Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise

  “Sure.”

  “I’d try to help, but we’re going into Mexico today.”

  He shakes his head. “I need to think and I do that better by myself anyway.” He gives me a halfhearted smile. “But thanks.”

  Then we all just kind of watch as he takes my calculator and his code and hightails it out of the room.

  EIGHTEEN

  As much as I tried to tell myself to stay out of it, the whole time Darren and Marko were downing coffee and eating breakfast, I kept thinking about Kip.

  Worrying about Kip.

  And it kept creeping back into my mind that if it was Grams who’d gone missing, I’d be going crazy trying to find her.

  Plus, maybe my mother never called me a sneaky punk kid, but I do know what it’s like to think that your mother never wanted you.

  So when everyone’s finally ready to go, I’m the one who winds up lagging behind.

  “Hey!” Darren calls over his shoulder. “Something wrong?”

  We’re barreling down the stairs, and I feel really stupid saying it, but I blurt out, “I’m worried about Kip.”

  “Oh,” Darren says, stopping.

  “We are not not going ashore because of Kensingtons,” Marissa says, and, boy, does she look serious.

  “I know,” I tell her. “I just feel really bad.”

  We all stand on the stairs for a minute until Darren finally says, “So what do you want to do about it?”

  I give a stupid little shrug, and then Marko pipes up with, “I say we take the Kipster with us.”

  “No!” Marissa cries. “The two of them will spend the whole time with that stupid code and a calculator and not want to do anything!”

  “Hey,” I tell her, “I’ve never been to Mexico. You think I’m going to spend the whole time with a calculator?”

  “Yes!”

  I roll my eyes and then we stand around some more until Darren asks again, “So what do you want to do?”

  And that’s when my gut takes over. “I want to invite him to come with us.”

  “Nooooo!” Marissa wails. “Besides, can you even take someone else’s kid into a foreign country?”

  “Let’s find out.” Darren says.

  I give him a grateful smile. “He’s probably in the library. Or his room, if his mom’s not there. Or in the Royal Suite.”

  “He could be anywhere,” Marissa moans.

  “All those places are close by,” Darren tells her. “Let’s just check.”

  We’re almost down to Deck 8, so we start by looking in the library, and the first person I see is the Puzzle Lady.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I mutter, ’cause while the rest of the ship is off exploring Mexico, here she is in a windowless room, putting together a boring brown puzzle.

  “Hi, there,” she says with a little smile, then nods toward the other side of the room and whispers, “Back there.”

  So yeah, I get hit with that same weird combination of feeling bad and feeling creeped out, and I wind up doing what I did before—smiling and telling her thanks.

  Marissa hangs back while Darren, Marko, and I pass by the computer tables and find Kip hidden away in the very back of an alcove, punching numbers into my calculator. “Hey,” I tell him, and even though we hadn’t exactly snuck up, he looks at us like we’ve got butcher knives ready to slash and jab.

  “Dude!” Marko laughs. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

  Darren takes over, saying, “We’d like you to come ashore with us.”

  Kip just sits there, blinking.

  “I know you’re obsessed with this,” I tell him, nodding at the code paper, “and believe it or not, I get that. But we’re, you know …”

  My voice just trails off, so Darren finishes for me, “She’s worried about you. Doesn’t want to leave you here alone.”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “But thanks.”

  “You’re not fine,” I tell him, but I recognize the look on his face. It’s been on my own face enough for me to realize that there’ll be no talking Kip out of this. He’s going to spend the day holed up with my calculator and his code, and nothing I can say will change his mind.

  Darren and Marko give it another shot, but they finally throw their hands up, too.

  Now, as we’re leaving, I’m kinda shocked to see Marissa chatting with the Puzzle Lady. Darren and Marko head for the door while I zip over to Marissa and go, “Ready?”

  She says, “Sure!” but then I notice that the whole top third of the puzzle is put together and that it’s a picture of a man straddling a big branch of a gnarly old tree. The artwork looks very detailed and classic—like it might be a puzzle of some famous old drawing or something. And even though I know it’s not a good idea to start chatting with a crazy puzzle lady, I can’t help asking, “What’s the puzzle of?”

  The Puzzle Lady laughs, “Very good question! So far, it’s of a man in a tree, but I have no idea why he’s up there. He seems to be looking at something, don’t you think?”

  I look closer, then nod and ask, “Isn’t there a box with the picture on it?”

  She smiles. “No box, no printout, nothing. Which I think is why I can’t seem to leave it alone. I want to find out!” Then she puts out her hand and says, “I’m Sue Taylor, by the way.”

  So Marissa shakes her hand and says, “I’m Marissa,” and I give her a little wave and say, “I’m Sammy.”

  “Very nice to meet you.” Then she smiles and says, “Have fun in Mexico.”

  Which for some reason creeps me out all over again.

  To get off the ship, Marko and I switched our sea-pass cards, then went through the checkpoint turnstile on Deck 4 and onto a smaller boat, which motored us to a dock in a big marina. Now, since the cruise ship was air-conditioned and really cool, and since we were running late and tangled up with the whole Kip situation, I guess we’d all kind of forgotten that Mexico would be humid and hot. By the time we’d walked the length of the dock, we were totally wilted.

  “Shorts woulda been thinking,” Marko says, because all of us are wearing jeans.

  “I knew that, too,” Marissa grumbles. “I feel so stupid!”

  There’s a big sign on a nearby building that says MARINA MERCADO over a doorway, and Darren leads us inside, where it is cooler, but not a whole lot. The place is like a giant maze of small, packed booths, where the booth dividers are about eight feet tall and covered on all sides with stuff like leather purses and hats and bright clothes and wrestling masks and Elvis paintings and wooden puppets and zarapes and wool blankets. And inside the little booths there’s silver jewelry and wood carvings and brightly painted pottery and knickknacks galore.

  We zig and zag around the booths for a while, checking stuff out, and although a lot of the booths have electric fans blowing air around, after a while all I can think about is how hot and claustrophobic I am.

  “See anything?” Darren asks me, and at first I don’t get the question.

  And then I do.

  “As in anything I would want to buy?” He nods.

  Now, maybe it’s because for the longest time I had zero money and still don’t know how to spend it, or maybe it’s because of the heat and being boxed in by Elvis paintings and zarapes and wool blankets, but I just shake my head and go, “No.”

  “No?” Darren asks, then looks over at Marko to see if he heard my complicated answer, too. Marko just shrugs, so Darren looks back at me and says, “You didn’t see anything you’d want? A souvenir?”

  “Maybe a blanket?” Marko says with a mischievous grin.

  I grin back at him. “I definitely could use one of those right now.” Then I look back at Darren and say, “I also don’t need a wobbly-headed turtle or a glass chessboard or a glow-in-the-dark painting of Elvis.”

  “Jewelry?” he asks, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

  “I’ve got plenty,” I tell him, then show him my Casey jewelry: the lucky horseshoe charm on my shoelace and the skeleton key ne
cklace that I keep tucked inside my T-shirt.

  And I’ve just put away my necklace when from my right I hear, “Hh-hh-hmm!” and there’s Marissa, holding out the skirts of two little halter dresses that are hanging from a booth wall. The dresses are both white, one with red and yellow flowers, the other with blue and yellow flowers.

  Now, okay. Normally, I would have given her the are-you-nuts? look, but I’m about to faint from heatstroke and just looking at those dresses is cooling me off.

  “The girl’s a genius,” Marko says. “I’m going to find us some shorts.” And before I can say anything, Darren’s hauled out his wallet and is paying for the dresses.

  The Mercado doesn’t have a dressing room, but after Marko shows up with two pairs of swim trunks and Darren buys a knapsack, which has drawstrings that double as shoulder straps, we go back outside, where we find a public bathroom and take turns changing. And since the three of them are all wearing some kind of low-cut sneakers, they look okay, but I look like a complete dork in my little dress and scribbled-on high-tops, even with the ankle flaps flipped down.

  But feeling twenty degrees cooler is worth being Little Miss Dorky!

  After we’ve all stuffed our jeans inside Darren’s knapsack, he slings it on his back and says, “Okay, gang, now I think we’re ready to tackle Mexico!”

  Which turns out to mean walk and shop.

  Which, really, I’d had enough of inside the Mercado.

  I do my best to be, you know, interested and impressed, but the only thing that really interests or impresses me is air-conditioning, which seems to be on in just the expensive shops. So I wind up spending a lot of time looking at stuff that I would never in a million years buy, just so I can soak up some coolness.

  On our way out of each shop, Darren asks me, “Anything?” but each time I just shake my head, step outside, wilt, and start looking for the next shop with air-conditioning.

  Marko finally catches on when I step inside a shop full of glass vases and platters, and he grins at me and whispers, “Takin’ shelter from the swelter?”

  I feel totally busted, so I just make a quick tour through before leaving.

  “Anything?” Darren asks, and he sounds kind of desperate. Like he can’t believe I’m passing up all this cool stuff.

  “Nah,” I tell him. “I’m not into dangerous art.”

  “Dangerous art?”

  “You know—stuff that might break if you happen to look at it wrong?”

  “So why’d we …?” And then, ding-dong, he gets it. And after he’s studied me a minute he goes, “Okay, so what do you want to do?”

  “Swimming with dolphins woulda been good,” Marko says.

  I can tell he’s only joking, but Darren snaps, “Shut up, man. I checked. They were sold out.”

  “Hey,” I tell them. “I don’t want to swim with dolphins!” But then it hits me what I do want to do. “But can we maybe get down to the water and just stick our feet in? That sounds really great to me.”

  At this point we’d been shopping for hours, so we were a ways from the marina, but we headed in the direction we thought the ocean was, and somehow we found a little patch of sand right by the water. It wasn’t an official beach, and at first I wondered if we were even allowed to be there, but nobody yelled at us to scram, so we took off our shoes and socks and went wading.

  The water was warm, but it was definitely cooler than we were, and it felt amazing! Trouble is, we hadn’t been in it very long when a man comes beelining toward us.

  “Uh-oh,” I say, nodding out at him. And we’re all sure we’re busted for … well, for wading in foreign waters without a permit or whatever. But instead he calls, “Tacos? Pollo asado, pollo colorado, carnitas …” Then he tries, “Coca-Cola?”

  Darren and Marko are out of the water in a flash, ordering stuff, and faster than you can say, “Boy, I didn’t realize I was so hungry, but now that I know there are tacos coming, I’m starving, and really, the thought of an ice-cold soda is making my mouth water buckets, because an ice-cold soda is going to have double the thirst-quenching power of anything else I can think of,” the guy is back, carrying a box lid full of food and glass bottles of Coke.

  We spread out our jeans, and as we get all set up on our little beach for a picnic, I notice Darren moving my shoes around more than he needs to. I can tell he’s trying not to be nosy, but while we’re eating, he finally breaks down and says, “Okay, ‘Cute Feet’ and ‘Cool Your Heels,’ I get. But where is Sassypants Station?”

  “Sassypants Station is a grave site in the Santa Martina Cemetery,” I tell him. And before he can say anything about that, I add, “And you may think you know what ‘Cool Your Heels’ is about, but I promise you, you are clueless.”

  “And that’s how you want to stay, believe me,” Marissa tells him.

  Darren’s looking a little worried, so I add, “It has to do with the way a condor cools itself off. And that’s all I’m gonna say.”

  “Yeah,” Marissa adds. “We’re eating.” She eyes him. “And even if we weren’t? You wouldn’t want to know.”

  “What are you people talking about?” Marko asks.

  Darren grabs one of my shoes and tosses it at him. “We’re decoding the shoes.” Then he grins at me and says, “I like how he put ‘Left Foot’ on both of them.”

  I nod. “Sums up my dancing perfectly.”

  Marko starts reading from my high-top. “ ‘Umbrella Girl,’ ‘Miss Notorious,’ ‘Triple-T,’ ‘Drool Monster’ … Wait—‘Drool Monster’?!”

  I shake my head. “Don’t ask. It’s not pretty.”

  He goes back to reading the shoe. “ ‘Cute When Baffled,’ ‘Shiver Me Timbers!’ ‘Fruity Chicken Salad Sammich,’ ‘Startle = Pain’ …”

  And then Darren picks up my other shoe and reads from it. “ ‘Ice Blocking,’ ‘Kickin’ Crime,’ ‘Zombies to the Rescue,’ ‘Storm the Castle!’ ‘Race Ya!’ …”

  Marko laughs. “Good thing you don’t have size elevens like your dad, or we’d know way too much about you!” Then he tosses me my shoe and goes, “Dude, that is the coolest thing ever. I’m talking ev-er.” He looks at Darren. “Man, why wasn’t I cool like that when I was a teenager?”

  “I don’t know,” Darren tells him. “I wish you had been.”

  “Hey!”

  “Man, I’m kidding. I was the dork, remember?”

  “Good of you to admit that.”

  Darren hands me my other shoe and says, “How long have you known him?”

  I take my shoe back. “Casey? About a year and a half. Why?”

  “Just wondering how long it takes to get to the place where little phrases can be code for whole stories.” He shrugs and looks away. “It feels like I’ve missed out on a lot.”

  I think about that a minute, then tell him, “If I were to scribble on your shoes, I could already say stuff like, ‘Let the Adventure Begin!’ and ‘Don’t Fall!’ and ‘Anything?’ ”

  Marissa chimes in with, “Hey, you could put ‘Port’ on one shoe and ‘Starboard’ on the other! And ‘Fore’ and ‘Aft’ on both!”

  “But which would be which?” I laugh. “And would those be one-way shoes?”

  Marissa’s bouncing up and down, totally getting into it. “How about ‘No Breakin’ into the Chorus Before You Finish the Verse’!”

  “Or ‘Stop Skippy-Doodlin’ Around!’ ” I cry, and I’m bouncing now, too. “And don’t forget ‘Hoity-Toity’ and ‘No Five-Fork Dining!’ ”

  “Or the best one of all,” Marissa cries, and when she looks at me, I know exactly what she’s thinking, so we both shout, “ ‘Kensington Clue’!”

  Marko raises his Coke bottle. “And I would definitely add ‘Tacos on the Beach.’ ”

  I smile at Darren and say, “See? We’re already filling up your shoes.”

  He smiles back at me, but even through his sunglasses, I can’t help noticing.

  I’ve made a rock star cry.

  NINETEEN

&nbs
p; My souvenirs from Cabo San Lucas were the sundress, a sunburn, and my Coke bottle.

  When Darren saw that I was keeping my bottle, he kept his, and then Marko and Marissa decided not to throw theirs out, either. We got caught in a downpour on the way back to the shuttle boat, which was weird and warm and funny. And over as fast as it started.

  On the boat ride back to the ship, I started blowing on my Coke bottle like a flute, and pretty soon the four of us were doing it, making sounds that Marko called the foghorn song. It wasn’t actually a song. It was more just noise and a lot of laughing. I think we drove the other people on board a little nuts, but whatever.

  Now, I didn’t think much about Kip when we were in Mexico, but the minute we were back on the ship, I started to. Marissa could tell, ’cause as we’re shuffling up the stairs, I could feel her watching me, and finally she says, “There’s no way he’s still there.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “No. I want a shower!”

  I did, too, but I still wanted to peek inside the library. “You don’t have to come,” I tell her.

  But we all wind up going, and sure enough, Kip’s right where we’d left him, only now the whole table where he’s working is covered with papers.

  “Any luck?” I ask, which totally makes him jump.

  “Dude,” Marko says, shaking his head. “Have you been out of that seat at all today?”

  Kip blinks at us, then says, “What time is it?”

  “Dinnertime,” Darren says.

  “Shower time,” Marissa grumbles.

  “Time for you to give that a rest,” Marko says.

  “Tell you what,” Darren says to him. “The four of us are going to take showers, then we’re going to come back here and drag you to dinner.”

  Kip’s head bobbles like a dashboard doll, where the head moves because someone’s jolted the car, not because it wants to.

  “Does anyone even know you’re here?” I ask him.

  “Noah.” His voice comes out groggy. Like it’s still waking up. So he clears his throat and adds, “He was here … a while ago.”

  “Well, we’ll be back as soon as we take showers,” Darren tells him as he scoops an arm around my shoulders and pulls me away. And since I’m still wet from the downpour and cold from the ship’s cranked-up air-conditioning and looking mega-dorky in a halter dress and high-tops, I don’t put up a fight.