Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise (20 page)

Darren laughs. “Wear your swimsuit, flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt. And bring a towel. We’ll grab breakfast on our way out.”

“What’s going on?” Marissa asks after I hang up.

I stumble over to the balcony and about blind us both when I open the curtain. “Darren booked us on some sail and snorkel expedition.” I open the balcony door, and sure enough, it’s already roasty-toasty outside. “It leaves in an hour.”

“In an hour?” she says, flinging off the covers.

So we hustle to get ready, and before you know it, the four of us are heading up the stairs to the Schooner Buffet.

After one flight, Marissa eyes my feet. “You’re serious?”

At first I think she can’t believe I’m wearing something besides high-tops, but then I notice that everyone else has their flip-flops under control.

Mine are wild.

And loud!

FLIP-FLAP, FLIP-FLAP!

And I can’t seem to shut them up.

“How do you
do
that?” I ask her, ’cause her feet are just … quiet.

She gives my feet a little squint. “How do
you
do
that
?”

So yeah, there’d be no sneaking around in these things, but I figured, Who cares? But as we’re cruising the buffet, I spot Lucas and LuAnn over at Fruity Island, and all of a sudden I
start
caring.

The first thing I do is look around for JT, because the last thing I want to do is deal with JT. I don’t see him anywhere, but Lucas and LuAnn are obviously uptight. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but from the way they’re putting stuff on their trays and talking to each other in manic little bursts, I know they’re not discussing the fine carving details of the watermelon shark.

So I turn to Darren and whisper, “Can I borrow your hat and glasses?” and before he can ask me why, I’ve snagged them.

“Hey!” he says, like I’ve stripped him down to tighty whities.

“Shhh!” I say back as I shove my hair inside the cap and
put on the shades. “Get me something to eat, okay?” Then I abandon my tray and head over to Fruity Island.

Trouble is, my feet are flippin’ and flappin’ so loud that Lucas actually turns and looks as I walk up. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to recognize me, but they still move away, and the only thing I manage to overhear before they leave is LuAnn saying, “How can they trap us on here? We’re not under arrest!” and Lucas going, “And that’s how we want it to stay! We have to stay cool and be cooperative and just play this thing out.” He takes a deep breath. “At least Noah’s agreed to do what he can to keep it quiet.”

I do try to follow them over to Pastry Island, but my feet are being so loud that Lucas looks
again
, so I just head back to Darren and the others at the main buffet, where my spot’s been taken by three very tan women with tight shorts, silver jewelry, and dainty, manicured feet.

Cougars.

And they are definitely prowling around Darren.

“No,” he’s telling them, “I’m here with my daughter.” He puts a hand on my shoulder as I wedge back into the buffet line. “Family time.”

“Oh!” they say, and give me the kind of smile that says, Aren’t you cute, and I’d like to kill you, all at the same time. Then they tell Darren, “Can’t wait for the concert!” and leave, carried off by their ridiculously quiet feet.

The instant they’re gone, Darren snatches his hat and glasses back from me, saying, “Let’s eat and get out of here.”

Which is what we do.

And even though Marko says something about wishing
“the Kipster” was going with us, Marissa cuts that idea off quick by pointing out that Darren had bought only four excursion passes, so unless one of
us
wants to stay home …

Which none of us does. And besides, we’re barely going to make sail time for the excursion as it is.

No time to track down the Kipster!

Luckily, we can walk right off the ship and onto the dock, so we don’t have to wait for a smaller boat to shuttle us over. And almost right away we spot a man with a sign that says L
OS
A
RCOS
S
AIL
& S
NORKEL
. He leads us and a handful of other people off the dock and over to, well, I guess it’s a truck. Or maybe a converted van? The back where we climb in has low sides with posts holding up a bright green canopy, and there are bench seats that go around the perimeter. There’s a big open window between the cab, where the driver is, and the back, where the rest of us are. And once we get going, Mexican music blares from speakers wired through the window.

Everyone on board seems to be in a great mood, holding on to one of the canopy posts or the side of the truck as we jostle through town and then blast along dusty roads into the countryside. The driver keeps shouting,
“Ándale,”
as we zoom around cars and people and livestock, so Marko starts shouting it with him, and pretty soon all the adults are going,
“¡Ándale! ¡Ándale!”

After about half an hour we park at a dock where a sailboat is waiting, and guides give us some instructions before we all pile into the boat.

Now, at first I’m kinda nervous. I mean, this is a
boat.
Not tiny, but not big, either. It tips a little side to side as people walk around. There are masts and sails and ropes, which seem solid and secure, but the whole thing feels somehow … dicey. Like once we get out to the real ocean, a whale might come along and flip us right over.

Plus, it’s crowded. Besides the five crew guys and eight passengers, there are three big coolers and a bunch of snorkel gear and not enough places to sit. I wind up on a wooden bench near the front of the boat, with Marissa on my right and Darren on my left. It’s actually a good spot, but poor Marko gets stuck sitting on an ice chest.

Anyway, after some more instructions and a little overview of where we’ll be going and what kind of wildlife we might be lucky enough to see, they put up the sails and off we go.

I’m still nervous as we sail away from the dock, but after we’ve been going for a while, I start to relax. Everything is so beautiful. The water, the birds overhead, the coastline, the mountains … And I love the
sounds
. The gush of water against the boat, the seagulls crying, the
wind
 … Something about the wind—in the sails, against flags at the top of the mast, and especially across my face and in my hair—it makes me feel like I’m soaring over the water.

Like I’m
flying
.

After a while one of the crew points and shouts,
“Delfines,”
and when we look, we see dolphins arching in and out of the water not far from us.

I cry, “Holy smokes!” and it comes out all squealy, because I’d never seen anything like it before. And then the dolphins swim
toward
us instead of swimming away,
and pretty soon the boat is sailing along in the middle of a group of them.

I look over at Darren with a big ol’ smile and tell him, “This is
awesome
,” and he smiles back and nods like, No kidding!

After that, I was definitely over my fear of being on the sailboat. I think the dolphins made me feel like we were welcome. Even after they took off, I just quit worrying about us being kicked out of the water by angry whale tails or whatever.

Then we arrived at our snorkeling place, which was called Los Arcos, where there were huge rock formations jutting out of the water, one in the shape of an arch. And after some basic snorkeling instructions, we put on our flippers and masks and jumped overboard!

It was really warm on the boat, so jumping into the ocean was a shock, but after just a couple of minutes, the chill was gone and the water felt great. And when Darren was sure we had the hang of breathing through the snorkel tube, we kicked off toward the arch rock, because that’s where all the fishies were supposedly hanging out.

And, boy, were they! Whole schools of yellow-and-black ones and green-and-blue ones. Plus we saw a sea turtle and an
octopus
.

It was awesome and I could have stayed out there all day, but after we’d been through the arch a few times, we heard the time’s-up! whistle blow and had to swim back to the boat.

The return trip didn’t feel much like the sail out to the rocks. For one thing, we seemed to be moving a lot
faster—like we were in a rush to get back. But also, the crew turned on music, which kind of killed the whole symphony of nature thing. Marko didn’t seem to mind, though, ’cause he slapped and bapped the side of the ice chest he was sitting on to the rhythm of the music. “Dude!” he called over to Darren. “I got me a cooler
cajón
!”

Darren laughed, “You have a way cooler
cajón
at the studio!”

Marko had to give up his ice chest when they served food, but he didn’t seem to mind that, either, seeing how the food that got served was delicious fruit and shrimp and fresh-baked rolls.

On our sail out to Los Arcos, one of the crew had been snapping pictures, and apparently there was a setup somewhere on board where they could print them, because after the food was put away and we were all air-dried, they brought out a three-ring binder with plastic-sheeted pictures in them. I didn’t even want to look, because come on—you want to sell me a little snapshot for twenty bucks?

But when it was Marissa’s turn with the binder, she gasped and said, “Oh, Sammy!” and shoved it in my lap.

Now, okay, the truth is, I hate pictures.

Maybe because I take
terrible
pictures, but whatever—I hate them.

But looking at the one in my lap, I knew right away—I had to have this picture.

Twenty bucks?

Shoot, I would pay a hundred!

“Sammy, that is
way
better than anything you would get at formal night,” Marissa whispers.

Well, pinchy shoes and a dress are not going to produce anything
anyone
would want, but really, this picture is more than just not tortured.

It’s like a small miracle.

For one thing, I’m smiling.

Really smiling.

For another, it’s a picture of … well, of me and my dad.

There are no pictures of me and my dad.

Zero.

Well, okay. There’s the cheesy say-cheese picture of the four of us, but none of just him and me.

And there sure are none with him grinning at me while the ocean’s glistening and
dolphins
are arching out of the water in the background.

Marissa takes over, shoving the binder into Darren’s lap. “You have to buy this picture!”

He takes one look at it, then calls out to a crew guy, “Señor,” and just like that, the picture’s mine.

“Promise you’ll scan it for me?”

I nod and look away, wishing hard for some sunglasses to hide my stinging eyes.

It was nearly five o’clock by the time we got back to the marina, and I could tell Darren was kinda keyed up as we went through the turnstiles and boarded the cruise ship.

I guess Marko could, too, because he says, “Dude, they’re here. Relax.”

“Who are we talking about?” I ask.

“Drew and Cardillo,” Marko tells us. “Bass and keys. We won’t be causin’ much trouble tomorrow without them.”

“Oh, we could still cause some major trouble,” Darren says. But then he frowns and adds, “But we’d be in violation of our contract.”

“Why haven’t they been on the cruise the whole time?” Marissa asks.

“What’s actually unusual is that we
have
been on the ship the whole time,” Darren tells us. “The way entertainment on cruise ships works is acts go from ship to ship, switching at ports. Or on sea days, they helicopter talent in and out.”

My eyes bug out. “They
helicopter
people around?”

Darren nods. “There’s a landing pad on the bow of the ship.”

“That’s a little over-the-top, isn’t it?”

“They’ve got a system down. And it makes for cabin efficiency. They don’t want you taking up a room for five nights when you only entertain for one or two.”

I think about that a minute. “So the comedian we saw last night …?”

“Is probably doing the same show on a different ship tonight.”

Marko throws in, “Sleeping on the same pillow some other entertainer used last night.”

As we enter the arctic zone of cruise ship air-conditioning, Darren adds, “We also would have been down on Deck 3 if I hadn’t upgraded. Drew and Cardillo decided last minute that they couldn’t be gone the whole week. They had other commitments.”

“Yeah,” Marko mutters, kind of rolling his eyes. “Soccer.”

Darren eyes him. “Hey, it’s important to
be
there.” Then he looks at me and says, “Which I’m afraid I won’t be much of tomorrow. We’ve got setup, sound check, and two shows.”

“And he’s a total mother hen,” Marko says.

“Hey!”

“Well, you are.” Marko puts his hands up. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Especially since we’ve got no techs.”

“We’ve got techs, just not
our
techs.”

“Variety show techs?” Marko says, pulling a face. “Comedian techs?”

“We’ll be fine,” Darren tells him. “It’ll all be fine.” But it’s like he’s trying to convince himself.

We’re at the Deck 4 stairs now, but instead of going up with us, Darren stops and says, “I do want to go check on Drew and Cardillo, and touch base with Archie before we leave port.”

“So is he hairy?” I ask, remembering how they’d called him the Wolfman earlier.

Marko kinda grins. “No hair, no sharp teeth … a big disappointment.”

I laugh, and then Darren gets us back on track. “How about we meet at our staterooms at seven and then go to dinner?”

Marko makes a quiet little
brwak-brwak-brwak
sound, which gets him backhanded by Darren. “Dude! I’m kidding,” Marko laughs. “And you know what? I’ll come with you.”

So they go down the stairs while we go up. And no, I haven’t gotten any better at the walking-in-flip-flops thing. They’re loud and I’m kinda slow, and on the Deck 6 landing, Marissa actually stops and says, “Take them off, would you? Just go barefoot.”

So I do, and it feels … great! I can totally zoom!