats seemed to be heading one way; motorboats, the opposite direction.
“I’m guessing that the sailboats are heading out to the Puget Sound,” Mom said, as she walked into the room and saw me looking at the boat traffic. “Remember how Robert used to rave about that?” There’s a ship canal that links Lake Washington—where we were living—with Lake Union and the Puget Sound. It meant that boaters had the best of fresh water and salt water accessible to them. It didn’t mean much to me, but grown-ups around here get all excited about the waterways. Robert, one of Mom’s old bosses at MegaComp, used to go on and on about how “fabulous” it is to get in a boat on the far shore of Lake Washington in the morning and be up at an island in the Puget Sound in the afternoon.
“It was all he ever talked about,” I added.
“Well, some people take their boating pretty seriously,” she said. “And from what I hear, the motorboaters are even more into it than the sailboaters.”
I let my mind wander to the idea that I was now living in the midst of all these serious boaters. And even if we weren’t going to be out there cruising with them, I was feeling pretty happy about the prospect of waking up on Lake Washington in the morning and going to sleep on Lake Washington at night. And I do mean on the lake.
CHAPTER 3
“WHOA! MY LEGS feel all wobbly and weird!” I said when I got back on solid land. I’d been on the houseboat for three hours and I already had my sea legs, I guess, because on land my legs felt like rubber. It took only a couple of steps before I was back to normal, though.
“Jake told me that it might feel weird to us for the first few seconds on land each day,” Mom said. She and I were taking Mango on a walk around the Portage Bay neighborhood. Lily’s parents had already picked her up, with a promise that she’d come back many, many times while we were living on the water. If word got out about where we were living, I could become quite popular, I bet. But, as always, we kept our house-sitting adventures hush-hush, particularly from the Seattle school district. Without a north Seattle address, I wouldn’t be able to keep going to Cesar Chavez Middle School with Lily.
As we continued on our walk, Mom started pointing out street names. Ever since I was little, Mom had this annoying habit of reading street signs and addresses to me. It drove me crazy—and it still drives me crazy—but it has made it easier for me to find my way around. At a very early age, I learned that avenues ran north-south in Seattle and that streets ran east-west. It was pretty easy to figure out because the streets were set up like grids. Except in this neighborhood.
“None of the streets are straight! This is so confusing,” I grumbled.
“Some of the streets follow the shoreline, but you’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly,” she said, pointing out that we were walking on Boyer Avenue. “This is the most important street for you to remember because—”
“Doughnuts straight ahead!” I cried.
“I was going to say because there’s a bus stop in front of the Canal Market, but if it helps you get oriented by knowing they have doughnuts, then so be it,” Mom said.
> Mango was obviously a regular at the Canal Market. He knew just where to sit and wait while we went in to check out the doughnuts. He also seemed to know that no one exits the store without getting a dog treat. We left, and as we ate our doughnuts, we walked about nine blocks farther to a busy corner I recognized because of a Red Robin restaurant on the right. Our street intersected with Eastlake Avenue East, a street I knew well from the number 66.
“You’re checking out the bus stops, aren’t you?” Mom said.
“Yep.”
“And I’m guessing that you’ve already memorized the routes and times by looking at the Metro schedule online?” she asked.
“Yep again. Except it’s way better to actually see the bus stop than to just look on a map, especially when curvy streets are involved,” I said. I was so relieved to see that I could walk straight down our street about twelve blocks to get on my favorite bus. Then it was just a couple miles south to get downtown or about five miles north to get to my old Maple Leaf neighborhood, where Lily still lived.
“We’ll have to check out the number 25, too,” Mom said.
“It comes every eighteen to twenty minutes during peak times, beginning at approximately six twenty-two A.M. To head downtown, I board on our side of the street, arriving downtown approximately thirteen minutes later. If I board on the other side of the street, I can get to the University of Washington, go shopping at University Village, or go to some neighborhood called Laurelhurst at any time after six thirty-one A.M.,” I rattled off.
