The thing is, I had no intention of leaving the ship on this occasion either, except that Jules and Adrian sneaked around behind my back and booked it.
'It's a Happy Un-Birthday present,' Jules announced, when I pointed out that the trip cost sixty-five dollars plus tax, and that he couldn't afford it. I was going to add that Happy Un-Birthday wasn't original enough to use as an excuse either, but I couldn't remember if he'd stolen it from Winnie the Pooh or Alice in Wonderland and by the time I'd worked out it was Alice, it was too late – he'd already moved on. 'Besides,' he said, 'I didn't pay for it on my own. Adrian went halves – which he can afford, seeing as how he's only two days away from a thousand-dollar karaoke pay day.'
I appreciated the thought, and gave in graciously. What else could I do? The tickets were non-refundable. Still, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the prospect of sitting on the boat watching the others handfeeding the stingrays and swimming with the reef sharks – which was sort of the whole point of going to Moorea in the first place.
It's most people's cruise high point. I mean, how often do you get to do something really cool like that?
Sometimes I wish that the doctors were right – and that there really wasn't anything wrong with my legs that should stop me from walking. But they weren't right. They didn't feel what I felt – or rather, what I didn't feel. They couldn't know how many times I'd tried to stand up, to take even one step away from that damned chair and be normal.
Normal ...
What kind of a word is normal?
I'll tell you. It's not a word, it's a sentence – a judgement.
It's the invisible barrier they throw up when you roll towards the in-crowd, and no matter how hard you butt up against it, you're trapped, like the puppy in the pet-shop window, stuck there with your nose up against the glass, trying to figure out what's stopping you from breaking through to the other side.
When I was younger, I used to cry at nights. That was when my dad came in and held me until I sobbed myself to sleep – but then I got tougher.
If you can't join 'em, beat 'em ...
The thing about being in the in-crowd is that it limits you. There are so many things you can't do, because they're just not cool, that you become paranoid about making a mistake that might put you on the outside.
So paranoid, in fact, that you don't end up doing anything very much, except the things that keep you safely inside your comfort zone.
And if you don't leave your comfort zone, you don't really learn anything.
Well, I was already way outside of the comfort zone, so there wasn't any reason to stop pushing boundaries.
In fact, I made it my mission.
I ran for student council and won (on a sympathy vote, perhaps, but all's fair in love and politics) – then I led a campaign for weekly seating ballots that changed the way seating was arranged in the cafeteria and the shaded areas, so that everyone had an equal chance of getting a good seat and it didn't depend on who you knew, or which group you happened to belong to.
And I made it a point of honour never to let a stupid statement stand without questioning it – which is a really unfair thing to do, considering that most people (especially if they have their position in the in-crowd to protect) tend to say the things they think sound good, without really thinking about them a whole lot, so when you actually question them they don't know what to say.
Which means it's not all that difficult to show them up for the poseurs they usually are.
There's absolutely no defence against the power of logic.
It didn't make me all that popular with the in-crowd, of course, but it did earn a grudging respect from the rest of the 'mere mortals' who populated my school – even if most of them didn't invite me for sleepovers.
If you're not afraid to stand out, it makes people kind of nervous to be around you – just in case they get picked out by the same spotlight.
I guess that's why the boys' gesture meant so much – and why I couldn't say no.
Even though I wasn't exactly looking forward to the ordeal.
Motu Lagoon is a wide, shallow, sandy-bottomed piece of paradise on the western coast of the island of Moorea. They take you out there on a boat that holds thirty or forty tourists, and park in the middle of the lagoon, at which point everyone cranes to look over the edge to catch their first glimpse of the stingrays.
It's not that easy to see one just by looking down into the water. Stingrays bury themselves in the sand so that only their eyes are showing. But when they move, it's quite amazing. The water around them sort of clouds up as they twitch their wings, and they rise up like something out of Battlestar Galactica.
It's pretty impressive if just one ray does it, but the rays of Motu Lagoon are keyed into the tourist trade. A boat means tourists and tourists mean a free feed. As soon as the first crew member jumped off the boat (not as scary as it sounds – the water's only about a metre deep), a whole fever of rays rose up like some alien space-fleet and surrounded him.
A note to the would-be naturalist: I called them a school of rays, but the boat captain corrected me. Put a bunch of them together and they're called a 'fever'. Why I don't know, unless it refers to what you get if you happen to stand on one and get stung by its whip-like stinger – which, in spite of the bad publicity they've had lately, is a very rare occurrence, and almost never fatal. Rays are about the most docile creatures in the ocean, and have all the aggression of a sponge – which is why the tour operators are able to take boatloads of geriatric tourists out to places like Moorea to blunder around in the water feeding them.
The boat had a platform at the back, and steps leading down into the water, so just about everyone could get wet.
Everyone who wasn't strapped into a wheelchair, that is.
They stood in the water, waist- or chest-deep, and held out pieces of fish, and the rays would rise up from the bottom and accept the donation, sometimes swimming right up against the donor, rubbing their raspy skin against them, and drawing out the predictable squeals and screams.
It was actually fun to watch. I took out the video to catch the experience, then realised that Jules and Adrian (who were acting as my joint chaperone, seeing as my dad and Jules' mum had decided to take a different tour – alone) hadn't gone in. They were standing near the bow, talking to the captain, who nodded, smiled and looked straight at me.
Then they came back to stand next to me, looking at the people in the water.
'Looks like fun,' Jules said to Adrian.
'Yeah,' Adrian replied, pointing to a woman who was having a screeching fit, because one of the rays had swum straight between her legs – her legs being in a direct line between it and a piece of floating fish that someone had tossed into the water.
'You can go in, guys,' I said. 'I'm fine here. I'll just take some video of the pair of you screaming like girls – for blackmail purposes.'
They looked at each other, and I recognised the expression. It's the look that boys get when they're about to do something that their parents warned them against doing – or else.
'Why don't you do the screaming, while I take the video?'
The captain's voice behind me startled me. I turned to face him, and he was smiling – and holding one of the boat's life-preservers, you know, those orange ring things with the boat's name stencilled in black around the face?
I looked back at the boys, and realised that I was about to be punked.
'You didn't think we brought you all the way out here to play cinematographer, did you?' Jules asked.
'We normally use these things to get people out of the water,' the captain went on, 'but like any good technology, they work just as well in reverse.'
He started attaching a line to one of the loops on the rim of the life-preserver.
'But ...' I began.
'But, what?' Jules cut in. 'What happened to all the big talk about pushing the boundaries and moving outside your comfort zone?'
Maybe that's all it was –
big talk. I suddenly didn't feel so brave.
'I'm not dressed for it,' I pleaded. 'I didn't bring a swimsuit. I don't even own one.'
Another slight difference between me and Jenna Hamilton.
For a second, Jules looked thoughtful, but he was just acting. He shook his head theatrically.
'Nnnah. Nice try, Suzi Q, but it's ninety-five degrees in the shade. I reckon it'll take about three and a half minutes for your clothes to dry, once you get out.'
Adrian handed me the life-preserver.
'Come on, we'll lift you onto the platform. You know you want to.'
I looked again at the people in the water, and I realised that I did. I took the ring, and did as I was told.
Jules and Adrian locked their arms around my back and slid their other hands under my legs, creating a human chair, then they lifted me out of the wheelchair and carried me to the end of the platform, sitting me down with my legs hanging over the edge.
'Now,' said Jules, 'just slide the ring over your shoulders, and under your arms, and we'll lower you in.'
Grabbing the line, they lifted me off the ground, and swung me gently out over the water.
Then I was in.
I don't think I can describe the feeling, floating there with the rays of Motu Lagoon gliding gracefully around me. The captain wasn't the greatest photographer on the planet, but when I saw the video later, I think I noticed a few tears.
The boys dived in, and started pushing me away from the boat. They took some raw fish from the crewman in the water, and handed it to me.
'Just kind of swish it around in front of you,' Jules instructed – which I did, and almost immediately, a large ray, about a metre across rose from the bottom and snatched at it. I squealed a little with pleasure, and waved the fish around more quickly.
And so began one of the best hours of my entire life.
There's something about putting yourself into another creature's domain. I mean, I've seen rays on the Discovery Channel, and I could probably tell you all about how their eyes are on the top and their mouths are on the bottom, so they can't actually see their prey, so they find food through their sense of smell and electro-receptors, the same as a shark. And how they feed primarily on shellfish and small crabs, and occasionally on small fish – unless, of course, they live in Motu Lagoon and get handfed by tourists.
But that's just information. It doesn't mean anything. Not the way that one afternoon, floating in the water and feeling them all around me, meant something.
I remember reaching out to touch one of the creatures as it glided past. The skin looked so smooth, but as it passed beneath my fingers it had the texture of coarse sandpaper. You can't experience that on Foxtel, no matter how good the photography might be.
I think I could have floated there forever.
And if handfeeding the rays was fun, watching them feed the reef sharks was amazing.
The sharks are nowhere near as placid as the rays, and you can't handfeed them, but watching them attack their food, while you're floating just a few metres away, is something I'll never forget.
The guy warned everyone not to approach where he was throwing the fish. Each shark, he said, is only small – maybe a metre long – but they have razor-sharp teeth, and if you get too close to a feeding frenzy, they aren't all that particular what they bite.
Everyone stood there (except me, of course – I floated, with my two minders making sure I didn't float away), watching as the crew tossed large pieces of fish into the slightly deeper water about fifteen metres away.
It was fascinating. Though the sharks are so much more aggressive than the rays, they are also a whole lot less comfortable when a crowd of humans invades their territory.
While we were feeding the rays, they didn't venture in very much, maybe one here or there, attempting a quick raid on the floating smorgasbord, but they were in and out like a flash.
Once the crew began throwing the food a little further away, though, they came from everywhere, attacking the food – and each other – in a frenzy of fins and bodies and snapping jaws. The water foamed up, and the black tips of their dorsal fins cut through the water in all directions. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.
When the food was exhausted, we waited a few minutes until the frenzy died down, then the sea went back to the way it had been – clear, calm and virtually shark-free.
'Time to go,' Jules whispered, as if he was being careful not to break the spell.
I nodded, and they began pushing me gently back towards the boat.
On the way back to the ship, I hardly said a word – pretty unusual for me – and the boys gave me my space. I think they could read my need to hold it all in – to store it away in that place where only the special memories are kept.
When were back on board The Polynesian Queen, I took hold of their hands.
'Thank you, guys. Really ...' I wanted to say more, but there weren't any words.
'What are friends for?' Adrian leaned over and kissed me on the top of the head.
Jules squeezed my hand, then took hold of the handles at the back of the chair and began pushing.
'Come on. Let's get you back to your room. It's almost dinner time, and I'm starved.'
For just a moment, I found myself wishing that he'd been the one who'd kissed me, but it passed.
That was when I began hatching my plan.
If he wasn't going to make a move on Jenna Hamilton, then I was.
On his behalf, that is.
What are friends for ...?
11
Questions
JULES' STORY
Even though she hadn't let me in on it, I worked out pretty quickly what Suzi was doing, and I would have asked her to stop – except that what she was doing seemed like a pretty good idea.
What she was doing was trying to get to know Jenna Hamilton on a level that didn't involve staring at her from the other side of the Lido Deck pool and commenting on today's bikini, and how unfair it was that her hair always looked just right, even if she was standing face-on to a force ten gale.
What I was doing was staring at them both from the other side of the Lido Deck pool, thinking how great today's bikini looked, and how fair her hair looked in the sunlight.
More than once, Suzi has accused me of being just 'a hormone with feet' – as if that's somehow a bad thing.
They were deep in conversation about something, and I saw Jenna smile as she pushed the hair away from her eyes, the way the models do on shampoo commercials.
It got me thinking. Perhaps there's a genetic component to sex appeal – apart from the obvious things like bone structure, perfect skin and stuff like that. Perhaps there are certain moves and postures that some people are just born with – that have a particular effect on other people, without them even being aware of it. Things which, if you did notice them, you could probably show someone, but which you might not be able to teach them how to carry off.
It would explain why all those people on Extreme Makeover can be given different faces, and lose three hundred pounds, but when it comes to the big 'reveal', although they look like a million dollars when they walk down the staircase at the end, they just don't come across as any more 'sexy' than they were before they went to all that effort.
And why, on the other hand, you can dress some people in a sack, rub dirt all over their faces and muss their hair up, like something out of The Rocky Horror Show, and you'd still find yourself wishing they were your date to the school dance.
When the two of them moved off together, I decided not to follow them. I didn't want to appear too desperate.
Instead, I headed off to see how Adrian's rehearsals were going.
I didn't make it, of course. I barely made it off the Lido Deck before Barry Barnes caught sight of me, and I found myself running down a corridor I hadn't escaped through before, looking for a place to hide.
I spent the next half-hour in a storage room somewhere on the port side, lying on a pi
le of carefully folded beach towels. Luckily I had my PSP in my pocket, so the time wasn't a total bust.
By then it was time for lunch, so I went to the snack bar instead. According to my mother, I'm just 'a stomach with feet' – and I'm not sure that that's such a bad thing, either.
'So,' I said, when I finally met up with Suzi again, 'what did you think?'
'About ...?'
She was going to play it all 'female' and force me to ask what I really wanted to know, instead of doing the compassionate thing and telling me everything she knew I wanted to hear.
'About the state of politics in the Middle East,' I replied. 'About what was wrong with the last three Star Wars movies. What do you think we're talking about?'
For a moment, I could sense the sarcastic replies, forming behind her eyes, but instead she just smiled.
'Touchy ...' Then she turned her chair around and pushed herself towards the balcony, forcing me to wait. She was in a position of power and she really knew how to use it.
We were alone in her cabin, and outside the sun was high in a blue sky and shimmering off the surface of the ocean like a postcard, but I wasn't there to admire the view.
Outside, the breeze was gentle, almost still, and I felt a warmth seep through my shirt as I leaned against the railing, facing back towards her.
'Well,' she said, finally, 'she's a hell of a lot better at chess than you are.'
'You played chess with her?' I asked – a little redundantly.
'What did you want me to do, take her dancing?'
I resisted the image.
'I'm sorry. She just didn't strike me as the chess-playing type.'
Suzi's face hardened slightly, and I realised my mistake, but she wasn't going to let me get away with it.
'And what, exactly, is 'the chess-playing type'? A social misfit in a wheelchair, who can't possibly do anything else?'
'I ... I didn't ... I mean ...'
I didn't have a clue what I meant.
Cruisin' Page 7