Seventeen Against the Dealer by Cynthia Voigt Page A

and Jake, they’ll vouch for me. I’ll meet you two in a couple of minutes; I’ll order for you,” he said, and walked away.
    Dicey had the check in her fingers. “He’s not serious,” she asked Ken.
    â€œHe’s serious. He can afford to be. I’m not sure where his money comes from, I heard it was smart investments, but someone else told me he invented a gadget for sonar or maybe it was dishwashers.”
    â€œI heard he’d inherited it,” Jake said. “Or his wife did.”
    â€œWhatever,” Ken said, “he’s got enough, plus more than enough, to do exactly what he wants.”
    â€œI’d take the money and be grateful,” Jake advised.
    Dicey shook her head. “It’s crazy.”
    â€œNot to him. It’s only crazy to people like us, who have to earn our living,” Ken told her. He looked at Jake. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? If I’d had a chance like this, at your age, Dicey—who knows where I’d be now. Not still here, that’s all I know. Not still scurrying around for orders. But if it makes you nervous, or you don’t think you can do it—”
    â€œOf course I think I can do it, I just don’t know that I can. I don’t like agreeing to do something if I don’t know I can.”
    â€œHow else are you going to find out?” Jake asked her.
    Dicey folded Mr. Hobart’s check into the pocket of her jacket. “I dunno,” she said, biting her lip.
    â€œHey, Dicey,” Ken said, “he’s okay, he pays his bills and right on time. Building a dinghy for Tad Hobart—that could be the making of you.”
    Dicey nodded. She understood. She just didn’t like it. She had thought—she thought she was planning to be the making of herself.
    â€œThink about it,” Ken advised her.
    â€œI will.”
    â€œKeep in touch,” he said. “Good luck.”
    She raised her hand in answer, climbing into the pickup.
    It wasn’t until she was off the Bay Bridge, driving through the light-spangled darkness across Kent Island, that it hit her: She was in business.
    In business, she thought, the recognition floating around inside her head, like a laughter you’ve had to hold inside and finally you can let free, and laugh out loud. With this check in her pocket, she was in business to build a boat.
    She settled down to think, moving along the road. She had some rough drawings she’d made; she’d better go over them. She didn’t know how to draw up nautical plans, but it was only a dinghy, it didn’t require the same kind of designing. But she’d never thought of a V-bottom, and she’d have to take a look at some, and then make a trip to the library up in Cambridge, to see what the books had to say. A couple of weeks, no more than a couple—she’d have the three boats in the shop done by then, but the supplies she’d need—white ash for the keel and frame, to begin with, and she had the tools but money was going to be a problem. It was expensive to build a boat.
    She wondered, following the truck’s headlights, as if the headlights were pulling the truck along the highway, if she should take on some of Claude’s boats. But, come April, she’d have been paid for this boat, so money would be fine again. If she had Claude’s boats, even only ten of them, she wouldn’t have the kind of time she needed, to do this one right.
    There were a dozen things to do, and she wanted to get to work on them right away, but first she had to go to the shop and unload this wood. She’d never felt less tired in her life. Besides, she was impatient to tell Jeff. She could call him from the shop. He’d be as glad as she was about it, and she couldn’t even imagine what Gram would say; Sammy, she could. He’d think it was only natural that Dicey should do something like get an order so easily.