The following morning started like any other. I woke up and traded showers with Laurie, then went to breakfast. Ordinarily, I would have chosen a table with people at it — I liked to eat meals with people from all over the ship — but my thoughts were still whirling from the night before. I chose an empty table by a window and sat down. I ate slowly, looking out at the water. It was still raining lightly, and the sky was darker than usual, but it was all so different from last night that I started to wonder if maybe I had just been dreaming. It all seemed even more ridiculous and impossible than it had last night.

A mug thumped down next to me, and I turned to greet whoever had joined me. I was shocked to see that it was Dani. He looked tired, but otherwise showed no sign that he had fallen into the ocean less than twelve hours ago. "I can’t believe you lied to me," he said.

I realized that he wasn't talking to me and looked up to see Mariana settling in across from us.

"I didn’t lie; they had plenty of melon when I came up earlier. If you could get out of bed at a reasonable time, you could have had some." Mariana looked at me and smiled. "Good morning, Jen. I’m Mariana by the way."

"Hi..."

"Hey, Jen," Dani said. He turned back to Mariana. "There is nothing reasonable about seven in the morning!" He chugged his entire mug of steaming coffee in a few gulps.

"I get up every morning at six for swim practice," Mariana said.

"So? I get up at five for crew. You don’t see me bragging."

Mariana stabbed a pineapple slice with her fork and glared at Dani. "You get up at five at home, but complain when I try to wake you at seven?"

"Crew only takes two hours. I’m in bed before eight, and I never have class before noon. If you wake me up at seven here, then I have to stay up all day."

Mariana pointedly turned away from him. "So, how are you?"

"I'm fine," I said. Seemed like their honeymoon wasn't off to a harmonious start.

Dani mumbled something about coffee and got up with his empty mug.

"You swim on your school team?" I asked. I had been so occupied with Dani I had forgotten that Mariana had been dressed for swimming last night. Maybe she had been planning on diving off of the ship too.

"I did. I was actually doing a little kid coaching thing this spring. Kids are fun." Well, she was perfectly willing to talk about that. I had a feeling she'd be a lot less forthcoming if I asked about last night.

"Kids are a pain," Dani said. He sat back down and took a sip of coffee.

"You love little kids, don't even lie," Mariana said. I hoped I hadn't started another argument.

"Ember and Catalina? Yes. Random brats on the street? No."

"Ember doesn't count as a little kid anymore, you know."

"Don't remind me," Dani groaned.

I ate slowly, hoping to learn more about them. Dani seemed content to drink his coffee quietly, while Mariana ate. I looked out the window. The rain was picking up and the sky was darkening. The waves looked a bit ominous.

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"Very Poseidon Adventure, isn't it?" Dani asked.

I turned and saw that he was looking out the window over my shoulder.

"Very what?" Mariana asked.

"Poseidon Adventure," Dani said, like it was obvious. "With Roddy McDowall?" Mariana shook her head. "How have you never seen... Oh, forget it."

The two argued about Dani's apparent bad taste in old movies until the bell for Latin American History sounded. I left the table before them, but heard them behind me all the way to the classroom. I sat next to Laurie in our usual place and was relieved when Dani and Mariana veered off toward the other side of the room.

"Mind if I join you?" asked a deep, gravelly voice.

Laurie and I turned toward the speaker. It was Football Guy. Up close, I could see that his eyes were dark, dark brown and his hair wasn’t just shaggy, but messy.

"Sure," Laurie said. "I’m Laurie, this is Jen."

"Cheers," he said, sitting down. "You can call me TS." He had a slight accent that I couldn't place.

Laurie giggled at him, and I rolled my eyes and pulled out my notebook. We didn’t talk during class. When it was over, Laurie lingered behind to talk to a friend.

"Gotten a reply from Jon?" I asked TS as we walked toward the door.

He looked surprised, but then laughed. I noticed that the very tip of his tongue poked oddly out of the corner of his mouth when he did. Instead of answering me, he just turned out of the classroom and headed down a nearby stairway. I considered going after him, but decided I didn’t want to be late for class. Tardiness was a bit harder to get away with when your classes were all on a ship. I turned away from the stairs and started toward the back of the ship. My next class was on the same deck, but all the way aft, while the Latin American History classroom was all the way forward. I had only just started walking, when someone fell into step beside me.

"Picked a plant to study in Panama?"

I suppressed a groan. Charlie.

"Not yet," I grumbled.

"Me neither. I’m just going to see what plants spark my interest once we get there."

I grunted in agreement, and we continued in silence. I sat next to Carrie in class, but to my dismay, Charlie gave up his usual desk near the door in favor of one closer to me. And here I'd woken up this morning wondering if it really had been a dream. The fact that they were all practically stalking me proved I really had seen something strange, something they didn't want other people to know about. An hour and a half later, I hurried out of the classroom, only to have him walking right next to me again.

"What’s your next class?" he asked.

"Ancient Latin American Cultures," I snarled.

"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.