But it turns out the choking feeling is me realizing that I don’t even like this song, let alone love it.
It’s me realizing I don’t actually like Elvis Moriello at all.
And if that’s true, what other lies have I been telling myself?
I can’t just sit here any longer. He’s not coming. I ask if anyone wants to hit the shops, and Lexi says, “Sure. I’m getting fried anyway.”
Out of nowhere, this guy near us starts to sing at the top of his lungs. He’s belting out “Yellow Submarine.”
Lexi and I look at each other and laugh awkwardly, as we slip our shoes on.
Then another woman joins in and then another two guys and more and there are suddenly maybe twenty people singing about how they all live in a yellow submarine and I turn to Lexi and say, “What the hell?”
She smiles. Charlotte takes out the ship’s itinerary for the day.
“I guess it’s a flash-mob-type thing?” I say.
Nora puts her schedule away. “Nothing on the itinerary about it.”
“Maybe unofficial?” I say.
“Must be,” Nora says.
I study the faces of the people singing, like actors in a musical, trying to figure out what kind of person you have to be to think it’s okay to just burst into song in life. They seem somehow on autopilot, and I wonder if this kind of flash mob feels like that—like an out-of-body-type experience—and whether I’d like it.
I don’t think so.
As quickly as they started, they’re done and they fade back into the crowd as if it had never happened.
“That was weird,” Lexi says.
“I dug it,” Nora says.
He’s in the tie shop—the back of his head silhouetted by a wall of silky colors. “Hold on,” I say.
Lexi stops short and an older woman bangs into her and bags go flying and I help the lady as fast as I can and then walk into the shop—so many ties, all lined up in triangulated rows—and he’s not there.
The suited man at the register looks curiously at me; I back out.
“What?” Lexi says.
“He was here. I saw him.” I look up and down the corridor.
She sighs.
“What? I saw him!”
“I don’t know, Nat,” Lexi says. “I mean, I never even saw you talking to him. And I mean, are you making this up? Just to have an excuse to, I don’t know, ditch us and be alone?”
“You can’t be serious,” I say, though it’s true that I do sometimes bow out of things at home with my own meh excuses. “I’m not making him up!”
I remember the picture I tried to take of him. I get my phone out. “I’ll show you.”
But the picture before the one of the girls on the tube ride isn’t the one I took of him.
It’s a selfie he took.
He is shirtless, standing by the edge of the ship, and he’s doing an old-fashioned sort of salute, two fingers to his forehead.
Does it mean hi or good-bye?
“Here.” I hold out my phone to Lexi. “Look.”
“That could be anybody. That could be something you pulled off Instagram.”
“I’m not making him up!” I scream.
Then Lexi says, “Okay, okay. Calm down.” She pulls me aside, next to the smug mannequins and their sequins. “I mean, you’re doing okay, right? You’re not, like, going crazy without any of us realizing it?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “But I’m freaking out a little.”
More like a lot, actually.
Because why did he take off his shirt there on the deck?
Why did he take the selfie for me?
Lexi sighs.
“I mean, I like him. A lot. There was, you know, chemistry. It was real. So why didn’t he show up? What if he—”
“What if he what?”
Hypnotic pull of the water.
Inches from death.
My head is whirring; my stomach, too. “What if that wasn’t him just now? In the shop. Because his shirt was there on the deck, where we were supposed to meet. And he made me say good-bye to him. He said he didn’t realize how it would feel to be so close to death.”
“What the hell, Nat?”
“I know!” I say, working hard to process it all, to have it make sense in a better way. ”What if he jumped?”
She huffs annoyance.
“Why are you annoyed?”
“I’m annoyed because I want whoever you’re going to like next to not be a douchewad.”
“Douchewad?” I repeat.
“What.” She shrugs. “It’s a word.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not,” I say.
“Listen,” she says. “He did not jump. He was just here, looking at ties. And last night he just couldn’t show up for some random reason that maybe we’ll never know, or he blew you off, and either way, it’s time to get lunch.” She puts an arm around my shoulders.
I very much want her to be right.
She is.
She has to be.
We circle back to grab the girls and hit a buffet. Men wielding shiny knives and wearing white chef’s hats stand by carving stations where meats are lit with orange heat lamps. A raw bar is piled high with flamingo-pink shrimp and veiny oysters. There’s a make-your-own pizza stand and a handful of other choices. The salad bar goes for nautical miles.
Charlotte starts with a plate of Chinese food, eats it, then goes back for a plate of just shrimp and soy sauce, then one more plate for turkey and stuffing, never mixing cuisines on a plate.
Lexi commits to one and only one section: burger, fries, pickles, that’s it.
Nora makes an elaborate salad—adorned with chickpeas and Craisins and feta cheese and some kind of pink vinaigrette—then only picks at it.
I just take whatever I think looks good and don’t care much about how it all goes together.
It’s a miracle that we’re all friends.
“I guess it’s my turn, then,” Nora says, pulling a red onion off her plate and setting it aside.
“Ugh,” I say. I just want to know what the picture means. I don’t want any more theories about what his deal is. I want answers.
“Just let her go, then we’ll pick a winner and be done.”
“Fine.” I eat some chickpea salad.
Nora says, “His name is Jude or maybe Lennon and he’s from Dallas. His parents were, like, big Beatles fans or whatever. And he’s a star student and amazing soccer player and he’s probably going to a big state school in Texas where he’ll join a frat if he isn’t already a freshman there, and he wears like a varsity letter jacket all the time and is a grade A asshole who has slept with like half the cheerleading squad.”
My grip on my fork tightens along with my jaw.
“Last night he thought maybe he could get something started with you but then some other girl came along and he went off chasing her skirt, because that’s just the kind of guy he is and he figured you were too nice for him anyway.”
“Chasing her skirt?” Lexi asks.
“It’s an expression.” Nora sips her water.
I push my chair back and stand. “Why can’t he just be an awesome, cool guy that I met and like and who likes me? Would that be so crazy?”
“It’s just a game,” Lexi says. “We didn’t mean—”
I don’t hear the end of the sentence over voices and sliding plates and metal spoons and ice machines all colliding in midair.
Lexi’s voice punches above it as I exit the room. “Nat! Come on,” she pleads.
She catches up to me by the elevators. “We need to get you a chill pill.”
“I just want to be alone for a minute, okay?” I raise my eyebrows.
“Meet us back at the cabin?” She raises hers.
An older couple is playing cards in shade created by the ship’s own structures. A woman on a lounger with a sleeping baby on her chest holds a paperback right near where he and I talked. A crew member pushes a bin of white towels through a small pu
ddle, and the wheels leave tracks and squeak, mimicking seagulls’ caws. I try to find an actual bird in the sky, but the air is lifeless.
I pick a chair and pull up the selfie. I zoom in on a mark just under his collarbone. It’s a tattoo.
Amelia
Disappointment is a punch to the gut.
A girlfriend.
Has to be.
Charlotte wins.
Why did he bother with me at all?
Attention, all aboard the Pisces. This is your captain speaking. I apologize for the inconvenience, but we need all passengers to report back to their staterooms for a cabin check and head count at three p.m., which by my watch is about thirty-five minutes from now. This process shouldn’t take long, and you’ll be back to your regular cruise activities in no time. So please, if you can, wrap up what you’re doing and head on back to your cabins and await further instruction. We thank you for your cooperation.
I don’t think. I just go.
It’s happening.
It’s really happening.
Lexi’s not right.
I am.
“What do you think is going on?” Nora says, twisting open a beer and handing it to me when I walk into the room. Charlotte’s ordered another bucket.
Vertigo surges as the horizon tilts out the window. I sit down on the bed.
“Do not go to the crazy place, Natalie,” Lexi says.
“What crazy place?” Nora asks.
Lexi says, “She thinks that her guy literally jumped ship. But it’s not possible.”
“Look.” I get my phone out. “Why would he take his shirt off? Why would he take a selfie like he’s saying good-bye? He actually made me say good-bye to him yesterday, like he knew he wasn’t going to show. He talked about being inches from death.”
Nora takes my phone and looks at it, hands it back.
Lexi says, “You just saw him in the tie shop!”
“I think I did,” I say softly. “But now. A head count? I don’t know.”
Nora says, “It does all seem strange. We haven’t even stopped in a port of call yet. Why would they need a head count?”
“I think I should say something,” I admit. “Should I tell them about him? When they get here?”
“I’m going to say something, and I don’t want you to get mad at me,” Lexi says.
“What?” I say.
“Not your circus. Not your monkeys.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means this is not your problem,” she says. “If it’s even a problem at all. He’s just a guy you met once.”
“What if he died?”
“What if he did?” Lexi ups her pitch. “What if it’s someone else who went overboard? Either way, I say we just mind our own business—you know, keep on keeping on with the sail-a-brating—and let them figure it out. He’s just a guy you met. Once. Twice, whatever.”
“You had to be there,” I say. “You don’t understand.”
“We’ve never been the kind of friends to let guys get between us,” Lexi says.
“He’s not getting between us,” I say, but I’m reminded of the Bechdel test from film class and think we’d all fail it in a movie about the cruise so far. Too much talk about boys, for some reason, even though at home we talk about books and movies and the world and school and our families and everything else, too. All the time.
“This cruise is supposed to be about celebrating you,” Lexi says. “Celebrating us. Friends.”
“I’m sorry that I met someone, okay?” I say. “But I mean, cut me some slack. Can’t you? All things considered?”
Regret is instant. It was a bad move to play the Dead Boyfriend Card with my best friends. I can see in their volley of eye rolls that they’re exasperated with me. Maybe I’m exasperated with myself. Maybe that’s why that night with him mattered. Because I felt something. I felt like maybe I could, I don’t know, love again.
Nora says, “I’m going to get some air. Let me know when they’re here.”
The balcony door makes a sucking sound when she opens it and again when she closes it, like it’s drowning—gasping for air.
We went blindly down a YouTube wormhole that time when Charlotte made us look at cruise ship tour videos. We ended up watching a video that someone on board a ship made of a man clinging—unsuccessfully, as it would turn out—to a lifeboat after jumping or being pushed from his balcony. It was hard to see exactly what was happening at first, but then it became terrifyingly clear: he lost his grip and slipped away into the white-black choppers of the night sea. People screamed. Someone yelled, “You killed him!”
“Did that just really happen?” Nora said when we watched.
“Jesus Christ,” Lexi said.
I felt sick that I’d watched that, sick like you feel when they play certain 9/11 footage and sick like news stories of floor collapses at weddings and bloody kids in war-torn countries. Sick with the impossibility of it all, with the reality of how small a person is. How at any second you can get struck down by a bullet or a tree; how a person can look so very tiny against the world, how each of us is nothing more than a speck.
When the knock finally comes, we hide the beers and greet a crew member who is holding some kind of scanner.
“All present and accounted for,” Nora says.
He asks for our key cards and runs them through his device.
“Why are they doing this head count anyway?” I ask. My mouth is dry; my voice unsure. I should show him the picture, tell him what I think.
“Oh,” the man says. “It’s routine.”
“Doesn’t seem routine.” I laugh nervously.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” he says then. “Thanks for your cooperation. There will be another announcement when we’re all done.”
The door thuds closed.
The room’s too crowded. We’re getting cabin fever. Charlotte and Nora climb into their beds just to get out of the way, then Charlotte sits up and says, “Let’s assume it wasn’t Natalie’s guy who went overboard. So who was it?”
“You mean what’s his or her deal?” Nora says.
“I guess,” Charlotte says. “Like, do you think they jumped or were pushed? Like, do you remember the YouTube thing?”
“Who could forget?” I say.
“I’m not sure which is worse,” Lexi says.
“Well, what if he was a terrorist or something?” Nora offers. “Like his travel companion just discovered evidence of his plan to do something awful and they struggled.”
“That’d be okay, I guess?” Lexi says.
“Oooh, I have a two-line movie idea,” Nora says, and she sits up in her bed. “Imagine there’s a girl standing by the railing of one of the decks. And she’s taking video, so we’re in her point of view, and she turns to a noise and it’s a guy coming at her, and she says, “You’re late” and he says something like, “And you’re a bitch” and he’s charging at her and then we just see her camera falling, but it’s clear she’s falling overboard.”
“It’s good,” Lexi says.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” Charlotte agrees.
“We could get Nate or Ben to play the guy,” Nora says, lying back down.
“How would you film the falling phone?” I ask, and repeat the name Ben so it sticks this time.
“I don’t know,” Nora says. “I’ll figure it out.”
That should be the end of it, but I say, “I think it’s kind of depressing. As a concept. And I mean, hello, violence against women.”
“Well, it’s not your movie,” Nora says.
A sudden frost of tension glazes the room.
“It’s also possible,” Charlotte says, “I mean, returning to the game, that it was just, like, an accident. Like he—or she—had too much to drink. And somebody dared him—or her—to sit on the railing or something and then bam, gone.”
I don’t share any theories; I don’t want to have any.
“You guys,” I say. “Can you please stop
?”
The announcement comes that we’re free to leave our cabins, and the whole afternoon takes on a prison break kind of feel. We go roller skating. We ride bumper cars. We play Skee-Ball and pinball. Anything to shake off this feeling of dread.
These are my real guesses:
Julian.
Luke.
Steve.
I’ll see him again and he’ll explain the selfie and he’ll have a perfect excuse for not waiting for me to come back.
Amelia will be a character from a book or movie; maybe the name of his beloved grandmother or cat.
It’ll be no big deal.
I’ll tell him that for a while there, I thought he’d jumped, and he’ll laugh and say something funny, about how trolls are by nature quick to panic.
“Well, I find it all very upsetting,” my mother is saying, when we join my parents at our dinner table. We’re in the Top O’ the Mast restaurant tonight. There is a big fake shipwreck by the entrance—like half a wooden boat sticking out of the floor—and huge plastic fish with bulging eyes on the walls. Where there aren’t mounted fish, there are crowded, frenzied aquariums.
“What’s very upsetting?” I ask.
“It’s just a rumor,” my father says. “No need to get everyone worked up.”
“What’s the rumor?” Lexi dares.
“Somebody fell overboard,” my mother says. “Or jumped! That’s why they needed the head count.”
“Jean,” my father says. “We talked about this.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, on the brink of tears. “It’s just, I’m trying. It’s just …” She starts crying, then uses her hands to wipe away tears—first left, then right, then left, then right—like windshield wipers. “So upsetting.”
My friends all look at me. I don’t know how to handle this any more than they do. I need water. It’s too cold, though—mostly ice.
A bright white fish puts its lips to the front of the tank nearest us. Surely this is a fate worse than death for a fish; to be put in an aquarium on a cruise ship. It seems cruel.
“Do they know who it was?” Lexi asks.
My mother shakes her head. “Apparently a woman says she saw it happen? And someone left a cryptic note about it at one of the bars?”
The Opposite of Here Page 6
