The Opposite of Here

by Tara Altebrando

  “Um,” I said.

  “What happens on cruise ships stays on cruise ships,” she said.

  “Wait. What do you mean?”

  We first met back in kindergarten and went to school together for a few years, but then Lexi moved and I sort of forgot about her until she moved back and started high school with us. I saw her on the first day of freshman year, and she ran up to me and threw her arms around my neck and then pulled away and did a quick Irish jig, and it felt like she hadn’t changed at all, which was ridiculous because something like six years had passed, but she still had this kid-like goofiness about her that made it sort of funny when she was talking about things like thongs. She’s good at getting herself in dumb situations—forgotten wallet, lost textbook—and being bewildered by it all, like she’s somehow been cast in the wrong movie.

  “I mean,” she said, “if I meet someone. Well. I just … I don’t want to break up with Jason, not exactly, so, you know. I’m allowed a little fun if the opportunity comes along, right?”

  “I guess,” I said, feeling bad about feeling judgy, especially because the reality was that she and Jason were not a great couple. She seems to physically shrink around him, while he puffs up; it’s like there’s some set amount of space they can take up and it’s out of balance pretty much all the time.

  “Don’t go getting all judgy on me,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  She gave me that look of hers, the one she gets to make when she knows I’m lying.

  “You’d really cheat?” I still didn’t like the idea of it.

  “I’m open to the possibility is all.” She drew her hair up into a ponytail, then adjusted her breasts in her bra. “You should be open, too.”

  “To what?” I held up one of her thongs. “This?”

  “Exactly!” She snatched it from me. “Come on.” She went to leave the room.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Victoria’s Secret,” she said. “Because whatever you have going on under there”—she pointed in the general area, swirled her hand around—“it’s probably got cobwebs in it.”

  I crossed my legs, then uncrossed them. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I’m so tired of walking on eggshells about it all.” She made a funny face and tiptoed exaggeratedly around the room.

  “Fine.” Anger lit my face, then immediately started to recede. I was getting tired of it, too. Of being alone. Of feeling dead and dusty. Of no one at school even daring to flirt with me or like me because dead boyfriends are hard acts to follow.

  “Fine,” she said.

  We finished packing, then went shopping. And when I got home, I threw out every pair of underwear, every bra that Paul had ever glimpsed or touched. I packed up a week’s worth of new secrets.

  “I just met you.” My feet are dark silhouettes on the dance floor. “Why would I want to go anywhere with you?”

  He holds my gaze blankly, like he is a robot reading data about me with his eyes. I use all my powers to transmit a blank poker face poker face poker face. Then he picks up his cup, takes a long sip from a straw, and puts it down. “Suit yourself.”

  He starts to walk toward the exit.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” I grab his arm.

  His robot gaze analyzes my touch.

  I let go.

  “I don’t know yet.” He looks around the room. The perky cruise person is whipping and nae nae-ing. Possibly, wait for it, yes: dabbing. My friends are watching her, laughing into their hands.

  He says, “What’s the opposite of here?” and looks like he’s expecting an answer.

  Over on the dance floor the counselor is—no, please. Just stop … Gangnam style?—and when I turn back, he’s gone.

  “And here’s the birthday girl now!” Lexi says when I join my friends and the guys they’ve met, then she starts to make introductions.

  “This is Nate,” she says. “He is under the false impression that he can beat me at whatever video games they have in this place.” There’s this sparkle in her eyes that she gets when she’s flirting, but at least she keeps her shape, doesn’t cave in on herself the way she does around Jason.

  Nate smiles and says, “Nice to meet you.”

  Then Lexi says, “That’s Leo. And that’s—”

  Brett? Bennett? A new, louder song has started.

  We all sort of nod and half wave, and Lexi keeps talking to them—mostly Nate—and it sounds like they’re all around our age and are here with their parents who are old friends, like used to be college roommates. There are younger siblings they plan to avoid elsewhere on the ship.

  Leo seems to be focused on Charlotte, who is not really allowed to date—so good luck to you, sir!—but then Nora flips her hair and smiles at him. Which could be a big uh-oh. Then again, Nora hasn’t liked anybody in forever so it probably won’t be an issue.

  “Where have you been?” Lexi turns to me as the others all go back to whatever they were talking about before I walked over.

  “I was over there,” I say. “Talking to a guy.”

  “Ooh, which one?” She casts a glance around the room.

  “He left,” I say.

  “Was he cute?” she asks.

  “Very,” I say, still feeling tingly from his … newness. Or maybe just from laughing after so long. “And funny, too.”

  “Well, where is he?” She turns so she’s standing beside me, sharing my view.

  “I told you, he just left.”

  “Why?”

  “You really have to ask?” I say and I dab. “He wanted me to go with him, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “You big dope.” She elbows me. “Go! Live a little. We’ll be right here.”

  “But go where?”

  “It’s a ship, Natalie.” She shoos me away like I’m a child. “And he just left. He can’t have gone very far.”

  We’re all aboard Starlite Cruise Line’s Pisces, a ship that holds thirty-five hundred passengers and twelve hundred crew.

  In the frantic few days before we left, Charlotte, who fights anxiety about new experiences by being hyperprepared, insisted we look at every photo on the website and watch video tours of the boat. That’s how we know that there are: Waterslides. Shuffleboard courts. Movie theaters. Shops. A bar made entirely of ice where they give you fur coats to wear. Four different dining rooms. A small planetarium.

  We know that onboard activities include everything from cooking classes to painting parties to improv shows and trivia nights. There are seminars on how to fold towels into animal shapes, ballroom dancing demos, and karaoke and trivia contests. There are fireworks one night—my birthday! Woohoo!—and even one of those “escape room” experiences: a murder mystery you have to solve in an hour.

  The main entertainment area, the Starlite Boardwalk, is on the uppermost deck and mimics an old-timey pier—it has a carousel and ice cream and candy shops and funnel cake stands and games like Skee-Ball and pinball and the balloon race with water guns.

  One level down from there toward the back of the ship is the Aquarius Deck, where a tube ride hovers above the pools like a massive clear serpent. I will not be going on it. Ever since Paul died, I’ve been experiencing a sort of vertigo or dizziness whenever I’m in motion, mostly when riding in the passenger seat of a car.

  I’d suggested at the outset of the planning “something fun” for my birthday that maybe a cruise wasn’t the best idea, all things considered, but my mom said most of the time you don’t even feel like you’re moving. So she’d started keeping an eye on rates and dates around my birthday, and I put the girls “on call.” We were basically waiting for the deep discount you can get if you book last-minute as Florida residents to go deep enough for my parents, which it finally did.

  “At this point it’s practically cheaper than staying home,” my father had said, and that had decided it. I called the girls and told them it was “go time” in three days, and my m
other went out and bought boatloads of Dramamine and seasickness bracelets for all.

  Back through the Supernova tunnel, I’m dumped on a hall heading toward the pools again, so I go with it. It leads me back to the Sail-Away bash, where the steel drums have been replaced by a DJ blasting a wordless dance track—electronic drums spitting out a beat.

  The two main pools are packed with people, laughing and splashing; a toddler wearing a Nemo bathing suit in a kiddie sprinkler area wipes out and starts wailing and is rescued by his mother’s lean arms.

  I go down a winding staircase when I seem to hit a dead end, scanning the crowd as I go.

  He’s not there.

  I pass through a set of automatic sliding doors into the level below Aquarius and walk through a crowded corridor of slot machines, their dinging loud and annoying, like a pack of battery-operated morkies.

  In a piano lounge, a small but committed crowd surrounds a man playing a shiny black baby grand; they are waving their drinks and belting out that song about a piano man—seemingly without irony.

  I end up at an elevator bank and spot a map. I stand there trying to locate myself.

  “Excuse me?”

  It’s a girl who looks maybe nine or ten, holding a gold and black card of some kind. “I need to stand there.”

  “Ellie, don’t be rude,” her mother says. Then to me, “Sorry.”

  I move and the girl steps purposely onto a golden disk on the carpet. She holds her card up, and a painting on the wall reveals itself to be digital; it gives her a clue about a mystery involving a bag of stolen stars while her parents wait with smiles. When they move on, I step back to the map and locate Supernova. Using my finger I find what looks like the opposite of it.

  The Gemini Deck at the rear of the ship on the third level.

  I get into yet another elevator and go down, and the feeling of it all transforms my stomach into a surging sea of excitement. The car stops and an old couple goes to get on, then backs off.

  “Sorry,” the woman says. “We have no idea where we’re actually going.”

  I nod and smile.

  Ditto.

  I go out through a set of heavy glass doors and step out onto the Gemini Deck, but there is no one there—everyone’s too busy having fun in more exciting spots. My lungs cave with disappointment. I thought I’d figured it out. I thought for sure this was where he’d be.

  I take a few deep misty breaths. We’re actually really moving now. Like if I were to jump, I’d land in a different spot. I’m too afraid to actually try it.

  I walk toward the back of the boat and watch the ship’s impossibly massive white wake—like a Jacuzzi for a giant.

  Florida has been reduced to a melted blob on the horizon, and the sun has dialed it down to roast.

  Maybe I should take a lesson from it and calm down some.

  I feel dumb.

  I’ll see him again another time.

  Or maybe I won’t.

  It’s just a cruise. Just a week. Just a guy.

  So dumb.

  I should go get the girls, go back to the cabin, and get ready for dinner.

  I turn.

  “I thought you’d be at least a few minutes longer, you know, like in an attempt to seem all cool and aloof.”

  He is lying on a lounge chair that I wasn’t able to see when I came out, tucked to the side behind a thick winding staircase to an upper deck.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I say.

  He nods at the chair next to him and reaches out to pull it closer to his. “Park ’er here.”

  I walk over, sit down, and stretch out my legs. My skirt is too short; I pull at its edge but it’s no use. I just can’t move … much.

  “So, Natalie, tell me. Is this sail-a-bration of yours what you always dreamed you’d do when you turned seventeen?”

  “Definitely not, no,” I say.

  “Well, then, why are you here? What went wrong?”

  I consider lying, but something in his eyes makes me not want to. I say, “My boyfriend died.”

  He looks pale and stricken for a second and we lock eyes for too long and then he looks away, shakes his head. “I am not often rendered speechless.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Did you kill him?” he asks, turning back to me.

  “What?” I snort involuntarily. “No. Of course not.”

  “Then what are you sorry for?”

  I spot a cloud that is barely holding it together as a cloud. “For telling you that like within the first few minutes of even knowing you. I just mean, I don’t want to be a downer. Sorry.”

  “Yeah, seriously.” He turns and sits sideways on his chair, so very close to me. “That was an awful thing to do to me. To make up for that egregious oversharing you just did, you’re going to have to spend the next”—he looks at his watch—“half hour with me.”

  “Oh, I am, am I?”

  He stands. “I am expected to dine with my parents at six, and I can hardly show up in such a fragile state.”

  “Well, all right, then.” I stand and he doesn’t move, so we are face-to-face, or face-to-chest, and I’m feeling too much something, so I look away and squeeze out from between the chairs.

  I mutter, “Excuse me.”

  I’ve completely forgotten—or maybe never knew—how these things are even supposed to work.

  I met Paul on a class trip to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. There were enough kids in our school that you didn’t really know everyone in your grade. I’d seen him around and thought he looked normal—tall with bad posture to try to make it less obvious how tall—and he usually seemed happy, which was more than most of us could say.

  Winter—the dolphin with the prosthetic fin made famous in the Dolphin Tale movies—was the aquarium’s big draw, but I found him—or maybe he found me—by the tank of a freakish-looking moray eel, its mouth permanently agape.

  “It looks like it just told a joke and is waiting to see if you’re going to laugh,” he said, and I smiled.

  “I’m Paul,” he said, without hesitation.

  “I’m Natalie,” I said, in the same matter-of-fact tone.

  “You know what’s always bugged me about this place?” he said.

  “What?” I was surprised but not unpleased with his frankness.

  “Clearwater Marine Aquarium,” he said. “Like what other kind of aquarium would it be? Like for real. Is that not to be confused with the Clearwater Alien Aquarium? What?”

  I shook my head, quite seriously. “No, it’s because of the Clearwater Human Aquarium down the road. You haven’t been there?”

  “Would you believe I haven’t?”

  “Then we’ll have to go sometime,” I said. “You really have to see the newborn baby tank. It’s the cutest.”

  “Oh my god,” he said, laughing.

  “What?” I said.

  “There is such a thing as going one step too far,” he said. “And you? You took that step.”

  I shrugged.

  He said, “But you’ll still take me there, right?”

  “Sure,” I said, and then we both nodded and it felt like something bigger and real had been decided.

  We rejoined our classmates then, and Paul met the girls after Nora pinched me and asked, “Who’s that?” and we met some of his friends and then we all visited with Winter and learned about the science behind the fin that saved her life and Paul and I exchanged numbers and within the space of a week we went to a movie together and went to the beach together and kissed. We were boyfriend and girlfriend just like that.

  “So this is the part where I say something like ‘What was he like?’ or ‘How did he die?’ Right?”

  “I guess so,” I say.

  We’ve found shuffleboard courts. He is pulling equipment from a rack. He hands me a long pole with a curved plastic head on it.

  “So, um, what was he like?” he says.

  “You know what?” I say. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

 
“Okay, then.” He puts a disk at my feet. “You know how to play?”

  “Nope.”

  He sighs exaggeratedly, shakes his head, and puts his hands on his hips. “Do I have to do all the work in this relationship?”

  I laugh; it feels easy now. “Are you always like this?”

  “You mean, am I always this amazing?”

  I roll my eyes.

  He explains the rules and we each take a couple of turns and I’m not a complete disaster but the mood has changed and I’m not sure why.

  “So what are you doing here?” I ask, brightly, trying to change the mood back. “On a cruise, I mean?” I smile. “You have a T-shirt?”

  “No T-shirt, alas.” He slides his disk and it lands on a ten. “I have business to attend to in Key West.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?”

  “Is that so hard to believe?” He’s faking hurt.

  “In fact, it is.” I take my next shot; the disk slides onto the ten, knocking his out of play.

  “Well, you don’t have to believe it,” he says, readying his next disk. “Makes no difference to me.”

  “You already said you’re with your parents. So—”

  “So maybe it’s family business,” he says, and his disk flies and lands on a fifteen and I think it means he’s won. Then we play another game, not really talking except for stuff like “nice shot” or “no fair!”

  After I win—I think?—he looks at his watch. “I need to go,” he says, putting his pole back in the rack and starting to collect the disks.

  “Yeah, me, too,” I say. I also have dinner at six.

  He turns to me, and stands close. “But for the record, I am not.”

  “Not what?” I ask.

  “Always like this,” he says.

  I nod, waiting to see what he’ll say next. For a moment he’s just looking at me; if I don’t consciously inhale and exhale I might stop breathing altogether.