Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (16 page)

“So he can let himself in and out of anybody’s room?” I whisper back.

“He’s the cruise director,” Marissa whispers. “I’m sure he has access to everything. And I don’t think the stewards work this late.” Then she adds, “Maybe there’s a note? We left
him
one.”

So we inch over to my bed like it has a coiled rattler on it and check for a note.

Nothing.

“Maybe he thinks this is funny?” I say.

Marissa nods. “Like we thought playing Kensington Clue was funny?”

But even looking at it from that angle, the noose on my bed does not seem funny.

It seems creepy.

Like a threat.

“Do you think Kate’s turned up?” I ask.

Marissa shakes her head. “Kip would have told us, don’t you think?”

I shrug, ’cause the last time we saw Kip, he was running off after punching JT’s lights out. Who knew if he’d bother to tell us. Or if Noah would. Especially not after he’d caught us playing Kensington Clue.

Marissa takes a deep breath. “I’m starting to think that maybe Kip’s right.”

“About?”

“About his grandmother and foul play.”

“Foul play?”

She looks at me. “That’s what they call it, right?”

I grab the rope and head for the door. “Yeah. I guess. I just haven’t ever heard anybody actually
say
it. It seems so, you know, Agatha Christie.”

Marissa chases after me, saying, “Wait! Where are you going?”

Where I’m going is next door to tell Darren, but there’s a little hitch in my brain stopping me from saying so. “I’m gonna tell my dad” is not something I’ve ever said or even
thought
, and it flashes through my mind that a) it’s childish, and b) it’s … well, it’s weird to even be having the whole tell-my-dad thing cross my mind.

So instead, I just beat on his door.

“Oh, good,” Marissa gasps. “I thought you were going to storm the castle again.”

I knew she meant beat down Noah’s door, because
I’ve got a kinda bad reputation with her for doing stuff like that. “The last person I want to see right now is Noah Marlowe.”

The door flies open, and there’s Marko, holding a toothbrush. “What’s up?”

I dangle the noose, and his eyebrows go for a big stretch as he moves aside to let us in. “Dude!” he calls, tapping on the bathroom door. “Be decent when you come out.”

“What?”

“Your offspring is here!” he calls, louder. “She brought a noose.”

We hear another
“What?”
but then the bathroom door flies open, and there’s Darren, also holding a toothbrush. “Everything okay?” he asks, then sees the noose.

“It was on my bed,” I tell him.

He takes it from me. “Not cool.”

“So, bro,” Marko says, “what’s our course of action?”

“Kick his ass?” Darren says, and he’s looking really ticked off.

I try to bring it down a notch. “Look, he obviously didn’t like our joke. And we obviously don’t like his.”

“I don’t care who you are or what your passkey allows you to do, you don’t just let yourself into the room of two young girls! And after midnight?”

“It was Noah! After midnight! With a key!” Marko cries, and when we all scowl at him, he looks kinda sheepish and goes, “Sorry.”

I nod. “Or maybe someone else saw us put the rope in front of Noah’s door.”

“You think someone’s been spying on us?” Marissa gasps.

Darren kinda shakes his head. “Who would be spying on us?”

“Kensingtons!” Marissa and I cry together. Then Marissa adds, “And since Kip knows what room Sammy and I are in, probably all of them do!”

“Like they would care?” Darren asks, and Marko goes, “Why would Kip tell anybody? Isn’t he mad at the rest of them?”

But then something hits me. “What if JT’s parents
did
see us at the library?”

Marissa’s eyes get all big and she jumps in with, “They could’ve bribed someone to let them into our room!”

“Girls! Girls!” Darren says. “You are really letting your imaginations run wild.”

I give him a scowl, because how many times have I heard
that
in my life? And now from him?

But then something
else
hits me. “Wait a minute,” I say, with a finger in the air, and what’s weird is, they all
do
wait a minute. And stare at me. Which is kinda distracting. Especially since my wait-a-minute thought is actually kinda mind-boggling.

“Well?” Marissa finally asks.

I take a deep breath. “According to the way we’re registered, I’m supposed to be in
this
room with Darren, and Marko is supposed to be in
that
room with Marissa.”

“Oh. Right,” they kind of mumble.

And then we all stand there, thinking.

“So maybe he knows I’m the instigator,” Marko says. “Maybe it wasn’t meant for the girls at all.”

As we mentally chew on that, I look around Darren and Marko’s cabin, and there’s stuff scattered everywhere, including an acoustic guitar propped up in the corner by a bed. But stuff everywhere does not explain ten hats on the desk. They’re not all ball caps, either. There are a couple of cowboy hats, a Panama straw hat, and a
fishing
hat.

There are also, like, fifteen pairs of
glasses
that range from cop-style sunglasses, to ones with narrow rectangle lenses, to cheap plastic hipster glasses, to the nerd specs Darren had been wearing in the library.

And I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to know.

“What’s all that about?” I ask, pointing at the desk.

Darren sort of raises an eyebrow at the hats, and when he doesn’t say anything, Marko goes, “Things can get a little crazy when people start recognizing us. Once it starts to build, it sort of tidal waves. And it’s starting to build.”

“So those are
disguises
?” I ask, thinking that a ball cap and sunglasses have got to be the lamest disguise ever.

Darren can tell what I’m thinking, though, and says, “A ball cap and sunglasses is the ultimate disguise. It doesn’t fool
you
because you know us. But it works remarkably well on people who only know us in a different context.”

“Like from posters, which are now up outside the theater,” Marko says.

“To hide, you just wear what half the population of men wear. It’s how you blend in and disappear in a crowd.”

“We’ve gotten pretty good at laying low,” Marko says.
“And switching it up. Like poolside today? Total peace and quiet.” He grins at Darren. “The goatees were genius.”

I blink at them. “You wore goatees to the pool?”

Darren shrugs. “My face was a little annoyed, but the rest of me was very happy.”

“Right, huh?” Marko says with a happy little sigh.

Darren looks at the clock. “Okay. It’s almost two in the morning. What are we doing about the situation? Do you want me to beat on Noah’s door?”

“Or maybe some other part of him?” Marko asks.

“No!” I tell them, ’cause something about your
dad
storming the castle seems so … childish.

“Okay,” Darren says. “Then do you girls want to stay in here with us? Would that make you feel safer?”

Marissa and I pull faces. “No!”

“No?” Darren says, and he looks kinda hurt. “Marko could sleep in your room, and you two can share one of the beds in here?”

“Uh, that’s okay,” I tell him, thinking how a) I was totally starting to feel like a little kid afraid of the boogey-man, and b) I did not want to share a tiny bed with someone who snored. Being in the same room was bad enough.

“Or we could just switch rooms?” Marko says.

“We’re fine,” I tell them, and drag Marissa toward the door. “It was probably Noah, and he probably thought he was being funny.”

“He does tell bad chemistry jokes,” Marissa says.

“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.