Paparazzi

by Linda Gerber

  I turned in my chair so that my back was to Nikos and whispered to Victoria, “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m completely serious,” she whispered back.

  “But we just got here!”

  “It’s past four, and we dock in Mykonos before eight. We’ll be lucky to get in our three hours. You signed the agreement with your parents,” she reminded me, “not to mention the network rules.”

  “But—”

  “We should get started,” she said aloud.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Victoria,” Mr. Kouropoulos said. “Could I speak with you first? It will only take a moment.”

  And then to Nikos, “Would you mind showing Cassidy to her room?”

  Nikos was at my side in a second. “Come with me,” he said, and he winked at me. Winked!

  “I don’t need anyone to—”

  “It’s fine,” Victoria said to me. “Go ahead.”

  “Come on,” Nikos said, and held out his hand.

  Okay, so Victoria had made me read up on Greek culture the whole flight over, but I hadn’t seen anything that would tell me what to do at that moment.

  I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to hold his hand or if he thought I needed help getting out of my chair or what. I was pretty sure I could stand without help, thank you, but again, I didn’t know what the custom was, so I took his hand. His skin was warm and soft, and his grip was firm. So firm that I had to yank my hand away to get him to let go once I was standing.

  He laughed at that. “Excellent,” he said. “I can tell this is going to be an interesting week.”

  I followed Nikos down a wide set of stairs that led from the top deck (the sky deck, he called it) to the promenade deck. I was glad to see more of the yacht instead of just taking the elevator back down, although Nikos wasn’t much of a guide. I mean, he knew where we were going, but he didn’t say much along the way to tell me about what we were seeing. If it was me, I’d be pointing out every little detail. Zoe had showed way more pride in the yacht than he was. Maybe I’d ask her to show me around later.

  “So,” I said, “how did you learn to speak English so well? You hardly have an accent.”

  “I have cousins in Florida,” he said. “Sometimes I go stay with them when my dad travels.”

  “Does he travel a lot?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  I knew what that was like. But then again, when my mom and dad traveled, I usually went with them.

  We fell into silence again. I didn’t like silence; it made me feel uncomfortable and awkward. So I kept trying to think of something to say to fill the empty space.

  “What’s your favorite spot on the yacht?” I asked finally.

  He looked at me like I had just asked if he breathed water or air. “My favorite spot?”

  “Sure. Zoe said her favorite is the sky deck because it has such an awesome view. Where do you like to hang out?”

  He thought for a moment, and then his eyes lit up. “I’ll show you,” he said. He grabbed my hand, and this time I didn’t worry about pulling back. It was kind of cool to be caught up in his enthusiasm. He led me down another flight of stairs and through a seating room that was all polished wood and white upholstery like the salon, only not as big. Finally, he showed me a narrow corridor.

  “Hardly anyone comes down here,” he said. “They’re all too busy working or whatever.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  Nikos stopped at the end of the corridor, in front of a wooden door with a brass plate that read, HERACLES. “Close your eyes,” he said.

  “Um, okay …”

  I could hear the latch click as he opened the door. He pulled me forward. I slid one foot along the floor and then the other, squinting and trying to see where I was going through my eyelashes until he yanked on my hand and warned me, “No peeking.”

  Even through my closed eyes, I could tell that he had turned on the light. He moved me forward a couple more steps and then stopped. “Okay,” he said. “You can open them now.”

  I had prepared myself to see another spectacular view. Or maybe a media room or something. So when I opened my eyes, I could only stand and stare.

  “It’s a game room,” Nikos announced.

  Which was an understatement. The room was filled with about every game you could think of: a pool table, a foosball table, one of those carnival basketball hoops, shelves full of board games. “Wow.” I looked the room over. “It’s huge.”

  “Runs about half the length of the yacht,” he agreed.

  Taking a few more steps inside, I turned in a slow circle. “This is amazing.”

  I expected one of his half-joking answers, but he just nodded. “I couldn’t believe it when I found it down here.”

  “Found it?” I asked.

  But he had already moved on, pointing out a wall lined with game consoles. “Look at this. They’ve got everything. Wii, Xbox, PS3 …”

  “They?” I asked. “Who are—”

  “Huh. Someone’s been down here.” He let go of my hand and walked over to where one of the screens showed a scene from some kind of medieval character game. “This is the game I play,” he said almost to himself.

  Since we didn’t always have a game console or even a TV when we traveled for my mom and dad’s show, I didn’t get to play video games much, so I didn’t know that much about them. I murmured something appreciative, because I figured that’s what he wanted to hear. But Nikos wasn’t listening to me anyway. He had walked over to the PS3 (I do know enough to tell the different systems apart) and picked up the controller. After he pressed a couple of buttons, a score flashed on the screen.

  He whistled and shook his head. “Someone topped my high score.”

  “Didn’t you say hardly anyone comes down here?” I asked.

  But he wasn’t listening; he was scrolling through what looked like a list of stats. “Whoever this player is, is good.”

  “Uh-huh,” I agreed. Which wasn’t very eloquent, I admit, but like I said, he wasn’t listening to me, so I didn’t figure it mattered. Once he connected to that game, it was like I wasn’t there in the room with him anymore. I turned from him to look around on my own, when a movement caught my eye.

  There. By the pool table …

  I wasn’t sure until I got a little closer, but then I could see her, crouched behind the rack of cues: Zoe. I quickly glanced back at the screen Nikos was studying so intently. Interesting. Was Zoe the mystery player? Made sense, although it didn’t explain what she was doing, hiding in the dark. Maybe she didn’t want Nikos to know she had played his game. Or … maybe she’d get in trouble for being there at all. Mr. Kouropoulos seemed like the type who wouldn’t let “the help” play in his game room.

  Zoe stared at me with round eyes, shaking her head just enough to signal that she didn’t want me to tell Nikos she was there.

  I nodded to let her know I understood, and turned back to where Nikos was scrolling through stats on the screen. “So,” I said. “This is your favorite game, huh?” I stood directly behind him so that his view of the door would be blocked, and motioned for Zoe to make a break for it. “What’s it about?” I asked.

  Nikos looked at me like I’d just sprouted horns on my head. “Are you kidding?”

  “Hey, I don’t get to play these kind of games much.”

  He tsked and started pulling up different characters on the screen. “Okay,” he said in a talking-to-an-idiot voice, “there are five character classes,” he said, “elf, dark elf, knight, prince, or magician. Only the princes can lead a blood pledge.”

  “Is your character a prince?”

  “Of course,” he said smugly.

  “What does it mean to ‘lead a blood pledge’?”

  He shook his head sadly and began to explain—slowly—the strategies behind the game. I admit to only half listening. I was more focused on the shuffling behind us. The soft click of the doorknob. The door closing as Zoe slipp
ed out of the room.

  I couldn’t help but smile to myself. Zoe had been in here playing Nikos’s favorite game. She must not have had time to turn it off when we came in. And, judging by the way Nikos had scrolled through the stats, she was good. Score one for Zoe.

  By the time I got to her room,

  Victoria was starting to get impatient. “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Nikos was just showing me around the yacht.”

  “All this time?” She showed me in, and I sat at her desk.

  “It’s big,” she said, “but not that big.”

  “Well, they’ve got a game room. …”

  “Ah, that explains it.”

  “Nikos wanted to show it to me,” I said. “I couldn’t be rude and tell him no.”

  “Of course. You are nothing if not polite.”

  I didn’t miss the sarcasm in her voice. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” I said.

  “Not to worry. It gave me a chance to speak with Magus. He lent us a book on Greek philosophy to add to your studies.”

  I groaned. “Philosophy?”

  “Please,” she said drily. “Curb your enthusiasm. I will read through it first. In the meantime, you”—she opened a book and set it in front of me—“may start by reading about the history of Delos.”

  I have to admit that I just sort of skimmed. It’s not that I didn’t find the stories interesting, it’s just that I kept thinking about the game room. Zoe, hiding out in the dark. Nikos, so intrigued by the high score on his game. There had to be a story there, too.

  “Have you finished your reading?” Victoria asked.

  My thought bubble popped and I blinked, the page coming into focus again. How long had I been staring off into space? “Um …”

  “I’d be happy to extend your studies if you are unable to complete your work in the allotted time.”

  “I read some of it,” I protested.

  “I see. Shall we review?” She pulled back her long, black hair and twisted it into a bun, skewering it with a pencil to hold it in place. Her business bun, I called it. Which meant she was settling in for the long haul. “Delos is the birthplace of … ?”

  Ha. I knew that one. We were going to be talking about it during our shoot the next morning. “Artemis and Apollo.”

  “Well. I’m impressed.” She turned a page in her notebook. “What does the word delos mean?”

  I thought for a moment. Luckily, I knew that one, too. “Delos is visible. Before Artemis and Apollo were born there, Delos was supposed to be a floating island they called Adelos, which means invisible.”

  She glanced up at me, pleased. “Yes. Very good.”

  “It’s in my lines for tomorrow,” I admitted.

  “I see. Do your lines say what significance its location had on Delos’s prosperity?”

  That one I didn’t remember. “Does it have something to do with Poseidon?”

  “Yes. In a way. Poseidon is said to have anchored Delos in the center of the Cyclades islands. It made Delos an important trade destination.”

  “Oh, right.” It was coming back to me. “So a lot of people and business and wealth came to Delos, just like Apollo’s mom said it would.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So what happened? Why is it deserted now?”

  Victoria closed her book. “As often happens, the wealth and prosperity on the island made it a tempting target for invaders. Rule of the island changed hands several times. People moved away. Eventually pirates and thieves claimed anyone and anything left behind, until one day”—she spread her empty hands—“gone.”

  I tried to imagine what it would be like if a busy, prosperous city like New York or Paris became deserted and just stopped being. “Could that ever happen now?” I asked. “A whole society dissolving like that?”

  “Of course,” Victoria said. “Think about the ghost towns from your Old West, or deserted steel towns once the industry moved out. The only constant in life is change.”

  “Is that something you read in Magus’s book?” I asked.

  “No. But there was a philosopher names Heraclitus …” She flipped through a few pages until she found what she was looking for. “He talked about how you could never step into the same river twice, because the water is always flowing, moving on.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Nothing stays the same. Fortunes change. What man does with that change is another discussion entirely.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Nothing was the same for me as it was just a few months ago. Now that the boy I liked was traveling with my mom and dad’s show, I was not. My fortune had certainly changed. The question was, did I have the power to change it back?

  Travel tip: The Greek people are renowned for their hospitality and generosity to foreigners.

  We docked at Mykonos harbor just before sunset. Mr. Kouropoulos, Victoria informed me after our lesson, had invited us to join him and Nikos in the town for dinner. That’s what he had wanted to talk to her about earlier.

  “You’ll want to dress nicely, but comfortably,” she said. “He said we would be doing quite a bit of walking.”

  Which it why I was still standing in front of my closet when I felt the thrum of the engines change. I knew we were coming into port. I couldn’t decide what I had that qualified as “nice, but comfortable.” To me, comfortable was my favorite jean shorts with the hole in the pocket. They also fit my definition of nice, but I knew that wasn’t what Victoria—or Mr. Kouropolous—had in mind.

  I finally settled on the bold, blue tank dress I had grabbed in London before our Spain trip. I’d never gotten a chance to wear it because of everything that happened in Valencia, so it was still brand-new. Plus, it was the only designer thing I’d brought with me—which doesn’t usually mean that much to me, but let’s face it: We were going out to dinner with Greece’s favorite leading man and his heartthrob son. We could pretty much count on an audience. With cameras. I did have my reputation as la chica moda to think about.

  I had just pulled the dress on over my head when I felt the engines change again. Outside my balcony doors, I could see the busy port and the whitewashed buildings that seemed to rise up straight from the water.

  I smoothed my dress down and rushed out onto the balcony to get a better view. The warm air smelled fishier than what I remembered of the harbor in Athens. In the turquoise water around us, single-masted fishing boats and huge yachts were tied to the piers, side by side. I leaned over the railing so I could see where we were docking, and my breath caught. I was right!

  A crowd had already gathered at the end of the pier. I didn’t see any barricades like before, but I did notice several men in dark suits standing in a row at the front of the crowd. Holding them back, most likely.

  Someone knocked on my door, and I hurried inside to answer it.

  “Are you ready?” Victoria asked. She looked even nicer than usual in a strapless, floral-print sundress, her hair swept back into a French twist. Her lips were shiny, I noticed. She was wearing lip gloss. She never wore lip gloss. I ran my tongue over my own un-glossed lips and wondered if I should put something on them before I left.

  “I just need to get my shoes,” I said, and ducked back into my room. I grabbed my silver strappy sandals from the closet, and a tube of lip balm from my bag by the desk. “Okay. Ready.”

  Nikos turned into a movie star again as we stood on the deck, waiting for the yacht to dock at the port in Chora, Mykonos Town. He didn’t just wave to the crowd gathering on shore; he winked, pointed, posed, and mugged—just like his dad. I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or to join in.

  That is, until we were finally anchored and it was time to disembark (a fancy word for get off the yacht). That’s when I could hear some of the voices in the crowd calling my name. I mean, how could I not get into it after that? Besides, to my mom and dad, this trip was a test. What better way to prove to them that I belonged with their show than to play to my fan base?
(How I had any fan base in Greece, I had no idea, but still.)

  After everyone else had gone ashore, CJ and her crew filmed Nikos, his dad, Victoria, and me disembarking. It wasn’t for any segment; it was just B-roll footage. B-roll is the background-type images you see between scenes that give a program its sense of place. Doing an arrival B-roll reminded me a lot of when Daniel filmed my mom and dad and me getting off the train in Buñol, Spain. Except Daniel had been using a single, on-the-shoulder camera instead of a complete setup with lighting like this crew.

  And in Spain, Logan had been there, on the platform. …

  “Cut!” CJ yelled. She clomped up the gangplank muttering to herself. “Cassidy, dear. As much as I enjoy your thoughtful expressions, we are going for carefree and happy right now. Do you think perhaps you could try to smile? Very nice. Okay.” She spun around and marched back down to the pier. “Again!”

  I was relieved when CJ and crew went off to film more B-roll without us in it. It wouldn’t have been any fun walking around Mykonos being directed at every turn. I wished some of the crowd the cameras had attracted would have gone off with them, but we weren’t so lucky.

  It didn’t seem to bother Mr. Kouropolous, though. He was very good at shutting out the cameras, and yet playing to them at the same time. The best I could manage was to remember to be on, but to try and forget they were there. I wasn’t very good at the forgetting part.

  It wasn’t long before the sun was slipping steadily toward the horizon, casting long shadows and painting all the white buildings in a rosy light.

  “The restaurant will be expecting us shortly,” Mr. Kouropolous said, “but perhaps you would like to see the town first? It is really quite charming at sunset.”

  As we passed the cluster of paparazzi and curious onlookers, the dark-suited men I had noticed from my balcony fell into step alongside us. With Magus, they surrounded us in a tight formation. The crowd followed like an obnoxious, camera-flashing herd of sheep.

  “This is crazy,” I told Nikos. “When I go out with my mom and dad, there’s sometimes a crowd, but nothing like this.”