Blue Autumn Cruise (4 page)

J
ust as we finished singing our very ridiculous version of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” Daddy knocked on our door and called us to come to dinner. I was so excited that the three of us were having fun together. And I felt like we all looked pretty and grown up with our braided hair. Even if we were singing “Aweemaway.”

The restaurant was beautiful! Murals of Italy were painted on the walls, and four round white columns
stood in the center of the room. Hanging from the ceiling were gorgeous chandeliers in gold and glass. The tables were covered with long white tablecloths and were set with sparkling glasses for water and wine, with a cream-colored napkin folded on each gold-rimmed dinner plate.

Grammy was the first one there. She had claimed a big round table for us and was sitting there all alone. “Finally! There you are! Over here!” She waved her arms energetically. “It’s a good thing I got here early and got the table,” she said.

We laughed as she gestured to the empty tables all around. When we sat down, two cute waiters came up, dressed in white, long-sleeved shirts and brocaded vests, with white aprons tightly tied around their waists, and they handed us heavy menus covered in leather.

“Good evening,” said the first waiter, who was tall and pale with dark hair. “I am Bogdan, and I am from the Ukraine. I’ve been on the ship for eight months.”

“And I am Luis,” said the second waiter, who was shorter and stocky, with shiny dark hair. “I’m from Mexico, and I’ve been on the ship for five months.”

“So you don’t get to see your families for all that time?” Grammy asked.

“No, we stay with the ship. But we get to go to wonderful, exciting places,” said Bogdan.

“What’s the most fun place you’ve been?” Lauren asked as she held the video camera up and pressed the Record button.

“Rio de Janeiro,” said Luis.

Bogdan scratched his chin. “I would say Barcelona, Spain.”

Luis and Bogdan told us they would be our waiters every night for the whole five days, and that they would be back in a few minutes to take our orders.

I opened my menu and discovered that the names of the dishes were in Italian.

“Oh my gosh!” said Lauren. “I have no idea what any of these things are.”

“What a great learning experience,” said Uncle Ted. “No chicken tenders tonight!”

Although the names of the dishes were in Italian, the description of each dish was in English. There were several different courses, including
“antipasti
,” which were appetizers; “
zuppa e insalata
,” which was soup and salad; pasta; and the main dish.

When Bogdan and Luis came back to take our orders, we had a lot of questions for them. They allowed me to order ravioli as my main dish, even though it was listed under “pasta.” Diana ordered stuffed chicken, which was called
petto di pollo
, and Lauren who said she was an adventurous eater, ordered lobster, which was called
aragosta
. Luke ordered spaghetti.

“Can I taste your lobster?” I asked Lauren.

“Sure!” she said.

Dinner went by in a blur. I focused on using my best manners. My ravioli melted in my mouth, and Lauren’s lobster, when I tried it, had a rich, sweet taste.

“What are you girls going to do tomorrow? We’re supposed to be at sea all day,” said Grammy.

“Go swimming!” said Lauren. “And maybe play some basketball. I’d like to try out that court that’s up there near the golf course.”

“There’s one pool where they play a lot of games, and then there’s another where it’s supposed to be quiet for adults,” said Lynn. “And then there’s a small pool at the very back of the ship.”

“I’ve heard that you have to get out early to claim a lounge chair,” said Daddy. “You girls shouldn’t sleep too late. You’ll miss getting a spot by the pool.”

“They have a teen nightclub!” said Lauren. “Can we go tonight?”

“Sure,” said Uncle Ted. “But the three of you will need to stay together.”

“We can go by ourselves, right?” Lauren asked.

“We’ll walk you up there just to see where it is,” said Daddy.

“Come on, we can find it ourselves!” Lauren said.

“Be patient, Lauren,” said Aunt Carol. “All in good time.”

All during the meal, Luis and Bogdan paid special attention to us, even though the dining room filled up with people.

“The staff is so attentive,” said Lynn. “Service is really a big part of the cruise experience, I can see.”

“It must be a challenge to live on the ship for months at a time. Think how small the staff rooms must be,” said Daddy.

“At the end of the day,” said Uncle Ted, “I would say the service is the key to a vacation on a cruise ship.”

He said it! Uncle Ted said “at the end of the day.” I glanced at Lauren, and we pressed our lips together. I looked away from her to keep from laughing.

A minute later, I couldn’t help it, and I looked back at her. She had put her hand over her mouth to cover up the laughing.

Before I could stop myself, I let out a giggle. Then Lauren did too. We looked away from each other quickly and tried to stop.

“Girls? What’s so funny?” Aunt Carol said.

“Nothing,” Lauren said. Then she burst out laughing.

I laughed too. Uncle Ted, when I looked at him, was concentrating on his steak. I cut my eyes over to Diana. She knew what was going on. She’d heard us talking about Uncle Ted’s sayings.

“Okay, do you girls want to share the joke?” Daddy said. “The rest of us feel left out.”

“Never mind,” Lauren said. “It’s nothing. Sorry.”

“They’re laughing at the way Uncle Ted says ‘at the end of the day,’” Diana said quite loudly.

“What?” Uncle Ted looked up.

I felt my face go hot and my scalp start to prickle. I couldn’t believe Diana had told! How could she do something like that? Now Lauren and I were so embarrassed.

“Oh,” said Daddy, “you’re making fun of your ‘rents, huh?”

“We don’t mean anything by it,” I said all in a rush. “We just noticed that Uncle Ted has new sayings each time we see him. We were just teasing.”

That was such a mean thing Diana had just done to us. She’d purposefully tried to make us look bad. Just because she was feeling left out. Which as far as I could see was her own fault. We’d been trying to include her the whole time. I’d been looking at my lap, but when I glanced up I saw Lauren looking at Diana with narrowed eyes.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Ted,” I said, feeling so awful.

“Well, I tell you,” said Uncle Ted suddenly. “Some people will go ballistic if you make fun of them. At the end of the day, I don’t mind a little teasing.”

All the grown-ups laughed, but Lauren was still giving Diana a dirty look. Diana’s jaw was set and her expression was stony-looking.

“That was a good way to handle it, Ted,” said Grammy Verra.

In a minute the grown-ups had started talking about something else. I heaved a sigh of relief. When we had finished dessert—chocolate mousse for all the kids, and tiramisu for the adults—Lauren wanted to go directly to the teen nightclub without going back to our rooms. Daddy said he’d walk us up there because he wanted to see where it was and what it was like. I was fine with that, but I could tell that Lauren was dying to go wander around the ship on our own. Diana said she didn’t want to go.

“Oh, you should go,” Lynn said to her. “Give it a try. If you really don’t like it, you can come back to the room.”

I watched Diana look at her lap. The way I was feeling right now, I didn’t care whether she came or not!

We walked toward the front of the ship, rode the elevator up to one of the top floors, and found the teen nightclub, which was called Cabaret. The walls were bright blue, and there was a funky blue-and-yellow pattern in the carpet. Small round tables surrounded by chairs were positioned around the room. High stools attached to the floor surrounded a shiny metallic circular bar. Against one wall stood one of those giant, colorful jukeboxes with flashing lights.
On another wall was a huge video screen where underwater scenes were showing. In one corner of the room was a console where there were joysticks and video editing equipment.

It was early, only 8:30, and hardly any people were there. One of the staff members stood at the door wearing a black T-shirt and pants. He looked like he was in his twenties.

On one side of the room sat a group of girls who were definitely older than us, and they were laughing and making fun of the place. On the other side of the room stood boys who looked like they might be our age. One was skinny with very short dark hair that looked almost military. His clothes looked like his mother had ironed them. The other was less skinny and had a long shock of brown hair that he kept flipping off his forehead. They were both kind of cute, especially the one with the longer hair.

“Hey, I’m Josh,” said the staff member at the door. “How old are you girls? This is the teen club, and it’s for kids ages thirteen to seventeen.”

“We’re fourteen and fifteen, all freshmen in high school,” Lauren said.

“This is the place for you, then!” He turned to Daddy. “We’re just about to start a game.”

“What kind of game?” Lauren asked. “I could get into a game!”

“We’re going to play a getting-to-know-you game, and then later we’re going to play karaoke,” said Josh. “You can also shoot and edit videos. At the end of the cruise, we’re going to broadcast some of the teen videos on the ship’s TV channel.”

“Ooh, really? I have my own video camera, but I don’t have that many features on it,” Lauren said. “Editing would be really cool.”

“Well, you can try it out in a bit,” said Josh.

Daddy and Uncle Ted waved good-bye to us. “We’ll see you girls later,” Daddy said. “Can you find your way back to your room?”

“Absolutely!” said Lauren excitedly.

“I think so,” I said.

“We expect you back in your rooms by eleven. Check in with us when you get back. We hope you have a good time, at the end of the day!” said Uncle Ted.

Lauren laughed. “At the end of the day, we will!”

“Let’s get started with this game!” Josh sat on the floor, and the three of us joined him. Slowly, the two boys came over. The older girls said they didn’t want to play.

“No problem, that’s cool,” said Josh. “What we’re going to do is you’re each going to introduce yourself and tell us three things about yourself. Two of those things will be true. One of those things will not be
true. We’re going to try to guess which thing each person says is not true. I’ll start. My name is Josh. I’m from California, and I played middle linebacker on my high-school football team.”

We were all silent for a minute.

“You didn’t play middle linebacker for the football team,” said the skinny guy with the supershort military hair and neatly ironed clothes. “You’re not big enough to play middle linebacker.”

“Ding, ding, ding! That is correct!” said Josh. “Okay, next?”

“I’ll go!” Lauren waved her hand. “My name is Stephanie Verra, and I’m fourteen and I love to flirt with boys.”

I could feel my face turning hot. I felt like saying, “Lauren!” But I didn’t say anything. Did Lauren really think that I loved to flirt with boys?

The two boys glanced at each other and laughed. “I believe that you love to flirt,” said the one with the shock of brown hair falling on his forehead. He had a habit of tossing his head to the side to throw back his hair. “So I think that’s true.”

“So you think either her name or her age isn’t true?” said Josh. “Hmm. What do you think?”

“I think you are fourteen. So Stephanie’s not your real name,” said the skinny guy to Lauren.

“Ding, ding. Correct!” said Lauren.

“So, what is your name?” Josh asked.

“Lauren. My cousin is the one whose name is Stephanie.”

Diana was supposed to be next, but she said she didn’t want to play.

“We’ll come back to you later,” said Josh. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

The skinny guy said his name was Evan, that he was fifteen, and that he had once been hit by lightning.

“You’ve never been hit by lightning,” Lauren said, laughing. “You wouldn’t be here.”

“Or else I would have, like, smoke coming out of my ears or something. Anyway, you’re correct,” said Evan. He turned to his friend. “Okay, your turn, dude.”

“My name is Guy,” said the boy with brown hair. “I’m a diabetic, and I won the national science fair when I was in fourth grade.”

“Hmm,” I said to Guy. He was really cute. “I’m going to guess … that you did not win the national science fair.”

Guy gave a quick toss of his head to get his hair out of his eyes. “Right.”

“So … you’re diabetic?”

Guy nodded. He showed us the small pump he used to deliver insulin. It was attached around his waist and
looked like a little cell phone. A tiny line led from it to an injection site to the right of his belly button.

“You wear that all the time?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “It delivers insulin continuously to my body.”

At that point more kids came in, and Josh had to leave to greet them and talk to their parents. Then he started giving out glow-in-the-dark necklaces and turned up the music.

“In about ten minutes we’ll start the karaoke!” he said.

The five of us sat in a circle for a few minutes, and then Lauren got up and went over to the video-editing booth. “I want to learn how to work this,” she said.

“Me too,” said Evan, following her.

Pretty soon Lauren had her video camera out.

I started talking to Guy about how he found out he had diabetes, and Diana sat there listening to us. While we were talking, Lauren must have figured out how to show the footage from her camera on the system in the club, because suddenly during a lull in the noise, on the big screen on the wall came up a video clip of Diana skipping around the room and singing “Aweemaway” at the top of her lungs. Everyone in the club burst out laughing, including the three older girls who hadn’t wanted to play the game with us.

Lauren looked over at Diana with a look of triumph on her face. Diana’s face turned completely white, and her mouth dropped open.