Blue Autumn Cruise (6 page)

I lay on my lounge chair and put on my suntan lotion. Mama let me get a new bikini that’s a hot-pink-and-yellow print, and I loved it. Diana was still wearing a faded navy-blue Speedo that she had worn for swim team last year. Lynn had offered to take her shopping for a new bathing suit, and Diana said she’d rather go to the barn. I wished I understood her!

“Good morning, this is your captain speaking” came a deep accented voice over the loudspeaker system. “Today we’re at sea, and we will be sailing at a speed of fourteen knots per hour. We should arrive at port in Grand Cayman by early tomorrow morning. It’s seventy-eight degrees on board today. In New York it’s thirty degrees. Enjoy your day at sea!”

“It’s hard to believe it’s so cold at home,” I said to
Diana. “If it’s thirty degrees in New York, it’s probably somewhere in the forties in North Carolina.”

“The horses are probably wearing blankets in their stalls,” she said.

Now was my chance to talk to Diana about apologizing. I hesitated, then plunged ahead on. “Hey, Lauren said she’d apologize for showing the video of you last night if you apologize for telling about our conversation about Uncle Ted’s sayings.”

Diana shot me an angry look. “But you guys are the ones that talked about it.”

“I know, but we really didn’t want Uncle Ted to know. It was embarrassing when you did that.”

“He didn’t get mad.”

“He could’ve. And you don’t know if his feelings were hurt or not.”

Diana played with the fringe on her beach bag. “Lauren
really
embarrassed me. And she did it on purpose.”

“I think she did it because you hurt her feelings first,” I said. “If both of you just say you’re sorry, we can get on with our fabulous trip.”

Diana looked out into the distance for what seemed like a long time. “It just really hurt my feelings.”

“So now you know how it feels,” I said.

Diana drew a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll apologize if she apologizes.”

“Whew!” I drew my hand across my brow to show I’d been sweating it out. “That’s great. It’s the right thing to do. So you’ll apologize when she comes out?”

“Yes.”

Evan and Guy came out then, and so we hung around with them. Diana was usually shy with boys, and today was no different. Guy and Evan were both kind of talking to me. I tried a couple of times to pull her into the conversation.

“So, Diana is the number-one girl on our cross-country team,” I told Guy. “She leaves the other girls in her dust.”

“No kidding; that’s cool,” Guy said.

Diana smiled nervously. “I like running.”

“I ran cross-country last year, but this year I played soccer. Still a boatload of running,” Evan said.

“Wait, Evan, we were talking about Diana,” Guy said. “So, tell us more about being on cross-country, Diana.”

I was so impressed. I had never seen a boy do that—shift attention to another person that way. I watched the way Guy sat forward and focused on Diana, and I thought,
Wow, he’s a nice guy
.

“Oh, I didn’t even want to do it at first,” Diana said. “My stepfather made me.”

“Your stepfather?” Guy asked. “That’s kind of cool.”

“Yeah. Then I started liking it.” Diana shrugged.

I was happy that Diana had said something good about Daddy. There was a time when I thought she never would.

A waiter came around with sodas and snacks.

“Did you see that guy over there?” Guy said to me. “He was at the teen club last night. He just tried to order a beer.”

We all watched as the waiter asked for the guy’s ID and then refused him service.

When Lauren finally came out, Diana glanced at her and then looked away, and Lauren at first talked only to me and the guys. Lauren was wearing a brand-new red-and-white bikini, and I could see Evan and Guy paying attention when she took off her cover-up.

Waiting for Diana to apologize, I held my breath. I was afraid she wouldn’t do it in front of Evan and Guy. I could see her nervously playing with the fringe on her beach bag again. The air between the three of us hung thick and heavy.

Diana cleared her throat. “Hey, Lauren.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about telling about Uncle Ted’s sayings last night. I see now that it embarrassed you guys.”

“It did. I couldn’t believe you told on us on purpose.”

I held my breath. Lauren was supposed to apologize now, not give Diana a hard time.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Diana said again. Her face was turning red. “Like I said, I’m sorry.”

“Okay … thanks,” Lauren said.

I held my breath. Lauren had to apologize now!

She sighed like she was annoyed. “I’m sorry I showed the video of you singing and skipping at the teen club last night.”

“I was so embarrassed,” Diana said. “It really hurt my feelings.”

“Well, in my opinion, if you can’t take a little joke—”

“Lauren!” I said. “You said you’d apologize. Don’t argue about it anymore.”

Lauren looked down and examined her nail polish. “Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Okay … thanks,” Diana said.

I stood up. “Okay! Apologies are done! Now we can go back to having fun. And you girls, please don’t make me have to do that again. We need to get along! Who wants to go swimming?”

I made both of them get in the water with me, and in a few minutes, it seemed to me that everyone was getting along all right.

I was happy they had apologized. But I knew how stubborn they both were. Had it seemed too easy?

I
hadn’t apologized very many times in my life for things I’d done, and I felt kind of awkward, so after an hour or so sitting out by the pool, I decided to go up to the track at the back of the ship for a run. Lauren kept videotaping everyone, and she and Stephanie wanted to keep flirting with the boys, so I decided I should just leave.

Mom and Norm told me it was fine to go to the track by myself, so I headed back to our room to get my
running shoes. But while I was in the hall outside the room, I overheard our cabin steward, Manuel, in the room across the hall with the cleaning supplies, talking to someone else in a hissed whisper.

“I am just not sure I want to do it!” Manuel said. “What if we get caught?”

“You can’t change your mind now!” said the other voice with an American accent. I couldn’t see what the man looked like. “I’m counting on you. You said you were desperate for the money.”

I stood very still, holding my key card, waiting for them to talk more.

“I am. For my little boy.”

“Then you’ll do it.”

There was silence after that. Someone left the supply room, and I didn’t turn around to see what he looked like. I went into my room and put on my running shorts and shoes, wondering what Manuel and the other guy were talking about doing.

When I came back out of the room, I peeked into the cleaning-supply room, but Manuel was gone. I stood around for a little bit, waiting to see if he’d come back, but he didn’t. I had figured out how to get to the track, by going toward the back of the ship, so I headed back that way and took the elevator to the top floor. When I stepped out of the elevator, I was outside on the top
deck, and a stiff, warm breeze blew my hair around. I started out running, wondering again what that argument I’d overheard had been all about. Something they didn’t want to get caught doing, so it must be illegal. Strange. I wondered if I should tell Stephanie about it.

I loved running. Finding out that I was the fastest girl on the cross-country team had done things for me. It became like an identity for me. I had more confidence about other things because I was good at running. And people were nicer to me. I felt cynical about that, because shouldn’t people be nice no matter what, whether you can win a race or not? Sometimes I wanted to say to people, “Hey, how come you weren’t nice to me last year before I was on the cross-country team? What’s really changed about who I am?” But at the same time, it felt good to be treated better. To feel more like I belonged.

Some kids still called me “annn-i-mal.” But having the respect of the cross-country team gave me more courage and strength to ignore what those other people said.

While I was running, I could let my mind wander. Things that had been bothering me before I ran somehow worked themselves out while I was running. I could solve problems. I could work out anger. I had found out that when my Moronic Mood-o-Meter was at
a seven or above, I could go for a run and come back out of breath but feeling calm and relaxed. Running seemed to help my brain waves.

So while I was running on that little track, looking out at the water all around, I thought through my fight with Lauren and our awkward apologies. There really hadn’t been a reason for me to tell on Stephanie and Lauren. I had just done it to be spiteful, I admitted it. And once Lauren tried to get back at me, I realized how hard the whole situation was for Stephanie, trying to mediate between us. And I decided I would try harder to get along with Lauren. After all, this was a fantastic trip, and we were lucky to be here. It would be stupid to ruin it with bickering.

After my run I walked around the track a few times, cooling off, just thinking about how amazing it was to be out in the middle of all this water. My shirt and hair were damp, but in the sea breeze, the sweat dried. The sun reflected off the shifting surfaces of the waves, and the moving water had an amazing aura—a deep rushing background sound that was soothing.

On my way back, I stopped by the adult pool. It was so boring and different from our pool! The grown-ups lay around quietly reading or sleeping in the sun. A lot of the grown-ups were drinking tall drinks with umbrellas in them. No one was even in the pool, and
its surface was almost still. Mom and Norm were sitting with Uncle Ted, Aunt Carol, and Grammy Verra, talking about what would happen tomorrow when we docked at Grand Cayman.

I sat on the edge of Mom’s lounge chair, thinking again about what I’d overheard Manuel saying. I decided I’d tell Stephanie, but not the grown-ups.

“Grand Cayman is supposed to have some of the best snorkeling in the world, because there are so few ocean currents. The water is supposed to be amazingly clear. You can snorkel right off the public beach,” said Norm. He had a guidebook open. “The kids will get a kick out of seeing all the fish around the coral reef. And there’s this place called Stingray City where there are dozens of tame stingrays in about three feet of water, and you can feed them. Should we go there?”

“Yes!” I said. Feeding stingrays sounded amazing. “Are you going, Grammy Verra?”

“No, I think I’ll stay on the boat and get a spa treatment or something,” she said. “Too much hullabaloo getting on and off the boat for me.”

I went back to the young people’s pool determined to get along better with everyone. When I got there, Luke, Evan, and Guy, and several other boys were playing basketball in the pool, and the splashing was so bad that Lauren and Stephanie had moved their
stuff farther away from the pool. But they hadn’t saved a chair for me this time.

“That’s okay,” Stephanie said. “Sit on the edge of my chair, Diana.”

At that minute I felt like leaving. It was amazing how I had been thinking so hard about getting along, and then one little thing happened, and I felt like giving up on everything and going back to the room.

“Or … wait a minute,” Lauren said, standing up. And she went over to the other side of the pool and asked someone if she could have one of the lounges next to them. She grabbed the chair and dragged it all the way back. “Here,” she said.

“Wow, that was nice, Lauren,” said Stephanie.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. It was cool that Lauren was trying to be nice to me. I sat on the chair in my running stuff. “Hey, guess what,” I said.

“What?”

“I overheard our cabin steward having the weirdest conversation,” I said. And then I told them what I had overheard.

“That is scary,” Stephanie agreed. “They’re going to do something illegal to make money.”

“That’s what it sounds like,” Lauren said. “Hey, I have an idea. I’ll ask Manuel if I can interview him on videotape, and then maybe we’ll find out what’s going on.”

“That’s a good idea,” Stephanie said. “But you’ll have to be careful not to act suspicious about anything.”

“I’ve got a great poker face,” Lauren assured us.

She got excited about doing the interview, and so after lunch at the buffet, we went in search of Manuel. We found him in the hallway a few doors down from our room with a cart full of clean towels.

“Hello, girls,” he said with a ready smile. His uniform was perfectly clean and ironed. “How is your cruise going so far?”

“Just great,” Lauren said, cradling her camera. “We were wondering, could we interview you? I have to do a project for school since I’m missing a few days to come on this trip.”

Manuel’s broad face clouded with doubt for a moment, but then his smile returned. “Sure,” he said. “That would be fine. How long will it take?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes,” Lauren said.

A few minutes later, he was sitting in the desk chair in our stateroom, and Lauren sat on the bed with the camera aimed at him.

“How long have you been working for the cruise line?”

“For five years.”

“How do you like it?”

He smiled broadly. “I love working for the cruise line. It is hard work but a good job.”

“What is your job like?”

“I am a cabin steward, and twice a day I clean and straighten the cabins of my customers. I assist with luggage and try to give my customers good service. I try in every way I can to make their trip pleasant. I do not have many days off. I know how to fold towel animals!”

“What is your favorite part of the job?”

“I enjoy meeting all the people. I get to meet people from all over the world. It helps you to understand that there is more to life than the place where you are from. I love learning about new places.”

“Do you have a roommate here on the ship?”

“Yes, I share a room with Ryan, another steward. He is an American from California.”

“Is your cabin like this room?”

Manuel shook his head. “Much smaller. But we are working all the time, and we do not spend very much time in our rooms.”

“We don’t spend much time in here either,” Stephanie said, agreeing.

“Have there been any crimes committed on any of your trips?” Lauren asked this question casually. I couldn’t believe she dared to ask it!

Manuel hesitated. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Did he seem guilty? I couldn’t look at him.

“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “Like stowaways or people being arrested or anything like that.”

“Yes, we did have a stowaway once. It was a woman. They caught her when she was disembarking at the end of the cruise.”

“How did she get away with it?”

“She acted like a passenger, I was told.” Manuel crossed his arms over his chest. “And then there have been passengers arrested for smuggling drugs and things like that.”

“Really?” Lauren stared at Manuel and waited for him to say more. My heart was pounding so hard, I was sure that someone must be able to hear it.

“Yes,” Manuel said. “It was good that they were caught.”

We all nodded and agreed. I still couldn’t look at him. I could hardly breathe.

“I will tell you about the most exciting trip I have made,” Manuel said suddenly. “Once we were sailing through rough weather, and the ship was rocking and tables and chairs went sliding across the room, and dishes slid off of tables and broke everywhere. It was pretty scary. I was happy to get into safer waters! I called my wife that night in great relief, and it was so good to hear my children’s voices.” Manuel’s face broke wide in a smile of relief as he remembered.

“Where does your family live?”

“My family lives in Manila, Philippines.”

“How often do you see your family?”

“I am on the ship for ten months, and then I have two months off to spend with my family.”

“Is that hard?”

Manuel nodded. “Yes, it can be hard. I have four children, and I was not able to be there for the birth of two of them.”

“Oh no!” Stephanie said.

Now Manuel hesitated and looked at his hands. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the key chain with the photographs on it that we had seen before. He held it up for the camera. “This is my family … my wife, Paloma, and Francisco is five, Sandra is four, Raul is three, and Carlo is two. And recently we found out that Carlo, my youngest son, is deaf. Because of my job, I was not there to talk to the doctors.”

“He’s deaf?”

“Yes, he was sick with a high fever, and as a result he lost most of his hearing. Now he needs hearing aids. You cannot imagine what it is like to tell your son you love him, and he does not understand.” Manuel quickly looked away from Lauren and put his hand over his mouth.

“When will he get the hearing aids?”

“When we are able to save the money, we will be able to get the aids. I am saving as much as I can now. They are very expensive. But as a parent you will do anything for your child. And it is hard not being there. My wife is heroic.” Then he shrugged and smiled. “It is a challenge, but I am lucky to have this job. And I keep up with the kids on Skype. Last night my daughter Sandra sang ‘Itsy Bitsy Spider’ to me over Skype.” He demonstrated the finger motions for “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” “And I will be home again in just a few weeks. I must have faith that we will be able to get the money for Carlo.”

The moment stretched out as Manuel smiled into the camera. He had a look of trust and hope on his face. After a beat, Lauren asked him some more questions about traveling, and then he demonstrated how to fold several towels into monkey shapes.

“Well, thanks for letting us interview you!” Stephanie said.

“You are welcome. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. And I will hope to see you around the boat.” After Manuel left, the three of us sat on our beds in silence, staring at each other.

“He’s so nice. I can’t believe he’s doing something illegal,” Stephanie said.

“Could you have imagined what you heard? Or
maybe you thought it was him and it was someone else?” Lauren asked.

I immediately felt a flush of anger. “No, Lauren, I didn’t imagine it! And yes, I’m sure it was him!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lauren quickly said. “I just can’t imagine him doing anything wrong.”

“Me, either,” I said. Now that Lauren had apologized, I carefully reviewed the scene I had heard in my head, wondering if I might have heard it wrong.

“But we did find out that he needs money,” Lauren said. “For the hearing aids.”

“Well, there’s one more thing,” I said. “Manuel said he has an American roommate, and the other guy I heard talking has an American accent.”

“There are a lot of people on this ship with American accents,” Lauren said.

“Well, there’s nothing else we can do,” Stephanie said. “Except just watch and listen whenever he’s around and see if we can find out anything else.”

Had I imagined it? Had it been another steward? Had I just thought it was Manuel? I lay on my bunk, beginning to doubt everything I thought I’d heard.