Antsy Floats

by Neal Shusterman

  Lexie sat beside me. She was already wearing a Caribbean sundress, full of both color for others and texture for her. We sat in the front row, which they call the bulkhead, with Moxie at her feet. I thought it was really cool that the airline allowed guide dogs. Crawley did not bring “the sins and virtues”—that is, the fourteen afghans that ran rampant around his huge apartment. Not that he didn’t try. He fought bitterly with Caribbean Viking cruise line, but the only pets allowed on the ship were guide dogs. To be honest, I don’t think he really wanted to bring them, he just wanted a good fight.

  “My grandfather told me what you did for Howie,” Lexie whispered to me shortly before takeoff. “Forging that birth certificate was deeply thoughtful and profoundly misguided. That’s what I love about you, Antsy.”

  “The fact that you love anything about me is what I love about you,” I told her. She smiled and gently rubbed the hairs on my arm, which was Lexie’s version of a kindly glance. Still, such intimate physical contact always gave me goose bumps, which I’m sure she could read like Braille.

  Just so you know, I used to date Lexie back in eighth grade. Now we’re just really good friends, except when one of us starts seeing someone else. Then we’re just annoyed with each other.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing my parents,” Lexie said. “I haven’t seen them since Thanksgiving, if you don’t count Skypeing. It’s nice that they’ll be meeting us on the cruise.”

  “There’s nothing ‘nice’ about it,” Crawley growled. “They just want to suck up to me for my eightieth birthday.”

  I’ve only met Lexie’s parents a couple of times myself. They’re real jet-setters, spending months at a time in Paris, or Monaco, or wherever rich Americans who think they’re European go. They’d prefer Lexie be in some fancy boarding school overseas, but such places don’t really cater to the blind, and besides, Lexie didn’t want to leave Brooklyn.

  “My relationship with my parents is complicated,” Lexie once told me. “But I know they love me.”

  I often wondered what it would be like to spend months at a time away from your parents rather than having them breathing down your neck on a daily basis. Lexie didn’t seem to mind the distance. But then, Lexie liked to keep her feelings to herself.

  • • •

  There were several things I discovered on the first leg of our journey:

  1. Bad food tastes good when served by flight attendants.

  2. You can never have enough warm nuts.

  3. Flight attendants do not like being called “the help,” which is how Crawley addressed them.

  4. Airplanes make a whole lot of noises that I don’t think have anything to do with flying, and maybe I don’t want to know what those noises are.

  5. Landing in Miami is a lot prettier than taking off in Queens.

  6. Embassy Suites has no actual ambassadors.

  Then at 11 A.M. the next morning, we were shuttled along with a bus full of Crawley’s “unwashed masses” to the Port of Miami. Everyone was brimming with anticipation. Howie was nervous, but not because of the passport thing.

  “The Caribbean is a very dangerous place,” Howie said. “I mean, there being pirates and all.”

  “That’s just a movie,” I pointed out. “A movie based on a ride.”

  “A ride based on reality!” he said, raising one eyebrow to appear wise. “And there’s longpork, Antsy. Longpork!”

  “So what?” I told him. “I like pork.”

  Then he got in close and whispered like there was anyone around who cared. “Longpork is people! They got people who eat people!”

  “Great,” I told him. “Can I send them Wendell Tiggor and a few other choice morsels from our neighborhood? My dad can provide a recipe that works with beef, chicken, or people.”

  He looked at me like I was serious, and since tormenting Howie was like a national pastime, I had to keep it going.

  “It’s a pretty exotic ship,” I said. “Maybe they’ll serve longpork in the dining room one night.”

  His face filled with an expression that was half horror, half disgust, and half excitement, which, if you know Howie, is mathematically correct. “Probably not,” Howie said. “It’s more of a room service kind of thing.” He thought about it and bit his lip, maybe trying to taste himself.

  Finally our shuttle bus got off the freeway, and the ship came into view.

  Okay, so now comes the part I’m sure you’ve been waiting for. The description of the one, the only Plethora of the Deep. But you know what? I’m not even gonna bother. Just go online and type in “big honking boat” and you’ll find everything you need to know. I mean, take the biggest freaking thing you can possibly imagine and then triple it. As Howie put it, “It’s the closest thing on earth to an Imperial Star Destroyer.” It’s so big, even the inside cabins have balconies, which to me implies that alternate dimensions are involved, but what do I know?

  Even the brand-new cruise terminal looked like something right off the cover of a sci-fi novel. I nearly got hit by a taxi staring up at it as we got off the bus.

  I can’t really say the weird stuff started at the cruise terminal, because weird stuff has been sticking to my heels like toilet paper for as long as I can remember. Not just weird stuff but weird people with weirder problems. I’m like a magnet for the normality impaired. So naturally, I’m the one who sees something freaky.

  See, inside the cruise terminal, there’s this big floor-to-ceiling glass wall, designed to give you a spectacular view of the ship—but the ship’s so big, all you can see is this endless wall of balconies eighteen stories high. At this point, we’re all waiting in line to check in, and I’m sweating because, unlike airport security, these cruise line agents are chatty, and what if they want to match us up with our birth certificates and my parents find out that Howie is suddenly my brother.

  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see movement. I turn to the window, and someone’s falling from the ship.

  I’ve seen people fall before. First, I saw a guy fall from a bridge—although that time it was just a dummy and we had thrown it on purpose. The second time, though, it was a real guy falling from a parade balloon that got stuck on the top of the Empire State Building. I’m sure you’ve seen it a million times online, including the version with added sound effects that make it obnoxious instead of tragic.

  This time it happened so quickly, I couldn’t be exactly sure what I saw—but I was pretty sure it was a person. The faller plunged past the balconies, but instead of hitting the dock, he disappeared in that narrow gap between the dock and the ship, which was maybe twenty feet wide. I didn’t hear him hit the water because the cruise terminal was playing a loud steel drum version of “Hot, Hot, Hot” on endless repeat.

  I shouted out something that my teachers would call an “expletive,” which in turn brought a head smack from my mother, which the security guard next to us seemed to approve of.

  “Did you see that?” I said, my voice about two octaves higher than normal. “This guy . . . the ship . . . he fell!” My brain couldn’t quite put the words in order.

  Howie shrugged. “I didn’t see anything.”

  My dad turned to look at the ship like he’s gonna see the instant replay. I looked around, but no one else had seen. The other cruisers were too busy fussing over their paperwork or complaining about security confiscating their hidden stash of alcohol.

  “Come on, somebody has to have seen it.” But apparently it was just me.

  “It was your imagination,” grumbled Crawley. “Move along.”

  But I’m too much of a moron to let it go. I ducked under the velvet rope and left the line. “I’ll be right back.”

  • • •

  A cruise terminal is not like an airport; it’s more like a warehouse. Downstairs, all the luggage that just came off the ship from the previous cruise was organized in
a massive room full of sunburned people futilely trying to find the pieces that belonged to them. Guards who looked like they might Taser you for sneezing in their direction were everywhere. But one thing I’ve learned in life is that if you act like you know where you’re going and you mumble a heartfelt but meaningless excuse without slowing down, they usually let you pass.

  “Hey!” a guard said. “You can’t go that way!”

  “Yeah, but I gotta get my thing from the guy, because he forgot,” I told him in a heartfelt way, and breezed right past him, no problem. I feel confident I could escape from a maximum security prison should it ever become necessary.

  So I got out onto the dock, where a forklift was loading massive crates full of luggage through the ship’s huge cargo door. I reached the edge of the dock and I peered into the water. No faller. No body. Nothing.

  Finally, two guards came after me. “Hey—this is a restricted area!”

  I tried to explain what I saw, but they weren’t buying.

  “Fine. We’ll file a report,” one of them said, but we all knew no one was gonna file anything but their nails.

  Then I looked up at the cruise terminal and saw my parents looking down on me, my mother’s eyes melting holes in the glass. Meanwhile, right next to them, Howie was holding up his room key and giving me a thumbs-up. It turns out, me running off had flustered my parents just enough that they didn’t notice when Howie presented himself to the cruise agent as Francis Howard Bonano.

  The guards escorted me back into the terminal, and that was that. Since nobody else saw anything and there was no evidence, I had to reluctantly conclude that it was my imagination. At any rate, I wasn’t going to let it mess with my good time. Besides, there were plenty of other things about to mess with it.

  CHAPTER 3

  DISTRACTIONS ABOARD THE LARGEST FLOATING OBJECT EVER CONCEIVED BY THE MIND OF MAN

  THERE’S THIS THING CALLED ATTENTION DEFICIT disorder. They used to call it hyperactivity. We all know kids like this. They bounce around from one thing to another like a Super Ball—which, by the way, can actually embed in the ceiling if you bounce it on a tile floor hard enough. I know, ’cause when I was younger, I got three of them stuck in the ceiling of our downstairs bathroom, and to this day my mother refuses to remove them because she claims they’re evidence. Evidence of what, I don’t know, but like most things, I’m sure it’ll come back to bite me.

  So I’ve been told that maybe I got borderline attention deficit, on account of the way I got trouble sticking to a single subject. But the way I see it, I’d rather hit three walls and get stuck in the ceiling than stand like a lump in the middle of the room staring at myself in the bathroom mirror.

  My point is that on the Plethora of the Deep, everybody’s got ADHD. You can’t help it. It’s like Las Vegas without the sleaze. There’s too much to look at, too many people handing out rainbow-colored drinks, too many glittering chandeliers, too much weird artwork by famous artists, and way too many string bikinis, although, to be honest, you really can’t have too many of those.

  My parents were not immune to being dazzled. They were so dazzled, in fact, that they got lost with Christina trying to find the cabin. “They’ll find it eventually,” Crawley announced, insisting that Howie push him onward.

  As it turns out, our cabins weren’t “cabins” at all. We had two adjoining “sky suites.” One was for Crawley, Lexie, and Lexie’s parents, who were going to board when the ship got to the Cayman Islands. The other suite was for my family and Howie. Each suite had two stories and was like a loft apartment. They must have cost Crawley a small fortune.

  “Wow . . . this is too much, Mr. Crawley!” I said.

  Crawley stood out of his wheelchair and examined a silver platter of chilled sushi, compliments of Caribbean Viking cruise line. “You’re right, it is too much,” he said, “but I’ve decided to spend as much money as I can before I die so that neither the government nor the various vultures with my last name will be able to pick over my rotting carcass.”

  And Howie says, “You won’t have that problem if you get cremated.”

  Crawley got this look on his face like he just swallowed bad sushi and turned to his granddaughter. “Why do I surround myself with imbeciles, Lexie?”

  “Well,” said Lexie, with an indignance that only she could deliver, “as one of ‘the vultures with your last name,’ I’m sure I don’t know. Now if you’ll excuse me, Moxie and I are going to explore. Perhaps we’ll visit the petting zoo.” Which made sense, considering she’s tactile and all. I offered to go with her, but she declined. “I’ll find my own way. Asking for directions is a good way to meet people.”

  I gotta admire Lexie. She’s got it nailed. I was sure by the end of the week, she’d know everyone on the ship. Crawley, on the other hand, had no such desire. He went to the huge two-story windows and closed the curtains.

  “It’s too bright in here,” he said. Then he turned on the TV and swatted Howie and me away when we reached for the silver platter. “Go eat your own sushi. I ordered a bon voyage platter for your suite, too.”

  We went to our own suite to find the front door open. I figured it meant the rest of my family finally found their way here, but no such luck.

  While I scarfed down all the sushi without octopus, Howie flipped through a big book on the coffee table that told everything you ever wanted to know about “The Largest Floating Object Ever Conceived by the Mind of Man.”

  “Hey, look here, Antsy,” said Howie. “It says ‘the Plethora of the Deep’s twenty-one mineral-rich Jacuzzis are oxygen enhanced to provide a soothing massage with patented therapeutic bubbles.’”

  “Yeah, I got your therapeutic bubbles right here.”

  With the sushi inhaled, I was now ready to explore. “So what do you want to check out first?” I asked him. “The roller coaster? The Cavalcade of Waterslides?”

  “Neither. I want to find the ghost.”

  I sighed. “Not that again!” Since the moment he found out he was going, Howie had been harping on this. According to Howie, this ship was the lifelong dream of Jorgen Ericsson, the founder of Caribbean Viking cruise lines, but he died before the Plethora was completed. There was a rumor circulating that his ghost haunted the ship.

  “What, do you think he’s gonna be posing for photo ops?”

  “People have taken pictures,” Howie said. “But he only shows up on iPhones.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. “I’m sure they’re as fake as your birth certificate—which I’ll regret I ever made for you if you spend the whole cruise ghost hunting.”

  He pulled out his iPhone. “Not the whole cruise . . . just a day or two.”

  I pushed him out of the room. “I am not wasting my time looking for Jorgen Ericsson’s ghost,” I told him. “But if I was, where do you think we might find it?”

  • • •

  I got a big mouth. I don’t deny that. Sometimes it’s a good thing, like the time I stopped some moron from falling into an open manhole by yelling “hey, moron, that’s an open manhole!” But other times, it sets me up for a world of trouble, like just before we left the suite, when I had announced to anyone who might be listening, that I made Howie a fake birth certificate.

  Okay, so as I was heading down the hall, I realized that I forgot my camera, so I went back to the suite. Keep in mind that I had just left it less than a minute ago. No time for anything to happen, right? I opened the door and standing there was a beautiful girl taking something out of a backpack.

  “Whoops, sorry,” I said, because my first thought was that I stepped into the wrong room. But no—because not only did my key work in the lock, but the backpack she was dipping her hand into was mine.

  I’m stunned by this, so my brain can’t access the full menu of appropriate responses. It’s more like the children’s menu, and I’m playing connect-the-dots with my mental
crayon. All I could say was, “What the heck . . .”

  Then I saw what she had in her hand. It was my wallet.

  Finally my brain engaged, and at last I uttered something useful. “That’s my wallet!” Okay, maybe not useful, but at least informative.

  She didn’t act like she’d been caught red-handed. She didn’t act freaked or surprised at all. She just glanced at the wallet in her hand and said, “Piece of garbage. Not even real leather.” She had a Spanish-sounding accent, but her attitude was more French. It made her seem exotic. But exotic or not, her hand was in my cheapo wallet, which didn’t have much money in it, but that didn’t matter. It was the principle of the thing.

  “Put it back, or I’m calling security,” I told her. “On second thought, I’m calling security anyway.” I stood there, blocking her exit, wondering how I could get to the phone without letting her escape and wondering how to make a citizen’s arrest, and if you could even do such a thing on a boat. She didn’t act like she was going to bolt at all. Instead she took a five-dollar bill out of my wallet, then returned the wallet to my backpack.

  “Go call security,” she said. “You can tell them I stole five dollars, and I can tell them that you made your friend a fake birth certificate.”

  Now my brain flipped the children’s menu over and was doing the word search.

  “You should close your mouth,” she said. “You could swallow a fly.” Then she brushed right past me and left.

  • • •

  I saw this thing on TV once where a guy comes into a criminology class, throws something at the professor, then runs out. It’s all part of the lesson, though. Each student is asked to fill out a police report of the incident, and then they compare them. It turns out that none of the reports were the same. Some people said the guy was wearing a green shirt; others said it was blue. Some said he had glasses, others said he wore a hat, and some were fairly sure it was a girl and not a guy. The point was to show how unreliable eyewitnesses can be.