Baby-Sitters on Board!

  I left the corridor, turned a couple of corners, and climbed a short flight of stairs. Then I pushed through a doorway, tripped, pitched forward, and ran directly into the most absolutely gorgeous, handsome, perfect, wonderful boy I have ever laid eyes on.

  “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry,” I exclaimed as we sorted ourselves out. “I wasn’t look — I mean, I wasn’t pay —”

  “That’s okay,” said the boy, grinning.

  His grin was as gorgeous and handsome and perfect and wonderful as the rest of him. Why aren’t there guys like him at Stoneybrook Middle School? I wondered. The boy’s eyes were a deep brown and they searched mine intently, as though, maybe, he could read my thoughts if he concentrated hard enough. His teeth, which I’d noticed when he smiled, were even except for a space between the top two middle ones. The space was cute. And his hair, which was the last thing I noticed (mostly because I felt as if my blue eyes were locked to his brown ones) was light brown and very straight — until the ends, where it curled into little tendrils.

  “Some ship, huh?” said the boy.

  “I’ll say,” I agreed. We’d reached one of the outside decks, and we leaned against the railing, gazing at the sparkling ocean.

  “I can’t believe all the great stuff that’s on board.”

  “Me neither,” I replied. The boy and I smiled at each other. “I’m traveling with my friends,” I said. “A whole big group of us. Who are you traveling with?”

  The boy didn’t answer. He looked at his watch. “Oh, wow, I’ve really got to get going. I … I promised I’d come right back. See you.” And he turned and strode away, leaving me alone at the railing.

  What did I do wrong? I wondered. Was my question totally boring? … And then I thought, I don’t care if it was. That was the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen, and I’m not going to let him get away. At least, not this easily. This is a dream vacation, and I’ve just found my dream boy!

  “Um, Vanessa, could you please hurry up? Just a little?” I asked patiently. Vanessa Pike is the slowest person I’ve ever met. Mrs. Pike once told me that she sometimes has to wake Vanessa twenty minutes before the rest of the Pike kids in order for her to get ready for school on time, and even so, she’s usually the last kid out the door.

  “I’m hurrying. Really I am,” said Vanessa. “I just have to lace my sneakers up.”

  At least she’s not talking in rhymes, I thought, which was what she did during the entire two weeks we spent in Sea City. (Vanessa wants to be a poet when she grows up.)

  Vanessa slowly pulled the lace of one shoe through an eyelet. She stopped to untwist it, then pulled it through the next eyelet.

  I glanced at Mallory, who was sharing a cabin with Vanessa and me. Without a word, we lunged for Vanessa. We each grabbed a foot and laced her sneakers for her. I didn’t know what my friends or the rest of the Pikes were up to, but I wasn’t about to spend half the day waiting for Vanessa to lace her shoes.

  “Let’s go see what everyone wants to do,” I suggested. “Come on, you guys.”

  Vanessa and Mallory and I left our cabin. Next door was the cabin Stacey was sharing with Claire and Margo. Next door to them was the boys’ cabin. The triplets and Nicky had been given a room to themselves. I had a feeling this wasn’t a very safe arrangement, but it was the best one the Pikes could work out. Besides, the boys’ room adjoined their parents’, so how much trouble could they get into?

  I knocked on the door to Stacey’s cabin and then on the boys’ door. The kids met in the hall.

  “So what does everyone want to do?” I asked.

  “Go exploring,” said Nicky.

  “Go swimming,” said Claire.

  “Go eat,” said Byron, who’s always hungry.

  “Play video games,” said Adam.

  “Look at the ocean,” said Mallory dreamily.

  “Find a candy machine,” said Margo.

  “Read,” said Vanessa.

  “Look for people wearing goofy bathing caps and laugh at them,” said Jordan.

  “Well, I’ve got news,” Stacey spoke up. “Your mom and dad said that you older ones — Mallory, Byron, Adam, and Jordan — don’t have to stick with an adult. You can go off on your own as long as you behave yourselves.”

  “Awesome!” exclaimed the triplets, and they started to run off.

  “Behaving yourselves,” I called after them, “means no running and no laughing at people. Got it?”

  The boys slowed down. “Got it,” said Adam solemnly. Then he grinned devilishly at his brothers. They headed down the corridor.

  Oh, brother, I thought. Please just let them stay out of major trouble.

  Mallory asked to go off by herself, so Stacey and I decided to divide up the four remaining Pikes. Since the idea of exploring seemed kind of interesting, I chose Nicky. Then, “Vanessa?” I said. “You don’t really want to read right now, do you? Come on and take a look at the ship.”

  “All right,” she agreed.

  Nicky, Vanessa, and I headed off in one direction, and Stacey, Margo, and Claire in another — in search of a candy machine and a swimming pool.

  “Let’s start on the very bottom deck and work our way up,” I suggested. “We’ll see what’s on every deck.”

  “Great,” said Vanessa and Nicky. And we did just that.

  The bottom deck, which was called the Island Deck, turned out to be rather dull. “Just cabins,” commented Nicky, sounding disappointed.

  The next level, the Dolphin Deck, wasn’t much better. Our cabins and the purser’s office were there. That was all.

  “What’s a purser?” asked Nicky as we climbed the stairs to the third level.

  “He’s the officer in charge of money,” I told him.

  “Could I ask him for a loan? Just a couple of bucks?”

  “I doubt it,” I said, smiling.

  The third level, the Providence Deck, was a bit better. We found more cabins, but we also found the ship’s doctor, the infirmary, and a large restaurant called The Pirates’ Den.

  “Whoa,” said Nicky, gazing around at the pirates’ hats and swords and eyepatches that decorated the walls of the restaurant. “I hope we get to eat in here.”

  “But,” said Vanessa warily as we passed the infirmary, “I hope we don’t have to go in there.”

  The Coastal Deck was where we found the Flamingo Cay Restaurant, the barbershop, and the Seven Seas Beauty Salon, as well as more cabins.

  “Ooh, Mary Anne,” said Vanessa, as we stepped inside the beauty salon. “Look, you can get your nails painted — even your toenails!”

  “Yeah,” I replied vaguely. I was looking at a girl who was standing at the appointment desk, apparently waiting for someone to help her. She had masses of dark, wavy hair that cascaded over her shoulders and partway down her back, and she was wearing one of the skimpiest bikinis I’d ever seen. Even though she looked just a little older than me, she had a figure that filled out the top of the bikini nicely.

  “Wow,” I said softly. I was highly impressed.

  The girl turned around then, and I blushed. I hoped she hadn’t overheard me. That would have been too, too embarrassing.

  But when she saw me, all she did was smile and say, “Honestly, traveling alone is such a bore. I have to do everything for myself — make hair appointments, talk to the purser. Have you ever traveled alone?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I don’t recommend it,” said the girl. “It’s bad enough that my parents got ki —”

  “Alexandra Carmody?” interrupted a young woman who had stepped up to the desk. “Lynnette is ready for you now.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Alexandra. She turned to me. “Excuse me. I’ve got to go. I have to get ready for my date tonight.” Alexandra followed one of the hairdressers to a row of sinks.

  I stared after her, openmouthed. What had she been about to say to me? That her parents had been killed? How horrible! Maybe that wasn’t it at all, though. Maybe she was going
to say … I couldn’t think of another word that began with “ki” that made sense, though. Kicked? Kissed? Nah.

  Imagine that. An orphan. Plus, she was so sophisticated. I could never, I decided, never in a million, billion years, be as sophisticated as Alexandra Carmody. Alexandra was even more sophisticated than Stacey or Claudia.

  “Mary Anne?” Nicky was tugging at my hand. “Come on,” he said. “This is boring. Let’s go.”

  We continued our explorations. On the Tropical Deck we found a stage and theater for live productions, a casino with slot machines (“For adults only,” I noted sadly), a room full of video games (“Awesome!” exclaimed both Vanessa and Nicky), a lounge, a pub, and a little restaurant called the Moonlight Cafe.

  “This is my favorite deck so far,” announced Vanessa, and I had to agree.

  “I’m not going to say which is my favorite until we’ve seen them all,” said Nicky wisely.

  And after we’d toured the sixth level, the Moondance Deck, he said, “Well, this sure isn’t my favorite.” The Moondance Deck contained only luxury cabins, the children’s recreation room, and a children’s pool. “Baby stuff,” Nicky scoffed as we passed the kids’ areas.

  But he perked up on the Starlight Deck, where we found another cafe, two fancy swimming pools, an ice cream parlor, a disco, a teen center, a bar, and — best of all — a movie theater.

  “Presents ten movies a day,” I read on the sign outside the theater. “Ten movies!” All thoughts of Alexandra Carmody flew out of my head. I love movies — old ones, new ones, love stories, space adventures, stories about kids in high school. “I’m changing my mind,” I told Nicky and Vanessa. “I think the Starlight Deck is my favorite.”

  “It might be mine, too,” said Nicky, “but look. We have at least one more deck to go.” He pointed up a short flight of stairs, where an arrow indicated the way to the Sun Deck.

  The Sun Deck, which turned out to be the very top deck of the ship, might not have been the most interesting level, but it certainly turned out to be the most exciting. At first it simply seemed, as Vanessa noted, “too healthy.” It was where we found the largest of the swimming pools, a jogging track, lounge chairs, and the health spa.

  “Boring,” said Nicky, but just then Vanessa exclaimed, “Hey, look!”

  “What?” I cried.

  In a corner of the deck sat a shabby life raft. A tarp had been pulled over it.

  “What’s so great about an old raft?” asked Nicky.

  “Not the raft, the head!” cried Vanessa.

  Sure enough, a sandy-haired head was peeking out of the raft. A hand moved the tarp partway aside, the head poked even further up, and then in one swift movement, the tarp was shoved off, and a tall boy leaped out of his hiding place and darted down a flight of steps.

  “After him!” cried Nicky.

  Nicky and Vanessa chased the boy, and I chased Nicky and Vanessa. But the boy had gotten a headstart. By the time we reached the bottom of the staircase that he’d run down, he was nowhere in sight.

  “Awesome!” exclaimed Nicky for the umpteenth time that day.

  And Vanessa added, “I can’t believe it. I cannot believe it! Do you know what, Mary Anne? There’s a stowaway on the Ocean Princess!”

  It was perfect, absolutely perfect. I couldn’t have asked for a better arrangement. The thing is, I had just finished reading Harriet the Spy. Well, not really just finished, but pretty recently. I had finished it about a week before my family left on our trip. And I wanted to be just like Harriet. Well, not really just like her, since she had a lot of problems. But I wanted to keep a notebook like hers, a notebook in which I could write down things about people. And I couldn’t imagine a better place to do that than on a huge ship full of people. There were bound to be some interesting ones to write about. Now, I know Harriet’s notebook got her in trouble, but I wanted to keep one anyway. I’d just be extra careful that my notebook wasn’t discovered the way Harriet’s was. Besides, I’d be writing mostly about strangers, not about people I knew. I told myself that if Mom or anyone caught me, I could say that this was a writing exercise, which was true, and which would sound believable since I might become a writer one day. (You never know.)

  The perfect part of the arrangement came when Stacey announced that us older Pikes — the triplets and me — were allowed to go off on our own. We didn’t have to stick with Mom or Dad or Stacey or Mary Anne. Not that I don’t like them, and not that Stacey and Mary Anne aren’t a lot of fun, but it sure was going to be easier to spy and to write in my notebook if I could look around the ship alone.

  So after the triplets ran off, with big plans to go find people wearing goofy bathing caps and laugh at them, I started to go off, too.

  “Don’t you want to come exploring with Nicky and Vanessa and me?” asked Mary Anne.

  I did, I really did — but not as much as I wanted to go spying. “Thanks,” I said, “but I’ll look around by myself.” I rolled my eyes, trying to make Mary Anne think I’d had it up to here with Vanessa, and Mary Anne grinned. Then I pretended to leave. I walked away, but after I’d rounded a corner, I hid behind a door until I’d seen Mary Anne go off in one direction with Nicky and Vanessa, and Stacey go off in the other with Margo and Claire.

  Then I ducked back into the cabin I was sharing with Vanessa and Mary Anne. I rummaged around in my suitcase until I found the new spying book I’d bought three days ago. It was a spiral notebook with a shiny green cover. As a precaution, I’d written OUR TRIP: A DAILY DIARY across the front. That was something that sounded fairly boring, should the book happen to fall into the wrong hands — not that I’d be careless enough to leave the diary where anyone might find it.

  I grabbed a pen out of my purse and was ready to go, but where? The ship was huge. I’d seen a diagram of it showing where the shops and restaurants and swimming pools and everything were. There were eight decks on the ship, from the Island Deck on the bottom to the Sun Deck on the top. At least I wouldn’t have to worry much about running into my brothers and sisters. If you wanted to, you could probably get lost on the Ocean Princess.

  I decided to start my spying right where I was, on the Dolphin Deck, but all I found were cabins, cabins, and more cabins. No people. No interesting people anyway. Maybe I needed an interesting deck in order to find interesting people.

  I made my way up to the Tropical Deck. That was the level with a theater, a casino, a video games room, and some restaurants and stuff. My luck up there was much better. Trying to look inconspicuous, I settled myself on a lounge chair on the veranda that wound around the deck. Almost the first person who walked toward me was a girl about Stacey and Mary Anne’s age (or maybe a little older) with long, dark, wavy hair. She was wearing the teeniest bikini you can imagine, and she looked as sophisticated as if she’d just stepped out of a fancy penthouse apartment in New York City.

  She paused to look at the ocean and soon a cute boy paused next to her. He smiled at her in this sort of coy way.

  Gosh! Maybe something like that will happen to me someday.

  “Great view,” said the boy. “Look, you can still see land.”

  The girl yawned. “It is great, I guess. It’s just that it’s no big deal. I mean for me. I live down here.”

  Darn. So she wasn’t a New Yorker after all.

  “Well,” the girl went on, “I live here when I’m not making movies.”

  “You’re an actress?” said the boy. “Wow.” He took the girl by her elbow and they sauntered off together.

  I wrote furiously, trying to get down everything I’d heard. When I was finished the boy and girl were gone, but I stayed right where I was — like a fisherman who’s caught a trout and decides he’s found a lucky spot on the riverbank.

  A few people strolled by me on the veranda — no one out of the ordinary. Then this old man came by. The thing that made me notice him was that he just looked so sad. He leaned against the railing and stared out at the water. I could tell he was thinking
of something else, and that the something, whatever it was, made him feel just awful.

  I was right in the middle of inventing a tragic past for the man when I caught sight of Kristy and Claudia. Oh, no! I didn’t want them to see me, but it was too late to get up and hide. I scrunched myself against the back of the lounge chair and bent over as far as I could. At least they wouldn’t be able to see my face.

  Then they walked by and I could tell that, like the man, they weren’t really seeing the ocean, or anything else. They were very caught up in their conversation.

  “I know I’m a slob,” Kristy was saying, “but why should it matter to Dawn? Can’t she ignore it?”

  “I don’t know,” Claudia replied. “Why don’t —”

  “Excuse me,” said a third voice, and I dared to look up.

  The old man had stopped Kristy and Claudia!

  “Do you have the time?” he asked them.

  “Sure,” replied Kristy. “It’s three forty-five.”

  “Thank you,” said the man.

  “You’re welcome.” Kristy smiled at him and she and Claudia walked on.

  I left the veranda then. It might have been a good fishing hole, but I was too exposed there. I found a flight of stairs and walked up one level to the Moondance Deck. At first it didn’t seem like much — just the children’s recreation area and pool, and more cabins. But after I walked by a cabin with its door open, I realized that they weren’t just any cabins, they were luxury cabins — huge. I decided to wander through those corridors for awhile. Maybe I’d see the sophisticated girl again. If she was a big-time actress she probably had a luxury cabin.

  I didn’t see her. What I did see was more interesting than the girl, more sad than the old man, and very curious. I turned a corner, and coming toward me down the hall was a woman pushing a little boy in an impossibly small wheelchair.

  “We’re almost there, Marc,” she was saying. “Just wait’ll you see our room.”

  “I can’t wait, Mom!” exclaimed Marc, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling as excited as he wanted his parents to think he was. I know because I’ve done that with my parents. Sometimes you have to protect parents and their feelings.