Take It Off

by J. Minter

  “This is probably where I should ask you about your sign,” he said, “but that’s not really how I do things.”

  She smiled. “That’s good,” she said, and took another swig before giving the flask back to him. “You’re from New York, right? I bet you’ve never even seen stars like this.”

  He looked up. The sky above them glittered with stars. “No,” he said, “guess not. So … what do kids do for fun in Berkeley?”

  “Probably about the same as you and your friends do,” she said. He laughed, because he doubted it. “You know, party, cause drama.”

  “I’d like to get in some drama with you.”

  “Yeah, that might be a good time.”

  Barker had finished his talk and was winding up his evening messages.

  “I’m very pleased with our exploration of Delos,” he was saying. “I’d like to congratulate one of Ocean Term’s students in particular. Yesterday, he was able to stop bandits from stealing an ancient and sacred piece of art. Patch Flood, ladies and gentleman.” Patch stood up sheepishly next to him and half waved at the crowd. Everyone murmured. Barker continued, “You could all learn a little something from him about the importance of embracing and protecting ancient cultures. Now, we’ll reach Sicily by morning, and there will be day trips tomorrow for those interested …”

  “That’s one of my guys from New York,” Arno said to Suki.

  “Really? Barker thinks he’s pretty special.”

  “Yeah, well …” Arno stopped when he saw Mickey, on elbows and knees, coming toward them.

  “My group sucks,” Mickey hissed.

  Loki looked over and glared at them to be more quiet. Apparently anarchy had its limits.

  “Suki Davison, meet Mickey Pardo,” Arno said. He wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed that Mickey was interrupting what was happening with Suki, or that he was trying to act like they were totally cool, when obviously they’d been sort of distanced for weeks, even on Jonathan’s stepmom’s awesome yacht.

  He also didn’t really want Suki meeting his guys. Even Arno, as he had learned with Jonathan’s trashy cousin Kelli, was occasionally played by girls.

  Mickey did a quasi-somersault and landed between Suki and Arno. “Suki,” he said, “righteous.”

  “Another one of my guys from the city.”

  “Uh-huh. Hey, Arno, got any whiskey?” Arno passed Mickey the flask and he took a swig. “So where’s the party tonight?”

  Arno and Suki shrugged. Barker’s voice came over the microphone: “All right, girls and boys, buona serra! And just a friendly reminder: Anyone caught with illegal substances tonight will be flying home tomorrow. The RAs will be doing room checks at midnight, so you have about an hour to do what you have to do before bedtime.”

  The kids gave a collective groan and then started to stand up.

  “Shit, I gotta get back to my group,” Mickey said. “See you later.”

  Arno waved at him exaggeratedly. “Buh-bye.” It was about time he got going.

  “And you,” Mickey said, pointing to Suki, “I will definitely be seeing later.”

  David is to ocean like wet is to blanket

  “Hey, have you seen my friend Patch?” David Grobart asked a little redheaded Brit who was standing by the edge of the deck and having a last cigarette before the teachers kicked everyone downstairs. He’d been looking for his friends for half an hour, and if he didn’t find them soon he was going to have to go back to his room by himself. Then he’d never find out where the party was.

  “Patch Flood?” the girl asked incredulously. She flicked her cigarette over the edge and turned to walk away. As she did, she called after him, “Your friend? Yeah, right.”

  That was a new low for David, and already he was having a terrible time. It was just like summer camp, except worse. At least in summer camp there were lots of other guys who sat around awkwardly at night. David had been in good company then. But on the Ocean Term’s cruise ship, sailing under a perfect, star-littered Mediterranean sky, David was pretty sure he was the only awkward guy on board.

  And to make matters worse, he was kind of drunk. One of the guys in his orientation group had brought a thermos of Irish coffee and they’d all had some of it. In fact, he must have had more than he realized. And then there were the one or two (two or three?) beers he and the guys had had in Patch’s room, before evening lecture. As he walked downstairs to the student cabins, he felt increasingly unsteady.

  The movement of the water and the lowness of the ceilings only contributed to his disorientation. Back home in New York, he was a basketball player for Potterton. He was six four, and known for occasional bouts of sensitivity. The halls, which were filled with girls in tank tops and their chatter, seemed to be closing in on him. David walked by, catching snippets of conversations. Who so-and-so liked, wasn’t so-and-so a bitch, which room they should meet at after room check. He wandered aimlessly for a while, and then he did the same thing he would have done in New York. He headed for Patch’s room.

  Patch’s room was sort of out of the way, and there were fewer and fewer kids the closer he got. As he turned on to his hall, he heard voices, and then he was pretty sure he saw Patch: He was leaning against the wall and pretending to listen to some big guy talk. But he wasn’t listening. Even David, in his sorry state, could tell that. He looked bored.

  “Hey, Patch,” David called. He was so glad to see him that he started to run. As he did, his toe caught in the carpet and he fell flat on his face. Humiliation washed over him. He lay with his head down for a minute, trying to think how he might play this off. As he thought, footsteps came down the hall toward him.

  “David …?” he heard Patch say.

  Then an older man’s voice said, “Sailor, are you …” David lifted his eyes and looked straight into the ruddy face of Roger Barker. His fat, saliva-strung mouth was forming the word: “Drunk …”

  “Uh, Doctor Barker …,” Patch was saying. But in order to preserve his dignity, and because he couldn’t think of anything else to say right then, David had to admit it.

  “Yes, sir,” he said meekly.

  “Stephanie!!!!!” Barker roared.

  Before David knew what was happening, one of the other teachers had appeared and he was being dragged through the halls. They went up and down stairs, and finally, when David had absolutely no idea where they were anymore, they reached a small cabin. It was even smaller than David’s cabin, which was small to begin with.

  Barker sat him down on the bed. “Sailor,” he said again, “let’s be serious now. Are you drunk?”

  “Yes.” David choked out the word. The cute girl from the brochure was standing behind Barker. Apparently, she worked for him now.

  “There is no drinking on this ship, sailor. I am forced to call your parents and expel you from the program. Now, what is your full name?”

  “David Grobart, sir.”

  Barker turned off the light and left. David heard the lock click. He lay on his back and tried not to think about his situation, but of course, that was impossible. How absurd that he was the one who got into trouble. Arno was probably in some girl’s room right now, using a minimum of four contraband substances. Mickey was probably taking a very illegal midnight pleasure dip in the pool. But it was David who had ended up in the hole. And then, of course, there were his parents. The Grobarts were both therapists, and try as they might to “be cool” with everything, David already knew that they would treat his expulsion as a personal blow to their already very fragile psyches.

  With these thoughts charging through his brain, David became increasingly pissed off. He worked himself into a fury until, finally, exhausted, he fell into a turbulent sleep. After hours of tossing and turning, the door opened, and Barker turned the lights on.

  “Come with me, sailor,” he said with gravity.

  David followed him up to the deck. His suitcases had been packed and were lined up by the exit ramp. It was early morning, and they were moored in Sicily
. Barker handed him his coat.

  “Your friend Patch packed your bags for you, because that’s just the sort of excellent young man he is,” he said. “Now, a car is waiting. It will take you to the airport. Your parents have arranged for a flight to take you back to New York. I’m sorry it had to end this way. I understand you’re quite a ballplayer. But I run a tight ship, and there will be no drinking on my watch.”

  “Thank you,” David said, which immediately seemed absurd. He picked up his bags and walked down to the car. He took one last look at the Ariadne. Up on the deck, Patch, Arno, Mickey, and Jonathan were watching him sadly. They were waving, and they all looked, David thought—his anger rallying for a moment—a little bit hungover.

  This is exactly what happens when I can’t see my friends

  “I can’t believe it,” I said.

  “What,” said Arno without looking up at me. He was trying to finish his assignment as quickly as possible so that he could swim a few laps before dinnertime. We were sitting in the Ariadne’s computer lab, and I had just gotten an e-mail from David.

  “Grobart’s back in the city and hanging out with that Rob kid—”

  “You mean your stepbrother?” Arno interrupted.

  “Yeah. And I think he likes it.”

  “You already knew that. They were practically best-fucking-friends on your stepmom’s yacht.”

  “Yeah, but that’s when they had limited options. This is voluntary. You’re telling me, in the whole of New York City, the only person David wants to hang out with is Euro-Rob?”

  Arno shrugged and kept typing. All the Ocean Term students had to read The Odyssey and write daily responses to it, and Arno had missed the first one and was really late on this one.

  “He sounds okay with being back home, though,” I said. “I think.”

  It had been two days since David got kicked off the boat, and we had all pretty much gotten over the oddness of how the most rule-abiding one of us had literally tripped over drunk in front of our fearless Captain Barker. But I’m the one who keeps us all copasetic as a group, so I felt really guilty that David was alone on the other side of the ocean. With Rob.

  Arno paused and looked up at me.

  “Remind me which one Calypso is …?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  For the second time, I quit my e-mail account and reopened it. There was still nothing from Flannery “Flan” Flood. We started going out about a month before I left for my dad’s honeymoon. I couldn’t really talk to Arno about it, but I was missing her a lot and was feeling pretty anxious about how we’d left things. And worse, I knew I deserved to be feeling the way I did.

  I took a break from my e-mail obsession and checked the trip schedule that we’d been given during orientation. And that’s when I realized that we weren’t just five days into the trip: We were ten days away from being back in New York. And today was Friday, which meant we were probably missing a lot of parties. Instead, we would have a sailing expedition in Menorca tomorrow, a “Free Day” on Mallorca on Sunday, we’d arrive in Barcelona two days after that, and leave port again the following day. Then there was still Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of little day trips in Spain and Portugal, before it was Sunday again and we could board a plane at Heathrow, bound for home.

  Just then, a female voice called to Arno. Girls are always trying to get attention from Arno, and he doesn’t give it up a lot—at least, statistically, when you consider how many girls are begging for his attention in the first place—which only makes them want it more. We both looked up. Two girls in flip-flops, boy-short bathing-suit bottoms, and worn tank tops were coming toward us. They looked very casual, like they had been sunning on the deck.

  “Hey, Suki …,” Arno said, flashing his I-am-dangerously-handsome smile. Arno immediately flipped off the computer, erasing what little work he’d done.

  “And Greta,” I finished, elbowing him not to be a dick. Arno had met Suki in his orientation group, and Greta was her friend from California. Suki was taller and more outgoing, in a cold way. The first time we met, she looked at me and said, “Oh, that’s why they call it a faux-hawk. Where I come from we have Mohawks for real,” as though she were the punkest ever or something. Greta was quieter, and she came from Santa Cruz, which is a place where Patch and his dad sometimes go to surf. Waves of hennaed hair spilled over Greta’s shoulders, and there were knots of friendship bracelets around her pink wrists.

  “Hey,” Suki said when they reached us. Why did she irritate me so much? Greta waved shyly from behind her. “We were wondering if you guys wanted to be partners with us on that project tomorrow,” she said to Arno. The teachers had planned a day of sailing for us the next day, on little sailboats—Ideal 18s. We were supposed to choose our own groups of five to seven people. It would be our first sailing practical.

  “Yeah, sure. We needed two more people anyway,” he said with a shrug.

  “I suspected,” Suki said at the same time as Greta said, “Right on.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll see you in the cafeteria for dinner,” I said, hoping to get rid of them.

  “Sure,” Suki snorted, “if I can gather the strength,” and then, laughing, she put her arm around Greta’s waist and they glided toward the door.

  Arno watched them walk away. Then he picked up his copy of The Odyssey and threw it at me for no apparent reason. It bounced off my shoulder and hit the ground.

  “Are you going to read that or what?” I asked.

  “Nah, I got more important stuff to attend to.”

  “Whatever.” I turned back to my screen and quit and reopened my e-mail so I could see if there was anything from Flan. The e-mail program has a Check for New Mail option, but I’m superstitious about that. I’d rather go for a clean slate.

  “Oh, by the way …” It was Suki. She’d made it to the door, but she hadn’t quite made it out. “I saw your friend—Mickey? On the deck? And he said he thought we’d all make a real sweet team.”

  I’m too nervous to actually digest Ocean Term fare

  Arno knocked on my cabin door at 6:25. Weirdly, Arno and I have fallen into the same hanging-out habits we have at home. Back in New York we spend the most time together because we go to the same school, even though we aren’t the closest in our crew, and now we were doing the same thing. After the computer lab, he’d gone for a swim, and now he was back at my place.

  “Dinnertime, Grandma,” he called. I groaned and let him in. In Manhattan we would eat dinner at 10:00, or maybe 8:45. Or maybe we’d skip it entirely and build up an appetite for late-night breakfast at Florent when we’re all wasted and absolutely starving. Arno flopped onto my bed and rolled his eyes at me.

  “I know,” I said. “This sucks.”

  “It would be fine if they didn’t force us to go.” He picked up one of the magazines I’d left lying around and began flipping through it.

  I gave myself a hard look in the mirror and tried to determine whether my outfit was too much. I was wearing white Ben Sherman jeans and an argyle Paul Stuart sweater.

  “Do you think this is, you know, too much?” I asked, catching Arno’s eye in the mirror.

  “Christ,” Arno said, throwing the magazine at my head.

  “Fine, let’s just go,” I said. I pushed my hair a few times, so that it re-formed into a crest down the center of my scalp, and kicked on some flipflops for casual balance.

  All the other students were streaming toward the cafeteria. Girls we sort of knew waved at us, and we waved back. We checked our names on the attendance list that one of the faculty people kept at the door, and got in line.

  “Great. This looks like cafeteria food,” Arno said. The cafeteria was dishing out your basic lunch-line fare—mashed potatoes, greasy chicken, corn, and greens. You get the idea. We both got grayish burgers, fries, and a Coke, and went to find a table. I looked around for Mickey or Patch, but I couldn’t see either of them, so we picked a random, empty table. The room was large, with vaulted ceilings. Th
ey’d gone for a sort of faux–prep school feel, with wood paneling and wood picnic benches for tables, in long rows as far as the eye could see. There were wall hangings made from sharks’ jaws, that sort of thing.

  Next to us was a table of jocklike guys shoveling food in their mouths and all yelling at once. Every one of them was wearing some shade of athletic gray or navy blue, with baseball caps turned at odd angles. There was one girl amongst them, a tall lanky blonde. She looked a little like Flan, and I stared at her for a minute until I realized she was way not as beautiful as Flan.

  Then Patch came through the line with Barker, who seemed to be escorting him through the many tables of students. The suppertime din quieted to near silence as they passed, and everyone turned to look. Patch has this effect on people: He’s golden and guileless, and sort of hard to pin down, too, and he has that very rare kind of cool that happens only when a person has no idea or intention of being cool in the first place. We watched as Barker cut in the food queue and gestured for one of the caf people to make up their trays.

  “We’ve got to save him,” I said.

  “I don’t want Barker anywhere near me,” Arno said. “He’d probably kick me out based on smell alone.”

  “Get over it. Patch needs us.”

  Arno stood up and started waving. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled: “Patch! Patch Flood! I just read this amazing passage in The Odyssey. Come over, I want to share it with you.”

  The cafeteria hushed again, and everyone looked in our direction. Patch excused himself from Barker and came over to our table.

  “Thanks, man,” he said. He and Arno did one of those man hugs where they shook hands and then leaned in to slap each other’s backs. “That guy’s really dragging on my scene. What’s new?”

  “I got an e-mail from David,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah, he seems like he’s taking it okay. Apparently his dad is writing a crazy letter to Barker about what a repressive program he’s running and how bad it is for developing psyches blah-blah-blah …”