The Trouble With Destiny (20 page)

At the sight of my band director—his own father—Lenny leaps backward, slipping on the moist floor and falling on his butt into a puddle. I manage to catch my towel milliseconds before it lands at my feet, adjusting it so all the important bits are covered and I'm left with the naked-at-school nightmare come to life.

“Mr. Curtis, I'm so sorry,” I say. “I can explain—”

“Liza, get dressed,” Mr. Curtis says, words I never imagined coming out of his mouth. His face is a total blank slate, which is somehow more horrifying than anger or disappointment. Like the calm before a storm that ends with me shipwrecked on Detention Island for the rest of my natural life. “Get dressed, and meet me back outside this door in five minutes.”

I don't even give myself time to nod. I simply dash out the door and down the hall to the dressing room, where I find my clothes in a small laundry bag on top of a chair, still heavy and stiff with wax.

Mr. Curtis saw my butt.

Lenny likes Demi.

I made a total fool out of myself in front of like, 66 percent of the Curtis family.

What is my life?

For the first time I'm not just thinking about the band or my love life. I'm thinking about what my parents will say when they find out about this, because Mr. Curtis is most surely going to tell them. Dad is definitely going to open up the private school discussion again. He's been hounding me to move in with him, insisting he can get me into some ridiculously prestigious college-prep academy where I'll have to wear plaid and hate my life. But with the way things are going, perhaps leaving the state won't be such a bad idea. And with my latest foray into nudity on a school trip, my mom might actually support the decision.

I dress faster than that time my dad took me shopping at Barneys and a salesgirl tried to barge in while I was still in my underwear to make sure the dress was fitting properly. I do not do naked in public…not until today, anyway. I'm halfway back down the hall when I realize my shirt is on inside out, the screen-printed logo of my favorite Holland diner rubbing against my bare chest, my bra stuffed into the back pocket of my shorts.

When I get back to the steam room, Lenny is nowhere in sight. Ms. Haddaway is gone as well. It's just Mr. Curtis, leaning against the wall, his head down, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. At the sound of my footsteps approaching, he glances up at me, his eyes steely.

“Follow me, please,” he says, his words practically frosting in the air. Gone is my most Zenlike teacher. There's no trace of his easy smile, and I'm pretty sure the next words out of his mouth aren't going to be “everything will be fine.” Because after what's just happened, I'm not sure anything will ever be fine again. My body temperature plummets, my skin pebbling as an increasing series of chills zips from my fingers to my toes. I don't know what's about to happen, but whatever it is, one thing is for certain. I'm in trouble.

Mr. Curtis starts down the hallway, and I fall in behind him. I watch his navy canvas deck shoes as they stride across the well-worn carpet of the hallway, my heart pounding with each step. We wind down hallways, up stairwells, through the cavernous atrium at the center of the ship, where all around me my fellow cruisers are enjoying heaping plates of food and fruity drinks topped with umbrellas. A group of kids led around by a haggard-looking ship employee chase one another around the potted palms. A gray-haired couple of retirees are poring over a printout, debating water aerobics or shuffleboard, and a pair of Mechanicals suck face in the corner, their oversized plastic hipster glasses tap-tap-tapping against each other with each head bob and tongue thrust.

I follow Mr. Curtis through one of the automatic glass doors at the end of the atrium. He steps out onto the deck and turns to face me, leaning against the railing. I step out after him, the door shutting behind me and abruptly cutting off all the noise of the atrium. There's no one on the balcony with us, just the sound of the ocean breeze and the waves as they rush past the hull of the ship.

“Liza, I'm very disappointed in you,” he says. And though the wind sends his hair flying about in all different directions, his voice remains steady. Measured. Almost sad. And that's the moment where I no longer worry about getting into trouble. That's the moment when all I can think about is how terrible I feel that I've let him down. Mr. Curtis trusted me. He had every reason to. He always has, and I've
never
let him down. Not until he walked in on me half naked with his son in a steam room.

“Mr. Curtis, I'm so,
so
sorry,” I say. My voice catches on the apology and turns it into a sobbing hiccup.

“I'm afraid I'm the one who should be sorry, Liza,” he says, his face suddenly melting into a look of distress.

Now I can't even hear the waves. All I can do is turn his words over in my brain.
He's
sorry?

“I should have known this was all too much for you,” he says with a slight shake of his head. “You were in over your head. That's the only explanation I can come up with for your behavior this week. And that display back there? Completely unlike you.”

“I—oh—uh,” I stammer, because I really don't know what to say. He's right. It's totally unlike me. But I'm also not sure I want to agree that I was in over my head. I can handle this. I
will
handle this. “I just, um—”

“You've totally lost your focus, and I blame myself, frankly, because I should have been paying closer attention,” he says. He crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head again, as much at himself as at me. “I thought you could handle it.”

The words stab me right in the heart, and I don't think I've ever been so ashamed. He's right. I came on this trip with one focus. Just one. Win the competition and save the band. And somehow, that turned into passing out in closets and sleeping on decks and running half naked through a cruise ship, wrestling with his son. All in the name of what I thought was love.

Lost my focus? I think I set my focus on fire and let the ashes sink to the bottom of the ocean.

“It's time for me to step in. Obviously there need to be some consequences for what happened back there,” he says. I notice a slight grimace on his face and realize how awkward this must be for him. He doesn't know that I was in the middle of slugging his son. To him, it looked like we were in the midst of a passionate, semi-naked embrace. And who knows where it would have gone had he not walked in. He's probably imagining that I intended to give Lenny something
other
than a bloody nose and string of insults and profanities. But I can't protest, because honestly, this is the least of the ways I've royally screwed up this week. The punishment for semi-naked hijinks has got to be less stiff than the one for vandalism, breaking and entering, or drug use (no matter how accidental). And then there're all the ways I've screwed up the band, from yelling at them to losing our star flute player to the disastrous performance of the first night. This can't be as bad as the punishment for all that, right?

“I'll take care of the rest of the performances. You'll be spending the remainder of the trip in your cabin, save for meals and mandatory meetings,” Mr. Curtis says, and that's when I realize that yes, it can be as bad. It can be worse.

“Wait, what?”

“You've been relieved of your duties. When we return home, you'll be serving some detention. Until then, you're grounded, so to speak.” I can see that the words feel unusual coming out of his mouth, and I give myself a moment to wonder when the last time he punished a band member was. Not in my memory, that's for sure, though there is an old story about a bunch of seniors who got caught smoking pot in the woods at band camp when they accidentally set a patch of poison ivy on fire. Mr. Curtis yelled at them all night long, and the next day he made them stand on the sidelines in the hot sun all day, covered in calamine lotion, until their parents could drive up and get them.

I always thought that was just a legend, but looking at his stern face now, I'm starting to think it's true.

“But, the competition,” I whisper. All the plans for the contest, the hopes of winning $25,000, the future of the band, are all crumbling before me in a giant earthquake of suck. I lost my focus, and now it's the band that's going to suffer.

“I'll be taking care of all the band business for the rest of the trip,” he says.

I feel like someone has squeezed all the air out of my lungs, and I have to gasp to get my breath back.

Mr. Curtis pushes off the railing and steps past me, activating the automatic glass door and gesturing me through. In a total trance, my eyes barely focusing on anything, I step through it.

“Straight to your cabin and nowhere else,” Mr. Curtis says, and I nod in response. I don't trust my voice not to crack into a million tiny sobs. My eyes are already in serious danger of overflowing. I just hope I can hold on until I get back to my room, where I can let the tears flow for real.

I'm just inside the atrium when Mr. Curtis puts a hand on my shoulder.

“And I'll take care of letting Huck know.”

“Huck know?”

“I think you were right. His skills are just not up to par. He's taking the entire performance off track, so I'll ask him to sit out the performance tomorrow.”

I can't even believe he's bringing this up now, when he's just benched me for the most important performance of the band's existence. He wants to talk about Huck's
skills
?

“Mr. Curtis, Huck may be terrible, but—” I say, ready to tell him that the band's not the band without Huck, but he cuts me off. Mr. Curtis puts a hand on my back, right between my shoulder blades, and gives me a firm nudge. The implication is clear: no more discussion, just me marching back to my cabin in defeat.

I take a few steps forward when a flash of neon catches my eye. It's Huck, stepping out from behind an oversized potted palm just outside the door. And from the way his eyes are slanted, his mouth turned down in a sharp frown, I know he's heard everything.

“Huck, I didn't—” But Huck just shakes his head once, hard, and then pivots on his heel. He charges through the crowd, zipping around the blond-headed twin toddlers engaged in a shoving match, and disappears into a crowd of people in swimsuits, towels wrapped around waists and tossed over shoulders. I take a few steps into the crowd, scanning the heads up on my tiptoes, but I can't see a trace of Huck's dark spiky hair. He's gone.

I glance over my shoulder and see Mr. Curtis, his eyes still on me. I have no choice but to trudge back to my cabin, defeated in every way possible. I've lost my crush. I've lost the band. And now I've lost my best friend.

Pit of disaster. Yeah, that's basically what my whole life has become, one giant pit of disaster, filled with alligators and snakes and no best friend.

I pause at the railing and rest my arms and stare out at the clear blue water. The sun is starting to set, putting a slight chill in the breeze that sends a shiver up my spine. The water is turning a deeper, darker blue as the sun gets lower, painting the sky in sweeps of orange, red, and yellow. I feel like I could reach out and touch the spot where water and sky meet, but the longer I stare, the farther the horizon recedes. It runs from my vision, reminding me that I'm surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of miles of sky, on top of hundreds of thousands of miles of ocean.

And I feel small. Very, very small.

The whole time I've been aboard the
Destiny,
I've felt like I was on a floating planet. It's felt huge and unwieldy, overfilled with people and food and activities. But now, as I stare out at the miles of deep blue ocean and clear blue sky, the
Destiny
suddenly seems as big as a rowboat, bobbing in the unbelievable expanse of the world, so small that if you blink, you'd miss it.

I let my arms hang over the railing and lean down until my forehead is resting on the cool metal. I feel the pull in my hamstrings as I bend, and I let out a long breath to sink deeper into the stretch.

“You look like you need to relax, my dear. Has anyone ever suggested you try a cruise?”

I glance up and see Sofia—the nice older lady who stood up for me and my strawberries the second day aboard the ship—clad in her usual uniform of brightly colored, flowing silk. On her feet are a pair of mint-green foam flip-flops from the spa, and one look at the way she's glowing tells me that her trip there was much more relaxing than mine. As I watch her watching me, I can tell I'm doing a very bad job keeping all the bad feelings inside. Her eyes go wide, then narrow, causing her forehead to wrinkle.

“Oh dear, I see it's going to take more than a blue ocean and unlimited peel-and-eat shrimp,” she says. She places a long, tan arm around my shoulder. I'm not usually a particularly huggy person, especially not with strangers, but when the heat of her skin and the weight of her arm hits my shoulder, I immediately lean into her, letting her wrap her other arm around me and pull me into a hug. I bury my face in the warm pink silk of her tunic and feel wetness—my own tears. I try to back away, afraid of leaving ugly marks on her elegant clothes, but she pulls me in tighter, her hand buried in my curls as she pats the back of my head.

“Darling, don't you worry about it a bit,” she says. She shushes me and lets me wait there until I'm all cried out. And when I feel spent, when my shoulders have drooped and my bones feel like they've been replaced with spaghetti, she lets me lean away and holds me at arm's length. I wipe the remains of the tears from beneath my eyes and take a deep breath. I'm surprised to feel something like a smile begin to creep onto my face.

“Never underestimate the restorative power of a good cry, I always say.” Sofia's eyes search mine for any more waterworks, but I think she's right. The tears are gone, and I do feel…well, not quite restored, but better. “Now that we've got that out of the way, do you want to talk about it?”

I take a deep breath, prepared to let it all pour out, but nothing comes. I don't even know where to begin. I boarded this ship with one anchor-sized problem in my suitcase, and now I need another bag to hold all the problems I've acquired. The band? The contest? Lenny? Russ? Demi? Huck? Nicole? Where would I even start?

“Okay, well, why don't I just offer up a bit of wisdom for you, and we'll see what sticks,” she says. She turns back to the ocean and rests on the railing, her manicured hands crossed elegantly at her wrists, her fingers dancing in the breeze. She closes her eyes and breathes in a lungful of ocean air, her whole body leaning into it. A few strands of gray hair escape from her bun and whip across her face. I can still see the splotches of wetness on her top, left over from my tearfest, and even though I doubt there's anything she could say that could make me feel better right now, I still want to hear it.

She opens her eyes, but keeps her gaze focused on the hazy horizon glowing pink and orange.

“When I was young, oh, about a thousand years ago,” she says with a slight laugh that sounds like wind chimes, “I spent so much time trying to control everything.”

When she says
control,
I feel like someone's popped me right in the sternum. A tiny sigh escapes my mouth, and I lean down into the railing next to her. She gives me a sideways glance before returning her focus to the water and the sky.

“I felt like I needed to wring life right out, making sure all the troubles and problems washed away, leaving only the
right thing,
whatever that was. But you know what, honey?”

She turns to me, her steely blue-gray eyes now meeting mine with an intensity I've never seen in this woman whose whole persona seems to be one of complete relaxation.

“What?” I say, but the word comes out croaked, my mouth dry from the wind.

“The only thing that was wrung out was
me.
” She taps the spot over her heart with one finger. “When you spend time worrying about mistakes, miscommunications, troubles, or
failures,
” she says, her eyebrow arching in my direction, “you miss all the wonderful misadventures, the lucky accidents, and even the perfect little catastrophes that make life interesting. Take my life. Most people would think my four marriages are a sign of failure. At love, at commitment, at life. But I've experienced more love in my lifetime than most, and I have four children, eleven stepchildren, and sixteen grandchildren to show for it. Who says that's a failure?”

“That's great, and maybe someday I'll laugh about all this, but that doesn't help me
right now.
I'm still left with all these problems and no solution.”

“Maybe there
is
no solution. Maybe
that's
the solution.”

Her words sink into me and raise the temperature of my blood to the point of boiling. What does that even mean? Is she seriously trying to Yoda me right now? No solution means I lose the band. It means my favorite teacher thinks I'm a troublemaker and will never trust me again. It means my best friend hates me. What's she trying to do, get me to fling myself overboard?

Sofia reaches out and covers my hand with hers. “My dear, listen to me. No solution is freeing. It means there's nothing to be done,” she says, and just when I'm about to let a rant of epic proportions rain down on her with the fury of the storms we've been experiencing on the ship, she raises a finger to shush me. “Nothing to be done, except move forward.”

I let the idea wash over me. What would that mean, moving forward?

I'd have to stop freaking out over the band going on without me, that's for sure. Which, I guess, is doable. I mean, their best performance on the ship was the one where the lights were out and no one could see me. It was like they played better without me leaning over them, shooting them scary stares and waving my baton with perhaps a little too much intensity. If they turn in a performance like that at the competition, they might still have a shot at winning. It's like Huck said, everyone just needed to listen and trust.

Just like Huck said…

I feel the corners of my mouth twitch, then sprawl into a grin. I turn back to the railing and close my eyes, leaning into the wind like Sofia did. And as I take in a deep, salty breath, I know she's right. And I know what to do. It might not work, but it's a plan, and that feels good enough for now.

“I think I've said something right?”

I turn and fling my arms around her, burying my face back in her tunic. This time I don't leave tear streaks behind.

“Thank you, Sofia. You really did,” I say. I take a step back and smooth out my tank top. Then I run my fingers through my hair, thick with salt and wind. “And I really want to stay here and hug you more, but there's something I have to do now.”

She grins at me, the laugh lines carving deep in her cheeks, her eyes wrinkling in delight. “Of course, my dear. I do have a marriage to celebrate, after all. Fourth time's the charm, I believe they say?”

“Who cares what they say?” I smirk playfully.

“Now you've got it, darling!” She waggles her fingers at me to shoo me away. “Off with you! And when I see you next, I expect to see a fruity drink in one hand and a delicious smile on your face.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I call over my shoulder as I skip away.

I round the corner toward Huck's room, the folded piece of Sail Away stationery clutched in one hand and my baton in the other. I'm probably the first person in the history of the hospitality industry to actually use the stationery provided to write a real live letter. And I'm counting on this letter to help me follow Sofia's advice: move forward.

I'm thinking about the letter and the three drafts I went through before I got what I have in my hand. An explanation. An apology. And a proposal. I'm hoping it works, because the band needs Huck right now. And perhaps I'm a little too lost in my thoughts, because I turn the corner right into what feels like a brick wall. I bounce back a step or two. My baton clatters to the floor and bounces off a brown leather flip-flop, along with the flapping thud of a spiral-bound notebook, the cover folded back so the pages flutter.

I haven't seen Russ since he stood in front of me half naked, glistening and muscled and…Oh yeah, that's when I was screaming Lenny's name, after he told me he liked me, but before I found out he thought I was Demi. Before I poured my heart out to Lenny, telling him he was a nice guy (ha!) who cared about art (not even!) and encouraged me (yeah, right!). Before I found out I was wrong about all of it. Not my finest hour. Not by a country mile.

Maybe it's embarrassment over my supreme dorkitude, or maybe it's the weird rolling in my stomach when I picture him bolting away from me, but for some reason I can't find words. I glance at him, a shockingly long way up, since he's a good foot taller and standing a little too close. As soon as our eyes meet, he looks away and sighs.