Antsy Floats

by Neal Shusterman

  “That’s good,” I said. I didn’t want to ask her what those things were. Somehow, I doubted they were about grades or about her most embarrassing moments. Whatever Tilde needed to forget, it was far more in need of forgetting than anything in my life. So I wished on a fake star that her memory would fail in all the best ways.

  Tilde shifted closer to me, not moving enough to trigger the light sensors, but enough for me to feel her hip against mine. I tried to control my heartbeat. There’s this creepy story by that Poe guy about a heart beating beneath the floorboards of a house, and I could swear I now heard my own telltale heart echoing in the wood of the Viking ship.

  “So do your parents know?” she asked me.

  “What, about you?”

  “No,” she said. “About you.”

  “Oh, right.” I cleared my throat to stall. “I’ve told them exactly what I’ve told you.”

  Somehow, she still hadn’t figured out that I’d told her nothing.

  “What about your friend, Herbie? Are you two a couple?”

  I decided right then and there that it was time to put a pin through her ballooning assumptions. “It’s Howie,” I corrected. “And no, we’re not. To be honest, you’re more my type than he is.”

  “So you’re saying if you liked women, you would be attracted to me?”

  “Yes. I mean I do, and I am.”

  She shifted very slightly closer. “You say this to make me feel good, but you don’t have to,” she said. “It’s nice to be this close to a boy without him expecting more and more.”

  That’s when I realized that this balloon wasn’t popping no matter how much I tried to puncture it, because Tilde didn’t want it to. It made me wonder how many guys had taken serious advantage of her in her life. She needed Enzo the Rainbow Warrior, not Antsy the Italian Stallion. I wondered how much she’d hate me if I took Enzo away from her now.

  “Are you ever going to tell me something about you?” I asked, trying to shift the attention away from me.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Tilde whispered. “If you tell me your darkest moment, I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Darkest moment?” That was easy. It was still pretty raw and close to me. “My dad’s heart attack. Those first few hours when we thought he wasn’t going to make it.” Yet as I thought about it, I realized that as dark as it was, I didn’t want to ever forget it. It brought out the worst in me, but it also brought out the best in me and in my whole family. Sure, I wished it had never happened, but I wouldn’t want to forget that it did.

  “I’m glad your father is all right,” she said. “Heart attacks are like earthquakes. They come suddenly and with little warning. But for my mother, it was more like a hurricane. I had warning, because I knew she was dying for a long time. Still, nothing prepares you for the shock when it happens.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s a pretty dark moment.”

  “That’s not it.” Then she paused. “My darkest moment came in the weeks after. When I realized that there was not another human being on earth who loved me.”

  Wow, I thought. I couldn’t even imagine that feeling. What do you say to something like that? “That sucks.”

  “Yes and no,” Tilde said. “Because it made me strong, and I realized I could love me and it could be enough.”

  “I don’t think I could ever be that strong,” I confessed. “I mean, half the time, I don’t even like me.”

  “You don’t always have to like yourself to love yourself,” she said. Which didn’t make much sense to me, but I was willing to go with it.

  “Do you know what, Enzo? I feel safe with you.”

  For a guy, that can be an insult as much as a compliment. “You shouldn’t,” I told her. “There’s nothing safe about me. Ask anyone who knows me.” But it was like she wasn’t listening . . . or she just didn’t want to hear.

  “I feel safe with you . . . and I need your help tomorrow. So I’ll feel safe.”

  “What’s tomorrow?”

  “Jamaica,” she said.

  “You’re going off the ship? You can’t go off—you’ll never get back on.”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  “No more stealing,” I told her. “I’m done with that.”

  “No more stealing,” she agreed. “Tomorrow, we’ll be buying something.”

  “Is it something legal?”

  She sighed. “Don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to.”

  So I didn’t ask anymore questions about it. I’m no fool. I knew Tilde was using me—and I knew it probably wouldn’t land us anywhere good. But for some reason, I was okay with that. Somehow I trusted that whatever she was up to, it was in a big-picture kind of way, worthy of my limited attention.

  Did she really feel safe with me, or did she just say that to get me to go along? In the end, it didn’t really matter, because whatever she baited her hook with, I had already chomped down and wasn’t getting free anytime soon.

  CHAPTER 7

  A COUPLE OF MORONS AND LEXIE’S PARENTS, WHO ARE ALSO A COUPLE OF MORONS

  AFTER OUR VIKING ADVENTURE, I WALKED AROUND the ship’s promenade deck alone before going back to the cabin. It was hard to shake the weird feeling I had while lying beneath the stars with Tilde. It was like I was living two lives now. I was two people, Antsy the kid I always was and then this new guy, Enzo, who was breaking laws left and right and enjoying it. Not that the real Antsy doesn’t mind bending the rules now and then, but this other guy, he was out of control.

  There’s this thing they call “folly-o-duh”—although since it’s French, it’s probably spelled with lots of silent e’s and x’s. Roughly translated, it means “a couple of morons.” It’s when two people get together, both feeding off the same bad idea, and since they keep agreeing with each other that it’s not a bad idea at all, it spins out of control, and they lose all touch with reality. It’s the principle that explains pairs like Bonnie and Clyde or Penn and Teller.

  I was beginning to wonder if I was spinning into a folly-o-duh with Tilde—but if I was, I was enjoying it too much to stop.

  Twice around the promenade and I felt more like me and less like Enzo. When I went into the cabin, Howie was there, sitting on his bed, looking dejected. Now I began to wonder what I missed in the real world.

  “How come you’re here?” I asked him. “Weren’t you taking Lexie to the seventies dance?”

  He shrugged. “She didn’t wanna go. She said she’s seasick, but the ship’s barely moving.” Then he sighed. “It’s okay. Had we danced, we might have died.”

  I went through the connecting door into Lexie and Crawley’s suite. Crawley was there watching the crawl of some financial news network. He pointed to the balcony, and now I could hear Lexie crying through the open balcony door. Moxie was lying on the ground trying to disappear into the carpet, whimpering like he did during thunderstorms.

  “Your conspicuous absence in this entire situation has been duly noted,” Crawley said.

  “What happened?”

  “If she wants to discuss it, she will. But for now, I suggest you get out there and make her happy. If you don’t, I’ll have your citizenship revoked and leave you in Jamaica or whatever godforsaken island we’re on tomorrow.”

  “Not even you can do that, Mr. Crawley.”

  “Perhaps not, but I’ll have fun trying.”

  I went outside. Lexie sat on the large balcony, her shoulders shuddering with her sobs. I’d seen her cry before, but never like this. Her flute was in her lap, and she gripped it with white-knuckled intensity.

  “Lexie . . .” I said gently.

  “Go away!” she yelled, caught off guard that I was there. Then she said more gently, “Just go away.”

  Of course I didn’t go. Now I really felt like a creep for not taking her to the dance. “Hey,�
� I said. “I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” she said through her tears. “This isn’t because of you.” Then she wiped away some of her tears. “At least, it’s only partially because of you.”

  “Well, I’m partially sorry,” I said like an idiot. “I mean, I’m fully sorry for my portion of it.”

  Lexie took a deep, shuddering breath and another breath that was smoother. “I’m so, so tired of being ‘the blind girl.’”

  “Hey, technology is advancing and stuff,” I said. “Maybe someday you’ll be able to see.”

  “That’s not what I mean!”

  I didn’t say anything else because if I was going to put any more feet in my mouth, I was gonna have to borrow someone else’s from down the hall.

  “Being blind isn’t the problem,” she said. “It’s being seen as ‘the blind girl.’ When I asked you to take me to the dance, it was because you won’t treat me like a china doll. You won’t be afraid to bump into me or step on my feet.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty good at that.”

  “Whenever I walk into a room of strangers, I feel all those eyes on me. I can’t see, but I still feel those eyes; isn’t that funny? People see me, and they automatically make assumptions that set me apart from anyone else in the room. I used to like that when I was younger, but now I see it’s an awkward, lonely kind of attention. I want people to see me, not ‘the blind girl.’”

  “Even if you weren’t blind, I think you’d stand apart,” I told her. “But that’s a good thing. I mean, blind or not, you’re kind of . . . I don’t know . . . remarkable.”

  “Remarkable,” she repeated, but it came out bitter. “Yes, people make remarks about me all the time.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  She reached over and put her hand on my knee, squeezing gently. “I know, Antsy.”

  We sat like that for a while listening to the whoosh of the ocean as the ship cut through the water.

  “I think I get it,” I said. “But I also get why it happens. It’s like we have to put people into boxes, because our brains aren’t big enough to make every person a person. So we put them all into boxes and then we get to decide whose box we’re going to open. We gotta be careful, though, because if we open everybody’s box, we’ll go crazy. So yeah, you’ll be ‘the blind girl’ and I’ll be ‘the obnoxious Italian guy’ to like ninety-nine percent of the people we meet. But to the one percent that opens our boxes, they get to hit the jackpot. Although they’ll probably return me for store credit.”

  She laughed a little, which was good. It meant there was another emotion there to fight against the tears. It occurred to me that she hadn’t asked me about where I’d been. I could have avoided the subject entirely, but somehow, I felt I owed her an explanation.

  “I couldn’t go to the dance because I’ve been hanging out with someone whose been causing me a lot of grief,” I told her. “But the thing is, this person needs my help.”

  She smiled, sought out my hand, and grasped it. “You’re good at that, Antsy. Helping people.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Everybody but myself. Anyway, it’s not what you think.”

  “You don’t have to say any more. It’s none of my business.”

  “Well, it kinda is. I mean you’re expecting me to spend time with you on this cruise. Howie is expecting that, too, and I’ve been abandoning you both.” Then I thought of something that was sure to cheer her up. “But hey, when we get to Grand Cayman, you’ll get to hang with your parents, right? I know you’re looking forward to that.”

  She took her hand back from me at the mention of her parents and began to run her fingers along the levers and valves of her flute.

  “I was looking forward to it,” Lexie admitted, “but we just got word that they won’t be joining us. They had ‘something pressing’ in Paris.”

  “No way!” I clenched a fist, wishing I could give them a piece of my mind. Then it occurred to me that all the other stuff that Lexie just told me was small compared to this. Here was the real reason for Lexie’s tears.

  “Sometimes,” Lexie said, “I feel like they just see me as ‘the blind girl,’ too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, for once glad that my parents were around to make my life miserable.

  “Well, to hell with them,” she said. “I’m having fun on this cruise in spite of it, and no one’s going to stop me.”

  Then she stood and hurled her golden flute into the Caribbean Sea.

  CHAPTER 8

  RED, RED WHINE, WALL OF VOODOO, AND DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

  I DON’T LIKE BEING A TOURIST. MOST TOURISTS are loud, rude, clueless, and got no respect for the place they’re visiting. The problem is, since I’m mostly loud, rude, and clueless, putting me next to a bunch of tourists makes me look like one of them. It’s embarrassing. If I’m gonna visit someplace, I don’t want to be clumped with some pasty-thighed retirees in sun hats. Lexie doesn’t like being “the blind girl,” and I don’t like being “the ugly American.”

  Under normal circumstances, though, I would have given in and gone along with the herd, but I already knew there wasn’t gonna be anything normal about my day on the island, with Tilde.

  • • •

  “What do you mean you’re not going with us?” My dad was up in arms. “Do you have any idea how much we paid for the Deluxe Jamaican Island Tour and Snorkel Extravaganza?”

  “So get a refund.” My original plan was to tell them I was spending the day with Lexie, but then she left with Moxie for the spa, announcing that she was getting a three-hour seaweed wrap, which until then I thought was something you ate. It left me with no cover story.

  “We made plans as a family,” my mother said, wagging her favorite wagging finger. “The least you could do is follow them.”

  “If I have to go, so should he!” complained Christina.

  “C’mon, Antsy,” Howie begged. “It’s an extravaganza!”

  “I got your extravaganza right here,” I said.

  My mother threw up her hands and walked away. “I’ve raised a cultural imbecile.”

  I showed them my sunburn, which was still lobster red, and began to whine. “In case you forgot, I’m burned, and it hurts. I don’t feel like going, so get off my back already!”

  My dad shook his head, looking at me all disappointed. “Fine. Stay here and vegetate. I hope you and Crawley enjoy each other’s miserable company.”

  “I heard that!” said Crawley from the adjoining suite.

  I waited until they had all left, then watched from the balcony until I was sure all the tour buses were gone.

  Crawley came up behind me, full of his usual suspicion. “What are you scheming?”

  “Who says I’m scheming anything?”

  He poked me on my sunburned chest intentionally, and I grimaced. “Don’t insult my intelligence. You’re always scheming something.”

  Which was usually true. But this time it wasn’t. “I’m not the schemer,” I told him. “This time I’m just the henchman.”

  Crawley nodded, somehow satisfied. “I always knew you’d be a henchman sooner or later.” Then he went back to his suite and closed the adjoining door.

  • • •

  As soon as I got off the ship, I found myself in Fake Jamaica. The pier was full of comfy gazebos in pastel pink and blue, sparkling-clean souvenir shops selling native crafts that all said “made in China,” and an open-air stage, featuring yet another clone reggae band with regulation dreads playing “Red, Red Wine.” It was all so controlled and sterile, it might as well have been Disneyland. I guess that’s what some people want: a giant living diorama—because the real thing isn’t always so pretty.

  But if you don’t get on the air-conditioned tour buses and actually have the guts to step out of the pier’s security zone, you
’ll find a world that ain’t so pristine but is tons more interesting.

  First there’s the guy who approaches everyone who looks under forty and asks them if they want to buy some prime gancha at discount prices.

  “What’s gancha?” a little kid asked his parents. “Can I have some?”

  The father laughed and said, “Not till you’re older.”

  The mother was not amused.

  There were souvenir shops out here, too, but they were more run down and more packed with stuff. More real. The buildings themselves had a kind of crumbling character to them, like they barely survived the last hurricane but what hadn’t killed them made them stronger.

  “You scared me, Enzo—I though you changed your mind!”

  I turned around to see Tilde. She was looking a little nervous and not at all her usual self. She gave me a hug, which she had never done before.

  “Ouch! Careful—my sunburn.”

  “We should go now,” she said. “We don’t have much time.”

  I noticed she was gripping a paper sack a little too tightly. “Are you gonna tell me what we’re doing? Does it involve the guy selling gancha?”

  “Idiota. We’re not buying weed or any other drug. What we’re buying is much more valuable.”

  “Which is?”

  Tilde put her hand in the air to hail a taxi. “Today, we buy freedom.”

  Kingston’s cruise port had no shortage of taxis, and pretty soon a small car, billowing more smoke than my grandma’s bridge club, screeched to a halt in front of us. The driver was all smiles. There was no shortage of friendliness in Jamaica.

  “Hop on in,” he tells us. “You want de island tour or beach? I know de best beaches.”

  Once we had gotten in, Tilde gave him an address scrawled on a piece of paper. “Take us there, please.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, without even looking at the paper, “but don’t you want a tour first?” He addressed me instead of Tilde, figuring I was either the one calling the shots or the more likely sucker. “I give you and your cutie my deluxe island experience; how dat sound? Good? Betta believe it!”