“Okay,” I say. “Have fun.”
She nods and smiles. “I plan on it.”
The engine’s rumble lends the bed a cheap-motel Magic Fingers mattress vibe. I lay there, under a heavy comforter, like an X-ray blanket, and hope my irritation gets shaken out of me. I picture my skeleton—in black and bright white—floating around in the middle of the sea like cartoon fish bones.
Below us, I picture weary whale moms pulling their offspring out of our way with gentle warnings—“Now just let it pass, then we’ll be on our way.”
I see egotistical sharks racing alongside us and winning—Suckers!
Somewhere, maybe an octopus who doesn’t like his kind marinated and grilled is shaking eight, fisted tentacles up at this ridiculous floating monstrosity.
Or maybe they don’t notice us up here, barely skimming the surface of the deep blue sea where they live, not even registering for those still-undiscovered species that live in caves and corners where light never shines.
It’d be better that way.
I close my eyes, and hope that when I wake up I’ll be transformed into someone who wants to play trivia games and have sing-alongs and sail-a-brate.
Someone who wants to be here and doesn’t care whether she sees him again or doesn’t.
When the girls come in, I pretend I’m already asleep but in my head I’m scripting a two-line movie.
INT. CRUISE SHIP -- CABIN -- NIGHT
A teenager--this is NATALIE--awakes. She looks out the balcony doors, sees the moon is bright. Glances at her friends, still asleep. She gets up, pulls a sundress over her camisole and underwear, slips on flip-flops, and tiptoes to the door, leaves.
INT. CRUISE SHIP -- HALLWAY -- NIGHT
She walks down the empty hall, slips into an open elevator.
EXT. CRUISE SHIP -- DECK -- NIGHT
She spies a teenage boy--let’s call him FINN. We sense she’s been looking for him. She approaches. He’s asleep. She nudges him with her knee. He wakes up.
NATALIE
You stood me up.
FINN
It’ll never happen again.
He sits up, they share a meaningful look. They kiss.
FADE OUT
Pisces Day 2!
We hope you’ll enjoy today’s FUN DAY AT SEA!!!
Highlights:
7:00 a.m. — Sunrise Yoga with Jan on the Gemini Deck
8:00 a.m. — Pools and tube ride open! Mission to Mars rock climbing wall opens!
9:00 a.m. — Shuffleboard Tournament sign-up on the Aquarius Deck
10:00 a.m. — Footprint analysis in the spa followed by spa services raffle
11:00 a.m. — PORT SHOPPING TALK
Matinee movie: A Star Is Born
3:00–5:00 p.m. — Live music in the Atrium: CORAL AND THE REEF
8:00 p.m. — “00Songs”—a cabaret performance like no other in the 360 Degree Theater
9:00 p.m. — Supernova dance party
10:00 p.m. — MARRIED COUPLES’ GAME SHOW CHALLENGE—Atrium
Over breakfast in the Saturn Room—basically a floating diner—it becomes impossible to avoid admitting that I don’t know his name.
“I know his name,” Nora says, then she sips cranberry juice.
“What?” I say. “How?”
“It’s Richard Furbraines,” she says, putting her glass down. “People call him Dick.”
The rest of us stare blankly.
“Dick for brains?” Nora says, like it’s so obvious.
We all crack up; people at the next table stare. My friends and I share sheepish looks, and then Nora says, loudly, “People need to loosen up. It’s like they don’t know they’re on a cruise.”
This is New York Nora. She lives deep inside Florida Nora and takes over her host body a few times a month, usually just to curse in Italian. New York Nora was born on Staten Island and moved to Florida just in time to start high school. She has a New Yawk accent and an Italian-from-Italy grandmother and should totally be on a Mediterranean cruise and not a Caribbean one. She has olive skin—which she of course shares with Florida Nora—and long brown hair with blond underlayers. Her nose is notable and sharply angled, as if carved by a sculptor—but one who had maybe planned for a slightly larger face.
She says, “I think this calls for a round of What’s His Deal?”
This is a game we play in film class sometimes, to talk about how to flesh out character motivation and backstory. If we have any extra time at the end of class, Mr. Cassidy will give us a character’s name and age—sometimes a profession or situation—and asks us what’s his or her deal?
“Yes, yes, perfect,” Lexi says, making miniclaps excitedly. “I’ll go first.”
“Can we just … not?” I say—because I want to believe there’s a perfectly good excuse; because I have my own fantasies about who he is and don’t want anyone else’s—but it’s too late.
“His name is Stephen and he’s from Brooklyn,” Lexi says. “He’s on the cruise with his parents and his sister who is a sophomore at Harvard. He is like the opposite of her—a total underachiever, smokes a lot of pot—and his parents like her better. Because of course. His father is a psychiatrist and his mother is a museum curator. He once did something really awful to some expensive piece of art at an opening, like when he was five or six, peed on a sculpture or something, and his mother has never forgiven him. They sent him away to sleepaway camp every summer of his childhood and are basically counting the days until he goes away to college next fall. They don’t even care where he goes as long as he’s gone. They’re taking a cruise because it’s the parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and the parents are hoping their kids will entertain themselves on the ship and pretty much leave them alone. Also, they figured that with the ship’s security measures and strict alcohol policies, they won’t have to deal with the fact that Stephen has a drinking problem.”
“Next!” I say, and I sip my drink. The game’s more fun when the person isn’t real, isn’t someone you maybe like. I’m already ready to be done with it.
“Let her finish,” Nora says, then she turns to Lexi. “So what happened last night?”
Lexi is preparing her bagel with annoying precision, spreading butter ridiculously uniformly across the surface. She then takes a bite, chews, and swallows.
“Last night,” she says, “he was waiting for Natalie to come back but his sister turned up with a bucket of beers or a bottle of wine or something and she offered him a drink and he couldn’t refuse. But he didn’t want Natalie to meet his sister or maybe didn’t want his sister to meet Natalie so he left and then got drunk.”
She wipes her mouth and looks around the room. “He’ll probably waltz in here any second now, wearing dark sunglasses and looking pale, and he’ll need a greasy breakfast and a beer or two before he’ll feel halfway normal again. And when Natalie confronts him about last night, he’ll lie and say that his parents found him and dragged him to some dumb comedy show with them. Then he’ll act all cool and distant and he’ll be cagey about making plans and Natalie will realize he’s a jerk and move on. Life’s too short—and a cruise is definitely too short—to waste on some loser.”
She looks up at me, then; they all do.
I put down my fork—I’m not really hungry anyway—and clap slowly three times. “That was a very nice piece of fiction,” I say.
“My turn,” Nora says.
“You guys,” I moan. “Come on. Let’s go do something.”
“Rock climbing?” Charlotte suggests, looking up from the daily schedule.
“Sure,” Lexi says.
“Really?” I say.
“Why not?” Nora asks.
“We never go rock climbing at home. Why here? I was thinking we’d hit the pool? Get a good spot?”
Nora says, “Please don’t tell me you’re going to want to sit there all day looking for this guy.”
“Of course not.” I stiffen. “Anyway, you can do whatever you want to.”
>
Lexi stands. “Rock climbing, then pool. All of us. Together.”
“Fine,” Nora says.
“Fine,” I say.
Up on the Boardwalk Deck, we find the Mission to Mars wall, which I guess is supposed to mimic the planet’s rocky terrain. Starlite really knows how to work a theme.
We have to get fitted for climbing shoes and harnesses, and it all takes longer than I thought it would. The wall is sort of an indoor/outdoor setup that looks maybe three stories high. We’re given a quick lesson in belaying—which means one of us is on the ground controlling the harness as another of us climbs—and how you communicate. You say “On belay” when you’re hooked up and then “climbing” to indicate you’re on the move and need some slack. When you’re done you’re supposed to say “lower” or “lowering,” which is obvious enough, I think, that it’s silly we’re being taught it.
Lexi climbs with me on belay. She’s a natural athlete—she plays softball and soccer at home—and scales the wall effortlessly. She rings a bell at the top, then bounces down like she does this every day.
When she says she has to find a bathroom I end up climbing with Nora belaying for me.
I don’t even really want to but it’s like there’s this inertia about it all because the guy’s giving us instructions and everyone else is doing it and I’m here so I may as well?
So I concentrate hard on the climb, on my grip. I learned from watching Lexi that it seems to work better to let the feet do most of the work and have the hands follow. I climb and climb, at one point grabbing a “rock” that looks like an alien face. It startles me at first—someone’s idea of a joke—and I hesitate to grab the Martian and almost slip off the wall.
I’m concentrating so hard that I don’t actually realize how high I am until I’m within reach of the bell. I look down and my panic triggers vertigo spins.
Someone’s shouting, “Go for the bell,” but I’m frozen. I can’t do it. Can’t move a hand. I can’t think of the word that I’m supposed to say to the belayer.
“I want to come down,” I manage, but the rope remains tight.
I close my eyes and feel the world spin and one of my feet slips and I drift out from the wall and grab my way back.
“I want to come down!” I yell.
Their voices rise and blur.
She says she’s done.
What?
Let her down.
She’s supposed to say—
Just let her down.
The rope slackens, and I jump down and hit my knee hard on the Martian face. I arrive at the ground feeling angry. I struggle to unhook myself with shaky hands that have tightened up like I’ve betrayed them by doing this at all.
“What’s wrong?” Lexi asks.
“I was trying to get down forever,” I say.
“You’re supposed to call out ‘lower’ or ‘lowering’!” Nora says. “And anyway, it was only like thirty seconds.”
“Can we just get out of here?” I say.
But where’s Charlotte?
She’s over there. She’s climbing hard and fast, with one of the guys she’d had her eye on at trivia belaying for her. When she comes down he says, “Nice climb,” and she smiles this free sort of smile I swear I’ve never seen on her before and says, “Thanks.”
She spots us and says, “I’ve got to go” to him, and then strides over to us.
“Who’s the guy?” Nora asks.
“Oh, that’s Shaun,” Charlotte says, sounding uncharacteristically relaxed. This week is going to be different for her after all.
“Come on,” Lexi says. “Let’s hit the pool.”
“You couldn’t tell that I was freaking out?” I say to Nora on the way back to the cabin to change.
“No,” she says. “I couldn’t.”
We find four loungers facing the main pool and settle in with sunscreen and lemon waters and magazines. Charlotte and Nora go swimming right away, but I’m not hot enough. Or so I say.
I watch and wait, scanning the crowd with secret service–level commitment. If he’s here, sir, I’ll find him.
“You coming in?” Lexi asks me more than once. Then she pokes me a few times and says, “Come on. All the cool kids are doing it.” But I just say, “No, I’m good.”
After a while, they decide to brave the tube ride. I say, “Have fun” and do another sweep of faces.
“You’re seriously not coming?” Nora says, standing and taking off her hat.
“I’m seriously not coming,” I say. Where the hell is this guy?
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I’m not in the mood.”
“But if you never try it, you never know if you’ll like it.”
“I know that I don’t want to. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’m not sure it is,” Nora says.
“I’m not sure I even know what we’re arguing about,” I say.
She shakes her head and walks off; Lexi follows after shrugging at me. “You’re really not coming?”
“I’m really not coming!” I repeat, then I roll my eyes when she turns to leave.
It’s like Sydney Bay all over again; I haven’t changed a bit.
I add the tube ride to my scanning area. Maybe he’s been zooming around over my head and I didn’t know it. I’ve been sleeping on the job after all.
Now that I’m alone, it officially feels like a stakeout.
Conversations drift by …
Oh, no, we still have the house in Pennsylvania.
I heard she was blond. And naked.
I hope she doesn’t drop an f-bomb in kids’ camp.
But I am focused in my task. I only get distracted once, when two crew members and a captain-looking type with a hard hat on talk urgently to one another, like intrigue is afoot. Hopefully not the dreaded norovirus.
A bearlike middle-aged man with thick, dark body hair sinks into the pool in front of me, then pushes back into a float.
A young mom struggles to put sunscreen on a squirmish girl with white-blond hair, like mine.
A lounging elderly couple with hats and sunglasses are either sound asleep or dead.
It’s a solid twenty minutes before Lexi and Charlotte appear in the clear tube overhead. They sit up and look down and wave at me, and I hurry to take their picture, then they disappear behind the ship’s massive smokestack.
Nora appears next. She’s in a tube on her own, and she doesn’t look down at me, doesn’t wave, only faces straight ahead. I don’t take a picture.
They come back and talk about how fun it was and how I really have to try it, and then Charlotte says, “Can it be my turn? I’m feeling inspired.”
“Your turn to what?” I ask.
Lexi puts on a broadcaster voice and says, “To play What’s His Deal?!!!!”
Charlotte spreads her towel on her chair, sits down, and closes her eyes, then opens them and puts sunglasses on, then lies back again. “He’s from California.”
I groan.
She keeps going. “His name is something boring beyond belief, like John. He’s here with his dad, who’s divorced from his mother and is an out-of-work Disney performer–type guy who is probably gay. They’ve never really bonded, but Mom insists her ex take his son on a vacation every year, and this is it. The dad likes cruises because he doesn’t have to pay so much attention to the kid, like if it were just the two of them on some road trip or something. The mom hasn’t handled the divorce well at all. She’s dating some boring guy who’s rich and she lords that over her ex, but he knows she’s miserable and so does her son.”
Lexi and Nora are listening and chuckling while they wring their wet hair out.
“You’ve all gone crazy,” I say. The captain dude is back, marching with purpose across the deck, jaw clenched.
“Anyway,” Charlotte says, “last night, he was up there waiting for you to come back and thinking about your hot body and then he remembered he has a girlfriend.”
“Ooooh,” Lexi
says.
“Nice,” Nora says.
“And he felt guilty enough that he decided he should just bail on you,” Charlotte continues. “When you see him again, he’ll be all apologetic about it, but he’ll say he can’t risk what he has with Lindsey even if yes, he’s very attracted to you. And that you should stop thinking about him and go have fun with your friends.”
“Brava,” Lexi says.
“I’m glad you’re all having fun at my expense,” I say.
Lexi pinches my thigh. “Lighten up, birthday girl.”
Nora says, “What was so great about him anyway?”
I shrug it off. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“What wouldn’t I understand?” Nora snaps.
Surprised by her tone, I calmly say, “I just mean you haven’t liked anyone in forever.”
She looks madder than seems logical. It’s a fact that she hasn’t expressed any interest in anyone at school or elsewhere in like a year or more.
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Lexi says, “Yeah, she didn’t mean anything by it,” and I’m not sure why she felt the need to repeat what I’d just said except that it’s possible my “sorry” sounded like “not sorry.”
“And anyway,” I say. “It’s impossible to explain, isn’t it? Why anyone likes anyone or anything? You just do.”
“You’re saying that you’re not responsible for who you like?” Nora asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess? I mean it’s either there or it isn’t, right?”
The Aquarius Deck DJ picks that exact moment to play a song by Elvis Moriello, this British singer-songwriter that Paul worshipped and introduced me to. It’s like I’ve got something lodged in my throat; I can’t swallow, can’t breathe.
We loved this song.
The album it was on was our soundtrack when we’d make out in Paul’s basement or car.
I really don’t want to hear it right now.
Not here.
Not now.
Not ever.
I adjust my necklace in case it’s that, but it’s not.
The song goes on and on and it’s wrenching.
How do you give yourself the Heimlich again?
The Opposite of Here Page 5
