More than Magic: Semester Aboard

More than Magic: Semester Aboard

by Elizabeth Kirke

Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Kirke

Published by Anchor Group

Edited by Melissa Ringsted

All rights reserved. Published by Anchor
Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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Chapter 1

A taxicab raced down the dock, came to a
stop, and a girl laden with shopping bags flew out. Everyone at the
rails of the ship yelled as she rushed toward the gangway. She was
a 'runner', one of the students who had pushed the all-aboard time
to the limit. She vanished into the ship to a mix of boos and
cheers.

"She's going to be cleaning tables tomorrow,"
my roommate, Laurie, snickered.

Most of us had taken the all-aboard time and
subsequent punishments for being late seriously, and had been on
the ship for over an hour. The majority of the people watching the
runners had changed into pajama bottoms or sweatshirts with
Semester Aboard-Study Abroad
written on them. We were
students on a cruise ship that had been turned into a floating
campus. Instead of studying abroad for a summer in one country we
were traveling down the western coast of Latin America. Our ship
had classrooms, a dining hall, dorm rooms, even a workout room and
a pool.

"Look, there's another!" called Dani. He
pointed to another cab speeding down the dock.

Even though it had been ten days since our
voyage had started I still didn't know half of the 307 students. I
had just met Dani earlier today. We had ended up next to each other
on a bus that took us on a tour of Acapulco. Every country had a
bunch of trips to choose from and you never knew who else on the
ship would end up with you. It turned out that Dani and I were just
four rooms apart and had never seen each other before today! I
wasn't entirely sure how I'd missed him. He was really tall, with
short hair, and tan, olive skin. His hair had looked black on the
bus, but once I saw it in the sun I was pretty sure that he dyed it
midnight blue. And he was drop-dead gorgeous with a personality to
match. He was incredibly friendly and outgoing. We had spent the
entire bus ride chatting and when I had mentioned that I didn't
recognize anybody else on the bus, he offered to stick around so
I'd have somebody to talk to. We ended up spending the entire tour
together.

"Dani!" someone called. We both turned to see
a boy winding his way between people and tables toward us. He had
wavy red hair and looked like he'd gotten sunburned in Mexico. I
was pretty sure he could pull off the natural redhead look, but I
could see streaks where the red dye, which was a bit too bright to
be natural, had faded to orange and blonde. It gave his head an
almost flaming appearance, which, I had a feeling applied to more
than just his hair. He was in one of my classes and I racked my
brain for his name. He didn't sit next to me, but we'd talked a bit
before our class had started.

"Hey, Charlie," Dani said.

"How was the city?" he asked, joining us at
the rail. I noticed that he wasn't much taller than me. He was sort
of stocky, but not overweight.

"It was fun." Dani gestured to me
.
"Jen, here, was with me."

"See anything good?"

"The fort was pretty splashy," Dani said.
"How was your mountain biking?"

"Toasty. I saw like a dozen Chupacabras."

"No, you didn't," Dani laughed.

"Yes, I did!"

I laughed and turned my attention back to the
runners while they argued. The last of the late students climbed
aboard and dockworkers started undoing the mooring lines. By now
just about everyone, including faculty, had gathered on the deck.
Mexico was our first port and we’d been inside for orientation the
first time the ship had left a dock. We cheered as the ship started
to pull away.

"Adios Mexico!" someone yelled.

"Vaya con dios!"

We waved at the scattered people on the dock
until we were too far away to see them in the dark. The wind
started to pick up as the ship cruised along past the lights of the
buildings on the edges of the bay. People gradually started to
disperse.

"Class in the morning," Laurie reminded me
with a groan.

"Ugh." We had classes every day we were at
sea and the first one started bright and early at eight.

We wove our way through the crowd and back
inside the ship, and joined the scattered people going down to
their rooms. After we reached the fourth deck we turned off the
stairway and into a brightly lit, long corridor that spanned the
entire length of the ship. Doors to our cabins lined both sides of
it. Long railings ran along the walls, but so far I hadn't needed
to use them. As Laurie and I walked down the hall I spotted two now
familiar faces. Charlie was leaning against the outside wall,
laughing, while Dani swiped his ID card over and over on a
door.

"Would you stop laughing?" Dani grumbled.

"I told you not to put it in the same pocket
as your phone," Charlie said.

"Are you locked out again?" cried a voice
behind me.

I turned to see a girl striding down the hall
toward us. I’d seen her around the ship before; she looked like a
supermodel. She was tall with thick, wavy blonde hair that looked
like it had green streaks in it. She had a figure that women paid
thousands for and eyes so blue they probably made mine look gray. I
noticed that she had on a t-shirt that said
Marlins Swim
Team
, which explained her green hair. She was probably a great
swimmer; she definitely had the body for it.

"How else am I going to carry it? It's not
like I have a purse!" Dani said.

"Get your ID punched and put it on that
lanyard they gave us," the blonde sighed. She shoved Dani out of
the way, swiped her ID, and opened the door. Halfway in, she turned
back to Dani with a condescending look. "If you get locked out one
more time, I'm not letting you back in."

Dani had to lunge forward to catch the door
as it closed. Charlie laughed and followed them in. Wait...the
blonde girl and Dani were roommates? With the exception of some of
the professors and staff who had brought their families all of the
rooms on the ship were single-sex. I knew for a fact Dani was a
student.

"Are they roommates?" I asked Laurie.

"Yeah, that's Mariana and Dani. They're
married."

"What? Seriously?" It actually wasn't that
hard to believe. Dani was probably the hottest guy on the ship and
Mariana could easily be the most beautiful girl. If anyone on the
ship would be married to one of them, it would clearly be the
other.

Laurie nodded. "I heard Mariana telling
somebody that this is like their honeymoon or something. She said
they had to fax their marriage certificate the second they got it
so that they'd be allowed to share a room."

"Wow." It sounded pretty cool, but I wasn’t
sure I’d want to take classes on my honeymoon.

We continued down the hall to our room. Even
though I had only slept there for a few nights before we arrived in
Mexico, it already felt like home and it was nice to be back. It
wasn't a very big room, but it was cozy. We had a narrow alcove
that separated our room from the door. Just by standing in one spot
and turning I could close our door, open the bathroom door, open
the closet, and reach my hand into the bedroom. Our beds were so
close together that our nightstands were sandwiched between them,
without enough room for even a pencil to roll off. I could have
reached out and touched Laurie's bed from mine. We each had a chair
and a little desk at the foot of our beds. Aside from some drawers
built into the wall and a small TV, there was nothing else in our
room.

After brushing my teeth I climbed happily
into bed. It didn’t take long for the motion of the ship and hum of
the engines to lull me to sleep. All too soon my alarm was ringing
for my morning class. By the time I got out of the shower Laurie
had returned from her daily trip up to the gym. I stepped out of
the bathroom and was dressed before I heard the shower turn on. I
smiled at how easily we got back into routine after five days in
port. I went up to breakfast and chose a random table. A couple of
girls I hadn’t met yet and a professor and her two little boys were
sitting there. We exchanged introductions and ate.

I found Laurie after breakfast and we made
our way to the huge room that served as the Latin American History
classroom. It was the first class of the day and was mandatory for
everyone, even the faculty. Across the room I spotted Charlie’s
bright hair and noticed that he was sitting with Dani and Mariana.
After class I joined the shuffle of students heading to other
classrooms. My next class, Plant Use in Latin American Culture, was
the one that Charlie was in too.

"Hey, Jen!" Carrie greeted me as we entered
the classroom. "The in-port project isn’t due today right?"

"No, it’s due tomorrow," Charlie answered. He
was sitting at the desk closest to the door.

"What a relief!" Carrie said. "I did that
algae the Aztecs grew. What about you guys?"

"I wrote mine on tomatoes," I said.

"Chilies," Charlie said.

"Ugh!" Carrie wrinkled her nose. "I can’t
stand spicy stuff."

"You won’t like me then," Charlie said and
winked at her.

We laughed and took our seats across the
room.

"He’s cute, but he sets off my gaydar like
whoa," she whispered to me.

"Mine too," I giggled.

After class ended I had half an hour to kill.
I swung by the dining room on Deck Five and grabbed a quick lunch.
Like my Plant Use class, my next class was uneventful. When it was
over I passed Dani in the hall on the way to Spanish for
Travelers.

"Hola," Dani called as he passed me. "Doin’
alright?"

"I’m bueno," I giggled to him. He laughed and
headed for the stairs.

After Spanish I joined the throng of people
gathered on Deck Seven. I found a lounge chair and pulled it over
to the rails so I could watch the water while I studied.

The next day was pretty much the same, but it
started raining early in the afternoon and was a bad storm by the
time I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night and
stumbled over to our bathroom, feeling awful. A bit of quality time
bent over the toilet didn’t help at all and I decided to try for
some fresh air. I pulled a sweater on over my pajamas, hung my ID
card strap around my neck, and slipped out of the room. I made my
way down the corridor to the door that led outside. For the first
time since getting on the ship I had to keep one hand on the
railing. The halls were well lit, even though it was the middle of
the night, and it was almost disconcerting to step outside into the
darkness. But the moment the cool, damp wind hit my face I felt
better. I hadn’t been seasick since our first night, but sometimes
I felt nauseous if I stayed in our room too long; being out on the
deck always helped.

I had assumed that I’d be the only one crazy
enough to go out in the rain in the middle of the night, but to my
surprise I wasn’t. There were people on the other side of the deck.
It was too dark to see them well, but the lights from the deck
above us illuminated them a little. One of them was Charlie. He was
standing under the overhang where Deck Five extended out above Deck
Four. He was just wearing a t-shirt and jeans and I shivered in
sympathy. A guy I recognized, not surprising since we all lived on
a ship, was sitting on the bottom steps of the outdoor stairway
that led to Deck Five. He was probably a football player back home
or something. He had shaggy, dark brown hair and a fairly large
nose. I’d heard a few girls giggling about him, but I didn’t think
he was that good looking. I wasn’t sure what his name was. Another
guy was sitting in a chair, probably pilfered from Deck Five, with
his back to me and his feet up on the rails. Mariana was near him,
wearing only a bikini top and a short skirt. I couldn't believe she
wasn't cold.

"I didn’t scream!" she said.

"You totally did! You freaked out!" Dani
laughed.

It had been too dark to notice Dani until he
spoke. My jaw dropped in shock. Dani was sitting on the railing of
the ship. Messing around on the rails was one of the first things
they’d told us not to do when we got on board. Even sitting on them
in the middle of a calm day was suicidal at best. But to sit there
in the middle of a stormy night was nothing short of a death
wish.