by Kasie West
“This band stinks,” I said to Blaire. I sat down next to her in the back of the big room. I slipped off my wedges that were too high, dropped my car keys inside of them, and shoved them under the table. It was the first time I’d sat down all night. I’d been busy checking on food and answering questions about the yacht and my money and my new hair. Everyone wanted to talk to me.
“They really do suck, don’t they? Tell me you didn’t pay them,” she said.
“I paid them. I practically begged them to sing.”
She laughed and I did, too. It didn’t seem to matter, people were still having fun. There were groups all over the boat—dancing, lounging in chairs on the deck, leaning against railings and enjoying the view. The ocean was relatively still tonight and the rocking of the boat created a calming effect for me. I leaned my head against the wall and let out a happy sigh.
“Where’s Elise?” I asked.
She pointed and I followed her finger to Elise, who was in the middle of the dance floor dancing with a guy I didn’t recognize.
“I swear, I don’t even know half these people,” Blaire said. “Do you?”
“No. I think people invited friends from other schools.” I paused. “Not that I know everyone from our school.”
“But everyone knows you.” She circled her finger, indicating the entire boat.
Past Elise, I saw someone I recognized but couldn’t place. “Who is … ” I trailed off as my mind put her in context. Rachel from the zoo was here.
“Who is what?” Blaire asked.
My heart stopped. Rachel from the zoo was here. How did she find out about this? Was she going to tell Seth about my party? I needed to talk to her. Find out if she knew this was my party. If she knew about my lottery win. Chances were, if she was here, she did.
“Will you watch my stuff for a minute?” I asked Blaire, pointing to my shoes and car keys.
“Of course.”
I pushed through the crowd and tapped Rachel on the shoulder. She turned around and the words that were about to come out of my mouth stopped.
“Hi, Maddie,” she said.
It wasn’t Rachel. It was another girl who looked kind of like her, a lot less like her up close, actually. “Oh, hi.” I didn’t know her name.
“This is so much fun.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” I was obviously getting paranoid about Seth finding out about my win from someone else. I needed to tell him myself and soon. Too bad I’d waited so long that now I had to think up the right way to do it, make it a big production.
I pointed over my shoulder. “I better get back.” I turned around and nearly ran Trina over.
“You should do a party like this every weekend,” she said, waving her cup of punch.
I laughed. “This is my one and only, so enjoy it.”
“What else are you going to do with all that money?” she asked.
“I’m going to save most of it.”
She nodded slowly like she thought that was the most boring answer in the world. It was.
“What would you do with it?” I asked her. I was learning that people loved this question. They always had an answer ready. I wouldn’t have had an answer ready, had someone asked me that before my lottery win.
“I would buy a plane and fly it around the world,” Trina said.
“As in you would fly it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a pilot?”
“I’ve never flown a plane before but fifty million dollars would be a good motivation to learn. I’d want to do something I’ve never done before. It’s like a chance to redefine yourself.”
I nodded. “Can’t you do that without money?”
“Money makes it easier.”
“I guess.”
“Let’s say you couldn’t save the money. That you had to spend it. What would you do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Maybe you should find out.”
That sounded an awful lot like Seth’s challenge—live a little. It made me wish Seth were here, at this party … dancing with me. No, not dancing with me. I shook my head and looked over my shoulder to where Blaire sat, her chin resting in her palm.
“Let’s go talk to Blaire,” I said.
“Um … sure.”
Trina’s hesitation made me remember how Blaire had refused to tutor her. Maybe it would help them both to get to know each other a bit.
Before we could walk back to Blaire, though, a girl with brown hair and a worried expression grabbed me by the arm. “Maddie! I have to show you something. Quick.”
“What is it?”
“Dylan Matthews is taking bets on if he’ll jump overboard.”
My heart was in my throat. I raced up a set of stairs and reached the open deck on the bow of the boat. She was right. Some kid, one foot on the seat of a patio chair, one foot up on the railing, both hands in the air, was yelling to the crowd that had gathered. One sudden move of the boat and he’d go over without even trying.
“How much will you pay me to jump?” he was shouting.
And the idiots in the crowd were actually yelling out amounts.
Dylan caught my eye from up there on the chair. “Maddie! Now we have big money,” he told the others. “How much will you pay me?”
“Nothing. Will you just get down? Go eat food. There’s lots of food.” It wasn’t a very tall yacht so I didn’t think he’d get hurt jumping off. But he might get lost out there in the dark water.
“I will get down if you give me a hundred dollars.”
“No.”
He lunged toward the railing.
“Okay! Yes! Deal. I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”
A triumphant smile took over his face and he jumped off the chair. He came over to me with his hand out.
My heart was still in my throat from the panic. “I don’t just carry cash around.”
“Maybe you should start,” he said. “Buy your friends.” He held his hands out wide, gesturing to the boat around him. “Oh, wait, you already did.”
My heart beat hard and I found myself wanting to push him overboard for free.
“I’ll collect my hundred dollars on Monday.” With that, he walked away and the rest of the crowd dispersed.
“Don’t listen to him,” Trina said. She had followed me up to the deck. “He’s an idiot. He always has been.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“You’re cool and everyone likes you.”
“Because of the money?”
“No, that’s just what gave you notoriety, made people sit up and pay attention. But now they’re looking and they like what they see.”
“Thanks, Trina.”
“I mean it.” She squeezed my arm. “Now, can we tell the band to take a break? They’re awful.”
I laughed. “Yes, I’ll go talk to them. Do we have any backup music options?”
“I have a pretty awesome playlist,” she said.
I held out my hand and she placed her phone in it. Then we headed downstairs.
Leo and his band were still going strong. It sounded like the same song as when I left but maybe that’s because every song he played sounded the same.
“There’s a small room over behind the bar area that has a sound system inside. Do you want to hook this up?” I asked Trina, holding up her phone.
“Absolutely.”
I couldn’t get Leo’s attention. He was singing with his eyes closed, the microphone against his lips. I jumped up onstage and tapped him. He didn’t stop playing, which was impressive. He just looked at me.
“You ready for a break?” I asked.
And just like that, the room went silent. He stared at me. I thought he was going to be angry or offended or something. But he leaned into the mic and said, “We’re taking five. Thanks for listening.” The band was down and in the crowd before I could even blink. I stood onstage alone now and someone below me yelled up. “Awesome party, Maddie
.”
“To Maddie!” someone else yelled. Then everyone cheered and raised their drinks.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. This feeling was much different than the last party I had thrown. And I wasn’t going to lie; it was a nice feeling.
Seconds later, the other music, Trina’s playlist, came through the overhead speakers. I listened for a moment to the first song and the group in front of me cheered even louder.
Over the heads of the cheering crowd, still in the back corner, I met Blaire’s eyes and cringed. I’d forgotten she was there, babysitting my stuff. I jumped off the stage and wove my way in and out of the crowd to get to her.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I got called away. Are you okay?”
“It’s just loud,” Blaire said. “And I don’t know anyone. Where did you disappear to?”
I pointed vaguely over my shoulder. “Upstairs to take care of a guy threatening to jump.”
“Someone jumped?”
“No, I think he was bluffing but I bribed him out of it.” I used both hands to usher her up. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
She slid her way out from behind the table. I grabbed my shoes and keys and led her through the crowd and up the stairs. A different set of stairs led us to an enclosed hallway flanked by locked doors, which I assumed were the captain’s living quarters. We continued down the hall to the end. I knocked on the closed door.
“Yes?” a voice called.
“It’s Maddie … the person who rented the boat for the night. Can I come in?”
A lock was unbolted and the door opened. Patrice stood in there, a big row of windows behind her providing the perfect view of the ocean. On our side of the windows were the ship’s controls. Lights and switches and knobs and wheels all blinking or lit up.
“Hello, Maddie,” Patrice said. “Come in. Check out my ocean.”
“This is amazing,” Blaire said. “And quiet.”
“Do you live on the yacht?” I asked Patrice.
“I do. It’s the best home in the world.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“And why?” Blaire added to my question.
“Do you need to ask why after seeing this?” Patrice moved her arm across the view in front of us. “I’ve lived on it for about five years. Before that I owned a sailboat. That was a different experience altogether but it made me love the ocean. Places like this have an amazing way of helping you discover who you are.”
I smiled, staring out at the endless dark sea. It did seem like the blank canvas of discovery.
Patrice looked at her watch. “It’s time to start heading back to the shore, though. Are you ready?”
I nodded. “This has been great. Thanks for taking us out.”
“I would say you’re welcome, but you are paying me to do it. I wouldn’t have otherwise.”
I laughed. “True.”
Blaire and I walked back out to the hall.
“I think you’re the most popular girl in school now,” Blaire said.
I wasn’t sure that was a compliment, coming from Blaire. “Does this make me sinister?”
She wiggled her eyebrows. “We’ll see.”
I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.
I woke up groggy the next morning. By the time the boat was docked and everyone left and people were paid and I dragged myself home, it had been well after two o’clock. Waking up at eight for work had sounded easier the night before. Now I just wanted to pull the blanket over my head and go back to sleep. I didn’t need to work. Why was I still working?
I groaned and rolled out of bed. To make matters worse, when I got to the zoo, Carol assigned me to bucket cleanup—my least favorite station. Buckets were used for everything: manure, feeding animals, picking up trash, and on and on. Occasionally the dirty bucket count would get so backed up that we’d have to go to an area with a big hose, something resembling a toilet brush, and soap to clean them up. That was what I was doing today. But at least Seth was there to keep me company.
“Hey,” I said, joining him by the hose. That’s when I realized we weren’t alone. Louis was lining up a row of buckets to the right.
“Batwoman!” Seth said.
I scowled.
“Batwoman?” Louis asked. “Why do you call her that?”
“Because she loves bats,” Seth said with a smile. “And anteaters.”
Louis tilted his head, probably because it made no sense, but he continued lining up the buckets.
Seth studied my eyes. “You look tired.”
I stepped out of my shoes and pulled on the knee-high rubber boots. “I am.”
“You want to call in sick? I’ll cover for you.”
“How can I call in sick when I’m already here?”
“You can leave now and I’ll let Carol know.”
“You’re already trying to get rid of me?”
“Never.”
Louis chimed in, “I want to call in sick.”
“The offer doesn’t apply to you,” Seth said.
“We could all call in sick and go rock climbing like we did that one time, Seth.”
Seth waved his hand in Louis’s direction. “Pay no attention to the man who is claiming I am irresponsible.”
I smiled at him and went to the shed on the side of the building to get the scrub brushes.
“Why are you tired?” Seth tied the rubber apron around his waist.
“There was this party last night.”
“Oh, right. The party.”
“I heard about a party last night,” Louis said. “It was on a yacht. A bunch of kids from my school went.”
My eyes shot up to look at Louis, to see if he knew more than that. If he knew my connection to the party. He was holding a bottle of liquid soap high in the air and trying to make the stream land in a bucket, oblivious to my nervousness.
“And you didn’t go to the party?” Seth asked him.
“I didn’t hear about it until after.”
“I went,” I said cautiously. With Louis here, now wasn’t the right time for confessions, but I was tired of hiding things from Seth.
“Yeah?” Seth seemed impressed. “How was it?”
“Pretty good.” Except for the stress and money talk and trying to keep multiple groups of people happy at once. I wondered if a party I wasn’t in charge of would’ve been more fun. “How about you? How was Grandma’s eightieth?”
“She survived.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” I went along the line of buckets Louis had set up and started scrubbing.
“You look familiar,” Louis said to me.
I frowned in confusion. “That’s because I’ve worked with you before.”
Seth, who had attached the hose, squirted Louis once in the face. “Hey, idiot, this is Maddie.”
Louis batted at the water and let out a yell of disapproval. “No, I mean outside the zoo familiar. Do you go to Century High?”
“No, I live in … ” I almost said Tustin but then remembered that Louis was the one who knew the lottery winner was someone from Tustin. I was afraid that would jog his memory. “No, I don’t.” This secret was becoming bigger than I wanted it to. In that moment, I almost wished Louis would out me so it would be over with. Almost.
Louis huffed. “Oh, you don’t want to tell me where you live? Like I might stalk you or something? I see how it is.”
“I wouldn’t want to tell you where I lived either,” Seth said.
“Good thing I already know where you live,” Louis retorted.
Did everyone from the zoo, except for me, hang out with Seth outside of work?
For the next thirty minutes, as we scrubbed and squirted out buckets, Louis kept giving me sideways glances.
“Rachel said you got into USC. Congrats!” Louis said.
At first I thought he was talking to me and my mind was trying to figure out how Rachel would know what colleges I had and hadn’t gotten into.
I was about to say no w
hen Seth said, “Thanks.”
My head whipped in his direction. “You got accepted to USC?”
“Yes.”
“That is the perfect school for what you want to do!” I said happily.
“Sure.”
The word sure was not my favorite word. People never used it when they really meant sure. It usually meant the exact opposite of sure. I furrowed my brows at him.
He just shook his head and his eyes went to Louis, then back to me. So he didn’t want to talk about it right now. I could wait.
I picked up a bucket and dumped its soapy water in the bushes that surrounded the back lot. When I turned around, Louis was walking away, back toward the zoo.
“Where is he going?” I asked.
“He said Carol wanted him to split his time between this and kiddie land.”
“Oh.” The tension that had been sitting on my shoulders as I waited for my secret to be spilled melted to the ground. “So?”
“So?” Seth asked, scrubbing a bucket. “What?”
I picked up the hose to rinse. “Tell me. What’s with the sure?”
“The sure?”
“You know. I say, USC is the perfect school for you. You say, Sure. Sure is basically like saying, If someone drags me kicking and screaming, I guess I’ll do it.”
“Really? That much context in one word?”
“Yep.”
He chuckled. “No, I’m happy about getting accepted.”
I raised my eyebrows. “That’s what happy looks like? You look like the depressed teen from one of your movies.”
“I have no depressed teens in my movies,” he said. “Only sad adults.”
I smiled. “You must’ve gotten inspiration from my house.” This didn’t make him smile like I’d hoped it would. “Seriously, why aren’t you more excited about your college acceptance?”
“I am. It’s great news. I just don’t know if I’m going or not.”
“What? Why wouldn’t you?”
He scrubbed a bucket and shrugged. “I’m not sure college is the right choice for me right now.”
“Why not?”
“So many questions.” He waved his dirty toilet brush my way, sending water spraying at me.
“Gross! Don’t put manure water on me.”
“That’s why you’re wearing a rubber apron.” He flung more water at me.