Antsy Floats

by Neal Shusterman

  Tilde and I managed to hit dozens of rooms that afternoon. Just like she promised, she never took more than five bucks from any one wallet, so no one noticed, or if they did, they probably figured their kids took it to use at one of the various money-sucking locations on the ship.

  I made lots of excuses so that I’d feel okay with being a part of this.

  Rationalization #1: Tilde was like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, which I guess made me Friar Tuck. And since a friar is like a priest with a bad haircut, my mother would approve, right?

  Rationalization #2: I didn’t actually take the money, I just stood outside. I was what you might call a “facilitator,” which sounds so much better than “accomplice.”

  Rationalization #3: I could be a positive influence on Tilde and eventually convince her to stop stealing. But this was stretching it, because the idea of me as a positive influence on anybody was higher fantasy than Lord of the Rings.

  Did I feel guilty?

  Yes.

  Did I know that it was probably the second-worst thing I’ve ever done?

  Yes.

  Am I gonna tell you what the worst thing is?

  In your dreams.

  But here’s the really scary part: Weeks later, after it was all over, and the media blew everything out of proportion—after all the crazy stuff that this day led to, would I take it back?

  No, I wouldn’t.

  Which means that I committed a crime and I’m not repentant. According to Sister Mary Marlena, who taught catechism until I drove her into early retirement, non-repentant sinners get a first-class ticket to hell, where the nuts are more than warm and there ain’t no upgrades.

  As to whether I believe that, well, I guess it all depends on whether or not the road to hell is really paved with good intentions. But I’m hoping for the more logical possibility that it’s paved with the same asphalt they use in my neighborhood—because those potholes come from a darker dominion than Brooklyn.

  CHAPTER 5

  A ROGUE WAVE OF RESTLESS LOBSTERS AND THE BUOYANCY OF MY BOAT

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL DAY?” MY MOTHER asked as we all got dressed for dinner. I couldn’t look her in the face because my mother reads faces likes it’s an ingredient list on a food package, and if she sees something unnatural, she’s not gonna buy it. And today, my whole face is unnatural.

  But she didn’t look at me. She was too busy worrying if her dress fit because it was formal night and we all had to look good, although the sleeves on the sports coat I borrowed from my dad were so short, I looked like a circus monkey.

  Lexie had long since taught me how to tie a tie because she couldn’t stand to be in the company of someone who didn’t know how. “I’m sure you look dashing,” she said, checking that my knot wasn’t lopsided. “Just make sure you find your suitcase by the time my parents get here. They’ll notice an ill-fitting wardrobe.”

  “You look elegant,” my mother told me. “Fancy schmancy.”

  “Fancy Schmancy Antsy!” said my sister, thrilled with herself.

  And then Lexie hesitated, still holding the knot of my tie, and asked, “What’s wrong, Antsy?”

  Lexie always knows when I’m not myself. She says it has to do with my breathing.

  “My grandfather says everyone has a ‘tell,’” she once said to me. “Most people are looking for it, but I’m listening for it. And you, Antsy, take deep breaths and hold them when something’s wrong.”

  Even after she told me that, I could never catch myself doing it. I guess it’s just my natural reaction to secret stress.

  Now that Lexie had caught it, my parents began to pay attention. My mother looked at me and instantly saw that my ingredient list was full of red dye and questionable preservatives.

  “What did you do? Did you break the boat? I’ll bet he broke the boat!”

  “Yeah, I dropped Crawley into the propeller to see if he would puree.”

  “I heard that,” yelled Crawley from the connecting suite.

  Even Howie was staring at me. “I didn’t see you all day, Antsy. Where’ve you been?” Everyone waited for an explanation.

  “What is it with you people?” I said. “We’re on a cruise and there’s lots to do. Am I supposed check in every ten minutes like a five-year-old?”

  “Don’t get all defensive,” my mother said. “It was just a question.”

  “Maybe I was out sunning myself.”

  “Were you?”

  “Maybe.”

  And then Christina smirked. “Or maybe Antsy has a girlfriend.”

  My mother sighed. “Wherever you were, I don’t want to know about it unless you were doing something I don’t want to know about. In that case—I want to know.”

  I took a deep breath and realized I was holding it again. I let it go and tried to make my breaths smooth and carefree, but it only worked when I concentrated.

  Everyone else let it go, but before I left for dinner, Lexie whispered in my ear, “We’ll talk later.”

  • • •

  Everyone on the ship was dressed fancy schmancy on formal night. Photographers were set up taking photos everywhere with fake backgrounds, even though the real background was more interesting than the fake ones. Why would you go on a cruise and have your family photographed with a backdrop of a country garden?

  My parents chose not to have our pictures taken, because a family picture would exclude Howie and make him feel bad, but a picture including him would make us feel worse.

  In the dining room, lobster was the recommended dinner choice, and everyone ordered multiple plates. I think this ship will singlehandedly make lobster extinct within the year.

  Crawley, who dressed in a tuxedo, stayed in his room for formal room service, and Lexie stayed with him, both of them refusing to have cruise ship lobster on principle, because it couldn’t possibly be as good as the lobsters he serves in his famous seafood restaurant.

  After dinner, I went back to the suite to peel off my monkey suit.

  “You oughta come with me to the Sports Deck,” Howie said. “Lance is gonna teach us to play rugby. That’s Australian football.”

  I told him I like my football American, like my cheese.

  It was after he left that Lexie came in from the adjoining suite.

  “Escort me on the roller coaster, please,” she said. “I’ve never been on a roller coaster at sea before.”

  “Neither has the rest of the planet.”

  “Not so,” she said. “The Plethora has been sailing for almost six months, which puts us behind the curve of cutting-edge experience.”

  We both knew that this wasn’t about a roller coaster, though. This was her opportunity to have “the talk” about why I was breathing so irregularly—and needless to say, there was a long line to ride the “Rogue Wave” roller coaster, leaving us plenty of time to talk.

  “It’s a lovely night,” Lexie said, not minding the wait. “I love the sultry Caribbean breeze.”

  “Sultry. Right.”

  The line moved quickly, so she dispensed with the small talk. “Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” she asked, in her most sympathetic, understanding voice. “You’ve been awfully quiet . . .”

  “What do you mean quiet?” I said a little too loudly, because I find it insulting to be told I’m quiet. Behind us, a group of foreigners looked at me severely for being loud and American.

  Lexie sighed. “Is it something I did? Or maybe you’re worried about seeing my parents again? They dislike you less than they admit, really.”

  Lexie has a tendency to think any strife in other people’s lives must somehow be about her. I could have said that she got it right, but I couldn’t do that in good conscience, so I said, “It’s not about you, and it’s not about your parents.”

  “Aha! So I’m right! The
re is something wrong!”

  I cursed and she laughed. It made me feel cornered. “Why can’t you let my situations be mine?”

  “Because you’re my friend and I care about you.”

  We were at the front of the line now and took our places as the previous riders, now soaking wet, exited the roller coaster.

  “If you care about me, then you’ll respect me enough to stop asking.”

  Then she got all bristly. “Fine. If you don’t want my help, then you won’t get it.”

  We rode to the peak of the ride in silence, then after an insane drop, we spun through loops and corkscrews and twists and a final plunge right to the surface of the waves that drenched us in tepid—did you hear that—tepid Caribbean water that felt cold at sixty miles per hour. Then the ride brought us back to where we started.

  Although I love roller coasters, I had just eaten half a dozen lobsters, and my stomach was now trying to push my lungs out my ears, and Lexie says—

  “Let’s do it again!” She tries to drag me back to wait in line, but I won’t budge, because if I ride again, I know those lobsters are gonna come a-calling.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I tell her. “Right now I gotta lie down.”

  “You’re such a lightweight.”

  And then I hear, “Excuse, please. You like up-down fastness? I ride mit you, ya?”

  I turned to see one of the guys who had been behind us in line—he was about our age, although it’s sometimes hard to tell with foreigners.

  “You no eyes, so I touch you,” he said, and he took Lexie’s dainty hand in his large one to guide her. “You safe, ya?”

  Lexie giggled. “What a charming invitation. I would be honored,” she told him. He nodded, clearly not understanding her words but getting that she meant “yes.” Then she dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Go Pepto-Bismol yourself into a pink stupor. Whatever your troubles are, you can share them with the bottle.” And she went off for more up-down fastness.

  • • •

  From there, I went up to the buffet—which is where all the people went who either didn’t want to dress up for dinner or couldn’t wait to be served. Food was the last thing I wanted to think about, but I wasn’t there to eat. When no one was looking, I filled a few plastic bags with food. I had a sack of garlic shrimp, beef broccoli, and an entire breast of turkey with all the trimmings.

  I’d like to say that sneaking into Bernie and Lulu’s cabin and climbing into Tilde’s lifeboat was dangerous, but it wasn’t. Bernie and Lulu apparently spent all their waking hours either in the casino or at the buffet, so they weren’t in their cabin when I used the passkey to break in. And climbing from their balcony to the lifeboat, well, the way the ship was designed, even if I slipped in between the two-foot gap, I’d only fall onto someone’s balcony one deck below.

  Tilde was in the lifeboat, as I suspected she would be.

  “Hey,” I said, “I brought you some food.”

  When I showed her what was in my backpack, she laughed. “You didn’t have to do that. It’s not like I’m going to starve without you.”

  I shrugged. “If you got caught taking this food, you’d get arrested or beheaded or whatever they do to stowaways. If I get caught, they’d give me silverware to take with me.”

  But then, when I took in the bigger picture, I saw that she had canned food stockpiled in the lifeboat. Much more than she even needed. Still, she ate what I brought her.

  “So what’s your deal?” I finally asked her. “If I’m helping you, then the least you could do is tell me why I should.”

  “You tell me,” she said, “because it sounds like you have me all figured out.”

  This, I knew, was a setup. It’s like the old question, “Do I look fat in this?” The answer, in any conceivable situation, is always “no.” Basically, she was sitting me down in a minefield and seeing if I could get through it without death or hospitalization.

  “You’re smart,” I told her, which I think was true, and it was a good place to start. “Not just smart, but street smart. You know how to make things happen and how to get what you need.”

  “Sigue,” she said. “Continue.”

  “You don’t have much. Maybe you got nothing at all. Poorer than dirt. Somehow you saw an opportunity to get on this ship and took it. I’d probably do the same.”

  “Dirt isn’t poor,” she said. “It must be rich to grow anything.” Then the ship hit a swell, and the lifeboat rocked like a Ferris wheel car. “Don’t worry. It’s safe,” she said.

  “I wasn’t worried.”

  “Continue.”

  “Okay, so you’ve got this whole thing wired: how to stay out of sight while in plain sight. I know about that on account of I had this friend who could stay hidden without even trying. He could probably walk right onto this ship and no one would even notice. But you’re not like that. You have to work hard at not being seen. But like I said, you’re smart. You’ve got it wired.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh yeah. The money. You’re probably giving it to your family, which is back wherever you come from. Or maybe you’re saving it to bribe whatever crewman finally catches you.”

  “And you think that’s clever?”

  “Very.” And then I added, “You figure the worst that can happen to you is you’re put off the ship. You’re too young to go to jail for something like this, and the cruise line doesn’t want that kind of publicity, so they’d keep it quiet, and you’d get sent back home. For you, it’s a good deal no matter how you look at it.”

  Then she smiled and moved closer to me.

  “So now it’s your turn. What’s your ‘deal’?”

  I shrugged. “I’m just a guy from Brooklyn.”

  “In a sky suite?”

  “Yeah, well, I have a rich friend.”

  “The old man with the cane?”

  “Bingo.” Then I added, “Better not let him catch you. Believe me, he will find a way to make your life a living hell.” Then I felt bad, because maybe her life already was a living hell. And then I said the stupid thing that I had thought about but promised I wouldn’t say. “Listen, you can hide out on my balcony. I won’t tell anyone.”

  She just laughed at that. “Why would I want your balcony when I have this luxury yacht?”

  At the time I thought she was talking about the lifeboat, but later I came to realize she meant the entire Plethora of the Deep, which she saw as her own personal playground.

  She kept on smiling. “I appreciate your offer, though.” Then she moved closer and said, “We can kiss if you like.”

  This I was not expecting.

  “That’s why you’re helping me, isn’t it? So go ahead. We can kiss, but that is all. Nothing more.” And she puckered her lips in anticipation.

  Okay, I have to admit, I was feeling stirrings. Let’s just say that the ship wasn’t the only thing that hit a swell. And she was right—I wanted to. She was beautiful; she was mysterious; she was so unlike anyone I knew in the real world. But she was wrong about one thing: I didn’t help her because I wanted to make out with her, and if I did that now, it would make me feel like a creep—because what if, in that secret place where my subconscious makes its sneaky little plans, what if that really was the reason why I helped her after all?

  I could hear all my friend’s voices in my head screaming, “Do it! Do it! Do it now, before she changes her mind!” I could even hear Ira saying , “Get it on video!”

  “No,” I told her, even though I knew I’d regret saying it in ten minutes. “I’m not gonna kiss you.”

  She looked at me like I had slapped her in the face.

  “Why not? I know it’s what you want.”

  “First of all, you just ate a pound of garlic shrimp,” I told her. “And second, you’re not my type.”

  “Oh . . . so then
you like boys?”

  “What? You think any boy who won’t kiss you must be gay?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  I was about to deny it, and then I realized something. She had been in control of everything from the moment we met. This was my chance to be in charge of the situation. To control the controller.

  So I looked her square in the eye and said absolutely nothing, neither confirming nor denying the suggestion.

  Her eyes went wide at my silence. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking away. “I didn’t realize . . . Forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  And so by not saying a thing, I suddenly had the upper hand.

  • • •

  I have no experience playing for the other team—and wearing a dress on Halloween doesn’t count. There are some guys you kinda know what their deal is and others who you’d never know unless they told you, like my cousin Benny, who evades gaydar like a stealth bomber.

  Guys at school use the “G” word as an insult. I don’t know why that is, but it just is. I admit that I’ve been guilty of that—but I also know I’d never treat a guy bad if he really was. Only the real lowlifes pick on guys or girls for being gay.

  As for me, I got no problem with all the variations of humanity. As long as no one’s making me do something I don’t want to—like the one time we played spin the bottle at a party. Spin the bottle is not a smart game unless you bend the rules, because the bottle don’t know the concept between male and female, and my bottle landed on Vinnie Bamboni. Have you ever seen Vinnie Bamboni? Calling him ugly is an insult to ugliness, and to top it, he’s got breath like used dental floss.

  Neena Wexler, class president and an iron-fisted enforcer of rules, was running the game, and she insisted you play by the book or you don’t play. So rather than get anywhere near Vinnie Bamboni’s butt-ugly lips, I left to go play Grand Theft Psycho with all the other guys whose bottle had landed on Vinnie. This does not make me homophobic. It just means I got standards.