Josh and the Magic Vial Read Free

“So I’d like to see you draw something other than murdering hulks, dragons, and Amazon women with big boobs. Is that such a crime?”
    No, he thought. It probably wasn’t. But he’d never tell her that. Instead, he said, “You’ll see. Someday I’m going to have it made. I’ll have a plush office down in Yaletown, I’ll drive a BMW, and I’ll do nothing but daydream and draw all day.”
    Millie laughed. “Wow!” she mocked. “You really are a superlative dreamer Josh.”
    Only Millie Epp could get away with a comment like that. He had to laugh.

2
    C lack-clack, clack-clack, clackity-clack. Josh swerved round an old lady crossing Broadway, crouched, then ollied over the curb, his board thwacking the pavement like a beaver’s tale.
    Main dipped into Mount Pleasant just ahead, and that was where he seemed to be going. Any direction that took him away from 169 Tenth Avenue suited Josh just fine. If he hung around home there would be chores — vacuuming, laundry, dishes, mowing . . . yech!
    Besides, Millie might drop by for an afternoon visit, and he needed a break. Josh smiled ruefully. She was the most persnickety, persistent, infuriating, wonderful friend a guy could wish for. He wasn’t sure why he liked her, but he did. What’s more, she seemed to put up with him. So the feeling was mutual.
    Clack-clack, clack-clack.
    The grade wasn’t steep enough to coast, but it was getting steeper and with each push he glided a little farther. Soon gravity would take hold and he’d cruise two blocks, to the intersection where Kingsway angled into Main at Seventh. He’d cut a sharp left there, heading for Quebec Street and away from the rumble and fumes of Main.
    A lot of people avoided Main and Broadway; Josh loved the place. The confluence of trolley buses, cars and pedestrians brought in university students, panhandlers, lawyers, secretaries, crooks, punks, drunks . . . you name it. Every sort of human fish swam in the currents and back eddies of Main and Broadway. Sometimes Josh’s parents — Frank and Alison a.k.a. the Dempsters — fretted. They wondered if this was the right neighbourhood for a boy to grow up in. They always came to the same conclusion: Main and Broadway was “an education.”
    Besides, where else could you find a wood-frame, heritage home, with a view of downtown Vancouver, and within walking distance of any place that mattered? Nowhere. So they stayed.
    That didn’t mean the Dempsters approved of all the neighbourhood joints Josh might go. Café Java, for instance— that was a place they frowned on. Coffee stunts your growth, they said. It leaches vitamins out of your body. It’ll keep you awake at night. It didn’t matter that he only occasionally indulged in a latte, that his usual order was a soda and a chocolate chip cookie. They still disapproved. He could hear their final judgment, “Coffee bars aren’t meant for kids, Josh. They’re for grown ups.”
    â€œYeah, yeah.”
    And if Café Java made his parents cringe, what would they have thought of The Guys and Dolls Billiard Hall, where Josh occasionally occupied a seat at the food concession. He liked watching the players crouch over the felt, and listening to the click of the balls or the thunk of a clean shot into the corner pocket. The Dempsters hadn’t even thought to declare The Guys and Dolls off limits, it was so far off the scale of conceivable places Josh might actually go.
    Parents worried too much, Josh figured.
    Clack-clack, clack-clack.
    Now gravity had him. The board accelerated down Main, moving fast enough to ripple his T-shirt and comb his sandy mop of hair out behind him. “Yee-haw!” Josh yodelled. Sometimes the best destination was nowhere, and the best activity was nothing-to-do. Parents had forgotten that . . . if they’d ever known it.
    Lil’s Magic Emporium and Second