The Opposite of Here

by Tara Altebrando

  “Sure,” I say. “Of course.” I see my parents coming toward me. “Gemini Deck at nine?”

  “Thank you thank you.” He clasps his hands together in gratitude, and then he takes a few backward steps away from me and then turns and heads down the corridor. I watch until he turns a corner, out of sight.

  “What are you doing, Nat?” Lexi says, while we wait for the elevator that will deliver us to the ice sculpture competition. My parents have decided on a show instead.

  “Nothing,” I say. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not getting involved with random drama on a cruise ship, that’s what I’m doing.”

  “I’m not getting involved,” I point out. “I’m already involved.”

  The first elevator to arrive is the glass one. After we get in and go down a few levels, we’re looking out at the Atrium. I scan the crowd as we drop and stop and drop and stop.

  “But you can be less involved,” Lexi says.

  Charlotte and Nora are both mute; they do this sometimes when Lexi and I are in a thing. They just seem to glaze over like they don’t hear us at all.

  “I just want to see him again, okay?” A woman walks into the Atrium to the delight of her children and husband. The children, two girls, run to her. “I need to know why he blew me off. And I want to know who Amelia is.”

  “Who’s Amelia?”

  “He has a tattoo. Ray, the first one. It says Amelia.”

  “Why do you care?” Lexi presses.

  I care because I lost someone, and maybe he did, too—maybe it was a grandmother, or even just a cat—and maybe that explains part of why I felt such an instant bond with him. But I don’t want to say that. I resent being pushed.

  I say, “I just do! Why does anyone want anything?”

  The doors open and Charlotte and Nora step out, maybe wishing they didn’t even know us. When Lexi and I go to get off, a family that is too eager to get on has to stop and back out of our way, like a parting of the seas.

  The evening drags on. I should’ve told him to meet me earlier.

  One man with a small chain saw carves an old pirate ship with tall sails out of a block of ice; the other makes a castle. The pirate ship wins with louder applause.

  We stop at a homemade ice cream stand on the Boardwalk. The flavors are aggressively quirky, like with basil and sweet corn. I get cilantro and lime and don’t love it, but my stomach’s off from nerves so who knows.

  We ride the small carousel; it’s just four of us and that seems somehow fitting and also dumb. Nora opts for a chariot-like bench with King Triton’s face painted in glittery colors. I’m on a gray dolphin behind Lexi, who’s on a yellow sea horse, who’s behind Charlotte, who’s on a clown fish. When we get off I feel dizzy and stay away from the ship’s rails, because one man-overboard scare per cruise is probably plenty.

  Lexi realizes she’s lost her key card, so we retrace our steps but then end up at the guest services desk; they make her a new one.

  We head to Supernova for a retro video game challenge. Lexi’s the only female contestant. She aces all these games I’ve never even seen, never knew she could play. In her last round, it’s a game like Crossy Roads, only it’s a frog trying to cross a busy highway and then some rivers packed with floating logs and snapping crocodiles.

  I watch as an overly pixelated alligator eats her final frog alive.

  Lexi groans but she ends up taking second place anyway.

  Nate takes third.

  The first-prize winner is Charlotte’s pal Shaun, and she high-fives him; their hands seem to magnetize for a minute.

  I slip out.

  INT. CRUISE SHIP CABIN -- DAY

  A teenage girl--this is NATALIE--stands by the window. Birds are gathering ominously on the railing. She turns, exits the room with a shawl wrapped dramatically around her shoulders.

  INT. CRUISE SHIP HALLWAY -- DAY

  Natalie walks down the hall; the ship is lilting, making it hard for her to walk straight. She punches an elevator button, gets in.

  INT. ELEVATOR -- DAY

  She’s alone. The numbers light up so very slowly.

  EXT. CRUISE SHIP DECK -- DAY

  Natalie arrives on an empty deck. Empty but for a crew member who is mopping up some kind of red liquid. Blood? Strawberry daiquiri? She goes to the rails, pulls her shawl closer. A boy approaches and she turns when she hears him. Studies him.

  NATALIE

  You have to tell me who Amelia is.

  BOY

  No, I don’t.

  He’s waiting for me, sitting on the edge of a lounge chair. He stands as soon as he sees me. “Hey, thanks for coming.”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Let’s talk over here,” he says, and he leads me to two cushy armchairs near where I believed I was falling in love with his brother. Nearby, there’s a big stack of the same loungers Ray and I sat on, and I wonder which ones are the exact ones, wonder how long they held our heat.

  “I was hoping you’d just run me through how you met my brother, what he said, everything.” Michael’s eyes are alive with curiosity.

  “I don’t know how to do that,” I say. “I mean, we sort of covered a lot of ground pretty quickly.”

  “Oh, now I get it,” he says, and an emotion I can’t quite read—disappointment? envy?—darts through his features.

  I take a moment to study him in detail—full lips, dark lashes, sleeves rolled up to reveal light brown hair on muscular arms. I say, “Get what?”

  “You like him.”

  “I didn’t say that.” There’s a vein in his arm that’s so distracting; it makes him somehow too real.

  “Didn’t have to.” He half smiles. “But anyway, that’s neither here nor there. So would you just tell me the basics? Please?”

  I tell him about the teen lounge. Vodka. My sail-a-bration.

  I tell him about the opposite of here.

  I tell him about shuffleboard and my dead boyfriend.

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Michael interrupts at that. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

  I say, “Well, it’s not like you killed him, so you don’t have to be sorry.”

  He says, “You know what I mean.”

  I nod.

  “I mean, like, are you okay?” he asks.

  I nod again, less sure this time.

  We’re quiet against the loud ship and ocean and world. Then I tell him about being near the edge of death, and the hot tub idea, and how his brother made me say good-bye and called me dollface.

  “And you said something about a picture?”

  “It looked like he was saying good-bye—sort of waving or salu- ting? And he’d taken his shirt off. I’d show you but my friend deleted it.”

  “Did he talk to anyone else that you saw?” His eyes are now deep pools of interest. “When you were together?”

  “No. Why do people keep asking me that?”

  “He didn’t ask you to do anything odd?” A flat pebble of concern skims through his gaze.

  I shake my head, “No,” and the ripples settle when he blinks.

  He nods and stands. “I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me, so thanks. You may now resume your sail-a-bration.”

  I stand, too, reluctantly—wanting for him to ask me to stay, wanting him to ask me more questions so that maybe my own answers will help me better understand what I felt for his brother and what I’m feeling now—and how they’re the same or different.

  But I’m the one with the question. I say, “Who’s Amelia?”

  He looks oddly devastated, then his whole body tenses, like preparing for impact. “Why? What did he say?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “In the photo, I saw his tattoo.”

  “You should go,” he says. “You should just forget you ever met him. Okay?”

  I say, “Tell me who she is and I’ll go.”

  “You need to forget about him.” He sounds a little unhinged now. “And if you see him, seriously, do
not talk to him. Just walk away.”

  “Why?” I have to fight an urge to cry creeping up inside me. “You’re scaring me.”

  “See this?” He reaches for a braided string bracelet on his left wrist. It looks old, soft, delicate. “I never take it off. You see one of us, you make sure you see this, because then you know it’s me. If you don’t see it here, it’s not me. And you walk away. You don’t listen to a word he says, you don’t make eye contact. You walk away and you find me or you go back to your parents or friends. You do not engage.”

  “Okay …,” I say slowly, my hand going to my neck. My necklace.

  “Promise me you won’t talk to him,” he says, and it sounds like an irrationally desperate plea, considering we barely know each other.

  “Okay,” I say. “I promise.”

  We stand there staring at each other and he steps closer and for a second I sense menace emanating from him but then his body softens and he moves closer still and he shakes his head and says, “I just can’t tell you more. I’m so sorry.”

  Behind us voices rise up. “That’s him there!” a man in a Mets cap shouts.

  Two cruise employees approach and say, “You’re going to have to come with us” to Michael.

  “What’s going on?” Michael says.

  “Just come with us.”

  “Why?” he pleads.

  “We’ll explain in the office,” one of them says.

  Michael looks at me—“Thanks again, Natalie”—then nods at the men.

  As they escort him away, one of them says, “Miss, you really shouldn’t be out here alone.”

  His words are a smack.

  I want to tell him that it’s a weird thing to say.

  I want to tell that man that I should be able to be wherever I want to be.

  Even though I’m a girl.

  Even though I’m alone.

  What does he think is going to happen to me, exactly?

  If someone had warned me about Nora’s party, would I have gone anyway?

  I nod and feel a sharp despair peck at me, like some bird of prey is snacking on my heart.

  Even out here, in the middle of the ocean, nothing’s really different.

  Wherever you go, there you are.

  I find my friends in Supernova. They’re learning how to make towel animals. I join in. Anything to take my mind off the twins, off Michael’s bizarre words of warning.

  “Soooo? How’d it go?” Lexi asks.

  I take a towel and try to start a turtle. “He told me to forget I ever met his brother.”

  The instructor is going too fast. If you miss a step, you’re screwed.

  “Sounds like good advice to me,” Lexi says, folding her towel the wrong way.

  “He said it in a weird way, though.” A long fold now and then a quick flip, some rolling. “Like if you see him, whatever you do, don’t talk to him. Just walk away.”

  Lexi’s turtle shell crumbles in on itself. She says, “Ack!”

  “He said it like his brother is … dangerous,” I clarify, twisting a towel corner into a turtle leg.

  She shrugs. “Maybe he is.”

  I’ve met dangerous boys before. The kind of boy that doesn’t respect. Doesn’t see girls as more than their bodies. Doesn’t take no for an answer; doesn’t think he has to even ask a question in the first place.

  That night at Nora’s.

  “You don’t think he, like, hurt her? Amelia? Like maybe killed her, even?”

  “He’d be in jail, Natalie.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “of course.”

  Miraculously, my turtle actually looks like a turtle.

  I go get a drink and study the stack of glasses, imagine one of them floating in midair.

  “Hey,” Ben says; he’s getting water, too. “Your turtle came out awesome.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and we walk back to the demo. Elephants are up next; I reluctantly shake out my turtle.

  The security officer I talked to appears in my line of vision.

  “We need to talk,” he says. I step away from the group with a towel in my hand.

  “We went back to the surveillance video of the Gemini Deck when you claim you were there with Ray Haines. It shows you putting a bar tab on the bar.”

  “Yes?”

  Ray Haines. It sounds made up, and he’s starting to feel that way, too, as hours and days tick by.

  “Care to explain?” the officer says.

  “Explain what?” I say. “I already told you I met him there that night. I didn’t drink any alcohol, if that’s what you’re—”

  “The note. Can you explain the note?”

  “What note?”

  He holds it out for me to read:

  “Hearing good. Eyesight adequate. You’re it, lady.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “What does it mean?”

  “Well, since it was written with quotation marks we figured it was a quote, so we looked it up. It’s from an old TV show. An Alfred Hitchcock show about a man who jumps off a boat to try to slow it down and win a bet about how many miles the ship could travel in one day.”

  “I still don’t understand.” Where’s Mr. Cassidy when I need him? He’d told me to look up a TV show episode, but I never followed up.

  Did Ray quote Hitchcock just for me?

  “This note is part of what caused the whole head count panic. So do you want to tell us what’s actually going on?”

  “I have no idea!”

  He gives me his best Condescending Older Man look, but I don’t fall for it.

  “Listen,” I say. “He obviously played me. I don’t know why or what the whole thing is about, but I didn’t have anything to do with it. I thought I was putting his check on the bar. I thought I was being responsible coming to you with information I thought might be important.”

  He seems stuck,—like he wants to tell me not to go anywhere for a few days—ha—in case he has more questions. He says, instead, “Well, let me know if you think of anything else.”

  It’s the first night we’re having anything that qualifies as “weather.” Wind. Clouds. Serious swells. Occasional outbursts of lashing rain. It’s hard to walk a straight line down the corridor at bedtime. We look drunk—like rah-rah party girls—even though we’re not. Rain and seawater cling to the ship’s windows, obscuring the night—the world—from view. I want very badly to be able to see some point very far in the distance, but it’s no use.

  When we go back to the cabin the bed has four towel animals on it. An elephant has a single red rose curled in its trunk beside a note: For Natalie.

  “What the hell?” Nora says.

  No one else has a note or a rose.

  I go to the door and look out into the corridor to see if Bonny’s around, but he’s not. He must have had a hand in this?

  “That’s just creepy,” Nora says.

  “Is it supposed to be some kind of apology?” I say.

  “Which one is it even from?” Charlotte asks.

  I assume Ray—he asked my stateroom number that first night, when we were parting ways—but …“I’m actually not sure.”

  “Which one do you want it to be from?” Nora asks.

  It’s an uncomfortable question. Maybe not even worth answering.

  “I’m too tired to think straight,” I say, even though it’s not really true.

  I go into the bathroom with the shower, where my toothbrush is. They haven’t asked about what Michael and I talked about or what the security officer wanted, and I haven’t told them.

  One thing has changed, though.

  I’m not just confused anymore.

  I’m angry.

  I wake sweaty from a dream.

  In it, the picture on the stateroom wall came to life. The ship was moving out of the frame, and the people on the beach all turned to me and had black holes for eyes.

  INT. CRUISE SHIP DINING ROOM -- NIGHT

  A woman in a long flowing dress--ghostlike in her appearance--is poi
nting at the air. A crowd is watching, midbite.

  WOMAN

  Don’t you see that floating glass?

  MAN

  There is no floating glass, miss.

  EXT. CRUISE SHIP DECK -- NIGHT

  Two teens, NATALIE and RAY, are alone with the night sky. Stars everywhere; shooting ones, even.

  RAY

  You making wishes?

  NATALIE

  I wish I’d never met you.

  Pisces Day 4!

  Port of Call: Nassau, Bahamas

  Highlights:

  7:00 a.m. — Wake-Up Zumba with Carol (Gemini Deck)

  12:00–2:00 p.m. — Bahamian Buffet on the Boardwalk

  Movie matinee: Galaxy Quest

  5:00–7:00 p.m. — The Conch Outs Live Band/Aquarius Deck

  8:00 p.m. — Songs about Sailing Sing-Along in the Piano Lounge (Atrium)

  9:00 p.m. — Karaoke in the Supernova Lounge

  10:00 p.m. — New Wave Dance Party

  11:00 p.m. — Live Piano “Name that Tune” with Lenny Lancaster

  The weather cleared overnight, or we’ve sailed out of it. Maybe both. The sky is so blue that it looks fake, like it must be green-screened behind the port.

  I think about coming down with some kind of sickness to get out of spending the day at The Reef resort. Haven’t I done an excellent job of avoiding the tube ride? Shouldn’t I be allowed to just sit and relax?

  Plus, the ship will be emptier with so many people getting off to explore Nassau. It will be easier to find Michael and find out what last night was all about; and harder for Ray to hide from me if that’s what he’s doing. Why would he want people to think someone went overboard?

  But there is no getting out of it.

  And probably the brothers are getting off, too.

  Bonny and his cart of linens are there on our way out. He’s full of cheer, wide smiles. “You got your gift from your admirer, yes?”

  “Yes,” I say, feeling icky about the whole thing. “Did he say anything to you about it? About me?”

  “No, he just said he knew your birthday was coming?”

  “Tomorrow, yes.”

  “Yes, he wasn’t sure. It’s okay? He knew your cabin number, so I figured you must have given it to him.”