Pieces of Love

by PJ Sharon

  “Sit down, Alexis. We need to talk.”

  Chapter 4

  My grandmother gave me an earful, half of which I was too stoned to hear or care about, until she brought up the inevitable topic...Amanda. “After everything your family has gone through with your sister, I would think the last thing you would want is to take drugs and cause any more trouble. I don’t understand you kids. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you, and you’re throwing yours away, just like Amanda.”

  Knowing nothing I said would make anyone see I wasn’t at all like my sister, I kept my mouth shut. Amanda and I had always been worlds apart in every way. She was pretty, I was plain. Her sandy hair and stunning dark eyes, her long legs, and her gorgeous smile put my straight mousy brown hair, brown eyes, and boyish build to shame. The only visible indication that we were sisters was in the subtleties. The round face, the curve of our lips, and maybe the cuteness of our tiny noses—my best feature. Otherwise, my sister was smarter, more athletic, popular, and socially more adept than me in every way. I couldn’t compete with her when she was alive. I certainly had no intention of trying to compete with her in death.

  While Maddie took in a deep breath, no doubt preparing for another tirade, I jumped in with my only defense. “It’s not like I’m shooting heroin or smoking crack. It’s only pot.”

  “Which will lead to more. Mark my words, young lady.” I was about to argue that statistically speaking this wasn’t true when she brought up a topic that made my insides squirm and my jaw clench shut. “Your father started with pot when he was your age. It didn’t take long for alcohol to follow. Once he started drinking, he was never the same. And you of all people know what alcohol cost him.”

  My father’s death from a drunk driving accident changed the landscape of my entire life. I was six and Amanda was nine then, and it was only a few years after that she started drinking. Secretly stealing a sip here or there at first, and then drinking daily by the time she was fifteen. I never touched the stuff. I hated the taste and even more, I hated the way it made me feel—out of control. By then, most of my friends were already smoking pot. It seemed like a good alternative at the time. At least with pot, I didn’t do anything crazy or act like an idiot. My teeth ached from clenching and words bubbled to the surface.

  “Look...Maddie. Ground me or take my phone away, or better yet, send me home, but please, please don’t make me sit here and listen to you compare me to Amanda or my father. I’m not like them and I never will be, okay?” I pushed myself up from the cushy white sofa, my head spinning enough to make me wobble.

  “I can see that this discussion is futile while you’re under the influence. We will decide what to do with you in the morning.” Maddie stood, her normally wrinkle free appearance looking worn and her eyes tired. As I turned to go to my room she stopped me. “Lexi, I know I haven’t been a big part of your life the past few years, but I...do care about you. I only want what’s best, and I can tell you, doing drugs is not the answer to your problems.”

  I resisted the urge to correct her on my name or to ask what the answer to my problems was, because I knew this would only lead to a longer discussion than my foggy brain wanted to deal with. Instead, I muttered good night and skulked off to my room. Curling up on the firm cool mattress, I stared out the long window at the moon hanging over the water. Light sparkled across the surface like a million fireflies dancing and winking as the crashing surf of the Pacific lulled me to sleep.

  ∞∞∞

  I slept dreamlessly and woke with a pounding headache and a mouthful of cotton and sawdust. After brushing my teeth, showering, and drinking a quart of orange juice, I poured a bowl of stale bran cereal with raisins—the only box in the cabinet resembling breakfast food—and sat at the kitchen table wondering if Maddie had slept in or if she was even home. The place was eerily quiet other than the hum of the air conditioning. I pulled my hoodie over my head. Did the woman have to keep the place so freaking cold? What was the point of living at the beach? I chewed the semi-crunchy flakes, annoyed there wasn’t even a slice of bread for toast, or a donut to be found, and decided a grocery list was in order. I grabbed a pen and notepad off the counter. With another bite, I cringed and added Choco-puffs and real milk to the list.

  The slider opened and Maddie strolled in, her red hair tousled and windblown, her cheeks rosy from exertion. She had on track pants, sneakers, and a faded Les Mis tee shirt. “Nothing like a morning walk on the beach to wake you up and make you feel alive,” she said, still a little breathless.

  Chocolate and Red Bull would probably do the same, but who was I to argue. “Could we go pick up a few groceries today?” I slid my list across the table and she picked it up, frown lines creasing her forehead.

  “We won’t need any groceries.” She dropped the list and poured herself a glass of juice.

  “Are you planning on starving me to death as punishment?’ I asked, immediately regretting the opening I’d given her.

  “On the contrary, my dear. Where we’re going, you’ll have all the food you can eat.” Maddie sank into the chair across from me, sipping her juice and studying me over the rim of the glass.

  I eyed her quizzically, afraid to ask for an explanation. The bran flakes were beginning to expand in my stomach. I slid the bowl aside, waiting for her to continue.

  She set her glass down and raised a thin brow. “Curious?”

  “Maybe,” I said, pushing my bangs out of my eyes.

  Maddie grinned, obviously satisfied she had hooked my attention. “Well, I just got off the phone with my travel agent. I had a cruise planned before your stepfather called to ask if I could take you for the summer. I’ve been trying to cancel my reservations, but my agent said that unless it’s for health reasons, I’m obligated to pay for the trip. So instead, I’ve decided to take you with me.”

  “You mean on a boat?” The cereal formed a large mass in my stomach, growing instantly to the size of a grapefruit.

  “No, on a spaceship. Of course on a boat, silly—although technically it’s called a ship.”

  “But I can’t go on a boat. I get really motion sick.”

  “It’s a ship and you’ll be fine. Cruise ships are like floating hotels. You won’t even know you’re moving.” She kept smiling as my heart rate soared and sweat broke out on my neck.

  “Floating is the operative word there, Maddie. You don’t understand. I get sick on bumper boats. I cannot go on a boat...on the ocean...” The lump in my stomach took a sharp drop to my lower intestines.

  “They have motion sickness medicine. You’ll be fine,” she said again. “Besides, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you. Fourteen ports in seventeen glorious days on the Mediterranean. You’ll see Europe for the first time and one of the stops is Tunisia. That’s in North Africa,” she clarified, obviously mistaking my look of panic for one of cluelessness. “It will be a fabulous trip. I’ve been planning it for ages. Now I won’t have to go alone with a bunch of old fogies. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

  Clearly, we had totally different ideas of what constituted fun. Dreading the answer, I asked, “And how are we getting to this...ship?”

  “We’ll fly from here to Rome and then catch the ship in Civitavecchia. From there we’ll sail down the coast of Italy to France and then Spain, and...” her voice trailed off as the food in my stomach made a sudden reverse turn, and I dashed to the bathroom. A few minutes later I returned, still feeling queasy at the thought of another flight and the idea of days—weeks at sea.

  “There is no freaking way you are getting me on another airplane.” I dug my heels in, spouting a dozen reasons that this trip was a bad idea. Apart from my motion sickness, I cited several compelling arguments. “What about pirates and terrorists? Political unrest in Tunisia and Libya?”

  Maddie rolled her eyes at me.

  “Don’t forget about the Titanic. And don’t even get me started on the hazards of flying on the oversized tin cans they call airplanes—which h
ave been known to plummet to the earth at speeds that will rip your eyeballs out of their sockets. If humans were meant to fly, we’d have feathers.”

  We were still arguing hours later when a limo arrived to take us to the airport, complete with a scary-looking driver standing outside the house. A guard—I couldn’t believe it.

  “I’m not taking any chances with you,” she said as she introduced the big guy. Hank, a muscle-bound character with a square face, dark eyes, and chocolate brown skin, towered outside the door waiting for me to try to escape and looking seriously capable of stopping me from any sneaky maneuvers.

  “What about my court-ordered classes?” Desperation kicked in and sweat beaded on my forehead as I struggled with my suitcase.

  “Mitch said he could arrange for you to take them when you return home.”

  My grandmother had thought of everything, damn her. I kicked, screamed, whined and cried all the way to the airport, but none of it ruffled her for a second. She was much tougher than I remembered.

  She loaded me up on Dramamine and picked up some stupid ginger gum and wrist bracelets that were supposed to stimulate an acupressure point in the wrist to stop nausea. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried all of these tricks before. My mother knew how I felt about traveling, and yet here I was sitting on a plane for the second time in two days, wishing I were anywhere else. I knew a hundred other people who would probably kill for a chance to see Europe or go on a cruise, but for me this was the next closest thing to hell. Not for the first time, I thought my sister was the lucky one. If this was life, death had to be easier. I gripped the armrests, closed my eyes, and swallowed back the organs that rode up in my throat as we sped down the runway.

  Chapter 5

  After I threw up twice in the airplane toilet and once on a cute, and surprisingly understanding, dark haired boy in the back row, I finally fell asleep, waking only long enough to down some ginger-ale and catch the end of an intense Vin Diesel action flick. Eight hours had passed like Chinese water torture, and Maddie and I were dragging our suitcases through the airport in Rome, shuffling toward a bus that would take me to the floating hotel of doom. I was hot, exhausted, and miserable.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is about Rome. This airport doesn’t look any different than any other one I’ve been in. It’s as big and confusing as the rest, only in a foreign language,” I complained as we followed a young Italian woman with a Welcome to Rome sign onto the bus.

  “This isn’t Rome,” Maddie sighed as she climbed the steps slowly, short of breath after trekking through the airport at breakneck speed. “Trust me, Lexi. You are going to love Europe. When we tour the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica, and you see the Sistine Chapel for the first time, it will bring tears to your eyes. You’ll see...you’ll be glad you came with me.”

  We settled into two seats at the back of the bus, and I stared out the window, unable to argue any longer. Even I had my limit and I had reached it hours ago. I watched as non-descript buildings and scrubby trees passed by, no signs that Italy was any more fascinating or beautiful than anywhere else on the planet. Cars whizzed past—little foreign jobs that looked economical and far less intrusive on the roads than the SUV’s back home.

  When we reached the port an hour later there was another ridiculously long wait, another security and passport check, and I was starving. As we approached the humongous ship my stomach lurched. The thought of climbing on board and essentially living there for the next seventeen days with my grandmother made me as nauseous as the idea of said ship bobbing like a cork through the Mediterranean. A vision of me heaving over the side rails flashed before my eyes. I was already missing home, more worried than ever about my mom. Instead of seeing the upcoming journey as an adventure of a lifetime, I wanted to cry.

  The whole experience felt like some kind of torture that Mitch had devised to scare me straight. I wondered if my mother even knew that I’d left the continent. Another wave of worry was followed by a surge of anger. Of course she knew. They had all planned this together. I pushed down the tears and sense of betrayal bubbling to the surface. I refused to give in to my urge to panic and run home crying—as if I had the option. Instead, I dragged my butt up the gangplank in a long line of other cattle-like humans, who all looked much happier and more excited than me.

  A part of me wanted to be at least a little excited. After all, my friends back home would be green with envy that I had spent half of my summer vacation cruising around Europe. But thoughts of what my mother was going through, and all that we had lost, crept into my mind. I couldn’t even muster a half smile when Maddie put her arm around my shoulder for the welcome aboard photo being snapped as we hit the top of the gangway. A joint would definitely have made the whole experience more fun—or at least tolerable—but who knew when my next opportunity to get high would come along. Another wave of panic set in.

  We made our way down a long hallway and up a few flights of stairs, avoiding the elevators that were bustling with gray-haired passengers. “This will be quicker,” Maddie said, tugging me along by the hand and taking the steps with more energy than seemed possible for a woman her age. Our cabin turned out to be bigger than I’d imagined. There were double beds, a suitable sized bathroom, and a balcony overlooking the port. I flopped onto the bed next to my suitcase, which was there waiting for me.

  “I need a nap,” I said. My head ached and my body felt wrung out. We’d been traveling for ten hours.

  “Don’t you want to explore the ship? There is so much to see and do. I know you’re going to love this, Lexi.” Maddie tossed her hat on the bed and began primping in front of the mirror that covered one wall above a glass-topped desk.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Aren’t you tired?” I groaned and pulled a pillow over my face.

  “I suppose I am a bit worn out.” Maddie plunked into a straight-backed, orange chair—one of two that flanked a small table against the wall. She checked her watch. “We could change into our swimsuits, go up to the Lido deck, and nap by the pool. They’re serving lunch up there until 2:00. Or maybe you’d like to take a little siesta out on the Promenade deck. There are usually lounge chairs set up and it’s quiet. Did you bring a book to read?”

  “No. Do you have to be so cheerful and energetic all the time?” My headache intensified. Peeking one eye out from under the pillow, I cringed as Maddie gave me a chilly stare.

  “It beats being a sourpuss,” she said, then added, “They have a library. I’m sure you’ll find something there that interests you.”

  “I doubt it,” I said. There were a few books I was supposed to read from the summer reading list for school, but I hadn’t even thought about it as I packed to go to Maddie’s. It seemed I’d barely had time to throw a suitcase together before Mitch was rushing me onto the plane. A pang of guilt twisted inside me, knowing I hadn’t even said good-bye to my mom. “When do you think I can call home?” I asked, my voice soft.

  Maddie smiled sympathetically. “We can check in with your stepfather in a few days.” She came and sat next to me on the bed. “I know you’re worried about your mother, dear, but there isn’t anything you can do except pray for her and let the passage of time take care of things.” She shook her head, her blue eyes growing misty. “You’ve all been through a terrible time since Amanda...well...I’m sure your mother will get through this. She has plenty of people taking care of her.” She patted my leg. “What you need to do is concentrate on taking care of yourself.” She began unpacking her suitcase, all the while humming some old ditty from way before I was born. She stopped abruptly. “I know. We can do the sunset Tai Chi class later. Tai Chi is wonderful for clearing the mind and calming the soul.”

  I rolled over and stuffed my head back under the pillow.

  ∞∞∞

  I awoke some time later to the sound of the ship’s horn blaring and the subtle sensation of movement. I looked around, disoriented, and found a note on the bed next to me. Lexi, I’ve gone to play Bing
o. I’ll be back later to meet you for dinner. Tonight’s dress is formal, so wear something pretty. No shorts or tank tops. Enjoy exploring the ship and please, stay out of trouble,

  Maddie.

  Formal? Crud. The only thing I had with me other than shorts were jeans or a bathing suit. I rummaged through my suitcase, dragged out a few articles of clothing that weren’t shorts or tank tops. Since unpacking would only serve to remind me that I was trapped, I slid the case under the bed. Defeated, I threw on a pair of capris pants, a button down short sleeved blouse and a pair of sandals—the closest thing I had to a nice outfit. By the looks of the sun on the balcony, it was late afternoon. A trek around the ship to orient myself seemed like a good idea.

  Within three minutes, I was hopelessly lost.

  Mazelike hallways leading nowhere and elevators that all had identical silver polished floral designs had me turning in circles. Our cabin was on the upper promenade deck, which apparently only housed cabins. The same with decks five, six, and seven. I spent half an hour working my way up and down the long narrow corridors, feeling more lost with each turn. Frantically, I searched for a ship’s map, which I had seen next to the elevators, but now it seemed that even the elevators eluded me. I bumped into a few people and would have asked for directions but everyone spoke a different language or was rushing to get somewhere. All I wanted was to find my way back to my room, but I couldn’t remember what number cabin we were in and I’d forgotten the keycard anyway.

  Frustrated, I determined I wouldn’t venture out of my cabin again for the next seventeen days. Near panic, I turned another corner and ran headlong into—my eyes widened. Perfect—the cute guy I’d thrown up on in the back row of the plane.

  Chapter 6

  “Are you lost?” Deep green eyes with long dark lashes loomed before me.