Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  “So … you’re not arguing?”

  I shake my head. “You’re right—I’ll catch up tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” she says, like a major miracle has just occurred.

  We don’t waste any time getting into bed. And when my head hits the pillow, the whole cabin seems to spin a little—I am so, so tired.

  But as I’m starting to drift off, I remember how the day had started, and a little giggle escapes me.

  “What?” Marissa says through the dark.

  “Why was six afraid of seven?” And before she can tell me to shut up and go to sleep, I giggle, “Because seven eight nine!”

  “Go to sleep, Sammy.”

  “Night!”

  And then I remember.

  It was the N that had told the joke in my dream.

  Noah.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  After years of sleeping on a couch, I’m not used to sleeping in late. There’s just not a whole lot of rolling over and stretching out and getting comfy on a couch. You hit the pillow and get in as many Z’s as possible before you start feeling cramped, or wake up with your cat sleeping on your head because he couldn’t find anyplace better to curl up.

  Living at Hudson’s now is better because I’ve got an actual bed, but I still wake up with Dorito suffocating me.

  I don’t think he quite knows what to do with himself yet.

  Anyway, it turned out that having a bed to myself, no cat to suffocate me, and the Great Engine Lullaby humming through the night messed me all up. It probably also didn’t help that the curtains were closed tight, making it pitch-black in the room, because when I woke up and saw the digital clock on the desk glowing 12:30, I thought, Wow, I’ve only been asleep for ten minutes?

  And then it hit me that it had been twelve hours.

  “Holy smokes. Marissa?”

  “Hmm?” she groans.

  I get up and go open the curtain. “It’s after noon!”

  “Close that,” she snaps, then turns over and hikes up her covers. “Yesterday beat me up.”

  But it’s really weird to be in the dark in the middle of the day, and it feels like shutting the curtains would be like sitting up in a coffin only to close the lid again.

  Instead, I go over to the phone and punch in Darren’s number, but all it does is ring and ring. “Rats,” I grumble, putting down the phone.

  Marissa sits up a little and glares at me. “Really?”

  “Really, what?”

  “The first thing you think about when you wake up is Kensingtons?”

  “Who says I’m thinking about Kensingtons?”

  “Who’d you just call?”

  “Darren! I need my calculator.”

  “So the first thing you think about is homework?”

  “Marissa! It’s twelve-thirty! We have to meet Darren and Marko here at five! After that we’ve got the concerts. If I don’t do my homework now—”

  “You have all day tomorrow!”

  “No! Stop that! I’m already behind schedule.”

  She flops back down and turns away from me. “Any schedule that has you doing homework on a cruise is a stupid schedule.”

  “Whatever. I’m going to go see if I can catch them at the buffet.”

  “Who?”

  “Darren and Marko! They were having a band meeting up there at noon, remember? And if I don’t catch them there, how will I find them? I need my calculator!”

  So I get dressed as fast as I can, and I’m about to leave when Marissa groans, “Hang on. I’ll go with you.”

  “Marissa, I’m in a hurry.”

  “I know, I know,” she says, then pulls on a sweatshirt, shuffles into her flip-flops, and stumbles along after me in her ratty hair and sleep pants.

  “You’re going like that?”

  She pulls her hair back into a ponytail. “You’re complaining?”

  “No. Fine. Come on, let’s go.”

  So we hurry upstairs, and while she goes in one side of the Schooner Buffet U, I go in the other, and we meet up with each other in the middle.

  “No luck?”

  She just shakes her head.

  And since I’m not too sure that she didn’t just sleepwalk through her half of the search, I say, “Keep going and meet me at the front.”

  “By the elevators?”

  “Yeah.”

  So I search the other half, but see no sign of troublemakers of any kind, until I meet up with Marissa again and notice who’s coming up the stairs.

  “Uh-oh,” I tell Marissa, and nod at JT and his parents.

  Now, knowing Marissa, and considering how, uh, ragged she looks, I’m expecting her to either run and hide. Or freeze and be mortified. But instead she snarls and says, “Ask them about Kip.”

  “You’re serious?” I whisper, ’cause that seems like a really gutsy—uh, make that stupid—thing to do.

  But that’s never stopped me before, and seeing how they’re all of a sudden right there, I just smile at JT and say, “Hi. Hey, did you and your cousin patch things up?”

  JT eyes Marissa with a sneer, then tells me, “Guess what. He’s not actually my cousin.”

  “JT!” LuAnn says, practically biting off his head.

  “Whatever,” JT says, and keeps walking.

  LuAnn and Lucas exchange looks, then hang back to smooth things over. “Sorry you girls have gotten caught in the middle of this,” LuAnn says with a plasticky smile. “It’s been a nightmare for all of us.”

  “So no word on Kate?”

  Lucas shakes his head

  “How about Kip?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere,” Lucas says with a fake little laugh.

  I tell him, “But nobody’s seen him in, like, two days.”

  He does another fakey laugh. “As I said, I’m sure he’s around here somewhere.”

  Something about LuAnn’s plasticky smile and Lucas’ fakey laughing and even the way they look is ticking me off. I mean, can you say spray-tan on rotten meat?

  So before my brain can tell me, Whoa, girl, out of my mouth pops, “Or maybe knocking him off is just easier than unadopting him?”

  Like a plastic bag thrown into a campfire, LuAnn’s smile melts right off her face. “What are you talking about?”

  But Lucas steps in with, “No, why did you just say that?” and he’s not laughing anymore.

  “You might want to ask Teresa,” I tell him. “And while you’re at it, you might want to ask Bradley about faking suicide notes.” I snap my fingers. “Or wait, maybe you all decided to do that together? It was your idea, right? Guess that’s easier than waiting seven years for your inheritance or trying to figure out those coded notes.”

  The color is suddenly completely gone from Tan Man’s face.

  His wife’s, too.

  And LuAnn now looks like she’s about to have a meltdown, so Lucas grabs her by the arm and tells me, “If you’ll excuse us?” and hurries toward the buffet.

  “By the way,” I call after them, “Noah and Ginger know about the secret meeting in Teresa’s room yesterday.” Lucas whips around to look at me, so I give a little shrug. “Just sayin’.”

  Marissa zooms in on me as Lucas and LuAnn disappear inside the buffet, and, boy, is she looking wide awake. “Trying to get us killed once wasn’t good enough for you? You have to go and do it twice?”

  “Hey,” I grumble. “Your idea.”

  “That was not my idea! My idea was to ask if they’d seen Kip, not to put them on the hot seat for murder!”

  I take a deep breath. “Yeah, well, I got carried away.”

  “Again?!” And since I’m heading for the stairs, she grabs me and says, “Where are you going?”

  “To find Marko and Darren?”

  “But we don’t know where they are!” She pinches her eyes closed and takes a deep breath. “Can we please get breakfast first?”

  “You’re serious?”

  She sighs. “I’m starving.”

 
Which didn’t do much for my appetite, seeing how it made me remember what Kip had said about knowing what starving really meant. But I let her lead me back into the buffet, and as we pushed our trays around and hopped from island to island, all I picked up was an egg roll and a dish of Jell-O.

  “That’s all you’re eating?” Marissa asks when we sit down.

  “There is something just weird with that family.”

  Marissa smooths her napkin across her lap. “So quit worrying about them!”

  I scan the room for Lucas and LuAnn. “And the notes. The notes make no sense.”

  “The coded notes or the I’m OK note or the non-apology note …?”

  “The coded notes. Why would someone leave notes that are impossible to decode? Why leave them at all?”

  Marissa takes a whopping bite of eggs and says, “I think Kip left them.”

  I give her a little squint. “Why would he spend all day trying to decode a note he wrote?”

  “To trick people into thinking he had nothing to do with them.”

  “I’m the only person who seems to care!”

  Marissa swallows, swigs some lemonade, and says, “Well, notes are Kip’s MO. Plus, he’s sneaky and known for doing stuff like researching relatives on the Internet and then ratting on them. He can memorize people’s pass codes and has probably snooped through their private accounts.”

  “Who says?”

  “Kip practically confessed to it himself!”

  Which was kinda true.

  And very … unsettling.

  “Still,” I tell her. “Nobody would kill someone over that.”

  She frowns. “Unadopting did look pretty complicated.”

  “But … why would you look up how to unadopt someone if you’d already killed them?”

  “Well, obviously, she didn’t.”

  “But who besides Teresa would want to get rid of him? You don’t throw someone overboard just because they annoy you or rat on you!”

  “Sammy! Nobody’s saying he’s been thrown overboard but you!”

  “Well, where is he, then?”

  She heaves a sigh. “Avoiding other Kensingtons? Look, most of their inheritance has to go to building a hospital in Africa. Kip’s from Africa. Kip and his grandfather were close. Everyone probably blames Kip for all of it.”

  “But that’s not fair! Or rational!”

  “Money makes people irrational,” she says, spearing a sausage link with her fork. “Now eat, would you?”

  So I ate. And the whole time I’m eating, I’m thinking about the stupid Kensingtons. Sorting things that had happened. Just like when Kate went missing, nobody seemed to be doing anything about Kip disappearing. It was like they didn’t want to admit or have anyone else notice that he was gone.

  Which got me wondering … what happens when a kid adopted from another country disappears?

  Who’s going to notice?

  “Stop it,” Marissa finally says. Then she sighs and says, “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but even doing homework is better than doing this.”

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  So we head back down to Deck 9, only I still don’t have my room key, and I still don’t have my calculator.

  “Just let yourself in,” Marissa says. “He’s your dad. It’s okay.” She kind of scowls at me as she opens our door and leads me inside. “Besides, how many times have you broken in somewhere, huh?”

  Which was true.

  And not something I really wanted to think about.

  “Sammy.” She sighs and then just stands there, looking at me.

  “What?”

  “He won’t be mad.” She sits down on the bed. “He thinks you’re awesome, can’t you tell?” And since I’m still not budging, she goes, “Look. You’re family. Family can take, you know, liberties.”

  “But … we’re barely family.” I look down. “It’s like I’m adopted into this weird situation.”

  She studies me for the longest time, then finally says, “Maybe you and Kip were both surprises, but you and Darren are nothing like Kip and Teresa. Darren thinks having you as a daughter is awesome. Teresa … well, Teresa’s obviously never been much of a mother.” She shakes her head. “She should never have agreed to adopt him.”

  Her words seem to hang in the air.

  Circle through the silence.

  I blink at her and whisper, “Holy smokes.”

  “What?”

  “Holy smokes!” I say louder.

  “Holy smokes, what?”

  Then my eyes practically pop out of my head and I jump off the bed. “HOLY SMOKES!”

  If I was right, the Kensingtons did have a reason to want Kip gone.

  A big one.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I explain what I’m thinking to Marissa, and she just sits there on the edge of her bed with her jaw dropped and her eyes popped. Finally, she says, “Whoa.”

  “Exactly. And now I really am worried about Kip.”

  “Take a deep breath,” she tells me, taking a deep breath.

  So I do.

  “What do we do with this information?” she asks.

  “It’s not information, it’s a theory.”

  “What do we do about your theory?”

  She’s trying to be all calm and collected, but neither of us is feeling calm or collected. Especially not me.

  “Okay,” she says. “Telling Noah is out, would you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the captain is not your biggest fan.”

  I frown. “Neither is Ginger. And obviously the rest of them are out.”

  We think a minute, and then Marissa says, “Do you want to call guest relations?”

  “Guest relations?”

  “That’s where you go if you have a problem.”

  “This isn’t a problem. This is a possible murder.”

  “Which is a problem for Kip,” she points out. “And Kate.”

  “Marissa!”

  “What? I’m trying to think! What other choices do we have?”

  My brain scrambles around for an answer. “Okay, if Teresa hasn’t reported him missing—”

  “Which, if your theory is right, she won’t.”

  “And if there’s no missing person reported by the parent, then there’s no reason to investigate!” I shake my head. “And who’s going to believe us?”

  We both sit there, thinking some more, and then Marissa says, “And Saturday morning, when we walk off the ship, it’ll be easy to cover everything up. All anyone will have to say is that he ran away from home.”

  We sit there some more, and finally Marissa says, “So what are we going to do?”

  And that’s when I know exactly what I want to do. “We’re going to wait for Darren and Marko to get back,” I tell her. “They’ll help us.”

  “Wow,” she says, studying me. “That is very … sensible.”

  There were a lot of other things she could have said, so sensible was actually a pretty big compliment. “Yeah, well, I’m fourteen now, right?”

  She eyes me. “The shadow of thirteen has definitely been following you, though. Or maybe that’s just you.” Then, before I can say anything, she says, “We should stick together today. Especially after the way you mouthed off to JT’s parents.”

  “Maaan,” I moan. “What a mistake.”

  She pulls a face. “Usually is.” Then she says, “But I sure don’t want to be locked up in here until Darren and Marko get back, so how about we go to the library and I cruise the Internet while you do your homework?”

  I blink at her and say, “You’re serious?” ’cause, come on—I’ve pretty much ruined the cruise, and doing homework when we could be swimming or eating yogurt or rock climbing or doing anything else seems obsessive and unnecessary and stupid.

  Even to me.

  But she smiles at me and says, “Yeah, come on, let’s go get your calculator.”

  I reach over and gave her a mondo hug, and promise myself th
at no matter how far apart we live, Marissa McKenze and I will stay friends forever.

  I did call Darren’s room again, and when there was no answer, I did think about trying to track him down. But in the end I did what Marissa said.

  I let myself into his room.

  “Hello?” I called, just in case, and when nobody answered, I stepped inside and checked the closet, which was right inside the doorway, like ours.

  Trouble is, I didn’t see the coat I remembered him wearing the night he’d taken the calculator from me, and I didn’t want to just start pawing around. So I went over to the desk, thinking he might have taken it out and left it there.

  Marissa follows me, and when I don’t see the calculator, I tell her, “I am not going to start digging through drawers.”

  “So you’ll do that in a stranger’s place but not your own dad’s?”

  “Stop that! I don’t think Darren and Marko are hiding bodies or people or … or are agents of foul play!”

  She snickers. “Agents of foul play?”

  “Stop it,” I snap. “You’re the one who started the whole foul-play thing!” And then I spot the coat Darren had been wearing. It’s hung over the back of a small chair, in the corner by his guitar, and when I go over to it, I see Darren’s empty Coke bottle from Cabo San Lucas propping up our cheesy say-cheese picture on his nightstand.

  “Ohhhh,” Marissa whispers when she sees me staring at it. “How sweet is that?” Then she spots an open notebook on the chair and whispers, “Is that a journal?”

  “No snooping!” I tell her, but as I’m digging through the pockets of the coat, I can’t help but notice that it’s not a journal.

  It’s a lyrics book.

  A lyrics book with chords and a lot of scribbles and scratched-out words and funny doodles.

  And across the top of the page, in block letters, is Nothing but Trouble, which seems like a nice little song for a band named the Troublemakers.

  So yeah, I’m feeling embarrassed and like a total nosy invader, but I do find the calculator and the paper I’d made notes on when I’d been brainstorming with Kip, so at least I feel justified in being there. “Got it!” I tell Marissa. “Now let’s go!”

  But on our way out, I decide I should leave Marko’s sea-pass card and a note. So I use the notepad and pen on the desk, and I’m planning to just scrawl out something quick, starting with an apology for coming into the room, but the explaining and apologizing and promising that I hadn’t snooped take forever, and then one thing leads to another and pretty soon I’m on my fifth page of the notepad and Marissa’s bored out of her mind, going, “What are you doing? Writing a book?” as she’s trying on hats and sunglasses.