The Opposite of Here

by Tara Altebrando

  Then, giggly, we head out to the balcony and the water is lit up like a tropical pink drink and life feels like this wild and unpredictable sort of thing.

  I think I like it.

  Our punishment, as Mr. Cassidy called it, for missing four days of school in the middle of November is this: each of us has to shoot a two-line film while on board the ship.

  Exactly two lines of dialogue.

  We each have to turn in a properly formatted script—likely a page or less—and show the film on our return.

  “How are we supposed to do that?” Charlotte said when we were given the assignment.

  Mr. Cassidy wagged his phone in the air. “Surely at least a few of you have iPhones? With cameras?” He knew we all did.

  He went on a tirade against the “Falling in Love montage” that day, complaining that it’s a cop-out to just show two people doing a bunch of cute things together while some happy/dramatic song plays and expect audiences to believe they’re falling in love. He said it was a screenwriter’s responsibility to put the chemistry on the page.

  We talked about tropes that day, too. And he suggested that we could each find inspiration, potentially, if we identified some of our favorites. Along with the rest of the class, we put together this master list of tropes on the smart board.

  Man against nature. Dark family secrets. Limited settings. Big comic misunderstandings (misheard dialogue). Stories about “chosen ones.” Star-crossed lovers. Class wars. Holy Grail–type quests. It went on and on, and when we were done we were each asked to pick our favorite storytelling trope.

  “Technology run amok,” Lexi said. “Always a good time.”

  Mr. Cassidy smiled.

  When it was Charlotte’s turn she went for “underdogs.”

  Nora picked “star-crossed lovers.”

  Finally, Mr. Cassidy turned to me. The words on the board seemed to swim. I said, “How do you pick just one?”

  He isn’t at the shuffleboard courts at 9:01 or :02, and for a second I am ill with nerves—or am I mildly seasick? Or wait, buzzed?

  I stand by the edge of the ship, then back away.

  I’m allowed to have a little fun. Like Lexi.

  And he will show.

  I have no reason to believe he won’t, even at 9:06.

  I imagine Paul on his cloud-throne again, and wonder what he’d think of all of this—of me waiting on a guy. Of me, moving on. A tide of anger rises in me because I’m angry that I even have to move on. For once I had actually liked where I was.

  I take my phone out of my small purse—phone, lip gloss, key card—because I want to take a picture. I say, “You’d do the same thing.”

  “What, exactly, would I do?”

  I almost drop my phone in the Atlantic.

  Not a reply from the heavens, no.

  The relief that he turned up is like a first inhale after an accidentally too-deep dive. He’s wearing cement-gray shorts and a short-sleeved white linen button-down shirt. He looks easily three years older than he did earlier and 200 percent more handsome. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Were you having a moment?”

  “I was,” I say. “And you saved me from it.”

  “Uh-oh, not a good moment, then?”

  “Not the best,” I say.

  Then he says, “I’ve got chairs over there. I was having a Coke and got you one.”

  As we move toward the chairs, I say, “For a second I thought you weren’t going to show.”

  “For a second I wasn’t going to,” he says, unbothered.

  “Oh no?” I say.

  A father and son start to take out the shuffleboard equipment, but whatever. I wasn’t that interested in a rematch anyway.

  “No.” He smiles broadly; his teeth straight like soldiers. “I mean, I was sitting here and looked over and saw that you were here and I was reminded of just how hideously ugly you are. I mean, for real are you like part troll or something?”

  “Hey!” I elbow him. It’s only funny because I know it’s not true. I’m no bombshell—though I am super blond with blue eyes—but I’m no troll either.

  “But then I felt bad.” He turns to face me straight on when we arrive at the chairs. “I mean you looked so lonely. This sad, lonely half-troll girl—”

  “Quit it—”

  “And, well, I’m a nice guy. So I stuck around. Do trolls even like Coke?”

  “Well, thanks. Thanks a lot. And yes, yes we do.”

  “Hey, where are your friends anyway?” He hands me the soda and walks to the railing and I follow. “Shouldn’t you all be sail-a-brating? I feel bad I stole you away.”

  “Movie-theme-song trivia. They want to meet you.”

  “Ah, but do I want to meet them?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?” I laugh.

  He shrugs. “I don’t know. Do you want me to meet them?” He drains half of his drink.

  “Of course,” I say, “and also, not really.”

  “Aha!” He smiles. “You do want me all to yourself.”

  “Who are you?” I say.

  He takes a second to think, then says, “Who do you want me to be?”

  “I want you to be you.”

  “But what do you want me to be for you?”

  “I don’t understand,” I say.

  He shrugs. “I saw you. At dinner.”

  “Why didn’t you say hi?” So he’s in the same dining hall rotation after all.

  “Didn’t feel right. You looked, I don’t know. You looked like you were somewhere else and it wasn’t a happy place and I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome there.”

  “Really?” I think back on our meal, on my mood.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way but have you, like, talked to someone about it? Like a professional, I mean?”

  “I haven’t felt the need.” A simple truth. “I mean, yeah, I’ve been sad. And mad. But my parents and friends have been great, so it’s okay, all things considered.” I can say anything. “It was a car accident. So, you know, I didn’t get to say good-bye, and that still feels hard.”

  “Good-byes are overrated,” he says, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “I don’t think so.” I shake my head.

  “Oh, hey, boyfriend,” he says in a high-pitched voice. “I know you’re going to die and that this is the last time I’m ever going to speak to you and the next bunch of days and weeks and maybe even years are going to suck big-time but I really just wanted to take a moment to say good-bye because that’ll really make me feel better about losing you forever.”

  “All right, all right.” I smile. “I guess I see your point. You ever lose anyone?”

  “I lost my dad,” he says, and I am about to reach for his arm or hand and say something, but I’m not sure what since the stuff people say is all so dumb. But then he says, “It was only for a couple of hours, though, at the mall. I found him in the food court.”

  “Come on,” I moan. “Be serious.”

  “Here’s the thing about loss,” he says.

  “Enlighten me,” I say sarcastically.

  He smiles surprise at me. “The ones that really sting are simply the ones that weren’t supposed to be next. There’s an order to things. Great-grandparents. Grandparents. Great-uncles. Old people first, you know? Men before women; it’s only polite. Anyway, I’m just saying there’s nothing particularly tragic about a ninety-nine-year-old dying. Unless by some miracle her mother was still alive, you know? We only get upset when things happen out of order. It’s all about who’s next in line to die for each individual experiencing the loss.”

  “Next in line to die,” I say. “You’re serious. This is your theory?”

  “Yes and I stand by it.”

  “Who’s next in line for you?”

  “One grandparent who’s hanging on. Then my parents. Ideally, my father first, then my mother. Then my older brother.”

  “You’re crazy,” I say. “And you still didn’t answer the question.”

  “No, I have
not answered.” He turns to me. “And I would rather not, if that’s okay. At least not now, not yet.”

  “Of course,” I say.

  He turns to face the water, and we stand silently for a while. He leans over the railing, and I panic and reach for him, grabbing his shirt to pull him back. He’s too tall to lean like that. The railing should be higher.

  “Easy,” he says. “I just want to look straight down.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. The water has a … hypnotic, for lack of a better word, allure.”

  I let go.

  He’s right that the ocean is officially too big, too deep, too mesmerizing. You can lose your way just looking at it.

  He says, “We’re something like eight stories high.”

  “I can’t look.” Then it’s as quiet as it can be with the white noise of waves and wind and the boat’s engine.

  “I didn’t know it would feel like this,” he says.

  “Didn’t know what would feel like what?”

  “Being inches from death.” He turns to me abruptly, and I almost gasp at our closeness; his gaze so intense, so direct. “What’s it like?”

  “What’s what like?” I say, sort of laughing. “You’re not making sense.”

  He looks down at those eight stories again. “Falling in love.”

  Oh.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I say.

  Is it possible it feels like this and I’ve forgotten? Or never knew?

  Maybe I never fell, and just was.

  He says, “Anyway, dollface—”

  “Whoa-whoa-whoa,” I say, shaking my head. “You talk to girls like that? For real?”

  He shrugs. “My girlfriend doesn’t mind.”

  I’m not going to be able to hide my disappointment; my poker face crumbles.

  “But she has an inflated sense of self … being an inflatable doll and all.”

  Relief again. “Oh my god, do you ever stop?”

  “As I was saying, dollface. It’s time for us to take a dip in the pool.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I honestly don’t know how you expect to go in a hot tub wearing that.”

  “Who said anything about a hot tub?”

  “I did.” He walks over to a lounge chair. “Just now. Please try to keep up.”

  I follow and sit, balancing my phone on the vinyl strips of the chair, near my back. I put my glass down on a small side table and he does the same with his.

  “Your phone won’t work this week,” he says. “You realize that.”

  “I do,” I say. “I thought I might want the camera.”

  “Hashtag cruisin’, hashtag blessed, hashtag latergram?”

  “Something like that.” I try to take his picture, but he pulls his shirt collar up over the front of his face and puts up his hands.

  Muffled, he says, “You need to go put on a swimsuit.”

  “What about you?” I say.

  Now he lifts the bottom edge of his shirt to reveal he has swim trunks on under his shorts; the glimpse of his belly skin makes me tingle.

  “I am nothing if not prepared,” he says. “Now go.” He waves his hands at me, shooing me away.

  “Okay.” I stand. “Be right back. Hey, what’s your name anyway?”

  He crosses his arms on his chest. “When you come back, I expect you to have three amazing guesses. But here are a few clues. It’s not Chico. Or Xavier. Or Angus.”

  I smile and nod. “Noted.”

  I’m about to go when he calls out, “Natalie?”

  I turn and he stands up and looks really seriously at me for a minute and then he says, “We should say good-bye.”

  “But I’m going to be right back.”

  “Just in case.”

  “In case of what?”

  “Rogue wave? Alien abduction? Iceberg? Romaine? Anyway, you’re the one who’s such a big fan of good-byes.”

  I smile. “Good-bye, dollface.”

  “Well done,” he says, and nods, then he sits back down in his chair. He lifts the leather bar tab holder from the table. “Oh, hey, can you just leave this on the bar on your way past?”

  “Sure.” I take it from him, slide it on the bar, which doesn’t actually appear to be open, as I pass.

  When I step out of the elevator on our stateroom level, familiar voices float to me.

  “Just give it time. You’ll get over it.”

  Heavy confusion slows my steps.

  “What you do is you box it up and you push it out yer window.”

  Yes, that’s definitely Lexi.

  “I’m trying.”

  And that’s definitely Nora.

  “Box. Window. Done.” Lexi sounds firm.

  “Okay, okay.” Nora is annoyed but resigned.

  They round a corner and nearly bump into me.

  “Jesus,” Nora says.

  “Aaaaah, you scared the crap out of me,” Lexi says, grabbing my arm with one hand and putting her other hand to her heart.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” Nora snaps, and Lexi doesn’t offer up an answer beyond that. She just says, “Seriously, I think I just lost a year of my life.”

  Maybe they were talking about the awful night I had at Nora’s house about a year ago, a night she and I have never actually spoken about. But maybe it’s finally time to get it all out in the open? I’ve told myself that if I give it time, I’ll get over it, too. Maybe the same thing happened to her.

  I say, “Where’s Charlotte?”

  “She’s saving our table at the trivia thing. What are you doing back here?”

  “Changing into my swimsuit to go hot tubbing.”

  “Atta girl!” Lexi says. “That’s more like it.”

  “You said you were bringing him to trivia,” Nora says.

  “Changed my mind,” I say.

  “Well, have fun and be smart,” Lexi says.

  “Always,” I say, except then realize I left my phone up on the deck chair. So maybe not always. I wasn’t smart that night at Nora’s house either.

  “Come on,” Nora says. “We’re late.”

  “Why are you back here anyway?” I ask.

  “I needed a sweater,” Nora says. “So I borrowed one of yours. Hope that’s okay?”

  “Of course,” I say. “What’s mine is yours.” She gives me a funny look as she slides my sweater on.

  I head out again after I’ve put my suit on.

  Skipper, Alvin, and Rhys will be my guesses.

  Or maybe Hercules, Vernon, and Han, as in Solo.

  My phone is right where I left it. But there is no sign of him. I sit down to wait. Maybe he had to go to the bathroom. It would have been nice if he’d thought to bring my phone with him. Someone could have stolen it.

  Something white—a towel?—flutters on a chair farther away.

  No, not a towel.

  I walk over for a closer look, and it turns out it’s his shirt.

  I reach for it, and I don’t know why but I hold it close to smell it—salty sweat and some woodsy cologne. When I pull it away I see I’ve left a tiny pink smear of lip gloss on it.

  Crap.

  I sit with confusion for another minute before it occurs to me that maybe this is a bread crumb trail.

  I head off in search of hot tubs, following signs and climbing an outside set of metal stairs to an even higher deck. I find two hot tubs—sending steam up into the air—beside a long bar. There are four people in each tub—lobsters in a pot—but none of them is him.

  The bartender is wiping up a thick red liquid.

  “Can I help you?” he says as I approach.

  “Was there a guy here, like, a few minutes ago? Around my age? Really tall? Possibly not wearing a shirt?” I hold the shirt up to lend my story more credibility.

  He shakes his head. “No, sorry.”

  “Are there any other hot tubs on board?”

  “Just the one on the Aquarius Deck, miss.
By the tube ride?”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  You can’t get there from here, at least not easily. I have to go in and then up four decks, then out again. The tube ride is lit up and otherworldly, like I’ve stumbled into an alien movie and this is the futuristic science lab.

  When I look over at the hot tub, all I see are breasts. They belong to five or six older girls in bikinis, sitting with their feet in the tub, holding drinks. So a different kind of movie.

  I wonder what’s going to become of me and my friends after high school.

  This is pointless.

  I go back up to the Gemini Deck for one last look. I put his shirt back where I found it. The moon lights a strip of sea like a searchlight. Cresting white waves bob and fade.

  I sit until it’d be too embarrassing to still be here if he did show up.

  He’s not coming.

  “That was fast,” Nora says. “Wait. Why are you dry?”

  “He wasn’t there.” I join them at their table with their boys in the lounge. The movie game answers are being revealed, and people are ticking off their choices as correct or not. A blip of the Titanic theme song plays, and it seems to me like a poor choice to have in the mix, all things considered.

  “Whatever,” Lexi says. “Asshole.”

  Nora has checked off the Titanic answer on her sheet as correct.

  “I’m tired,” I say, because my anger has subsided and my heart is trying to squeeze between ribs to hide. I’d been foolish to let myself get so worked up. “I’m heading back to the cabin. Anybody want to come?”

  “Soon,” Nora says as the announcer says, “This was our next clip,” and the room fills with high-pitched orchestra sounds that feel ominous.

  “That one,” he says, “was Vertigo.”

  Nora x’s her guess off and says, “Should’ve known that one, I guess.”

  “Charlotte?” I ask, thinking she’s more likely to want to turn in early. She has a habit, on Fridays, of making plans with us—movies, bowling, whatever—then deciding when she gets home from school that she just wants to stay in with her parents.

  “Soon,” she says to me, and she indicates a table near us with exaggerated eyes, so I look and see two guys. They’re black and look like brothers or maybe cousins—something in the cheekbones—and one of them looks Charlotte’s way.