Needle (noun): 1. A small, slender, usually steel instrument that has an eye for thread at one end and that is used for sewing. 2. A teasing or gibing remark.
One definition described my days at Camden Harbor, the other, my evenings that last week living with Ashling. I was thrilled when Friday afternoon rolled around. As soon as camp ended, I’d be moving my things out of the house and into the harbor. The late-afternoon sun slanted through the parlor windows as we worked on our samplers, and I was filled with peace.
“Miss Libby, Miss Libby!” one of the girls shrieked. Boom—peace shattered. “That boy is back!”
The rest of the girls screamed, chucked their samplers willy-nilly over the settee, and ran to the window.
“Thith time he’th brought flowerth,” Amanda lisped, amid a chorus of oohs.
I stooped to pick up a few samplers, straightened, and looked out the window. Cam was coming up the front walk, with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a small white bag in the other. Not only did he actually have his navy jacket on, buttoned, but he’d also added a waistcoat and even a casually tied cravat—every inch the proper gentleman.
“Miss Libby, I believe he’s come courting,” Emily said, squinting through her glasses.
“A thuuuiter.” More oohs. A what? Oh, “a suitor.”
Cam rapped a little pattern on the door: knock, knock, knock, knock, knock—knock knock.
The girls screamed and dove for the settee, picking up whatever sampler was nearest. They were almost interchangeable, anyway—I’d sketched out patterns of all the different ships in the harbor for them to embroider with indigo-dyed linen thread, and they’d all picked the Anne-Marie. Surprise, surprise.
“Get the door, Miss Libby!” they said collectively with giggles, pretending—and failing—to be very involved in their needlework. “Get it, get it, get it!”
I paused to check myself out in the hall mirror. I hadn’t seen Cam since he’d chopped our wood. How lucky that I’d just happened to choose the pretty pink flowered dress today! Taking a deep breath, I flung open the heavy wooden door.
I was almost finished with Northanger Abbey, mostly because I’d discovered Ashling talked to me less if I was reading, so for lack of a better option, I’d started scouting out the romance novels in the house “library” for my next book. I swear to God, the cover art for Let Sleeping Rogues Lie had leaped off the page and shown up on my doorstep.
“Miss Libby,” he said bowing deeply. “I’ve come calling.” He grinned, shaking the hair out of his eyes, and I was hit with the full force of how unbearably, impossibly gorgeous he was. Yes, sure, the (very small) handful of boys who’d been interested in me in the past weren’t total trolls, but they had left me completely unprepared for the movie-star-hot manifestation of my dream man. It was like I’d opened a door to the magical fantasyland in my head. I was frozen to the step like the little delft milkmaid on the shelf in the parlor.
“Let him in!” one of the girls shrieked. The rest took it up, chanting, “Let him in! Let him in!”
“I think you’d better let me in. Or it might get ugly in there,” he said, widening his eyes.
“I think I’d better,” I agreed, and, heart hammering, I let him in. I closed the door behind me and led him to the parlor.
“Ladies.” Cam swept an elaborate bow. The girls giggled. “Miss Libby,” he stage-whispered loud enough for them to overhear, “can they have candy?” He shook the little white bag.
“Please! Please, Miss Libby, please can we have candy? Please, please, please!” they all begged.
“Of course.” The day was almost over. If they got hyper, their parents would have to deal with it. And how cute was it that he’d brought them candy! Cam went over to the girls and gave them each one of those swirly-stick candies they sold in the gift shop.
“Mithter Cameron?” Amanda asked as she pulled out a strawberry swirl-stick candy. “Where were you all week? Why did you thay away?”
“Ah, fair lady, I was nursing a wound.” The girls gasped. “A broken heart.” More, louder dismayed gasps.
“Who broke your heart? Tell me. Who. Who did it?” Natalie, one of the older, pushier girls, demanded.
“Why, as much as it pains me to say it, our very own Miss Libby.” He shook his head sadly. “She never stopped by with my gingerbread.”
Ohh, right—with all the ghost excitement, the sparring with Garrett, and the possibility of escaping Ashling, I’d completely forgotten. Cam’s gingerbread must have still been wrapped in the towel in the warming oven.
“Oh, Mith Libby, how could you?” Amanda whispered painfully amid general noises denouncing my villainy.
“Yes, Miss Libby, how could you?” Cam echoed, mock-wounded. “Hasn’t she been naughty?”
Wow, I hoped the kids missed the subtext.
“She should be punished,” Natalie said grumpily.
“I was thinking the same thing.” Cam looked like he was about to burst, trying not to laugh. “But even though she doesn’t deserve it,” Cam said, composing himself, “I’ve decided to forgive her. And be nice. Because that’s just the kind of guy I am. Miss Libby”—he displayed the flowers with a flourish—“these are for you.”
The girls paused in unwrapping their candies to sigh, collectively, “Awwww.”
“They’re beautiful, Cam.” I accepted them, blushing. They really were. A boy had never brought me flowers before. Dev was wrong—chivalry wasn’t dead. Gentlemen did exist. And I was face-to-face with living proof. “Thank you.”
“You should probably put those in water.” Emily shook her candy stick at me.
“How right you are,” Cam said, steering me toward the kitchen. “Let me help you, Miss Libby.”
“But the girls, I—”
“Oh, they’ll be fine for a minute,” he insisted, quashing my protest. “They have candy.”
Cam took a jug from the kitchen, filled it with water from the pump out back, and placed it on the kitchen table. The minute I’d put the flowers in the jug, Cam pulled me away from the table, brought my head toward his, and kissed me. Deeply.
“Cam.” I broke away breathlessly, completely taken aback by how sudden this was. “The girls. They’re in the other room. We can’t. Not here, I—”
“What are you doing after this?” he asked, cradling my face in his hands.
“I’m—I’m moving into a bunk on the Lettie Mae,” I explained, trying to conjure a coherent thought out of thin air even though my brain appeared to have shut down. “I have to get my things out of the house and into the boat.”
“The Lettie Mae?” He wrinkled his nose distastefully. “I think you’re moving into a bunk on the wrong ship.” Cam stroked my cheek. “You’d have a lot more fun on the Anne-Marie. I promise.”
“Oohhhh, Miss Liiiiiiiiiiiibbby,” one of the girls said in a loud singsong from the other room, “what are you dooooooo-iiiiiiiiiing?” Giggle explosion.
“I—I have to go back in.” I gestured to the parlor, trying to break away, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do.
“I’ll help you move.” He kissed me again, quickly, fiercely. “Change and meet me at the wharf at two forty-five.”
“Two forty-five,” I whispered back, as he vaulted out the kitchen window. The man knew how to make an exit.
I tried to collect myself, but my heart was pounding so loudly, I was afraid the girls would hear it. Or that it might burst forth from my stays and leap straight out of my chest. But somehow I managed to keep all my vital organs in the right places as I collected the samplers, put them in the cabinet, and took the girls back to the Welcome Center in a maelstrom of Cam-related teasing and giggling.
There wasn’t any camp on the weekends, so the goodbyes took a little longer. Eventually, everyone had been hugged and handed off, so I was free to hustle my bustle (literally) back to the Bromleigh Homestead. As I changed into my standard-issue polo and nonexistent khakis, I cursed the fates for condemning me to this hideous shirtdress and myself for not having the foresight to smuggle in some makeup. This was a sort of/almost/kind of date, for Pete’s sake, with the hottest guy I ever had or probably ever would cross paths with, and I was going dressed as a half-nudist man. With no eyelashes.
Taking a page out of Scarlett O’Hara’s book, I pinched my cheeks and bit my lips, and then added my own personal touch: the sooty swipe of ashy eye shadow. It would have to do. I locked up the house and made my way toward the wharf, which was at the corner of the museum closest to my house. It served as the unofficial barrier between the historical harbor at the museum and the working harbor in town.
I couldn’t believe Cam had offered to help me move—how could someone so hot also be so sweet? Not like that idiot Garrett, who would barely even fish me out of a barrel, let alone move my hair-care products to a schooner. Not that Garrett had anything to do with this—who knew why he had randomly popped into my head.
Cam was leaning against an old wooden pole in the water, squinting into the late-afternoon sun, and pushing all thoughts of Garrett from my mind. Somehow Cam even managed to look good in the stupid Camden Harbor uniform, which defied all the natural laws of physics.
“Already got her pants off?” He smirked, looping his thumbs casually through his khaki belt loops as he pushed off the pole and ambled over to me. “My kind of girl.”
“No, no, I’m wearing shorts.” Blushing like crazy, I lifted my shirt to show him. “See? Perfectly respectable chinos. They’re conservative. They’re J.Crew.”
Cam laughed. “God, you have no idea how cute you are, do you?” He slung his arm around my shoulder, and we walked together off the museum grounds. “Which way’s your house, babe?”
Babe? Babe? Oh my God, I was “babe”! I was also hyperventilating slightly. Being this close to him, especially with the memory of that kitchen kiss searing my brain, was almost too much to take. He smelled sort of salty, like a sea breeze, which should have been gross but was inexplicably intoxicating.
We chatted—well, mostly he chatted, and I nodded—as I showed him down the sidewalk to my house. The five-minute walk felt a lot shorter without Ashling, much to my chagrin. All too soon, Cam dropped his arm as I pushed open the front door.
“Careful!” I warned. “Don’t let it slam; it—”
Too late. It slammed shut and wobbled dangerously but held.
“Libby!” Ashling called shrilly. “HOW many times I have told you NOT to slam the door! And I know it’s you!”
Cam raised his eyebrows.
“Welcome to my nightmare.” I gestured grandly. “Come on, you can hang out in the living room while I get my stuff together. It’ll only take a minute.”
I’d decided to use my third of my room in the house as my closet, and only to take the bare essentials—Camden Harbor uniform, underwear, toiletries, Chucks, PJs, bathing suit, flip-flops, a book—on the boat with me. I figured that way, everybody won: Ashling and Suze got more space, and I could turn my bed into a shoe rack.
“You might need to hold my hand,” Cam whispered. “It’s scary in here.”
I took his hand and pulled him down the skinny hallway to the living room.
Neil’s long limbs were draped all over the couch, extending off both sides. He shifted slightly over his radishes and hummus to reveal a heavily bandaged shoulder.
“Neil!” I gasped. “What happened?”
“I got shot,” he said through a mouthful of radish, muting the old Monty Python sketches he’d been watching.
“What? Shot?” In my seventeen years, I’ve run across very few situations for which the word flabbergasted was appropriate. This, however, was one of them.
“Turns out some of the last living lighthouse keepers are very, um, territorial about the lighthouses they keep.”
“Yikes.”
“A lighthouse keeper shot you?” Cam looked impressed. “That’s awesome.”
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I can’t believe you were shot!”
“Shot with what I believe was an 1873 Winchester still mostly in working order—what a find!” Neil finished excitedly.
“I’m, um, happy for you?” I wasn’t totally sure what the correct response was when someone had enjoyed a near-death experience involving a rare historical artifact.
“Yeah, I was really lucky,” he continued. “If the gun had been in mint condition, I would probably be dead. Thank God for pH deterioration, right?” He chuckled.
“Uh, right,” I agreed.
Ashling appeared in the kitchen door frame like a malevolent ghost in a floral apron, stirring a large chipped mixing bowl.
“Libby, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with boys in the house,” she drawled.
“Um, hello, there’s always a boy in the house. One lives here. What about Neil?” I pointed to him.
“A necessary evil.” Neil frowned into his radishes. “I don’t want you parading your men through here at all hours of the night.”
“It’s three in the afternoon! And one guy is not a parade.” I turned to Cam, blushing. “There’s no parade.”
“I’m Cam.” He stuck out his hand to Ashling.
“Do you work at the museum?” she asked suspiciously, slooowly extending her arm.
“Yep. Demo squad.” He jokingly saluted.
Ashling withdrew her hand so fast a casual observer might have thought he’d said “sewage treatment plant.” She hissed and turned away, like Dracula facing a mirror. Or a cat in a bath.
“Cam, I’ll be right back with my stuff.” I sighed. He was going to run screaming for the hills.
“Wait.” Ashling stopped me, disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, and then returned with an envelope. It had my name written in ballpoint pen on the front. “These came for us today. It should have everything you need. So you won’t ever need to come back.” She returned to the kitchen.
I jammed the envelope in my back pocket as I grabbed the rest of my things out of the bathroom and stuffed them on top of the pink duffle bag I’d packed the night before. I was steps away from freedom.
“Ready to go?” I asked, coming back to the living room. Cam was leaning against the wall, arms folded, watching Monty Python.
“That it?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of my bag.
“Yep.”
“A girl who packs light.” He picked it up off my shoulder and swung it easily over his. He was even carrying my bag! So gallant. “You see something new every day.” Cam readjusted the bag. “Let’s do this.”
“Bye, Neil.” I waved. “Get better soon!” He waved back with a radish, and Cam and I headed down the hall. Suze popped out of the bedroom, squeaked, and popped right back in. We left.
“Wow”—Cam shook his head—“what a bunch of freak shows.”
“They’re . . . different,” I said diplomatically. “But aside from Ashling, they’re not that bad.”
“Not that bad?” He snorted. “Andre the Giant, the hostile bitch, and the mute virgin? Please. You are way too nice. Thank God you’re getting out of there, Libs. You’re gonna love living on a ship. There’s nothing like it.”
He waxed rhapsodic about boats and maritime life the rest of the walk over. Yes, my former roommates were weird, but I thought Cam was being a little harsh. Zoning out somewhere around the time we got to discussing the mizzen, I remembered the envelope I’d stuck in my pocket. I quickly opened it and unfolded the typed sheet of paper within.
It was a “Camden Harbor Summer of Fun Social Calendar.” I quickly skimmed it: Sea Shanty Showdown, Fourth of July Lobsterfest (Featuring Fireworks!), and, finally, the End-of-Season Costume Ball (Period Costume Mandatory).
“Oh yeah.” Cam was reading over my shoulder. “The Showdown’s coming up. It’s awesome. Starts in the boathouse, then moves out to the dock. There’s beer and stuff. Wanna come with?”
“I’d love to, um, come with.”
He laughed at me. It didn’t really sound like my kind of thing, as it involved “beer and stuff,” but it was historical, right? I’d be fine. Plus, it was a date! With Cam! At least, I thought so . . . I mean, sure, he didn’t technically say it, but if we were going together, that meant we were going together, right?
We’d arrived. “Where we going?” Cam ran a hand through his hair.
“The fo’c’s’le,” I pronounced carefully. I’d Googled it earlier.
“Mmm, cozy.”
He wasn’t kidding. We made our way up the gangplank of the Lettie Mae and down the smallest set of stairs I’d ever seen, passing through a narrow hall into a space that was more cupboard than room. Garrett was already lying in the bunk on the left-hand side. He sat up so fast, he hit his head on the ceiling with a sickening crack.
“OW!” Garrett rubbed his head. “Jesus Christ, I think I saw stars. Like in a cartoon,” he muttered absent-mindedly.
“You didn’t tell me you were living with someone, babe.” Cam dropped my duffle roughly to the floor. Garrett grimaced as the word “babe” left Cam’s lips.
“No, no, it’s not like that!” I rushed to explain.
“Definitely not like that,” Garrett said so firmly, I was almost a little insulted. He climbed down the little wooden ladder that led to his bunk to stand in the two square feet of floor space between the bunks. He folded his arms across the “I am the Fifth Cylon” printed on his chest, whatever that meant, and leaned against the ladder.
“Garrett is, um, investigating,” I explained.
“Investigating?” Garrett repeated. “Like I said, Nancy Drew, this is not The Secret of the Old Clock—”
“Sorry, sorry, whatever!” I interrupted. God, he took himself so seriously. And he wrote for a newspaper that probably like all of fifteen people read! “Garrett, our intrepid Camden Crier reporter, is writing a piece of journalism so serious, it is second only to a treatise on Fallujah, except the subject happens to be a ghost instead of war crimes.”
“A ghost?” Cam chuckled. “That’s cute, Nancy.” This was addressed to Garrett, not me. “I see you’ve got your flashlight in case the big, scary ghost comes to get you.”
“And the museum decided,” I continued, before Garrett could say anything, “that he couldn’t stay on the boat alone. Not being museum staff and all. And it kind of fell to me, because nobody wanted to do it.”
“Shocker.” Cam snorted. “Well, at least since it’s Garrett, I know I don’t have to worry about anything happening between the two of you.” Garrett stiffened but said nothing. “Later, Libs.” Cam slung an arm around my shoulder and deposited a smacking kiss on my cheek, eyes on Garrett the whole time. “And you’ll definitely get a good night’s rest. This one’ll put you right to sleep. Ask him to tell you about Battlestar Galactica.” He left the fo’c’s’le, laughing all the way up the stairs and out of the ship.
“Battlestar Galactica,” Garrett muttered distractedly as he climbed back into his bunk to give me room to unpack. “Battlestar Galactica!” That was more of a declaration of outrage. He started fiddling with a flashlight, screwing and unscrewing the part where the batteries went in. “You know, Time magazine named it one of the One Hundred Best Television Shows of All Time. It’s been in the New York Times’ Top Ten list every year since it debuted. And it’s been nominated for several writing, acting, and directing Emmys, in addition to the ones it won for visual effects. I don’t understand why this country has such a weird prejudice against science fiction. Because it involves interplanetary travel, it’s automatically crap?”
I realized he was waiting for an answer. “Um . . .” I finished stuffing the rest of my things in the whitewashed trunk bench. “I like watching things where people attend English country dances and fall in love, so I’m, um, probably not your target audience.”
“Anyone involved with Cam is definitely not my target audience,” he said so quietly, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hear it.
“Listen,” I said, “I’m all unpacked, so I’m gonna hang out on deck. If you want to stay in this cave, that is totally fine with me, but I’m going up. You do whatever you want.”
I grabbed my book and headed up, leaving him in the bunk, hoping he didn’t follow. Up the steps and on deck, out of the claustrophobic cabin, I decided I liked boats. The Lettie Mae was a small ship, for a schooner, and the weather-beaten wooden planks fit snugly together. “My, she’s yar,” I said to no one in particular. It was the only nautical term I knew, because Katharine Hepburn had said it in Philadelphia Story.
I went straight up to the bow at the front of the ship, resisted the urge to have my very own Titanic “I’m the king of the world!” moment, and sank down in a little ball, snuggling against the side of the ship. The bow was very cozy. Hours flew by as I sat there reading, totally immersed in the world of the book.
“That looks sort of thick for People magazine,” an unwelcome voice said snarkily, interrupting my reading. Jesus. Why did everyone at this museum think I was stupid? Did they not have well-dressed blondes in Maine? This was getting ridiculous. But when I looked up, mentally prepping a biting comeback, I came face-to-face with a horrifying sight.
“Oh my God,” I said, gasping, “you did not seriously bring those Hobbit feet up here.”
“What?” Garrett was standing above me, little digital video camera in hand, displaying the biggest, hairiest, most terrifying feet I had ever seen. “Wait, you know what a Hobbit is?”
“Yes, I know what a Hobbit is. I’m not pop-culturally challenged. I saw Lord of the Rings. I was even in the Orlando Bloom fan club in fourth grade. I had his poster in my locker. Oh my God, can you please put on some socks?!”
“Orlando Bloom portrayed Legolas, the Sindar Elf of the Woodland Realm. Not a Hobbit,” Garrett said seriously. “And in my opinion, his performance was one of the weaker ones in the fellowship—”
“Oh my God, I don’t care, whatever! Socks, shoes, something, please! I am instituting a new policy! Shoes or socks must be worn in communal areas!”
“Fine, fine!” Finally he stomped away and then returned a minute or two later, feet thankfully encased in Converses. Phew.
“Much better,” I muttered.
“So what are you reading?” He crouched down to my level. Curses. Why did he insist on socializing? Well, it’s not like I could dodge him forever. I had to spend the rest of the summer with him in very close quarters. So I supposed I just had to make the best of it. “Something about shoes and lipstick?” he said sarcastically.
Grrrrrr.
“Northanger Abbey.” I showed him the cover. A small woman in a black dress made her way down a long, maroon-carpeted hallway. “No shoes, no lipstick. Fun fact: Sometimes girls read things that aren’t magazines or related to Gossip Girl in any way, shape, or form. There you go. A little bit of trivia, free from me to you.”
“Is that . . . Jane Austen?” he asked. He sounded surprised, which only annoyed me more. Both that he knew Jane Austen had written it and that he didn’t think I’d be reading it.
“Impressive,” I said approvingly, albeit very grudgingly. “Most people haven’t heard of it.”
“I, uh, read it on the cover,” he admitted, laughing.
“That’s okay.” I laughed with him, in spite of myself. “Like I said, most people, especially boys, haven’t heard of it. Let me guess: you had to read Pride and Prejudice in, oh, let’s say junior English in high school, and that pretty much sums up your Jane Austen experience?”
“Pretty much.” He nodded. “Is this one good? I mean, they didn’t make it into a movie with Keira Knightley, so it can’t be that good.” After a moment or two, the ghost of a smile flitted across his face, and I realized he was joking. “It’s sort of, um, unusual that you’re reading it, right?”
“Sort of, yeah,” I agreed. “The really unusual thing is that it’s my favorite. I don’t think I know anyone else whose favorite it is.”
“Why is it your favorite?” He folded his knees into his chest. One had a Band-Aid on it, which looked sort of funny on his big knees, like he was the world’s largest six-year-old boy. And it appeared to be a Transformers Band-Aid. Oh my God. So he was the world’s largest six-year-old boy.
“Catherine, the heroine, has kind of an overactive imagination. She loves these dark, mysterious gothic novels and sees herself as the heroine of one. And you should be the heroine of your own life, you know? I like her. She’s feisty. Funny. I think the best word is . . . irrepressible,” I decided. “And the hero, Henry Tilney? I like how sarcastic he is. He’s smart, well read . . . the two of them seem like people I’d want to be friends with. Like real people, who would actually fall in love. Who you could see having a life together. I mean, sure, yes, Sexypants Darcy, everyone loves him—I get it. I like him too. But he’s just so . . . aloof. Could you really hang out with Mr. Darcy? Sometimes I don’t really know if I could. Henry Tilney, though, you could totally just shoot the shit with.”
“An interesting theory.” Garrett nodded. “But you know,” he said seriously, “I might be wrong, but I think Mr. Darcy’s first name was Fitzwilliam, not Sexypants. I did only get a B on that test, though, so I don’t know . . .”
I blushed and decided to steer the conversation away from sexy anything. “This is the real reason I fell in love with it, though. My favorite line:
“History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. . . . I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome.”
“What?” He wrinkled his nose, confused. “You’re working at a museum. Don’t you like history?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Of course I like it. I love it. I know, it seems contradictory, but this is how I feel about a lot of history. I don’t like ‘solemn’ history either—wars and plagues and dates. History isn’t an endless parade of facts. There’s so much more to it than that! Catherine would have loved the history that I love. History is just stories—I mean think about it, story is right in the word—history is the life stories of millions and millions of people. Real people, living, beautiful, ugly, wonderful, horrible, messy, complicated human lives. War isn’t just the names of a victor and a loser and the date it happened, but who was that victor, not just on the battlefield, but in the barn or the bedroom, you know? Why was he the victor? You know how they say truth is stranger than fiction? All the greatest stories in the world are things that have actually happened. History isn’t dull or dry or dead or boring—when you look at it like that, it’s the most alive thing there is! You know?” He was staring. “God, I’m sorry.” I blushed. “I got a little carried away. I usually do, when I talk about history.” So carried away that I’d completely forgotten who I was talking to. And that he was a lame sci-fi freak with gross feet who thought I was stupid.
“No, no! That’s great!” Garrett rushed in. “I think it’s great that you’re so passionate about it. I was just . . . just thinking how weird it was that you said that, because that’s basically exactly how I feel about journalism. Except I’ve never been able to articulate it so well.” He grinned wryly.
“That was hardly articulate,” I countered.
“I mean,” he went on, “when you think about it, history is just journalism plus a hundred years, give or take. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” I smiled. “You’re right. I’d never thought about it like that.”
The sun had started to set over the bow of the ship, bathing us in color.
“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” I said softly.
Garrett’s face darkened, like he’d just remembered something. “So . . . you and Cameron?”
“Oh, um, I don’t know.” I blushed. “I’ve only known him for like a week.”
“So you’re not dating?” he asked brusquely.
“I, um, I don’t think so. I don’t really know,” I admitted. “He, um, asked me to, um, ‘come with’ to this Sea Shanty Showdown thing, but I don’t really know what that means . . .”
“Cameron was being vague? What a surprise.” He stood up abruptly. “Trust me. I’ve known Cameron for a long time. You’d be better off if it meant nothing. Much better off.” Garrett brushed some nonexistent specks of dirt off his shorts. “The sun’s almost set. I’m gonna go downstairs and see if anything shows up.”
“Wait.” I got up to join him. “How does this work? Are you going to stake out all night long? Do I need to like supervise? Do I have to watch you the whole time? Or can you just promise me you’re not going to pull a Guy Fawkes and blow this mother up?”
“No, you don’t have to watch me. And Guy Fawkes failed, anyway.”
I followed him down into the hold.
“Oh, I know. I assumed you would fail in your attempt, as all the gunpowder in here is fake. That was part of the metaphor.” I mean, obviously.
He went into the fo’c’s’le, and returned with two battery-powered portable camping lamps. “Here. This is for you. It’ll get really dark really fast, and all of the oil lamps in here are fake—and any kind of flame would be a safety hazard, anyway.” He handed it over.
“Are you going to stay up all night?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know.” He sighed. “The ghost has only ever been sighted in the early evening, around now, but that might just be because no one was on the ship later. So I guess I’ll just hang out with my video camera until I get tired.”
“Listen,” I said halfheartedly, “if you want me to do a shift or something, I guess I could. You could wake me up, if you want.”
“No. No, that’s fine.” He brushed past me and went deeper into the ship. “Good night.”
“Um, good night,” I called after his retreating back.
Inside the fo’c’s’le, which was, except for the camping lantern, pitch-black, I changed into heart-patterned boxers and a Hello Kitty T-shirt. After placing the light and my book up on the bunk, I climbed up the ladder and got into bed.
It was sort of creepy in there. Okay, really creepy. The camping light cast all sorts of eerie shadows into the gloom as the boat rocked gently, and you could hear the wind whistling from outside. Not that I ever in a million years would have admitted to Garrett that I was a little freaked out, but I was. Really freaked out.
I tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. What was Garrett’s problem with Cam? He had gotten all weird and shifty, and we’d been having a perfectly pleasant conversation about Jane Austen and history and stuff. Cam was such a nice guy. I mean, hello, he carried my duffle and he wanted me to “come with” to the Sea Shanty Showdown! That definitely meant something. Plus, I’m sorry, Garrett, sci-fi is lame. Fact.
Several hours of sort of reading later, the door to the fo’c’s’le slowly creaked open. I screamed so loudly that it was a wonder the camping lantern didn’t shatter. An ominous disembodied voice rumbled through from the other side: “Hello, Kitty.”
The door swung open the rest of the way to reveal Garrett.
“You are a jerk!” I yelled, chucking my pillow at him. “I almost had a freaking heart attack!”
“Sorry, sorry.” He laughed. “I couldn’t resist.”
“Jerk!” I yelled again. “Now give me my goddamn pillow back so I can keep beating you!”
“I think, no.” He set up his camping lantern next to his bed. “That is not in my best interest.”
“Fine. You know what? Fine.” I huffed. “Whatever. We’re done with this.” I shut off my lamp and pulled the blanket over my head.
“Good night, Kitty.”
Garrett softly lobbed the pillow onto my bed, turned out his lamp, and went to sleep.