“Streamers, Squire,” she had said. “That’s all I asked for. Not papier-maché tar pits. Not prehistoric punch bowls. Just. Streamers.”
Squire, ever the junior diplomat, had nodded patiently and offered encouragement between bites of his grilled cheese. “It’ll be better this time. You’ll see. It can’t get worse.”
He regretted those words now.
As they reached the dance hall, Sandy wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell?”
Squire reached the doors first and cracked one open, just a sliver.
Then closed it. Firmly.
“Nothing to see here,” he said, trying to pivot on his heel. “Let’s maybe check on Redd instead. Or stare into the sun.”
Sandy raised an eyebrow. “I’m going to look.”
She shoved him aside, flung the doors open—
—and stood frozen in the doorway, staring at what could only be described as a beach-themed garbage emergency.
The gym floor was scattered with what appeared to be real seaweed. Buckets of sand were overturned near the bleachers. An old ship anchor lay tilted against the snack bar. Broken fishing nets drooped from the rafters like the world’s saddest tinsel. And somewhere, under it all, a distinct squawk echoed.
Big Joe stood proudly in the centre of it all with two seagulls perched in his antlers like they owned the place. He grinned broadly, the smell of brine radiating from his lei.
Sandy tried to speak. Nothing came out. Her mouth opened and closed several times, like a fish on dry land.
“What she means is, ‘what is this?’” Squire translated gently.
Big Joe gave a triumphant HRRRNK and stomped once.
“He says,” Squire relayed, squinting, “‘You know that one movie with the time-traveling car, and the kid needs to dance for some reason? That dance was called Enchantment Under the Sea. This is Enchantment From the Seaside.’”
He gestured grandly to a suspicious mound of sand that might’ve once been a crab.
Sandy still hadn’t moved.
Squire steered her gently by the elbow. “I’ll fix this,” he whispered, guiding her back out of the room as one of the seagulls tried to make off with a streamer.
Sandy and Squire stepped into the mechanic’s bay for the second time that day. The smell of oil hadn’t improved, and neither had JIM.
He was parked in the middle of the room in a dented baby stroller, humming “Luc’s Guitar” through his voicebox in mournful half-tune. One mechanical arm balanced a clipboard. The other was rooting through the stroller basket, sorting cassettes with the reverence of a priest handling relics.
Sandy folded her arms. “JIM. What did I tell you one hour ago?”
He didn’t look up. “I don’t know. I erased it from my memory. Something about backbacon?”
“No. I said no Stompin’ Tom.”
JIM finally glanced up with an innocent servo-blink. “Not even the boot-stomp ballads?”
“Especially not the boot-stomp ballads.”
“But—”
“No, JIM. Not from that box!”
“But it rocks!”
“Not with polka! Not with waltz! Not with folk songs full of schmaltz!”
JIM gripped a cassette like a guilty cookie thief. “But you can! You will! Just give it a whirl—music for every patriot boy and girl!”
Sandy snatched the cassette mid-recital.
“No box. No tape. No boot. No drum. You can’t DJ with Stompin’ Tom.”
JIM let out a robotic sigh, shoulders slumping. “This is why I miss the 70’s. Back then, people had taste.”
Sandy didn’t argue. She didn’t plead. She just pointed.
“Give me your arms.”
JIM stiffened. “What?”
“You heard me.” Her voice was flat as concrete. “Arms. Off. I’m done negotiating.”
“That seems excessive.”
“You can have them back after the dance.”
Reluctantly, JIM powered down his upper limbs. They disengaged with a hiss and clatter.
Sandy tucked them under her arm like rolled blueprints.
“I’ll handle the playlist myself,” she muttered, turning to go. “You just focus on not gluing yourself to the stroller.”
“Too late,” JIM called after her. “I’m already emotionally attached.”
Soash was still stationed at the hallway payphone, hanging up with the casual flourish of a man who believed he had just survived another romantic ambush. He turned and spotted Sandy and Squire approaching.
“You know,” he said, adjusting his lapel, “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. But I’m beginning to think something is going on tonight. It’s no coincidence that every girl I’ve called has a sudden emergency.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
He began ticking them off on his fingers.
“I mean—Marjorie? Her mother’s wrestling in the main event tonight, and she’s her corner manager. Then there’s Eileen—some last-minute shipment of cows just came in, and she has to brand them all before sunrise.”
He held up a third finger. “And Clara? Just got hired as an assistant lumberjack in Logging Camp Number Three, deep in northern Quebec. Had to leave immediately. Tragic.”
Squire gave him a long stare. “Uncle Soash, you are a walking conspiracy theory. And yes, you believe in all of them.”
Sandy, who had taken to gently banging her head against the wall, sighed. “Have you done anything to help with the dance tonight?”
Soash turned, one hand dramatically placed over his heart. “I have promised to appear. And I have promised to outshine you all.”
He flourished his scarf like a cape. “For tonight, I will be delivering a dance clinic the likes of which this generation has never seen.”
Then he turned back toward the window, as if waiting for destiny—or possibly an emotionally confused woodpecker—to call him next.
They walked into the hockey rink for the second time that day to find Redd standing in full posture at centre ice, proudly addressing an audience of exactly zero.
“How’s it going, Redd?” Sandy asked, already bracing. “You’re my last hope. My last chance at a win. Please tell me you cut the speech length.”
“Indeed I did, dear Junior Agent Beeches,” Redd said, beaming. “It was a trial by fire, but I’ve whittled it down to a crisp, commanding five hours and fifteen minutes!”
Sandy blinked. “Redd… your speech was four hours and thirty minutes. How did it get longer?”
“Well,” Redd said, warming up now, “I got to thinking. Then inspiration struck! Why merely speak about the greatness of Confederation when I could reenact it? With puppets!”
He reached into a nearby duffel bag and produced a sock puppet wearing a tiny paper cravat.
“So I wrote a script, made a puppet for every founding father, rehearsed it three or four times—realized the seven-hour version dragged a little—trimmed some of the fat, and boom. Lean, efficient, five-hour historical pageant.”
Squire frowned. “We were gone for an hour. How did you do all of that in an hour?”
Redd looked confused. “Efficient time management?”
Sandy turned and walked away. Not a word. Not even a sigh. Just a silent, mechanical exit like someone quietly short-circuiting.
Squire watched her go, then turned back to Redd and gently took the clipboard from her limp hand.
“I’ll handle everything,” he said, quietly. “Go. Lie down. Take a walk. Count ceiling tiles. Whatever you need.”
Behind them, Redd was already staging a trial scene with two socks and a glitter gavel.
It was just before the dance.
Sandy Beeches sat on the edge of her bunk, somewhere between a daze, a dormant volcano of madness, and the heavy stillness of someone who had accepted her fate with grim resignation.
A soft knock at the door.
Squire poked his head in. “Ready?”
“For what? Resigning? Packing up and going home? Yes.”
“You don’t mean that.” He stepped into the room, smiling with an earnestness so ridiculous it made her want to groan... and smile anyway.
“Come on. I’ve got something to show you.”
Sandy followed, too tired to argue, too curious not to. Squire led her down the corridor, toward the gym.
He paused at the doors, gave a theatrical bow, and opened them with a flourish.
She stepped inside—
—and froze.
It was... a normal dance.
Modest decorations. Simple lights. No volcanoes. No beach trash. No dinosaurs. And most shocking of all: no active disasters.
The gym was full of junior agents—nervous, excited, freshly scrubbed. Redd stood on stage, holding a microphone like a patriotic magician.
“Ladies, gentlemen, fellow agents-in-training—welcome to a celebration of rhythm, responsibility, and regulation-approved footwear!”
A polite cheer went up. Big Joe stood beside the stage, wearing a bowtie, looking proud and suspiciously well-behaved.
Squire leaned in. “I borrowed this from your collection,” he whispered, holding up a cassette.
He walked to the stage. JIM DANDI was plugged into the speaker system, reduced to torso and head, resting on a wheeled cart. His LED eye blinked resentfully.
Squire popped in the tape.
Music filled the gym—Chilliwack. Rush. Triumph. The Guess Who. An actual, danceable Canadian playlist.
Sandy blinked.
The song played. The disco light spun. The gym glowed in pastel twilight.
And no one moved.
Sandy stood at the centre of the dance floor, blinking. Around the perimeter of the room, junior agents hugged the walls like camouflage. The boys stood in one rigid row. The girls stood in another, exactly opposite. Nobody made eye contact.
It was like the Cold War. But with punch.
She turned to Squire. “Is it broken?”
“Nope,” he said, adjusting the volume knob on JIM’s torso. “It’s working perfectly. That’s the problem.”
“Then why aren’t they dancing?”
“Because,” Soash announced, striding up like a peacock with somewhere important to strut, “this is a teenage dance. No one actually dances. Not until someone else does first. And that, dear comrades, is where I come in.”
He gave Banks a florid bow. “Banks. A lady of order and iron will. Shall we?”
Banks stared.
“No.”
Soash nodded gravely, adjusting his lapel. “Ah. As expected. Another piece in the grand mosaic of rejection. I don’t want to say there’s a conspiracy... but let the record show: that’s thirteen consecutive declines since breakfast.”
He turned to the crowd, arms raised like a tragic stage magician. “Very well. Deny me your partnership, but you cannot deny... my dance solo.”
And with a dramatic toss of his scarf and an unnecessarily complicated spin, he launched into a one-man routine so flamboyant, so physically improbable, it could only be described as a jazz funeral for shame itself.
He windmilled. He shoulder-shimmied. He leapt into a tangled streamer and emerged spinning, triumphant.
“It’s an interpretive number!” he declared, wrapped in crepe paper like a patriotic burrito.
Sandy rubbed her eyes.
“I’m going to pretend that’s inspiring.”
Beside her, Squire extended a hand again.
“Dance with me?”
She gave a tired smile. “You’re really not going to give up, are you?”
“I work here, don’t I?”
They danced. Slowly at first. Then one or two junior agents peeled off the wall. Then three. Then five. Someone laughed. Someone tripped.
By the end of the song, the floor was full.
And for one brief moment in MONARCH history... nothing went wrong.
Much later that night, in the quiet hum of HQ’s records room, Sandy sat with a mug of chamomile and a puzzled expression.
Across from her, Squire was scribbling notes on a clipboard with quiet efficiency.
“I just… don’t get it,” Sandy said. “When we left, everything was on fire. Metaphorically. And in the case of Big Joe’s volcano, literally.”
She leaned forward. “How did you fix it?”
Squire shrugged modestly. “Trade secrets.”
“Squire.”
He sighed and pulled out a crumpled page from his pocket. “Okay, fine. I made a list.”
He held it up.
SQUIRE’S DISASTER TRIAGE PLAN
-
Bribe Big Joe with snack vouchers to redecorate using only items from the gym storage closet.
-
Distract Redd with a role in a one-minute opening ceremony modelled after the Halifax 1969 Pipe Band Parade (silent version).
-
Let JIM keep one Stompin’ Tom song… but only as the closing number.
-
Blackmailed Soash with the ultimate threat: I know where the glitter cannons are. And I’m not telling him where until he agrees to chaperone properly.
-
Use Sandy’s own mixtape as the music lineup. (Labelled “DANCE VIBES—DO NOT TOUCH.”)
Sandy stared at the paper, then at him. “You... did all this in under an hour?”
“I move quickly under stress.”
“And you blackmailed Soash?”
“I regret nothing.”
There was a long pause.
Then Sandy laughed—genuinely, helplessly—and leaned back in her chair.
“You’re good, Swift Fox.”
Squire grinned. “I learned from the best.”
Somewhere in the hallway, a distant crash echoed, followed by Soash yelling, “I meant to do that!”
Sandy didn’t even flinch.
“Next year,” she said, “we’re skipping the dance and just watching disaster drills. Way less stressful.”