Amazing.
Anyway, while we’re zigging and zagging and scooting forward in line, Darren and Marko are oblivious because they’re all intent on filling out forms. Darren seems really serious about it, too, checking and double-checking paperwork and passports and birth certificates, shuffling stuff around until it’s in some special order.
“Did she give you my forged birth certificate?” I finally ask, and really, I meant it as a joke because I figured my mom had, you know, confessed her sins. And since the paternity test had come back saying I was his kid, it wasn’t like a birth certificate that had the wrong year on it was going to mess that up.
But the minute it’s out of my mouth I know that it’s a stupid thing to joke about. His eyebrows go flying. “There’s a forged one?”
“Uh, never mind.” I try to wave it off. “It had to do with getting me into school early.”
“Why would she …?”
He’s obviously still clueless about my mother’s sneaky ways. So I just shrug and say, “It was cheaper than paying for day care? But I wound up being a ‘behavioral problem’ and got held back.”
“So … you did kindergarten twice?”
“Mm-hmm.” I grin at him. “Scarred me for life.”
Marko chuckles. “Troublemaker.”
And I eye Darren and tell him, “I did thirteen twice, too.”
“Thirteen …?”
Darren’s voice trails off again, but Marko figures out what I’m saying. “So Lana didn’t tell you that she’d enrolled you in school early until last year?”
I nod and give a little snort. “It was some birthday, let me tell you.” I mock my mom’s voice, going, “Terribly sorry to break it to you, darling, but you’re going to be thirteen all over again.” I look at Darren. “You have no idea how happy I am to be leaving that number behind.”
Darren stares for a minute while it all sinks in, and I have to laugh because Mr. Cool Rocker Dude is not looking cool at all. He’s looking flustered. And worried. Like he’s just realized he’s in the deep dark woods without any weapons.
Marko laughs, too. “Take a breath, bro. It’ll be okay.”
Right then Marissa grabs me and whispers, “The blond one has gorgeous eyes,” and that’s when I realize that the whole time I’ve been talking about doctored birth certificates, Marissa’s been checking out the boys I’d told her had been checking her out.
I roll my eyes.
“What?” she says, all defensively.
“You’re such a butterfly.”
“A butterfly?”
“Yeah.”
“Like a social butterfly?”
“No. Just a butterfly. You know, pretty, fluttering around, checking things out but not quite landing …?”
“I am not fluttering around!”
I laugh. “But you’re definitely checking things out!”
She backhands me and whispers, “Shh! Here they come!”
Which is true. They’re facing us again, and as they scoot forward in their zag line, we do the same in our zig. The guys look like they’re our age or maybe a little older and they’re with three adults—two women and a man. Two of the grown-ups are obviously a couple because they’re the same shade of tan, and with their matchy polo shirts and sun visors, they look like they’ve just stepped off the golf course.
The other woman looks, well, diagonal. Like she’s been spun through a giant apple peeler or something. Her hair is cut in a spiral that starts at the top of one ear and swoops around the back of her head to the bottom of her other ear. And her sundress has only one shoulder and it sort of spirals down to the hem, which angles from about mid-thigh on one leg to below the knee on the other.
Anyway, all of them are some variety of extreme blond except for one of the boys, who is African American. And as they scoot closer, I can see what Marissa means about the blond boy’s eyes—they’re incredibly blue.
“What did I tell you?” Marissa gasps when they’re safely past us.
I give a little nod. “Like beacons of light in a dark, troubled world.”
“Shut up!” she laughs, and backhands me again.
Now, the whole time we’re scooting away from them and then turning and moving toward them again, Marissa’s fluttering. To the point where Marko notices and nudges Darren, who finally tunes in to what’s going on. “No!” he says, looking from us to the boys and back again. He turns to Marko. “I don’t know if I’m equipped for this!”
Marko just laughs.
We all scoot forward again and now Marissa and Beacon Eyes are not even hiding the fact that they’re fluttering around.
“Hey,” Beacon Eyes says with a grin, “I’m JT.”
“And I’m his cousin, Kip,” the other boy says.
Kip’s voice has a little accent to it, and since there’s nothing blue-eyed or blond-haired about him, Marissa’s looking back and forth at them, obviously thinking, You’re cousins?
JT totally calls her on it, saying, “Yes, he’s adopted.”
Awkward!
Marissa blushes and since everyone’s scooting forward again and it feels like we’re trapped in Awkwardville, I smile at Kip and try an escape hatch. “Well, her name’s Marissa and she was raised by wolves.”
Kip gives me a smile back. “And you?”
I grin at him. “Wolves, too. But my name is Sammy.”
Kip laughs. It’s a kind of tittering laugh. You know, sort of a guy giggle? And something about it makes me turn around and grin at him again—this time bigger.
He’s looking over his shoulder, too. Grinning, too. “See you on the flip side,” he calls, and moves on.
And then Darren’s hovering over us going, “I should probably lay down ground rules?”
He says it like it’s something he knows he should do, but isn’t really sure how to. So I ask him, “About …?”
His face gets a little contorted. “Boys?”
“All we did was say hi to them.”
“You call that just saying hi?” He pops his sunglasses on top of his head. “That was way more than just saying hi!” He stares at me, then starts blinking in a very un-rock-star-like fashion before he turns to Marko and mouths, “What am I going to do?” which Marissa and I can both totally see.
“Look,” I tell him, “you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Marko chuckles. “Famous last words.”
So Darren put his rock star foot down. “Here’s the deal: no boys in your cabin, no visiting boys in their cabins. Boys and you stay in public areas. Are we clear?”
Marissa and I nod.
“I want you to have fun, but please don’t go wild on me.”
Part of me wants to act insulted that he would even imply that we’re that kind of teenager, but he’s obviously stressed, and really, how would he know?
So I just give him a simple “Got it.” But even after I’ve given him zero argument, he’s still looking … bottled up. Like there are pressures inside that need to come out. So I finally go, “What else.”
He looks right at me for a minute, then kind of shakes his head and looks down. “When I was a teenager, I wanted to get away from my parents so bad. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing with this dad thing. I don’t want to be the heavy, but I know it’s a mistake to try and be your friend.…” He gives a little shrug, then looks at me. “So expect me to screw up, and when I do, don’t cop an attitude or play head games with me—just tell me.”
This was so different from any conversation I’d ever had with my mother. Instead of trying to cover up or hide, he was just laying it all out there.
Which sort of stunned me.
But was also really … nice.
So I give him a little smile and tell him, “I can do that.”
He laughs. “I bet you can!”
“And really,” I add, “you can trust us—we won’t cause you that kind of trouble.”
He takes a deep breath, holds it a minute, then lets it out. “Okay. Thank
s. I think I can handle the other kinds.”
I felt weirdly happy after that. Then we passed by JT and Kip again, and Marissa let it slip that we were with Darren Cole. “You know, the musician?”
I give Marissa a dark look and say, “Do not do that!” but it’s too late. All of a sudden, the Diagonal Dame and the Golf Team are reaching across the aisle, shaking hands with Darren and Marko, going, “I’m Teresa, Kip’s mom!” and “We’re JT’s parents, Lucas and LuAnn!” and then spouting off about how they’re doing the trip as a “Kensington family reunion” and throwing around information about themselves like they’re long-lost friends. “I’m a fashion designer!” the Diagonal Dame says, rummaging through her purse for a business card. “I could do some really interesting pieces for your next tour!”
“We’ve got villas all over!” Tan Man says, handing Darren a business card, too. “Be our guest anytime!”
Darren takes the cards but I can tell he doesn’t want them, and somewhere along the line, the sunglasses have come back down.
“I can’t believe they make you slog through this line!” the Fashionista says to Darren, and then the Tan Man adds, “That’s right—isn’t there some VIP entrance somewhere?”
Darren says, “Normally, they’d have us come in through the crew entrance, but I’m here with my daughter for the full experience.” Then he slings an arm across my shoulders and grins at me.
I don’t know how to explain it other than to say that the theory of a dad—or even knowing who he is—is not the same thing as feeling like you have one. I mean, everyone’s got a dad. Or, you know, a father. But just because you know he exists in your head doesn’t mean he’s also in your heart. And the truth is, I’d sort of quarantined Darren Cole to my head. I mean, the situation was strange and awkward and bizarre, and I was having so much trouble wrapping my head around finally knowing who he was that I didn’t see how he could ever actually become a “real” dad.
But something about his little sling over my shoulders, something about the grin and the way he’d said I was his daughter like he was actually stoked about it—it was the first time I felt a little hiccup in my heart about him.
And then his arm was off and we were moving forward, and Darren was talking to Marko, and Marissa was talking to me, and my head was putting Darren back in quarantine, where a dad you barely know belongs.
THREE
Darren did ask Marissa not to point them out to people again, and then casually kept his back to the cluster of Kensingtons for the last zig and zag of the line.
After we’d made it through check-in, we went out of the giant warehouse through a wide corridor room, where a cheesy photographer made us stand in front of a cheesy backdrop and say, “Cheese!”
Then, finally, we went outside.
“Holy smokes!” I gasp, and stop dead in my tracks.
“Big, huh?” Marissa says, like this floating city in front of us is no big deal.
She keeps on trucking, following Darren and Marko along a covered walkway that parallels the cruise ship, but I just can’t stop gawking. The ship is really long and really white, and there are, like, fifteen stories of little windows going up, up, up. And it’s right there, with only a narrow channel of water between us and it.
“Sammy! Come on!”
Marissa’s waving me up the walkway, and ladies wearing sundresses are passing me by, so I race to catch up. “I can’t believe how big it is!”
“I know, right?” Darren says, and since he’s sounding pretty amazed, too, I ask him, “Is this your first cruise?”
He nods. “Cruising was not exactly on my bucket list.”
“Mine, either,” Marko says as we turn onto the gangway and head across the channel toward an opening in the ship. “But I’m thinkin’ maybe it shoulda been.”
The gangway’s not a couple of funky planks like you see in old movies and cartoons. It’s wide and long and has safety siding and an arched blue canopy over it. Like something you might see outside a fancy hotel or restaurant, only much longer and bridging over deep water.
“So wait,” Marissa says. “I’m the only one of us who’s cruised before?”
Marko eyes her over his shoulder, then announces, “Overboard with the wench! No repeat offenders allowed.”
I laugh ’cause, really, who needs been-here-done-this when you’re amped about something new?
At the end of the gangway there’s a man announcing, “Have your sea pass out. Remove hats and sunglasses. Welcome aboard!”
Darren shuffles through all the check-in stuff and hands around what look like credit cards. Mine has my name and a bunch of other stuff printed on the front, and on the back it tells me that I should carry it with me at all times.
“What is this thing?”
I was asking Darren, but Marissa pipes up with, “That’s your sea-pass card. It’s your stateroom key, your extras charge card, and you need it when you disembark and reboard.”
I look at Darren for help but he just sort of shrugs and laughs, “I think she’s saying, ‘Don’t lose it.’ ”
Marissa nods. “Exactly!” She starts pointing to stuff printed on my card. “This is our formal dining room and the table number, this is our seating time.…” She looks at me all twinkly-eyed. “The dining rooms are amazing.”
I blink at her. “You’re not talking seven-silver-forks amazing, are you?”
She laughs. “Maybe only five?”
I look at Darren. “I cannot do five-fork dining!”
But we’re at the head of the line now, and one by one we hand our cards over to a woman behind a podium, get mug shots taken, then get our sea-pass cards back.
“What was that for?” I ask, because I have no idea what just happened.
“They sync up your card to your face,” Marissa tells me, “so if you leave the ship, they know it’s you when you get back on.”
“Wait. When am I getting off the ship?”
She looks at me like she can’t quite believe how green I am about this. “At the ports?”
Now, the truth is, there was all this stuff Darren had told me to read about online, but my head hadn’t been in the cruise. I’d been trying to get my schoolwork done so I wouldn’t have to worry about it on the cruise. To make a long story short, I really want to get on the college track when I move up to high school next year, which means that I’ve had to buckle down. I didn’t used to care, but now I do, and let’s just say it’s not easy to catch up when you’re as far behind as I was. But I’d managed to finish all my makeup work, plus everything assigned over spring break … except for Ms. Rothhammer’s science assignment, which was brutal. We were on a chemistry section, and the work sheet had gnarly word problems that made you do confusing calculations of chemical reactions. There was a time I would have blown it off, but Ms. Rothhammer is my favorite teacher, so I’d brought the assignment with me, thinking that if I did only three problems a day, I’d have it done on time.
Anyway, the point is, I never went online to check out the ship or the ports or the food or the cabins or the dining rooms. I just collected most of what was on the list Darren had sent me, threw it in a suitcase, and got in the town car when it showed up at Hudson’s house. So I wasn’t, you know, prepared for any of this, and I sure wasn’t expecting what we saw after we left the mug-shot zone and stepped around the corner.
It was like entering an air-conditioned palace. The room was huge and ritzy, with marble and glass and brass everywhere. There were wide, swooping staircases that went up one flight, and glass elevators that went up for miles. And as we walked along, we passed by a whole feast of food, complete with a chef slicing meat off a giant roast.
I guess Marko hadn’t done his homework, either. “Dude!” he said, about bursting with excitement. “This is killer!”
And Marissa was right—it did feel like we were in some ritzy resort in Las Vegas instead of on a ship. “Can we eat?” I ask, because the food looks amazing and suddenly I’m starving.
r /> Darren’s shuffling through paperwork. “How about we find our rooms first?” Marko catches my eye, and I can tell he’d like to chow down now, too, but Darren’s already heading for the elevators, going, “Our rooms are on Deck 9,” so we wind up following him instead.
The back wall of the elevator is glass and bowed out, and once the doors close, Marissa and I stand looking outward as we start going up. We can see people inside the elevators that are across a big open area from us, everything below, and even above, which is so cool. It’s like being in a glass pod flying through space. I get this urge to wave at the people going down in the elevator across from us, but I know it’s dorky, so I hold back.
But then I realize that I know people in the elevator across from us.
So I cut loose!
“Hey! That’s JT and Kip!” Marissa says, and waves, too. And we’re acting like such doofs, jumping up and down and waving real big, that they do notice us, but it’s at the last minute, and then they’ve zoomed out of view.
“Oh, maaaan,” Darren says, and he’s shaking his head.
I give him a little shove. “Don’t worry so much.”
We’re at Deck 9 now, and when we step off the elevator, Marissa asks, “What are our stateroom numbers?”
I squint at her. “Why are they called staterooms?”
Marissa shrugs. “Cabins, staterooms, whatever.”
Darren’s checked the paperwork, and the minute he says, “We’re in 9606 and 9608,” Marissa checks a plaque that’s mounted on the wall and announces, “Port side!” and starts toward the other side of the ship.
“Whoa, whoa!” Darren says, calling her back.
It takes a few steps, but Marissa does stop and come back. “They’re over here, really!”
“I’m sure they are,” Darren tells her, “but legally, you two can’t have a room together. You have to be with someone twenty-one or older, so the travel agent signed Sammy up with me and Marissa up with Marko in rooms right next door to each other. So Sammy and Marko will just switch.”