More than Magic: Semester Aboard (3 page)

"Getting lunch first?" We all got a break
between the first two and last two classes of the day.

"Yes."

"I’ll join you for lunch then."

He didn’t seem at all concerned that I was
practically running down the halls. I stomped down the stairs to
the Deck Five dining room, grabbed a small lunch, and ate in
silence. Charlie sat next to me and read a textbook without a word.
When I stood back up and started for my next class he was right
behind me.

"I know what you’re doing," I finally
said.

"Escorting you to class like a
gentleman?"

I glanced at him as we walked and glared.
"You’re following me. All of you. Dani and Mariana and that big
guy."

"TS."

"Whatever. You’re trying to make sure I don’t
tell anyone what I saw last night."

Charlie smiled at me. "I don’t know what
you’re talking about."

I stopped outside my classroom door. "I
wasn’t going to tell anybody. I’m still trying to explain what
happened to myself. But, now that you’ve all gotten weird and
stalkerish on me, I just might start talking."

Charlie grabbed my arm and tugged me to face
him. "Don’t!"

The weird thing happened to his eyes again,
but this time his face was hardly two feet from mine. Flashes of
orange and red flared in his irises and I was sure that this time
it wasn't a trick of the light. My arm felt uncomfortably hot where
his hand was.

Trying to ignore the strange thing his eyes
were doing, I forced a sweet smile. "Too bad none of you are in
this class with me; it’ll make it awfully hard to spy."

The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile
and his eyes faded back to red-brown. "Don’t bet on it," he
whispered. Then he released my arm, waved, and strode away.

This was getting a bit creepy. I really
wasn’t planning on talking; what I had seen sounded crazy even to
me. But, I knew that I had really seen something. The fact that
they were all making attempts to keep tabs on me made me even more
convinced that whatever I had seen was as strange as I thought it
was. I opened the door to the class and went over to my seat. I
glanced up to see if the Professor was there yet and froze.

Thomas was leaning against the Professor’s
podium talking to him.

"Thank you very much," Thomas said with a
smile.

The Professor waved him away and Thomas
crossed the room and sat down next to me.

"What do you think you’re doing?"

Thomas smiled at me. "I heard you're watching
a video on the Aztecs and asked if I could sit in."

"What about your class?" He was actually
skipping class to keep an eye on me. I was getting more than a
little creeped out.

He shrugged. "I'd rather watch this."

I knew my mouth was hanging open, but I
didn’t really care. He pulled out a notebook without another word
and adjusted himself so that he could see the TV. I spent more of
the class glaring at him than I did watching the video. He looked a
lot different in the light than he had last night. His eyes were
somewhere between gray and green, but the color was muted, almost
dull. His skin was a bit pallid, like he didn't get out much, and I
hoped he was planning on using sunscreen when we got to the
equator. Now that it was dry I could see that his hair was almost
as light brown as mine and, without the rain matting it down, it
was a totally different style, not at all emo like I had thought.
His bangs fell almost neatly across his forehead, not quite long
enough to be in his eyes, and it was slightly longer in back. I
hated to admit it, but now that I could see him in better light he
was cute. Really cute, actually. If he put on a little more weight
and got a light tan he'd be really handsome. But, I reminded
myself, he was here basically spying on me, which made him about as
unattractive as a guy could be.

"Can I get a real answer?" I asked when class
ended.

"Of course," Thomas said, as if he actually
intended to give me one.

"Are you going to follow me to my next
class?" It wasn’t the question I wanted to ask, but I wanted to
make sure he was capable of answers.

"Sure, I don’t mind walking with you to
class."

I glared.

"Here, I’ve got that." He scooped my books
from my hands before I could protest and started walking.

"What were you doing in my class?"

"Watching a video, I told you that."

I sighed, then sighed again when he turned
down the hall to my next class without stopping to ask me where it
was.

"Look, I know you’re following me around to
make sure I don’t tell people about last night, but this is weird
enough as it is. You can at least tell me how you know my
schedule."

Thomas shrugged. "Mariana’s a work-study
student. She helps out at the Student Life desk, so she has some
extra computer access."

I almost stopped short. "And she what? Looked
up my class schedule?"

"Exactly."

For some reason, confirmation that they had
put extra effort into monitoring me was even more unsettling than
the paranoia that they might have. Thomas stopped without prompting
in front of my Spanish classroom and handed my books back.

"Enjoy class. Adios." Without another word he
turned and headed back the way we had come.

I walked in and sat down, dropping my books
heavily on a table. "Well, I’d say this is a pleasant surprise, but
it isn't a surprise and it's not at all pleasant. What’s your
story? Flunk out of your Spanish class?"

Dani chuckled. "I was feeling seasick this
morning and missed mine. Your teacher is kindly letting me make it
up this period."

"How generoso of her," I said dryly. I didn't
even bother asking Dani why he was skipping his other class. "And
why do I get the feeling that you don't get seasick?

Dani looked a bit nervous, and then quickly
covered it with a grin. Interesting. "We should get started before
the teacher yells at us for speaking English. Como estás?"

"Malo."

"Aww, por qué?"

"Por qué do you think?"

Dani smirked.

When class ended I gathered my books and left
the room. Dani followed wordlessly.

"How do you say creepy stalker in Spanish?" I
asked.

"Yo no se," Dani said.

We headed aft toward the staircase to Deck
Seven and spotted TS going down it.

"Have you seen that?" he asked, pointing to
the wall behind him. The walls on every landing between decks were
plated with glass and had a different poem painted on them. I had
stopped to read them all, they were pretty neat. One side was
written in English and the other looked like the Greek
alphabet.

"Yeah," I said. "Ocean-y poems."

"Glanced at it," Dani said.

TS grinned and once again the tip of his
tongue stuck out. I couldn't decide if it was almost cute in a
weird, funny way, or just weird. "Better read it again."

Dani frowned and hurried up the first half of
the stairs to the landing. I followed and stood next to him as he
read it.

"What?" he suddenly yelled. He looked back
and forth from the English side to the Greek side. "Why would you
do that?"

TS started laughing and his tongue lolled out
a bit more.

"Seriously," Dani said. "That ruins the
entire verse!" He glared at the wall. "What kind of an idiot
translated this?"

"I'm so glad I'm here for this," TS
laughed.

Dani turned and said something to him in
another language. TS chuckled and replied. Whatever he said made
Dani roll his eyes and start up the second flight of stairs.

"Cheers," TS laughed. "Bye, Jen," he added to
me as he headed back down the other steps.

Curious, I hurried after Dani. "Do you speak
Greek?" I asked when I caught up.

"Yeah."

I looked at his dark hair and tan skin with a
fresh perspective. "Are you from Greece?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Oh. You don't have an accent."

Dani shrugged. "I moved to the states a long
time ago."

He pushed open the door to the Deck Seven
exterior deck and we went outside. It was still raining so I
ordered hot chocolate and settled into a chair. Dani went out from
under the overhang that covered half of the deck, but stayed near
me. He dropped his elbows onto the railing and looked out over the
water, ignoring the light rain. After a minute he closed his eyes
and raised his head, letting the rain splash onto his face. He
looked oddly content.

"Aren’t you cold?" Seeing him getting rained
on in just a t-shirt was making me shiver.

Dani shook his head. I sipped my hot
chocolate and thought about the night before. I had never really
had a wild imagination and was starting to wish that I did. Judging
from their behavior today I had clearly witnessed something
important and secret, but couldn’t begin to imagine it. Even though
he obviously had gone overboard, I still couldn't figure out how he
could possibly have gotten back on the ship.

"Did it hurt?"

"Did what hurt?" Dani asked, looking at me in
surprise.

"When you hit the water."

Dani looked at me critically, as if wondering
how much to really tell me. His eyes looked a lot lighter and
grayer than their usual cheery blue. I would have thought it was
just an optical illusion from the gray sky, but I noticed that
flecks of grays and blues seemed to be moving in his eyes, almost
like gentle waves.

"Yeah," he said finally, then shrugged.
"Didn’t kill me though, so no worries there."

"No. Falling off of a ship didn’t kill
you."

Dani rolled his eyes. "Just forget it.
Really."

I didn’t stay on the deck as long as I
usually did. Dani followed me back to my room and I stopped outside
of it.

"I’m not going to tell anyone from inside my
room," I said. "Laurie isn't even here. Besides, I’m not planning
on telling anyone anyway. But, you know, the more you guys follow
me around the more curious you’re going to make me."

He hummed under his breath. It looked like he
was annoyed, but the hum was oddly lyrical. Now there were bits of
darker blue in his eyes, swirling with the lighter blue. I didn't
care that it wasn't physically possible; his irises were actually
moving. "See you at dinner then," he said, before heading back down
the hall. I stared after him for a moment. I'd never seen anybody
with eyes that did that. No, I realized; I had. Charlie's eyes were
weird too.

I slammed my door behind me; at last, I was
free. At least until they forcibly joined me for dinner. But my
freedom didn’t last. I growled when someone knocked on the door
just a few minutes later. I opened it and was disappointed, but not
surprised, to see Thomas.

Chapter 3

No. Thomas was not going to come stalk me in
my own room.

"Look, I just told Dani, I’m not going to
tell people! Do you really have to follow me around like this?"

Thomas smiled. "I just thought you might want
to know that I heard back from Jon."

Oh. That changed things a bit. "What does he
have to say?"

Thomas glanced up and down the hall. "May I
come in? I’d rather not discuss this in the hallway."

"Fine." I stepped aside and held the door
open. He didn’t move; he just shifted his weight like he was
waiting. "Well?" I leaned forward and grabbed him. "Hurry up, I
want to get this over with." I tried to pull him into the room, but
something happened. He tripped, or I tripped, and we fell. It
almost felt like he had pulled himself out of my grip and fallen
deliberately. I tumbled back into my room and he fell out into the
hall. He sat up and winced like he was in pain.

"Oh, come on," I snapped. "Either get in here
and tell me what you have to say so that you can stop stalking me
or go away!"

He smiled, and stood back up and slid past me
into the room. He regarded the beds for a moment and then sat on
the one that wasn’t mine. That was a bit creepy. Actually, it was
really creepy. The crew had just made them and I didn’t know how he
knew which bed was which. Nevertheless, I sat down across from
him.

"So," I began, "Jon."

Thomas sighed. "Jon." He bit his lip like he
was wondering how to say things. "So, Jon is my boss."

"Your boss?"

"Well, actually he's higher up than that.
He’s the head of our agency."

Agency? That caught my attention. Agency was
a government term. For an absurd moment I thought that he worked
for the government, but quickly pushed the idea aside. He was just
a college student. There was no way he was working for some
government agency. Plus, it had to be a pretty small company. If
this Jon guy really had a position that much higher than Thomas he
wouldn't be personally corresponding with him or TS. Then,
something else occurred to me and I felt like an idiot for never
even considering it before. They had all known each other to begin
with. Out of 307 students I was the only one from my school and I
had only heard of one other from my state. Mariana and Dani of
course knew each other, but they had to have known the others
before the voyage started. They wouldn't be all sticking together
like this if they didn't. And now things seemed a bit stranger.

"And what you saw…" Thomas continued. "Well,
you shouldn’t have. I had to report it and I figured I'd just go
right to the top. Jon wants to talk to you."

"Like, on the phone? Did you get my number
while you were stalking me?"

"867-5309, right?" Thomas asked, looking like
he was trying to hide a grin.

It took me half a second to recognize the
number. I glared at him when I did. "Wrong Jenny."

He laughed. I realized that it was the first
time I'd heard a genuine laugh from him. Under any other
circumstances it would have been a cute laugh. "I'm sorry," he
said, still chuckling. "Bad joke. I didn't think you'd know that
song."