Coincidence - Alan May [13]
“You will love it,” she had told him, nearly breathless with enthusiasm about the wonderful plan she had devised. She was disappointed when Pierre said he wanted no part of it.
“I felt like she just wanted to get rid of me,” Pierre told Melissa. “I was so happy when she said I didn’t have to go back to Caneff, but then …”
He was sick of authority figures telling him not to think for himself, to do whatever they said and do it quick, no questions asked, and was sure life on the Inspiration would be more of the same. And he was sure that the other kids on the ship would look down on him once they knew he had been to Caneff. It was practically a reform school, wasn’t it? Everyone would assume he was a juvenile delinquent. They would all be rich kids, anyway; the concept of hard work would be foreign to them. And why were they all paying good money for the privilege of working their tails off, anyway?
Not that he was ever going to be accepted in the program.
“The interview was awful,” he told Melissa. “They kept asking me questions about drugs, about drinking. And I told them what I thought—that onboard ship, no, drinking should not be allowed, that could be disastrous, but on land? I said I didn’t know what authority the program has over the local officials.
“And anyway, my grades were not so great. I was sure they’d never accept me over the other kids who were applying.”
But accept him they did. Ten days after the interview, to his chagrin and his mother’s delight, he received the acceptance package. He had no choice but to go. And now he was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he was going to like it.
6
When the van dropped them off at the dock, Melissa was amazed by the size of the ship. It looked huge, certainly bigger than she had anticipated. All of the lines and ropes made it look confusing and exciting at the same time.
Dave Cameron told her she was assigned to cabin 119. Pierre showed her the way, lugging her bag down the stairway to her cabin for her. He had promised Dave he would go with him to pick up the last group of students at the airport, so he was forced to bid his new friend adieu for the time being.
Opening the cabin door, Melissa’s first impression was, Oh, my God! Four people can’t live in here for a year!
Four paces into the cabin was a wall with four sections of three shelves each, one section for each student. To the left was an aisle about three feet wide and six feet long with bunk beds on either side. There were two drawers under each lower bunk. That was it for storage space. Just inside the cabin door to the left was a tiny washroom with a small sink, a shower stall barely big enough to turn around in, and a toilet, or “head,” as it was called onboard ship. The whole cabin was about ten feet square.
Two of her roommates had arrived earlier and taken the lower bunks, so Melissa claimed the inside upper one for hers.
The thought of unpacking was depressing. What would she do if her clothes and stuff didn’t fit? It took almost half an hour to unpack; some stuff she simply left on her bunk until she could figure out what to do with it. Jettisoning it into the Pacific began to seem the best option. And she had been so careful, she thought, to pack only the most essential of items. Clearly there was a discrepancy between what the ship builder deemed “essential” versus what an average teenaged girl did. She realized why the students had all been given soft canvas bags—there wasn’t any space for hard suitcases.
Melissa was just squishing her bag into the corner of her storage drawer, hoping she’d be able to close it afterward, when her three cabinmates opened the door, nearly falling on top of her as they entered.
“Whoa! That’s one way of making introductions!” one of them laughed from the lower bunk into which she’d rolled in order not to step on Melissa. “I’m Nancy.”
“I’m Kathy,” one