by Ann Hood
Tears sprang to Felix’s eyes. “It’s as if you’ve written that for me and Maisie,” he said.
“Truly? Are you two wandering guests in worlds unknown?” Alexander asked.
Felix gazed up at all the stars.
“You have no idea,” he said, sighing.
The Thunderbolt
After a week at sea, a routine had developed in Alexander’s cabin. He slept and studied in the room with the bed, and Maisie and Felix took turns sleeping on the couch in the sitting room. Alexander had requested extra blankets so that the one sleeping on the floor could be more comfortable. Felix had borrowed some books from Alexander, and he was content to curl up and read or sit up on the deck. But Maisie was growing restless. Even though Alexander was conceited, a know-it-all, and more confident than anyone she’d ever known, she had to admit—to herself—that she’d developed a crush on the short, redheaded seventeen-year-old.
By the end of the second week, she became determined to get him to pay attention to her. She couldn’t do it by talking about poetry, like Felix did. Or computer games, movies, TV shows, or any of the things that made up her world. No, the only thing she had that Alexander was interested in, Maisie decided, was her knowledge of New York.
On their sixteenth day at sea, Maisie finally had her chance. Felix was up on the deck, and when Alexander came back from lunch with their smuggled bread and butter, Maisie was waiting for him. She’d wet her hair and combed it with her fingers, trying to tame it as best she could in such damp air. Alexander walked in and as usual, hardly looked at her.
“Here you are,” he said, placing a large linen napkin on the small table by the couch. He unfolded it to reveal the thick slabs of bread smeared with butter. From his pocket he took out two oranges.
“Oh,” Maisie said, “I love oranges.”
“Mmmm,” Alexander said, already lost in thought.
Maisie remembered how her father, who had grown up in New Jersey, had told her that when his grandfather was young, oranges were a rare treat. Sometimes he got an orange in his Christmas stocking, her father had said. Maisie had thought that was just about the worst thing to find in your Christmas stocking. She always got gel pens, purple Post-its, holiday-flavored Lip Smackers, a deck of cards, butterfly clips and bands for her hair, Sour Patch Kids, piña colada–flavored gum . . . thinking of her Christmas stocking, with her name written across the top in gold glitter made her too sad. What would we do this Christmas? she wondered suddenly. Their first one without their father.
She forgot all about oranges and her plan to warn Alexander about how scarce they were in New York (because if her grandfather couldn’t always get them in the 1940s, no way would they be all over New York in 1772).
“Did you say something?” Alexander asked her.
Maisie shook her head. She hadn’t said anything. She’d sniffled.
He shrugged and picked up a book, heading into the bedroom with it.
“I was thinking about Christmas,” Maisie said.
Alexander stopped and turned to her. “Christmas? Why?”
“It’s my first one without my father,” she said quietly.
“He isn’t in New York?”
She shook her head.
“I see,” Alexander said.
He looked as if he might walk into the bedroom, but then thought better of it. Instead, he sat in the big leather chair across from the couch.
“It is difficult,” Alexander said. “To be without your parent.”
Maisie realized that he must think her father had died. His own mother had, and his father had deserted him. Actually, Alexander was a good person to talk about this with.
“He lives in . . .” Maisie tried to think. Qatar probably wasn’t a country yet. “The Middle East,” she said finally.
“Forever?”
“I’m afraid so. He and my mother got divorced,” she explained.
Alexander nodded thoughtfully. “My mother had complicated relationships, too,” he said. “Does he write to you?” he asked.
“No, he . . .” Maisie almost said “calls once a week” but stopped herself. No telephones, she remembered.
“Neither does mine,” Alexander said. His violet eyes looked at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. “After Mother died, I thought he might come to Saint Croix and take me with him. But he didn’t.”
“Where does he live?”
“From what I understand, he moves from island to island. Following work.”
“My father is supposed to come to Newport for Christmas,” Maisie said. She hadn’t considered that he might not come, but hearing Alexander made her worry.
“But he’s working at this new museum, acquiring art and setting up galleries and stuff, and what if they don’t let him leave? I liked it better when he was just a painter and lived with us.”
When she said this, Maisie could picture her father in his paint-splattered clothes, riding his bike home from his studio. She could remember how happy she used to get when she saw him coming up Hudson Street, how she would run down the block to meet him. His hugs smelled of turpentine and oil paint and were a little sweaty.
“Do you miss him?” Maisie asked.
“Yes. I write him every week,” Alexander said. His pale skin seemed even paler when he added, “I worry about him. Last year, I read in the Gazette that his house was attacked during a slave uprising in Tobago. My father was shot in the thigh—”
“What?” Maisie gasped.
“It could have been worse,” Alexander said solemnly. “Two men were killed. Still, I wrote him, so full of worry that I could hardly sleep. But he didn’t answer my letters.”
“Is he all right?” Maisie asked, still horrified.
“I have heard he recovered and is living on Saint Kitts.”
Alexander looked so sad that Maisie reached over and put her hand on his. To her surprise, he did not recoil. A funny feeling ran through her, and she pulled her hand back. Although Maisie had never had a crush before, she had once considered developing one on Tripp Truitt. Tripp was a grade ahead of her, and everybody had a crush on him because he was tall and his bangs fell in his eyes in an adorable way and he rode a skateboard to school.
Yes, Maisie thought as she considered Alexander Hamilton, even though the whole school knew that Tripp Truitt was crush worthy, she had decided against wasting her time on him. So why in the world was this short, pale, redhead with the giant ego making her feel this way? Why couldn’t she have crushes on the right boys?
“Don’t be upset,” Alexander said. “I’m sure you will see your father at Christmas. Why, he must already be sailing toward America to make it there in time!”
“I hope so,” Maisie said.
“If you want to talk more about this . . . ,” Alexander said as he stood.
“Thank you,” Maisie said.
He smiled at her, and her stomach did a little flip.
“For everything,” she added.
“I am delighted to help,” he said.
“If you ever want to know more about New York, I can tell you about it. I lived there my whole life until just a couple of months ago.”
“We shall make time for that conversation,” he said. “But for now, I need to study.”
Maisie watched him as he walked across the sitting room and into the bedroom. In no time, she heard him talking to himself in there. Maisie grinned. That was how he studied. He paced back and forth, talking out loud to himself. Alexander Hamilton, she thought. For a moment she remembered Clara Barton—how she had grown up to create the American Red Cross and nurse soldiers in the Civil War and all sorts of awesome things. What, she wondered now, would Alexander Hamilton do when he grew up?
$ $ $ $ $
After more than two weeks at sea, boredo
m struck. The Thunderbolt hit some rainy weather, so they couldn’t sit up on the deck. Felix started to worry again about getting seasick. To distract him, Maisie asked Alexander for some paper and a pen so they could play the dots game. They had spent hours playing this game when it rained and they were stuck in the apartment on Bethune Street. They would take turns drawing a line to connect two dots, and when the line completed a square, they got to write their initials in it. The one with the most squares at the end won.
Of course, the pen now was a quill that she had to dip into an inkwell, which was pretty messy. Maisie kept dripping ink all over the paper and herself, until her fingers were stained. But eventually she got the hang of it, and she presented Felix with the game all set up, the paper covered with dots.
Felix, who had even grown bored with writing poetry, whooped when he saw the game.
Happily, Felix took the quill and connected his first two dots.
“This is nice,” he said.
“See? And you haven’t gotten seasick,” Maisie said, dipping the quill in the ink and connecting two dots.
“Don’t jinx it,” Felix said, only half kidding. “We’re not there yet.”
No sooner did the words leave Felix’s mouth than the ship, without any warning, leaned hard to the right, sending Felix tumbling off the sofa.
Felix screamed. Images from the Titanic movie flashed across his mind. The night his family rented it, he’d had nightmares.
Maisie and the chair slid smack into the bedroom door.
But before either of them could get to their feet, the ship heaved to the left. Felix rolled to the other end, screaming, “Help!” the entire way.
This time Maisie got thrown from the chair and landed in a heap beside her brother.
The bedroom door flew open, slamming hard against the wall. Maisie caught a glimpse of Alexander, both hands on the wall for balance, moving slowly toward them.
“A storm,” he managed to say before—once again—the Thunderbolt sent Maisie and Felix across the floor.
“We’re all going to die!” Felix cried.
From the small window in the sitting room, they saw flashes of lightning. The rain, which had been falling steadily for several days now, pounded the window. From the hall outside the room came the sound of people running and shouting.
The ship rocked, back and forth, as if it, too, were trying to find its balance.
“Alexander!” Maisie yelled above the din. “Should we go on deck?” As afraid as she was, somehow she felt safer with him in charge.
“Stay here until I find out what’s going on,” he said.
From the floor, she watched as he fought gravity, pulling himself across the room and out the door.
Felix grabbed hold of the legs of the desk and held on tight.
“Oh,” he said over and over. “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”
For a few minutes, the only sounds were Felix’s whimpering, the rain hitting the window hard, the crack of thunder, and the occasional electric zap of lightning, which would light the dark blue sky.
Then Maisie laughed.
“Are you crazy?” Felix managed to ask her.
“No,” she said. “But I’m sure we’re not going to die.”
The boat took its hardest pitch yet and Felix’s oh came out like a moan from a horror movie.
Maisie laughed again. “Calm down,” she said in a perfectly normal voice. “This ship is not going to sink because Alexander Hamilton is on it. Obviously he makes it to New York and goes on to do whatever it is he goes on to do.”
“Right,” Felix said, trying to get his hands and legs to stop shaking. “But we don’t know if the ship actually sinks, and he manages to survive. We don’t know if maybe he floated around in the ocean for days waiting to be rescued. Maybe . . .”
He stopped himself. The possibilities were too terrifying to say out loud. Once again visions of the Titanic movie popped into his head, this time ones from after it sunk.
“Oh,” Felix whimpered.
The door creaked open, and Alexander came back inside the cabin.
“It’s a pretty bad storm,” he said, holding on to the doorframe. “I think we should ride it out down here.”
“Do—do—they think we’re going to sink?” Felix stammered.
“We just have to ride the storm out,” Alexander said firmly.
“We will,” Maisie said.
“Oh,” Felix moaned as the ship lurched yet again.
$ $ $ $ $
“I told you so,” Maisie whispered to Felix when the storm finally ended the next day. All night they had rolled and swayed in the cabin, holding on to the edges of whatever they sat or laid on. Alexander managed to bring them some broth from the dining room where, he reported, glasses and dishes were breaking with regularity.
“Well, excuse me for not wanting to get shipwrecked or lost at sea or . . .” Once again he stopped himself. Even though they had survived the storm, what might have happened still had him trembling.
Maisie picked up the dot game. “Now,” she said, “where were we?”
From outside their cabin, hurried footsteps pounded down the corridor. The sound of people shouting filled the air.
“Now what?” Maisie groaned.
This time, the cabin door burst open and Alexander stood there, his eyes wild and a look of terror on his face.
“Hurry!” he ordered them. “On deck!”
Felix and Maisie jumped up.
Alexander turned and motioned for them to follow.
“What’s going on?” Maisie asked him.
Without turning around he answered, “The ship is on fire. We need to evacuate. Now.”
Fire!
“On fire?” Maisie shouted.
She thought about the nice, orderly fire drills at school: the special exit they used, the buddy they walked out with, how they waited—bored—until the principal announced they could return to their classrooms. But this was a real fire. And they were not able to exit at sea. Her heart pounded. Not with fear, though. With excitement. They had survived the storm, and Maisie knew they would survive the fire, too.
“Follow me,” Alexander ordered. “All passengers need to be on deck in case—”
“We sink?” Felix squeaked.
“Yes,” Alexander said firmly. “In case we sink.”
Maisie left the cabin quickly, wondering what she would see out there. But Felix stayed put as if he were frozen in place.
“Come now, Felix,” Alexander said in a no-nonsense voice. “No time for tears or fears.”
Felix nodded and forced his legs to move forward. They felt like they were made of lead. His whole body felt that way. Sometimes Felix dreamed he was being chased, and his legs seemed unable to cooperate, heavy and stiff. Like now. But this was no dream. It was really happening. As he made his slow way to the door, he heard frightened screams from above and men shouting orders and saw women clutching their children’s hands and running down the hall right in front of him, asking, “What’s happening? What’s happening?”
Alexander pushed his way through the crowd to go and help on deck. By the time Felix and Maisie reached the stairs, they had become part of a large group, huddled close together and moving as if all the bodies were one being. The air hung close and reeked of smoke.
Someone at the top of the stairs shouted down to them, “Cover your nose and mouth!”
A wave of panic shuddered through the crowd as people brought their hands to their mouths, still pushing forward.
Finally Felix felt the stairs beneath his feet. From behind he was lifted up, the crowd now almost in a frenzy.
It seemed as if the stairs went straight to heaven, disappearing into what seemed like billowing clouds. But moving upward, Felix realized that t
he clouds were actually thickening smoke. His eyes started to sting as he moved up the smoky staircase. At the top, the smell of things burning and the flames and smoke scorched his nose and throat. A hand grabbed hold of his arm and tugged him through the smoke and into a clearer area across the deck.
“Stay here,” Alexander said to him, letting go of his grasp on Felix’s arm and joining the men at the rail.
Maisie stood wide-eyed beside Felix.
“I know I said that there was nothing to be afraid of,” she said. “That obviously Alexander Hamilton would survive anything. But now I’m not so sure.”
Felix and Maisie stared at the hot flames leaping from the ship. They could feel the heat from the fire on their faces, and the air around them had taken on a hazy, gray quality.
Then Maisie saw something she couldn’t believe. “Alexander’s going overboard!” Maisie shouted.
She took off in the direction of the fire and the men at the railing, where Felix saw that Alexander was indeed climbing over.
“Stay back here!” he called after his sister. But with a sinking feeling, he knew she wouldn’t listen.
He took a few tentative steps toward her, but the smoke and fire frightened him too much, and he returned to the end of the deck where most of the other women and children huddled.
As she neared, Maisie saw that Alexander wasn’t the only one going overboard. Many men climbed over the railing and lowered themselves on ropes toward the sea. And, she realized, they were all holding wooden buckets.
At the railing, she peered below. A dozen or more men were swinging from ropes, just above the gray sea, filling the buckets with seawater, then handing them up the rope to the next man, who handed it to the next man, until it reached the top. Waiting men took the buckets of water and ran to douse the flames with it. She thought about fire hoses and fire hydrants and fire extinguishers and all the things that worked to put out fires in her world. These buckets of seawater seemed small and ineffective in comparison.
Maisie swallowed hard, the taste of smoke burning her tongue and throat. Would these men with their buckets be able to save the Thunderbolt and her passengers?