Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise

  “Plus I hadn’t thought about the room-switch thing before, so I’m sure he didn’t think he was threatening a couple of helpless girls.”

  Marissa snorts. “Helpless. Right.”

  “So forget about it,” I say over my shoulder. “We’re fine.”

  “I’d argue with you,” Darren tells me as we go out the door, “but I agree with you, so I wouldn’t know where to begin with that.”

  Marko calls, “Just dial our room number from your cabin phone if you get scared,” and Darren pokes his head out the door and adds, “And jam a chair under the doorknob.”

  “Got it!” I call back. “We’ll be fine.”

  I do actually jam a chair against the door, but only because I said I would.

  Not because I’m scared.

  And I do dial their room.

  Just to try it out.

  Then I brush my teeth and wash my face and collapse into bed. And the last thing I remember before drifting off is Marissa’s sleepy voice coming through the dark, murmuring, “Your dad is awesome.”

  My brain says to tell her, “His name’s Darren,” but I’m so tired it just comes out, “Mmm.”

  Sunshine started creeping in through the curtains way too early, but nine decks down, the Great Engine Lullaby kept me in Snoozeville.

  Until the engines stopped lullabying and started sputtering. And cranking. And va-va-vrooming.

  We didn’t seem to be going faster, but something was definitely happening and I did not like the way it felt.

  I guess Marissa knew I was starting to freak out, because she groans, “We’re pulling into dock,” then wraps a pillow over her head.

  “Pulling into dock?” I kick off the covers and go out to the balcony and see that lots of other people are also on their balconies, watching as our giant floating city moves slowly toward land.

  It’s already warm out, and humid. At the end of a long, rocky pier, there’s a lighthouse, and the town itself looks nestled sort of haphazardly up rocky hillsides around a bay. The buildings are mostly boxy, with flat roofs and lots of square windows, and the water is really blue and busy with motorboats and small sailboats.

  I just stand there, taking it all in. It’s not like I’ve ever really traveled anywhere, but something about this does seem foreign.

  And exciting!

  But when Marissa finally stumbles onto the balcony, she takes one look and says, “Yup. Mexico,” then stumbles back inside.

  I check Darren and Marko’s balcony, but it’s empty. The balcony where I’d seen Kate’s white pants the first afternoon is empty, too.

  After a little while I go back inside, where I find Marissa back in bed. “You want a lemonade?” I ask, ’cause all of a sudden I’m dying for the pink lemonade they have at the buffet.

  “You offering to deliver it?” she moans.

  “Sure.”

  She rolls toward me and unburies her head. “How can you be so awake?” And before I can answer, she buries her head again and says, “Extra ice, okay?”

  So I get dressed quick and head up two decks, and the first thing I notice when I get off the stairs is that there are a lot of people waiting for elevators to show up. So many that there’s no way they’ll all fit in one trip. Some of them are carrying bananas and bagels or pastries, and some have whole trays of food.

  The next thing I notice is that one of the people waiting at the elevators with a tray is Ginger.

  Well, there’s no way I want her to see me. I mean, I’m sure by now Noah’s told her how insensitive and crass we are, playing Kensington Clue and leaving ropes outside doors. And even though part of me wants to go up and ask, Hey, did your sister ever show up? the smarter part of me ditches it into the Schooner Buffet.

  The place is packed with people. Lots of them have backpacks and cameras and are eating like they’re in a hurry. And while I’m looking the breakfast foods over, thinking I’ll take a tray down to Marissa and we’ll eat in the room, Captain Harald comes on over the PA and starts making announcements about disembarking and remembering your sea-pass card and getting back to the ship by five because we’ll set sail at five-thirty, and anyone not onboard has a long walk home.

  After that, people start eating faster and moving faster and grabbing bananas and pastries and leaving. Which makes me feel like I’m missing out on something big, or at least running really late.

  So I pile a bunch of stuff—including bananas and bagels—on a tray, get two glasses of lemonade and two more of milk, then head down two flights of stairs with my getaway tray.

  Marissa can’t believe her eyes. “Wow!” she gasps when she sees the tray. “This is awesome!”

  We wind up having breakfast on the balcony. And even though the balcony is tiny and boxed in on three sides, it’s warm and balmy, and we can see the hills of Mexico, and eating breakfast out there feels really decadent to me.

  Like something I would never have pictured for myself.

  Plus, Marissa smiles at me and says, “This is so great. I’ve never done this before,” and something about that makes me feel extra happy.

  And then there’s a ringing sound.

  At first I think it’s just some random ringing sound.

  And then it dawns on me that it’s a phone.

  Our phone.

  So I rush inside, sure that it’s Darren giving us a wake-up call, only when I pick it up and say, “Hello?” the voice on the other end goes, “Don’t hang up.”

  “Why would I hang up?”

  “It’s Kip.”

  “I know that.”

  “You could tell? From three words?”

  “Technically four. Two words and a contraction.”

  “Well, don’t hang up.”

  “Does it look like I’m hanging up?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t see you.”

  I sigh. “Kip, why are you calling?”

  “Can I come over?”

  “To our room?”

  “Shh! Yes!”

  “Why am I shushing? And no, that’s not a good idea.”

  “Please?”

  “No. I promised I wouldn’t—”

  “Coded notes were put under our doors,” he whispers. “Everyone’s freaking out.”

  My ear perks up. “Wait, what? Notes in code?”

  “Yes! And for some reason everyone’s acting mad at me.”

  “Well, you did punch your cousin in the nose.”

  “Can I please come over?”

  “How about I meet you by the stairs?”

  “No! I can’t risk any of them seeing.”

  “Seeing what?”

  “I can’t explain it now!” he whispers, and it comes out all frantic.

  “Look, I—”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Wait!”

  But he’s already hung up the phone.

  SEVENTEEN

  “Great,” I grumble, then I dial Darren’s room and hear a gravelly, “Hello?”

  Obviously, I’m waking up the rocker boys, so I get right to the punch line. “It’s Sammy. We’ll have a visitor here in about seven seconds. A boy.”

  That wakes him up. “A boy?” And now I can tell that it’s Darren on the other end.

  “Kip. I tried to tell him not to come because I agreed to the no-boys rule, but he’s on his way over anyway.”

  “So am I,” he says, and hangs up the phone.

  Sure enough, seven seconds later, Kip’s there, knocking on the door. And sure enough, by the time I’ve answered it, Darren and Marko are stumbling out of their room into the hallway.

  “Oh, good!” Kip says when he sees them.

  Darren and Marko look at each other like, Oh good? but Kip’s already inside, at the desk, scribbling like mad on a piece of notepad paper.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him, but all I get is a frantic little head shake. So I look over his shoulder and watch him write:

  90 – 49 – 19 / 4 – 39 – 8 – 60 / 42 – 10 – 39

/>   19 – 53 – 60 – 10 – 16 – 16 / 53 – 16 / 99 – 34 – 7 – 22 – 13

  9 – 53 – 60 / 17 – 18 – 53 – 9 – 53 – 20 – 22 – 8 – 7

  49 / 20 – 83 – 7 / LIONN

  When he’s done, he stands up straight and lets out a huge sigh of relief. “There. That’s it.”

  Now, I know Kip said it was a coded message, but to me it looks like some complicated order-of-operations problem that Mr. Tiller might have assigned us in math.

  Well, except for the LIONN part.

  But still. I didn’t understand how he could have held anything that long and complicated in his head. I would have had trouble with just one line of it. So I stare at him and say, “That’s impossible. No one can do that.”

  “What is it?” Darren asks him.

  “A coded message!” Kip gasps. “Copies of it were under Uncle Lucas’ and Uncle Bradley’s doors, with their names and TICK TOCK typed on the front.”

  “Whoa,” Marko says, clicking into what just happened. “You mean to tell us you memorized it?”

  Kip looks down and gives a little nod.

  “Sammy’s right,” Marko says. “That’s impossible.”

  And then we all stare at his bowed head until it’s totally awkward, and he finally volunteers, “Grandfather taught me. He called it Picture and Pattern.” He shrugs. “I’ve worked at it for years, but this is bigger than anything I’ve ever done before.”

  We stare at him some more. “Do the others know you can do that?” I ask.

  “Uncle Bradley might.” He eyes me. “Either that or he’s just naturally paranoid about his passwords.”

  We all raise eyebrows and sort of mentally look around for things we should be hiding from view, but nobody says anything until Darren finally asks, “So what’s this about?” He sits on the edge of Marissa’s bed and says, “And start at the beginning, would you? No skippin’ around.”

  “Yeah,” Marko says, plopping down next to him. “Our sleep-addled brains can’t take you skippin’ around.”

  So Marissa and I sit on the edge of my bed, and Kip starts pacing a little, going, “It was a weird night. I couldn’t sleep. The phone rang at one-thirty, and after my mother answered it, she said, ‘I’ll be right there,’ and was gone until three-thirty.”

  “Do you know who called?” I ask.

  “The only person she really talks to is Lucas, but I can’t be sure.”

  “What about Ginger and Noah?”

  “Oh.” He sort of frowns and says, “She’s fine with them, too.”

  Darren shakes his head and says, “We’re skipping around.” He looks at Kip. “You couldn’t sleep, the phone rang, your mom disappeared for two hours, and then what?”

  “In the morning, there was a note shoved under our door.”

  “Who found it, and at what time?” Darren asks.

  “I did. Around seven.”

  Darren focuses on him. “From what you said before, I’m guessing the note was folded, with your mom’s name and TICK TOCK typed on the outside of it?” And after Kip nods, Darren says, “But you opened it anyway.”

  “She was sleeping! And it wasn’t in an envelope or anything!”

  “So why not just copy it? Why memorize it?” Marko asks.

  Kip looks away. “You don’t understand Kensingtons.” And then when we all just stare at him, he says, “Because if she’d caught me, she would have taken it away! And now she can’t!” We’re quiet a minute, and finally I ask, “So what did your mother do when you showed her the note?”

  “She freaked out and got mad at me for looking at it. She called me a sneaky punk kid.”

  “Your mother did?” we cry. And then Marissa asks, “Because you looked at some weird coded note?”

  He gives a little shrug. “Like I said, she never wanted me.”

  I eye him. “Or maybe she thinks you planted it.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Did you?”

  “No!”

  “Well, you’ve been known to slip anonymous messages under doors, you know.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Sure it is. There was the one you wanted to put under the Royal Suite door the night of the big fight, there was the non-apology you left slipped under our door—”

  “Non-apology?!”

  Marko interrupts with, “If you ask me, this is a classic case of skippy-doodlin’ around,” and Darren nods and goes, “You’re definitely skippy-doodlin’ around. There are big holes in this story, and Marko’s right—our sleep-addled brains can’t handle it.”

  Marko gives him a happy bro grin, then makes a little rewind motion with his hand and goes, “You couldn’t sleep, the phone rang at one-thirty, your mom disappeared for two hours, then returned and went to bed. Around seven in the morning you found a note shoved under your door, she freaked out and called you a sneaky punk kid, and then what? How and when was there a convergence of Kensingtons?”

  I blink at him. “A convergence of Kensingtons?”

  Marko nods. “You know—how’d they all decide to get together?”

  Marissa eyes me and kinda mutters, “So much for being sleep-addled.”

  “No kidding,” I mutter back.

  “Hey,” Marko says. “I like things sequential. No rushing, no skipping beats, no jumping to the bridge before you finish the chorus.”

  Darren adds, “And absolutely no breaking into the chorus before you finish the verse.”

  “You can start with the chorus, though,” Marko says, looking at him. “Like we do in ‘Echo Man’?”

  I blink at him. “You’re accusing us of skippy-doodlin’ around?”

  “Right, right,” he says, then turns back to Kip. “So tell us about the convergence of Kensingtons.”

  Kip kind of nods and then goes, “My mother called Lucas, Lucas called Ginger, Ginger called Noah, Noah called Bradley, and they all met in the Royal Suite. It was at around eight.”

  “Did you go?”

  He shakes his head. “My mother wouldn’t let me.”

  I zero in on him. “So you stayed in your cabin?”

  He toes the floor. “Not exactly.”

  “You listened through the suite door?”

  He nods. “But I couldn’t hear anything!”

  “Back to the notes,” Darren says. “What are they?”

  Kip gives a kind of wild shrug. “I don’t know! Threats? A sick joke?”

  “Hmm,” I say, eyeing Marissa. “We happen to know that at least one of those people likes sick jokes.…”

  “Right,” Marissa says. “The noose.”

  “The noose?” Kip asks.

  So we tell him about the noose, only—dopey us—that means we have to back up and explain about the rope and playing Kensington Clue.

  Kip looks horrified. “You were playing Kensington Clue? And Grandmother was Mr. Boddy?”

  “She was actually Kate, the Diamond Dame,” Marko tells him.

  Darren nods and says, “And the culprit turned out to be Noah, in the library, with a rope.”

  “Only that last time, though,” Marko adds. “The time before, it was Lucas, in the—”

  “Stop!” I cry, then tell Kip, “Sorry! But … none of us really thought she was dead. Just, you know, misplaced.”

  “Misplaced,” Kip says, like it’s the stupidest thing anyone’s said all day.

  Which it actually might be.

  “Skippy-doodlin’ around again,” Marko warns, which definitely sounds stupider than saying someone’s misplaced, but I still feel bad, so I tell Kip sorry again, and Marissa adds, “And we don’t know she’s dead, right?”

  Darren picks up the paper with the code on it. “This would seem to indicate she’s not.”

  Marko shrugs. “Or maybe it indicates that time is running out for one of the three heirs. Or maybe all of them!”

  Marissa and I look at him like, WHOA! and Kip nods and says, “That’s what Bradley, Lucas, and my mother think.”


  “What about Ginger?” Marissa asks. “What does she think?”

  “Noah said she tried to talk everyone into working together, but it started another yelling match.”

  “Whoa. Wait,” I say, putting up a hand. “How do you know any of this? When did you see Noah?”

  “Skippy-doodlin’ around,” Marko mutters with a little tisk.

  Kip frowns. “Noah sorta caught me spying.”

  I eye him. “Sorta caught you?”

  “He came storming out of the suite.”

  “Because …?”

  Kip shrugs. “He said Bradley called him a dim-witted sycophant.”

  “What’s a sycophant?” Marissa whispers, and when I shrug, Marko goes, “A toady,” and Darren adds, “A kiss-up.”

  “Ouch,” we both say, and Kip frowns and says, “Exactly.”

  “But what’s the deal with the codes?” Marko asks. “Maybe they’re from the Diamond Dame?”

  Kip shakes his head. “It’s not her style. Not at all. She’s basically allergic to numbers.”

  “So maybe they are a threat. Or a scare tactic?” Darren says. “But who has something to gain from this?”

  Kip just shakes his head some more, and then Marko says, “Tick Tock does sound pretty ominous.”

  Kip looks right at me. “Can I borrow your calculator? I’m hoping I can decipher the code.” Then his forehead goes all wrinkly and he says, “Because what if it is a threat? Or a ransom note? And what if there’s a time limit? I don’t think the others are going to do anything but fight and if—”

  “Dude!” Marko says, putting up a hand. “A ransom note wouldn’t be in code! It would say, Fork over a billion bucks at the big clock at midnight!”

  Kip looks around at us. “So … you think it’s a threat?”

  “Who would threaten them?” I ask. “I mean, who are their enemies?”

  “I don’t know!” Kip cries. “Each other!”

  That zaps us quiet for a minute. Then I try, “So maybe one of them did the codes, and gave himself one, too, just to cover it up?” And Marissa throws in, “Or what if it’s just a distraction? What if someone’s trying to get them to quit thinking about Kate by making them worry about themselves?”

  Kip gives me a pleading look. “Can I please just borrow your calculator?”

  So I dig it out of my backpack and hand it over. “I need it back tonight, okay?”