“What about you?” he says. “Are you always like this?”
Words bubble up from a secret place inside me. “I don’t even know what I’m like.”
“Well, this week you can be any way you want to be, right?” he says.
“Well … my friends are here.”
“Ditch those bitches!” He holds up a hand for a high five.
I smile and comply. “Done!”
“There you go!” he says, with fanfare, then we’re quiet for a minute as we go inside and he seems to be studying me for updated data and I have a harder time finding my poker face. “It sucks, I know. Being this person who ends up being defined by some kind of tragedy.”
“Yes.” My throat clogs. “Yes, it does.”
“Where’s your cabin?” he asks.
I tell him my stateroom number.
“Not even close,” he says as he hits the elevator up button.
I hit down.
“What do you miss most about him?” he asks as we wait.
“I said I didn’t want to talk about him.” My necklace itches and I adjust it.
He says, “I think you’re lying.”
“Maybe,” I say.
“It’s his giant penis, right? He had a giant penis?”
“Oh my god, no. Just stop.” I push him and he stumbles backward laughing. I am laughing, too—echoing clear across that canyon inside me.
I like this feeling. I like being surprised by someone.
Surprised, too, by myself.
“Okay, so he had a small penis,” he says. We are both still laughing. “A very small, very soft penis. But surely he had some redeeming qualities?”
“He did,” I say, wiping away tears of laughter. “For one thing, he always knew how to make me laugh.”
“Small penises will do that.”
We both lose it again then finally stop. My stomach hurts, like it just did crunches.
“This is fun,” he says as his elevator arrives.
“Yes, it is,” I say.
“Rematch later?” he says.
“Wait,” I say. “Who even won that last game?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Nine o’clock?”
The doors close before I can say, “Yes,” but I say it anyway.
The boat lurches; I grab a railing, then step into my elevator feeling like maybe cruises aren’t so bad after all.
It’s time to unpack and settle in for the ride.
Welcome aboard the Pisces!
Mandatory GUEST ASSEMBLY Drill; report to the station indicated on your key card at 4:00 p.m. You will not need to wear a life jacket, however you must bring your STARLIGHT KEY CARD. All ship services are suspended between 3:45 and 4:30.
ALL GUESTS MUST ATTEND
Today’s highlights:
4:30 p.m. — Sail-Away Bash on the Aquarius Deck; LIVE MUSIC!
5:00 p.m. — Meet and Greet in the Supernova Teen Lounge
5:00 p.m. — KIDS’ CLUB OPEN HOUSE AND TOUR featuring Dance Floor Fun and Ice Breakers
Walking Ship Tours leave the Atrium every hour on the hour starting at 5:00 p.m.!
7:00 p.m. — ’80s Music “Name That Tune” in the Lunar Lounge
7:30 p.m. — Movie Theme Song “Name that Movie” in the Supernova Teen Lounge
9:00 p.m. — Celebrity impersonator Chris Montell in the Starlite Theater
Shops open when we reach international waters!
I wave my key card in front of the lock and it clicks open. Charlotte is in the shower; Nora’s out on the balcony; Lexi is wearing two towels—one as a turban and one wrapped around her torso and tucked near an armpit. She is reorganizing stuff in her suitcase. “Well …?”
“Found him.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know.” I flop down on the cabin’s only bed. “He’s pretty great. Like maybe amazing. I seriously don’t think I’ve felt this way about anybody since—”
“Whoa, Nelly!” Lexi looks up as she flips her suitcase lid closed.
My hot skin reacts to the air-conditioned cabin with a chill. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just met the guy. So, like, hold your horses.”
“Of course I just met him. We just got here.”
“Okay so don’t get all ga-ga over the first guy you meet is all I’m saying.” She starts to slip clothes on, releasing her towel.
I look away. “I thought you wanted me to move on,” I say. “Out with the cobwebs and all. You’re the one who told me to go after him!”
“Yes, because we’re here to have fun in the sun,” she says. “We are here to let loose and flirt with whoever. We are not here to get all lovey-dovey and serious.”
“I’m not,” I say, weakly.
The four of us are able to share a stateroom because Charlotte, who had different school-year cutoffs in Philly, is actually a year older than us and just turned eighteen. So technically we’re within the ship’s regulations. Our parents also filled out the minor release forms so that we can disembark without them as long as Charlotte’s there. (It also means she can buy alcohol on board, but my parents didn’t seem to note that detail the way we did.)
Lexi and I will be sharing the bed while Nora and Charlotte sleep in bunks—one is the converted sofa; the other pops down from the ceiling to reveal painted constellations.
The staterooms on our hall are serviced by a man from India named Bonny, who introduced himself while double-checking that all our bags had arrived. “I’m here or near here all the time,” he said. “Anything you need, I’m your guy.”
The room is maybe half the size of my bedroom at home but has a balcony, at least, which will help with the sardine feelings and claustrophobia I anticipate. You can even see a part of the captain’s bridge—basically a glass chamber—that juts out a bit farther than the balconies do.
There’s more closet room than we have clothes to hang—and a small safe that we don’t use—but not a lot of drawers; we each get one so will mostly live out of suitcases. It took us a few minutes to figure out that the lights only work if a key card is in this holster by the door. There are two tiny bathrooms—one with a toilet and sink, the other with a shower and sink—and one framed illustration on the wall. In it, a group of people on a tropical island are looking out to sea, waving to a departing cruise ship.
Lexi, now dressed, says, “Oh, and your parents were looking for you in a panic. So you should probably pop your head in over there and tell them you’re alive. Maybe tell them to try to chillax a little, too?”
“Yikes.” I lean up on an elbow and study the Stargazer schedule on the bed. “Where did you say I was?”
“Shopping.”
“It says right here that shops don’t open until we’re in international waters after dinner.”
“Well, I tried,” she said, shrugging and flopping her arms at her sides.
I stand to find clothes for dinner and for my rematch. “I wish you could be a little more excited for me.”
I’m trying to sound more reasonable than I feel. I pull a dark purple sundress out of my suitcase.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She bends to release the towel on her head and shakes out her hair. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
I’m an idiot.
I don’t even know his name.
When I told our film teacher, Mr. Cassidy, that the four of us were going on a cruise for my birthday and would be missing school, he asked me, “Have you ever seen Lifeboat?”
“No,” I said. “What is it?”
“Hitchcock film shot entirely on a boat,” he said. “Not my favorite Hitchcock except they’re all my favorites, as you well know. Oh, and there’s an episode of his TV show set on a cruise ship, too. You should check them out.”
It’s true that we’d studied nothing but Hitchcock for the first few weeks of class, or at least it felt that way. But I hadn’t minded. I’d gone in as a fan, having seen The Birds and Vertigo on a classic movies channel; c
lass only helped me to better understand why I liked them.
“What about The Poseidon Adventure?” Mr. Cassidy said. “Not Hitchcock, mind you, but relevant.”
“Nope,” I said. “What’s that?”
“Shelley Winters? Oscar-nominated role?”
“Not ringing a bell,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with you kids today.”
“Why? What’s the big deal?”
“Look it up,” he said. “The original one. Not the remake.”
So I googled it and found out that it was a movie from the seventies set on a cruise ship. A rogue wave hits the ship and it’s overturned and it starts to sink—upside down. A small group of survivors inside the boat set out for the ship’s hull—hoping for a miraculous rescue at the surface of the sea.
I found it on YouTube and watched it, up until a point where an obese woman character—the Shelley Winters role—has to swim through a flooded corridor in order to attempt a dangerous rescue of another passenger and she has a heart attack right after. It was painful—I cried—and I was too pissed off at Mr. Cassidy to finish watching and I told him so in class the following week.
“You can’t just give up on a movie during the dark night of the soul,” he’d said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That’s the point in a film when all hope is lost and the protagonists must dig deeper than ever before to prevail against the odds stacked against them.”
“Too late,” I said. “Gave up.”
“Trust me,” he said, “you’ll go back to it. You’ll want to know what happens. You’ll need to know.”
I put my dress on, then go out into the hall to knock on my parents’ door since we all decided it was best not to use the adjoining door in case someone was in flagrante delicto (my father’s phrase) or “otherwise indisposed” (him again).
“There you are,” my mother says. “We were worried.”
“Mom,” I say. “Where would I go, exactly? And I’m turning seventeen. I need at least a little bit of free rein.”
“I know, I know.” She nods. “I’m sorry. I just want this week to be special.”
“It already is.” It’s the right thing to say.
The girls pour out into the hall, and I feel for a second like the ship surged or dipped. We four spend an awful lot of time together at home. We have almost all our classes together and three of us are in driver’s ed together and a different three are all on yearbook and glee club and then we still choose to hang out on weekends. When my parents suggested the cruise, it was obvious to me and to them that if I brought anyone I’d have to bring three. It was true that things with Nora had become a bit strained in the past year, but no one seemed to notice that but me. Not even Nora, frankly. But none of the four of us has ever spent a whole week together, so this is uncharted territory. No way to know whether it’ll be smooth sailing or choppy seas.
My parents walk ahead and my friends surround me.
“I thought you said you weren’t ready to meet anyone,” Nora says, so I guess Lexi told her what I said.
I nod. It was true that I’d been saying that for a while. “Maybe I was wrong,” I say.
“Did you make, like, plans?” Lexi asks.
“We said we’d meet up later, yeah.” Like it’s no big deal.
“We’re doing movie-theme-song trivia,” Charlotte says. “You should come. You’ll know more than us anyway.”
“I want to be on Nate’s team,” Lexi says.
I smile. “Are you calling dibs?”
Lexi winks. “Maybe.”
I say, “Maybe you should ‘whoa, Nelly’ yourself.”
“It’s not like that,” Lexi says.
Nora looks at me and says, “Oh, like you’ve never called dibs.”
I seriously have no idea what she’s talking about. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” she says, but I don’t brush it off so easily.
She was there when I met Paul.
But I didn’t think I’d had to call dibs.
Crew members greet us by the dining hall with containers of sanitizing hand wipes. This is a thing we read about in our travel documents—a policy implemented after a whole ship got knocked out by a norovirus. As much as I hate the fake lemon smell of the wipes—and believe, like my parents, in good old soap and hot water—I’m happy to cooperate if it means we avoid spending the whole week taking turns hugging the john.
Our official dinner seating every night is at six, which means if we want to see shows we see the late show. We will rotate through four different dining halls, designated by letter codes on our key cards; our head server and assistant server circulate with us. We can skip the official sit-down meal and opt for some more casual buffet and to-go foods if we want. There is one optional formal night—which happens to coincide with my actual birthday—so we all brought one fancy dress.
Tonight we’ve been assigned the Stargazers’ Garden. It’s massive, like it easily holds five or six hundred people. There are small tables for two with candles glowing in red glass, big round tables for larger parties like ours, and other configurations in between. There are mirrored walls and columns, reflecting lights and silverware and smiling faces, and a gazebo at the end of a sort of garden path lined with gorgeous floral arrangements and small trees. The ceiling is impossibly high-feeling considering we’re on a ship; it’s dark blue with tiny recessed lights that twinkle like stars; piano and chatter and the whish of a fountain fill the air.
We take seats and our waiter introduces himself—Carlos, from Belize—and I wonder if he thinks of this as the opposite of Belize. At the next table a man with a thick Southern accent is saying that the room was inspired by the gardens of Versailles at night, but he pronounces it “versails” and I cringe. Then I order prime rib—“For the Landlubber!” the menu suggests—and wonder if Carlos is also cringing. How is landlubber even still a word?
A ship photographer arrives at our table and snaps pictures of my parents—“and now the girls.” We smile once, then again. We say “cheese” when told to.
My parents have brought a list of all the land excursions, so we review the activities we’ve already booked. Tomorrow is a designated “fun day at sea,” but the day after that we’ll go snorkeling in Grand Turk, then the next day we visit a waterpark resort—The Reef—in Nassau; then there’s a day on the private island, another day at sea, and we’ll cap it all off with a stop in Key West, where we’ll take a tour of Hemingway’s house.
“There may also be a surprise or two thrown in along the way,” my mother says conspiratorially to my father.
Great.
I scan the room again.
I don’t see him and there’s no reason I should, I guess. I didn’t even think to ask his name, let alone his dining room assignment.
During dessert at least four birthdays get celebrated around the room, with staff members clapping and singing.
“I don’t want any of that,” I say as I watch an elderly woman snuff out a candle. I wonder if she made a wish or not. “No singing. Understood?”
My parents both nod, but they don’t look happy about it. After dessert, they excuse themselves to go play a game of ’80s Name That Tune in a bar somewhere. “You girls will be okay?” my mom asks.
“Of course,” we all say, like a Greek chorus.
My father says, “Back in the cabin by midnight.”
The chorus nods.
“So,” Lexi says when they’re gone. “Is he here?”
“I don’t see him,” I say.
“Well, we’ll meet him soon enough,” Charlotte says.
“I don’t know about the theme song thing,” I say.
“What don’t you know?” Lexi asks.
“I just mean, I’ll ask him. But I don’t get the sense that it’ll be his vibe or something.”
“What’s his vibe?” That’s Lexi again. “Anti-movies?”
“I do
n’t know,” I say. “Just more low key.”
“You barely know the guy, Nat,” Charlotte says.
“I know!” I also know all too well that I should be wary of guys I don’t know very well, but this feels different.
“We need to meet him,” Lexi says.
“We absolutely need to meet him,” Charlotte says. “Just go get him when it’s time and bring him to the lounge.”
“Okay,” I say. “I will.”
I look at one of the room’s large columns, and wonder if it would be sturdy enough to climb if I had to escape rising waters like the folks on the Poseidon.
We head for the shops, which have just opened up; there’s a festive feeling about it all, like it’s Christmas Eve and everyone is on a frenzied hunt for last-minute stocking stuffers.
We pop into a clothing store to look at hoodies for Nora, who forgot to bring one, but she doesn’t see any she likes. We look at gowns in the window of a dress shop; even the mannequins seem embarrassed at the level of tack: so many sequins. We pass a candy shop and a tie shop and a jewelry store and a flower shop and then Lexi decides that it’s time to test out Charlotte’s alcohol-purchasing abilities.
We go back to the cabin and pull out the room service menu, and Charlotte gets on the phone and orders a “bucket of beers.”
“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” I say. We sometimes have a beer or two at parties, so it’s not that. It just seems more like there are rules here. Like this is on par with going to a bar, which we’d never think to try at home.
“It goes onto my key card charges,” Charlotte says. “My parents are so busy all the time, they won’t even look at the bill—if they even get an itemized one. I’ll just make sure I buy some souvenirs and stuff.”
“Anyway, it’s only a six-pack—that’s like a beer and a half each,” Nora says. “What’s the big deal?”
“Fine,” I say. “I thought Charlotte would be the one saying no.”
“I’m always saying no,” she says. “I want this week to be different.”
I guess that makes two of us.
When there’s a knock at the door, three of us hide in the bathrooms and Charlotte answers.
The Opposite of Here Page 3
