M#12, Dawn and the Surfer Ghost

This mystery was honestly so terrible that I had to set it aside for a few weeks to even be able to finish the recap. It's just boring and everyone in it is being stupid as hell.

Dawn is in California in this book, living with her father for a few months. Dawn ping-ponging back and forth across the country is one of my least favorite of the ongoing BSC story arcs. Except for the book where she steals her dad's credit card and books a flight. That's not this book, though, so I pretty much try not to think about the logistics of moving back with her dad for several months, moving back to CT, and then moving back to CA, this time for good, all in the space of a school year. The BSC time warp is a strange thing.

Anyway, this book. Right. The outfit Dawn is wearing on the cover is actually described inside the book, so that's one bonus point. Dawn is supposed to have waist-length hair, though, so there goes at least half of that point. I put the book at a bit of a kicky angle on my scanner so it would seem like a much more fun book, but I don't know how well it really worked.

Every chapter of this book starts with a letter that Dawn is writing to her friends back in CT, or a letter that her friends are writing to her. It seems like an excessive amount of letters, but I guess this is back when long distance calls were expensive. At least most of them are in Dawn's handwriting, which is easy to read.

Dawn reminds us that her friends in California all love to eat healthy food. They are eating spinach dip and organic corn chips. Don't get me wrong, I love spinach dip, but it's not exactly a low-fat food, and organic corn chips are still fried and greasy, I'm just sayin'. Dawn tells us that she and her good friend Sunny are going to be helping out at a flimsy plot device an after school program on the beach.  It meets several days a week, and afterward, she and Sunny will have time to surf. Because Dawn is suddenly really into surfing, and taking lessons, and she's even going to enter a competition.

On the first day of the program Dawn meets a surfer named Thrash at the shop where they rent their surfboards. He has long blonde hair, wears a distinctive ring, is about 20 years old, and is a fantastic surfer, probably the best on the beach. He's friendly while chatting with Dawn and we find that he has surfed all over the world. He gives Dawn advice about what kind of board to use and tells her it will be really stable even if she hits some gnarly waves. Dawn has apparently never heard the word gnarly before, even though six pages earlier some little kid was showing off his new ninja turtle action figure. I guaran-damn-tee you that if you were babysitting little boys back when the original TMNT was on, you've heard the word gnarly. Thrash calls Dawn by the name Kelea, which he explains as a reference to a Hawaiian princess who made friends with the water god and was a radical surfer. Looking this up on Wikipedia was more interesting than anything in this book. Sunny accuses Dawn of having a crush on Thrash but Dawn denies it, saying that Thrash is just a fascinating person.

(Dawn totally has a crush on Thrash.)

The next day, when Dawn and Sunny show up for the after school program, there's a big fuss on the beach. Thrash's surfboard has been found, destroyed, washed up on the beach, and everyone is assuming he's dead, although there's no body. Dawn feels a pressing need to go try and eavesdrop on the police who are interviewing people and searching for the body. She mentions a surfer named Gonzo, who is wearing wildly patterned jeans, and another named Spanky, who has a nose ring. He probably also has an embarrassing story about someone walking in on him masturbating in a really inappropriate location, because I can think of no other reason why someone would have a nickname like Spanky.

There is an evening session of the kids' program, with a cookout and a bonfire, and even though it is a misty night, they see a surfer out in the water, but when they run to the spot where he was, there's nothing there. Dawn decides that there is no other explanation than it being Thrash's ghost. None. She goes to talk to the police and ask if there's been any progress on the case, and says the atmosphere in the station is more informal than in CT, because the officers are wearing short-sleeved uniforms and seem friendly. I was unaware that short sleeved police uniforms were a symbol of a casual atmosphere. Apparently I live in a casual place, guys. I guess Montana is just more informal than stuffy old Connecticut. Despite the informal friendliness, the cops don't seem all that inclined to tell a random teenager whether there are any leads on the case. One suggests that since there's no body, there's not really a case to investigate. Just because a broken surfboard was found doesn't mean that someone died, and Thrash could have just moved on. This seems logical to me, but Dawn is pissed as hell that they don't seem to care what happened to Thrash. She tries to investigate by herself. She wants to prove that Thrash really is dead, and that he was murdered. I don't even know. She finds a discarded can of Thrash's special blend wax on the beach. This doesn't prove anything to me except that Thrash littered. Dawn, on the other hand, thinks maybe his ghost is using the wax.

I might actually have lost IQ points typing out that last sentence.

There's a new dude working at the snack bar, and Dawn realizes that it's Thrash! He's cut and dyed his hair and taken out a piercing and taken off a ring, so obviously nobody else has recognized him.

Dawn spies on Thrash while he's working but he doesn't do anything all that interesting. Then the day before the competition, Dawn catches Thrash messing with someone's board. She's outraged, blaming Thrash for the accidents that have been occurring, but he says he's only messing with this one board because the board's owner was the one who sabotaged Thrash's board. Dawn thinks he should enter the competition honestly, without messing with anyone's board, and she thinks she has a plan. Thrash tells her that he's been practicing at night, and she's all, nobody saw you, and he's all, goddamn you're fucking stupid, the surfer ghost? that was me.

The next day,  Dawn gets to the beach in time to see Thrash come walking up with his hair dyed back to blonde, wearing his earrings and ring. Everyone's like "Holy shit, there's Thrash!" because he looks totally like his old self now that he's replaced the earrings. Then for some reason Gonzo the surfer screams and runs away, and the cops arrest him for tampering with Thrash's board, except I don't know if there was any evidence of any kind that Gonzo was the culprit, so maybe if he'd just kept his stupid mouth shut and not bolted, he could have just categorically denied everything. 

Thrash wins the competition. He's headed off to faraway surfing lands, but gives his ring to Dawn as a gift to thank her for not letting him tamper with the surfboard. She plans to wear it on a chain around her neck.

(Dawn totally has a crush on Thrash.)

Dawn wins third place in the women's amateur competition, because this is the BSC, and they are all fantastic at everything they ever try, ever.

The subplot is that back in Stoneybrook, Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold (remember, they're identical twins, but you can tell them apart because Carolyn has a mullet and Marilyn plays the piano) have started a gymnastics class and their parents have set up a practice area for them in the basement. They've got mats and a balance beam and a huge mirror, and an "obviously secondhand" cassette deck. The twins have a routine to the song "Tutti Frutti."  Because yeah.

Anyway Carolyn gets hurt when Marilyn turns her back, so the twins become inseparable, because Marilyn feels guilty. This annoys the BSC, so they decide to make the girls do things separately. They get Haley to invite Carolyn over to play a 2-player video game (because obviously the rattail kid is friends with the mullet kid) and Margo Pike to invite Marilyn over to listen to a new cassette. The twins are reluctant at first but then decide they can be apart for a few hours.