The 13th Sign

by Tubb, Kristin O' Donnell

  My toes tapped, waiting on that darned ferry, but we’d have to cross the river by boat. My toes bouncing on the metal floor seemed to ask, Lost or left? Lost or left? The question I hadn’t asked about my dad since I was nine was back. Yet another thing I’d unlocked: insecurities about my dad. Super.

  Was I nervous to get on this boat? Was that it? I couldn’t tell. I hoped not. We didn’t have time to make it to the Crescent City Connection Bridge.

  Brennan placed his hand on my knee to stop it from bouncing. Had he heard my feet tapping out those silly questions, too? He smiled, and a new kind of warmth flushed my skin.

  Brennan had once been a friend. Well, he’d been nice—my best friend’s nice older brother. But then my dad’s accident happened, and Brennan faded into the background. That was okay—a lot of people didn’t know what to say to me. But when he finally started paying attention to me again, it had been an insult here, a jab there. Remembering it now, I jerked my knee away from his hand.

  His forehead wrinkled. “Things were really different before, huh? And you remember it?”

  I nodded at the pavement.

  I heard him swallow. “Was I—you know? A good person?”

  I sniffled, then felt hot. “Yeah. Yes.” I cracked my knuckles.

  Brennan laughed. “You’re a horrible liar, you know that?”

  “I used to be great at it.”

  He shrugged. “Not exactly a skill worth having.”

  I nodded and craned my neck, looking for the ferry.

  “We’ll get there, Jalen,” Brennan said.

  I couldn’t sit still. Lost or left? Stupid feet. “I know.”

  One of the Ellies jumped up and stood in front of us. “What if we don’t get there—huh? Jalen, do you know what will happen if you fail one of these challenges? Did you even bother asking?” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me.

  “No, I guess I didn’t,” I murmured. That outcome hadn’t really occurred to me, not until that lottery ticket. I had no idea what would happen to me if I failed. I only knew that I didn’t want to know. “But I can’t exactly quit now.”

  The other Ellie scoffed. “Jalen won’t fail. She knows what she’s doing, don’t you, Jalen?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t lie.

  The first Ellie’s face crumpled. I stood and hugged her, unsure if I was comforting a friend or walking into some sort of trap. “Please don’t fail, Jalen,” she whispered into my hair. “I don’t want to find out what happens if you do.”

  It sounded almost—almost—like my best friend used to sound. What I wouldn’t give to see her right now.

  I bounced on the balls of my feet. Lost or left? “I won’t.”

  Dillon clapped his hands together loudly and hopped off the bench next to us. “You guys are a bunch of downers. C’mon! Let’s rock this joint!” He snatched up his tuba case and flipped open the shiny brass locks.

  I winced—more locks. But Dillon pulled out a gleaming brass tuba—a smallish one, its horn the size of a basketball—and threw it over his head. He shimmied into it, then jerked his head at the trio of musicians that played next to the Louis Armstrong statue outside the terminal.

  “Let’s go!” He grinned his Cheshire cat grin. His ankle seemed to be feeling better. Which instantly made me feel better.

  The trio—a trumpet player, a saxophonist, and a trombone player—had the trombone case sprawled open in front of them, catching spare change from the commuters headed to work on the ferry. The music their instruments made blended together like the ingredients for ice cream—sweet stuff that when combined made something cool and creamy and extra special. They smoothed right through Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.”

  The song wound down, and Dillon showed the trio his tuba. “Mind if we make it a quartet, fellas?” The musicians didn’t say anything, but transitioned the music to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It was a big song that needed a big sound, like a tuba. Dillon hopped right in.

  And he was horrible. His blasts and blurps bounced off the statue, off the metal side of the ferry terminal, and crashed into each other in midair. It was a catfight of musical notes—howling, yowling notes, notes so loud and so awful, it seemed impossible one human and one tuba could make them.

  But he was having so much fun. He kicked his legs out in front of him, he twirled in circles, he swayed that honking tuba side to side. He hopped around on the sidewalk, his tuba burping forth brassy blasts. I couldn’t help but get swept up in his joy. I started clapping along. Both Ellies danced.

  Dillon took his mouth off his mouthpiece long enough to shout to Brennan, “Pick it up on the bucket, dude!” He pointed his tuba at a yellow bucket near the trombone player’s feet.

  Brennan blushed. I nudged him with my elbow. “Go on,” I whispered in his ear. I felt him shiver. “You can’t be any worse than Dillon.”

  Brennan grinned, nodded, and pointed at the bucket. The trombone player smiled and nudged the bucket toward Brennan with his toe. He sat on the curb and tucked the yellow bucket upside-down between his knees.

  Brennan’s palms slid and whacked and thrummed a drumbeat so steady that I swear those musicians sat up taller, played faster. He knew exactly when to tilt the bucket to get a better boom from the thing. Between Brennan’s drumming and Dillon’s deafening tuba blurts, I couldn’t stop grinning.

  Bliss! Sunshine swelled through me, warming me to my fingertips and toenails. My cheeks began to ache from all the smiling, my stomach clenched from all the laughing.

  Wasn’t I headed somewhere? It could wait. This was too much fun. When was the last time I had fun? I deserved this.

  And then, silence. The song came to an all-too-abrupt end, like screeching brakes on a car. The trio nodded. Dillon and Brennan had drawn a small crowd, a crowd that was forking over dollar bills.

  Brennan stood, blushed. “Thanks, fellas.”

  The trombone player nodded. “Anytime, kid. You got a real heartbeat on those things, you hear?”

  Brennan beamed. And I laughed. They didn’t say a thing about Dillon’s talent.

  “Ferry’s here,” Brennan said. “C’mon.”

  The boat chugged up and slipped into the dock. We dragged ourselves toward the entrance. I wasn’t sure if my hesitation came from fear of the Keepers or fear of the ferry.

  The five of us—me, Brennan, Dillon, and the Ellies—crossed through the echoing metal terminal to get to the second story of the ferry. Below us, cars clanged and clattered onto the wide parking deck that took up the whole lower level. I jumped at every boom those cars made as they loaded onto the boat.

  But I was doing it. I was getting onto the ferry! I hadn’t made it this close to a boat in four years. I wished I could share this triumph with Ellie. But not only did I not know which Ellie was mine, she wouldn’t remember my paralyzing fear of boats, anyway.

  I used to love riding the ferry into the city. My dad once said it looked like a floating tiered wedding cake. A ferry ride always meant something exciting was in my future.

  I felt someone staring at me. A petite woman with tight curls springing out from under a captain’s hat. Rather, it was a horrible mesh baseball hat that read CAPTAIN in script. She wore an orange vest with yellow reflective strips on it, and she was studying me. I held my breath. No mist.

  When we reached the ferry itself, I paused. I fought the urge to do what my dad used to do: He’d pause here, too, and yell, “Permission to board, Captain?” Every time. It made me howl with laughter when I was a kid. The other passengers would smile and laugh, too.

  I looked around for some sign, something that would tell me to stay off this boat. Every time I’d tried to get on a boat since my dad had disappeared, I would see a sign, something warning me to stay away. Today—nothing. Were the signs still there and, as an Ophiuchus, I just couldn’t see them now? Before, I would’ve seen a sign. Or maybe…would’ve made one up? But today, not even the huge orange patches of rust coating
the vessel could turn me away.

  I pushed back my shoulders and stepped over the inch-wide crack that separated the terminal from the boat, the crack that separated land from water. It felt like I was stepping over a canyon. I threw my head back and laughed.

  The woman watching me, the captain, nodded and climbed the stairs to the steering room at the tip-top of the boat. Brennan, Dillon, the Ellies, and I entered the huge, hollow seating area. There weren’t many people on board. I supposed this early on a Saturday morning was always slow.

  Brennan and I plopped into chairs that looked like scoops of sherbet. Dillon dropped his tuba with a thud and fell into a nearby seat. He gripped his head and immediately turned a lovely shade of puke green. I thought of his ankle and sat up. “Are you okay?” I asked him. “You don’t look so hot.”

  He swallowed, nodded, then swallowed again. “Boats. Water. Not my thing. Ferry ride’s quick, though. I’ll be alright.” Brennan nodded with sympathy. And, boy, did I ever understand being afraid of boats.

  The Ellies buzzed around Dillon like gadflies, asking, “Are you alright, Dillon?” and “Do you need anything, Dillon?” One Ellie trying to out-Ellie the other. Maddening.

  Seeing two Ellies here surprised me; I had hoped Fake Ellie would disappear around all these other humans. But even though it was a small crowd, it was still a crowd, where everyone makes a habit of overlooking everyone else. She didn’t need to disappear in a crowd. It was probably very safe for her here.

  My eyes closed almost immediately. The air smelled like fish and salt and mud—the earth-meets-river-meets-sea smell that always hung over New Orleans’s riverfront. The gentle rocking took me back to my dad’s boat, a small, rusted fishing thing that was barely big enough to be called a dingy. I inhaled. I’d missed this.

  My chin knocked against my chest and my head snapped up. I needed to move, or risk falling asleep. Asleep! I couldn’t make myself that vulnerable!

  “Want to go for a walk?” I asked Brennan.

  He nodded. We climbed the stairs to the third level of the ferry, the open-air level. Fresh air was what I needed.

  At the top of the steel staircase, the woman from the terminal, the one wearing the captain’s hat, looked down on us, hands on hips. We hadn’t yet left the dock.

  “You two come with me,” she ordered. She turned and strode toward the next level of stairs, expecting us to follow. Brennan and I froze.

  The captain paused, turned, and shifted what I thought was a huge glob of chewing tobacco from one cheek to another. But then she blew a bubble, a huge, pink, quivering bubble. It popped with a snap when she sucked it back into her mouth.

  “Come,” she said around the wad in her mouth. She jerked her head toward the next set of stairs, to the very top of the ferry. “You’ll want to see the steering room.”

  It wasn’t a question. But she was being nice. She’d seen me hesitate before getting on the boat, and she wanted to help. And if I were being honest, yes, I wanted to see the steering room! I’d wanted to since I was a kid, since I first started thinking of this ferry as a big floating cake. Since my dad squatted down and pointed up, up, up at the flapping flags and the spinning radar thingies and said in a hush, “Jalen, that’s where the captain stands.” I nodded and followed.

  The captain unlocked a chain strung across the next set of stairs. On the chain, a sign dangled: WARNING! RESTRICTED AREA! We climbed the stairs toward the captain’s roost.

  As I was climbing, I became woozy. My head felt like it was filled with whooshing air. I became very aware of how high above the water we were, how high in the air I now stood. Four stories up! I swallowed.

  I’d never been afraid of heights before. In school I’d scale the rock wall to the roof of the gym. When we’d toured the local theater, I was the only one who’d been brave enough to climb out on the catwalk and learn about stage lighting. I froze and started shaking. The captain smiled and extended her hand down to me. I nodded, took it, and edged up the stairs. Her hand was callused from hard work.

  The captain stood behind the wheel, and the boat slowly chugged out of port. It was noisy, rattling progress—this old boat straining against the powerful Mississippi River current. But I was more comfortable inside this tiny room, surrounded by walls and gadgets.

  And then I smiled to myself—I was on a boat. Once I looked past all the dials and gadgets and flashing lights, I noticed the view. It made me slightly dizzy at first, looking out. But this view of New Orleans couldn’t be beat. The Crescent City Connection Bridge draped over the river to our left. I secretly stuck out my tongue at it—See me, on a boat? I don’t need you anymore, bridge! The white spires of the Saint Louis Cathedral poked the sky, up and to the right. Straight ahead were the towering hotels and glittering buildings of downtown New Orleans, and the mirrory green roundness of the Audubon Aquarium.

  “Take the wheel,” the captain said. Her breath smelled pink. A long lock of her curly blond hair had freed itself from under the hat and hung past her shoulders.

  My heart skipped. “Really?”

  She smiled, a goofy, lopsided grin around her glob of gum. “Yes, really.”

  I stepped up to the wheel, a U-shaped thing, and paused just before gripping it. I could feel the power leaping out of that captain’s wheel into my fingers. The power to chart my own course. I’d be the one in control. It’d been so long since I felt in control. I needed this. Deserved it. My hands wrapped around the wheel. Orange warmth flamed inside me and energized me to my toes. I was steering the Algiers Ferry!

  I turned, briefly, to look back at Algiers Point, slowly getting smaller behind us. It was so different from the downtown side of the river. Trees and grass and homes dotted the west bank. The expanse of water between us and land, between us and home, grew.

  We were so vulnerable here.

  “Look at that.” The captain’s voice beside me had turned from powdery pink to mirrored steel. “You’ve got water in your veins. Just like your dad.”

  My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. My dad?

  I realized now who I was up against. I should never have agreed to steer.

  The captain fizzled away, disappearing into a thick fog that filled the room with sulfur stink. Brennan scrambled to unlock the door. The mist twirled and twined, the script on the baseball hat thinning out, then spiraling, solidifying into massive curled horns. The hair—long, flowing, golden curls that had been tucked under the hat—fell, then turned to near stone. A thick skull soon covered itself with smelly matted fur. Snorting nostrils, no longer breathing pink puffs of bubble-gum air but musty, gamy steam. Shoulders that stretched ever higher, over six feet. Hooves pounding on the metal floor of the steering room. A short, twitching tail.

  The captain of this ship? Aries the ram.

  Brennan had managed to make it out of the captain’s room onto the stairs leading down to the seating area. But I had been greedy. I’d wanted to stand at the control panel—just this once—and feel like I was the one charting the course.

  My instinct was to grab the stool behind me. It was, of course, bolted to the floor. The mist was clearing now, and the ram filled almost every inch of this room. Her flanks twitched. Rather, his. The female captain? Now a male ram. His head thrashed from side to side. I guessed the captain hadn’t thought of the consequences of morphing into a ram in this tiny room. Impulsive. Just like an Aries.

  In trying to turn, the ram’s horn jammed in the ferry’s control panel. Sparks shot forth. The lights flickered, and the hum of the engine died. There were just a handful of passengers below, but I heard their groans over the ram’s snorts as the ferry lost power.

  The ferry was drifting now. At the whim of the powerful Mississippi River. The Coast Guard would come soon. Was that good or bad?

  Bad, I decided. They’d catch me and lock me in a room filled with questions. No time for that.

  Brennan stood at the top of the narrow stairway leading down. “Jalen!” His voice sounded sm
all, coming to me around this beast. There was nothing in this cabin to use as a weapon; everything was bolted down or attached. I’d have to squeeze past Aries to the door. And I had to do it now, while his horn was still trapped. I pressed against the wall and inched toward the exit.

  Aries stomped his hooves, trying to free his jammed horn. The din of his feet pounding against the metal floor and echoing around this tiny room was deafening. The floor dented and warped. I hugged the wall and continued around the room, trying not to slide under those massive, crushing hooves.

  The door was a few feet away now, but Aries’s hindquarters blocked my exit. I put my hands on his wiry fur and pushed gently.

  One does not push an Aries gently. His fury exploded, his hind legs bucking and kicking. The control panel sparked and fizzled. His mighty horns lifted toward the ceiling. He shook them with obvious pride. He had freed himself. I had to leave now.

  He was trying to turn to face me. I pushed once more—no, shoved—his hindquarters and reached the doorway.

  As I did, I was launched forward, chest first, like I had a rocket pack strapped to my back. Pain exploded through me, back to front. Aries had kicked me, hard, onto the stairs. I instantly got dizzy, flying forward, four stories up. The sensation of being kicked coupled with being so high up made me feel as though I were sailing through the air for hours, rather than seconds. I gripped the first thing I saw.

  Brennan. I landed on top of him, knocking his feet out from under him. Together we skidded, thump, thump, thump down the metal stairs.

  At the bottom, I leaped to my feet, then pulled Brennan up. “You alright?”

  He blinked, rubbed the back of his head, shook it off. “Yeah. I think.”