Mask on the Cruise Ship

by Melanie Jackson

  “There’s Ira,” I exclaimed, swirling the lenses into better focus. “He’s hobbling off a tour bus, along with the doting Lavinia. Guess the bus we took was too early for them. STUFF AND NONSENSE!” I shouted. I found Ira amusing.

  He couldn’t hear me, of course, but a couple of mountain goats did. They were grazing in some clover, across the meadow from Madge and me. The goats glanced up, beards wagging as they chewed, and regarded me with scorn.

  “STUFF AND NONSENSE!” I shouted again.

  “Please, Dinah,” begged Madge. “What have my eardrums ever done to you?”

  “There’s Mother getting off the bus. And Jack! Wait — where’s Julie? I thought she and Mother were both coming … Nope, Julie’s not there. Weird.”

  “Dinah, PLEASE stop saying ‘weird.’ ”

  Chapter 9

  A chilling experience

  I spent the next minutes eating my favorite banana-honey-peanut-butter sandwich and watching Jack through the binoculars. Somebody had pointed him up the trail after us.

  “He’s sprinting all the way up,” I informed Madge. “Can you believe it? Sprinting!”

  Madge was looking annoyed and pleased at the same time. “There’s no need to report on him, Dinah. This isn’t ABC’s Wide World of Sports.”

  When I’d finished my sandwich, I started bellowing “STUFF AND NONSENSE!” at Jack. It was a scientific experiment, you might say. To find out how far up the trail Jack would have to be before he heard me. “STUFF AND NONSENSE!” Yup, I was a regular Albert Einstein.

  “DINAH!”

  I lowered the binoculars. Madge was standing and glowering.

  Then, to my amazement, her face crumpled and she burst into tears. By the time Jack reached us, I was trying to explain, “But, Madge, this is science … ”

  Jack gathered her in his arms for a bear hug. After all that sprinting, he was only slightly out of breath. That wasn’t athletic, in my view. It was unnatural.

  Jack noticed my disapproving frown and winked at me. “So tell me,” he murmured to Madge, “is it my personality that upsets you? Or should I just be switching deodorants?”

  Madge giggled through her tears. That was the great thing about Jack. Being beautiful, my sister had always been fussed over by everyone. Spoiled, really. But Jack laughed at her instead of fussing.

  With a shaky breath, Madge told him, “It’s — well, sometimes having a younger sister is so stressful.”

  “WHAT?” I couldn’t believe the unfairness of this. “Madge, you got on an emotional teeter-totter just now because of Dad, not me! You won’t admit to thinking about Dad — it’d make things less than perfect, wouldn’t it?”

  Madge wouldn’t look at me. Jack, however, was glancing back and forth from one to the other of us with the beginnings of understanding in his gray eyes.

  “It’s the Mendenhall Glacier’s fault,” I finished dramatically. “That’s what started it all.”

  “Ri-ight,” said Jack. Then, unexpectedly, “You’re a sensitive kid, Dinah. I bet that’s part of what reaches people when you sing. It’s not just the voice.”

  Me, sensitive? That was the second shocking observation made about me within the hour. Beneath my annoyance at Madge, I felt the faint stirrings of pleasure.

  “All right,” said Madge, dabbing at her eyes with one of the blue-imprinted-with-white-ship napkins from the picnic basket. “I will acknowledge that my sister is stressful and sensitive.”

  She fished a brownie out of the basket and handed it to me. A peace offering. We gave each other tight, suspicious smiles and narrow-eyed frowns; it was what we did when making up. All in good humor — sort of. It’s a sister thing, difficult for outsiders to understand.

  “You should have some of this lunch with us,” Madge told Jack, who was indeed looking bemused. “The chef packed enough for ten people. Or at least for Dinah and two friends.”

  “Can’t, my one-and-only.” Growing somber, Jack picked up the basket. “We should head back down to your mom. She’s been through a bad shock.”

  With his free hand he pulled me close for my turn at a bear hug. Then he explained: “Your mother and Julie delivered the Raven by cab to the Juneau Heritage Gallery. Or tried to. When they stepped out of the cab, a young man in a black balaclava and ski suit rushed Julie. He grabbed the box and peeled down the street, out of sight.”

  “You mean — the Raven’s gone?” I squeaked.

  “Gone with the brisk Alaska wind. To use your favorite word, young Di, there’s something even weirder. Your mom caught a glimpse of the guy’s eyes as he was wrestling the package away from Julie.

  “His eyes were gooseberry-colored.”

  You could definitely call Jack’s news a cliffhanger. We were near a cliff and my mouth was hanging open.

  Jack didn’t have a lot to add. Julie was giving a statement at the police station. The Juneau Heritage Gallery had announced that its famed Raven mask would not be returning soon, maybe ever.

  I raced ahead of Jack and Madge down the trail. After all, it was I who’d had the original sightings of Gooseberry Eyes, off our balcony at home, and then at the Vancouver cruise ship terminal. It was my duty to tell the police about that.

  Then there was Lavinia. She’d sighted Gooseberry Eyes at the terminal too — if only she’d stop wooing Ira long enough to tell the police!

  No doubt about it. I had work to do.

  In zooming past Jack and my sister, I’d scooped another sandwich out of the picnic basket. I chomped into it as I ran. Ew, cucumber and cream cheese. Cream cheese lite, no doubt. This would be the sandwich Madge had ordered.

  At a bend in the trail I almost bumped into a group of Empress Marie passengers. In the lead, whistling, was — Talbot St. John.

  The tune he’d been whistling died away at the sight of me. He ducked his face, as if trying to hide beneath the long, dark forelock Liesl and the other girls were mad over. “Hi, Dinah,” Talbot said uncomfortably. “Listen, I’m sorry about the pool incident. I didn’t mean to — ”

  “What pool incident, Talbot?” asked a sharp-faced woman behind him. In starched khakis, she had one of those pageboy hairdos so stiffly sprayed you feel you could break a sprig off and use it for firewood.

  So that was Talbot’s mom! No wonder he had such a scornful attitude; he must’ve got it from her.

  I almost felt a twinge of understanding. Then I remembered how scornful he’d been about me. I turned my back on him. To show how gnat-like and insignificant his presence was, I busied myself training the binoculars on the Visitors’ Center.

  There was Mother. Closer now, I could make out the anxiety on her face. Hard to enjoy a view, even one as spectacular as the Mendenhall Glacier, when you’d just had a rare piece of art whisked out from under your nose.

  There was stooped old Ira, being fussed over by Lavinia. She was trying to give him a steaming cup of something, hot chocolate maybe. He was swatting it away.

  And Evan — he’d arrived by that later bus too. Evan looked just as anxious as Mother. Kept glancing up the trail as if afraid the abominable snowman was about to descend. What was his problem?

  I heard Madge’s and Jack’s voices coming up behind me. Well, time to gallop ahead of them. I knew, I just knew, they were talking about their relationship. Teens did that. They went on for hours, all very solemnly, with vows and promises galore. Bo-o-r-ring.

  I caught a scrap of their conversation. Jack was saying, “Love doesn’t mean one or the other of us, or both of us, for that matter, has to be perfect.”

  YECH! I galloped. Soon I’d be at the bottom and could question Mother about Gooseberry Eyes — preferably over one of those cups of hot chocolate Lavinia had been trying to press on Ira.

  I met a second group of passengers climbing the trail. There were so many of them I dodged into a tiny woods beside the lake. At this point the trail had almost wound to its base. If I’d sat down at the edge of the woods, my feet would have just about touched water.r />
  This being a glacial lake, I decided to give that idea a pass. Instead, feet crunching on the dry pine needles beneath the trees, I hoisted the binoculars for another look round. There was a cormorant! Perched on a rock, the slim black bird bowed formally to me. I bowed back.

  Of course he wasn’t really bowing. He was watching for fish. Plop! His long neck plunged into the clear blue water. He lifted his head up again: a shiny silver trout was squirming in his long beak.

  Only for a second, though. Gulp! Then he started bowing again.

  I lifted the binoculars to focus on the Visitors’ Center. Mother still wore her anxious expression. To cheer her up, I waved. “C’mon, Mother, notice me!”

  As a result, I didn’t really notice the people around her. Not at first. They would just be the same ones as before, right?

  Hold on. I stopped waving. That was funny. They weren’t quite the same. There was one difference. I refocused the lenses. Huh! I was right.

  I was just pursing my lips to form my favorite word, weird, when it happened.

  I was shoved roughly from behind and sent hurtling into Mendenhall Lake.

  Let’s be more precise about that.

  Into ice-cold, deep Mendenhall Lake.

  Forget the principle of flotation. I’d been pushed so hard I just sank. No cormorant, I. I went into the blue and then black depths, where all of me froze but my brain. Then, after I briefly, longingly, pictured Mother, Madge, Jack and Wilfred the cat, my brain numbed, too.

  Except for a single, almost calm thought: The image of my loved ones breezed by awfully fast just now. Is that all there is?

  Is that all there is? That was a song. My dad had played it a lot. Peggy Lee sang it. Dad had really liked Peggy Lee.

  Numbed, I was growing comfortable. Didn’t feel like moving at all. Dad … I could see him now. My dad had crisp black curly hair and black eyes so bright and full of life they practically gave off electricity. “Hey, Dinah,” he’d say, starting up a CD. “See if you can sing this one.”

  Dad?

  I don’t know if I tried to call out to him. Ever after I thought I did. More likely — at least, this is what everyone said — water filled my lungs, and it was then that I started coughing and spewing out bubbles. And thrashing around in an effort to punch through that deep, blue-black cold.

  Anyhow, I’d always believe that the thought of Dad forced me to the surface again.

  Something grabbed me by an armpit. Something sharp. Must be the cormorant’s beak. The beak dragged me up, up, out of the water.

  After several huge wrenching coughs, I could breathe again. I gasped, “Did you run out of fish?”

  “Trust Dinah to be thinking about food,” said a familiar, rather shaky voice next to me.

  I opened my eyes — they’d been squeezed shut. I was sitting on the pine needle floor. Madge was kneeling beside me, her face pale, frightened and tender at the same time.

  Jack was on the other side of me. He had me gripped in another bear hug, as if he feared I might get away from him.

  He was sopping wet. He’d been the cormorant.

  “We’re going to revise our swimming lesson plans,” Jack informed me. His voice was unsteady too. “Since you seem unable to be around water without falling into it, I’m first going to teach you how to tread water. That way, next time, you can keep your head up while waiting for me to fish you out.”

  I could see how my impromptu plunges would get to be tiresome for Jack. I tried to apologize, but my teeth were chattering too badly.

  “C’mon,” said Jack, hoisting me. “Let’s take our shivering bones down to the Visitors’ Center. Maybe they have some towels.”

  “Paper towels, for sure, in the public washrooms.” Madge allowed herself the ghost of a smile. “You can cover yourselves with them and pretend to be mummies.”

  They each took one of my hands and we hurried down the path. “I’m not letting this kid near a glass of water without supervision,” Jack informed Madge.

  I wanted to speak, to tell them that I was sorry. That it hadn’t been my fault: someone had shoved me.

  But what finally chattered out from between my teeth was: “I saw Dad.”

  Chapter 10

  A memory in the deep freeze

  They didn’t believe me.

  They also didn’t believe that I’d be able to do a show in the evening. On that point, anyway, I was able to prove them wrong. I belted out just the same as always. Maybe more so, because I remembered how numbing those dark depths had been and how I’d almost given up and stayed there.

  Nope, I wanted to live, and to live was to sing. In fact, I blasted out “Who Will Buy?” so loudly that people strolling by on the deck heard and crowded in to listen.

  Later I planned to sing it again, maybe not quite so loudly, for Madge. Now that we were ocean-bound again, she was swaddled in comforters in our stateroom, suffering a fresh bout of seasickness.

  “You’re certainly a big draw,” Mr. Trotter admitted after the show. He mopped delicately at his mustache curls with a blue-and-white napkin to remove any hors d’oeuvres crumbs. “If only you were, well, quieter in other respects.”

  I knew he was referring to what had happened at Mendenhall Lake. It was the talk of the ship.

  Evan was tinkling out dah DAH dah dah DAH dah; he glanced up and smiled wryly. “I hardly think Dinah chose to be shoved in the lake, Mr. Trotter.”

  The program director’s apple-like cheeks grew mottled. He didn’t like being contradicted, especially by a lowly staffer.

  Then he saw Julie, cute in a leopard print mini-dress and black fishnet stockings, and his expression became fond and beaming. He oozed out some compliment, but she ignored him.

  “Who do you think pushed you, Dinah?” she asked, looking frightened. “Was it Gooseberry Eyes?”

  “I don’t know,” I said unhappily. That particular whodunit had been bothering me all day. Or at least since a whole crowd of anxious fellow Empress passengers had pressed hot chocolates on me, and the intense sugar hit had revived my numb brain.

  Evan kept playing. I fit the words in my mind to his tune: Who WAS it who PUSHED me? “I just didn’t see,” I admitted.

  “Why would Gooseberry Eyes, having stolen the mask, then head over to Mendenhall Lake for a trail hike?” Mother wondered to Julie. “It doesn’t make sense. Wouldn’t he want to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible?”

  “You’d think so,” said Julie, clearly troubled.

  “You’d bet so,” I interrupted. “Gooseberry Eyes wants to sell the mask to some unscrup —unscrup — ”

  “Unscrupulous,” Julie filled in, with a wan smile.

  “Unscrupulous art collector,” I finished. Mother often lectured me about interrupting, but it was hard not to.

  Julie sighed. “Yes, our gooseberry-eyed thief must be long gone.”

  She frowned at Mr. Trotter, who’d been smiling admiringly at her. Embarrassed, the program director backed up — to bump into Jack. “You. French,” Mr. Trotter blurted out. “Can’t you watch where you’re going?”

  “It’s evidently more in my interest to watch where you’re going,” Jack returned, nursing the foot Mr. Trotter had stepped on.

  Jack had a lazy way of speaking, especially when delivering insults, so that people were left puzzling whether or not to feel offended.

  Dah DAH dah dah DAH dah, played Evan, hiding a smile.

  “I trust you’re not being humorous again,” Mr. Trotter snapped at Jack.

  “Sorry,” said Jack. “Dinah, did you see anyone on the trail before you went into those woods?”

  “Just a bunch of people hiking up,” I said. “Empress Marie people.”

  Evan shook his head over the notes he was playing. “And among them, possibly, a gooseberry-eyed outsider.”

  Mother shuddered. I would’ve shuddered too, except that I was hot and sweaty from singing. Besides, one face from the bunch of hikers had detached itself to hover, like a qu
estion mark, in my mind. A long, oval question mark with a black lock of hair tumbling over it. Talbot St. John.

  Talbot had been among the hikers — and we didn’t like each other. To him, I had about the status of the dirt underfoot on the West Glacier Trail.

  Was scorn enough of a motive for him to push me into Mendenhall Lake? Talbot wasn’t stupid. He was acing his grade seven science tests at Lord Bithersby (yet another reason to dislike him). He had to know that near-freezing water wasn’t the healthiest thing to immerse a classmate in.

  Sure, a bright guy like Talbot would know that.

  But would it matter to him?

  Mother bent down and whispered to me. “Dinah, you’re scowling yourself into a little gnarled walnut. Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Um,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say what I’d been thinking. Twerpy or not, Talbot was a fellow Lord Bithersby-ite. Besides, I had no proof.

  Mother took hold of my hand. Rather tearfully, she told the others, “Dinah — shy and reluctant to speak! This girl is ill. I knew it. One can’t be tossed into glacial waters without some side effects. I’d better get her into a warm bed right away. Oh dear, I don’t want her going the way of Ophelia … ”

  Oh no. The inevitable literary reference. I had no idea who Ophelia was, except that she must be of the drowned-rat variety. “Mother,” I protested.

  “Now, now, what’s this?” a jolly voice demanded.

  It was Captain Heidgarten. As in, the ship’s captain. Broad-shouldered, in a starched white uniform brimming with gold buttons, he towered over the rest of us, even Jack, who was no slouch. Captain Heidgarten’s blue eyes twinkled at us out of his brown-bearded, sunburned face. “I’ve been intending to pay my compliments to you, Dinah, on your singing abilities. I had the pleasure of seeing you in The Moonstone last fall and am looking forward to attending one of your performances aboard the Empress. But now I see I have to offer my congratulations to you as well. Anyone who survives the brutal clutches of the waters of Mendenhall is remarkable indeed.