There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys’ ship would not be attending. It almost wasn’t worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys’ ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
The best thing about liking a boy was that it filled in all your time. You could lie on your bed and listen to music for an entire afternoon, daydreaming about him, feelings travelling deliciously all throughout your body. Without a boy to like, you were liable to spend your energy spreading gossip and causing drama among the other girls, just to have something to think about and do.
Sebastien wasn’t any normal boy. He was a technophobe. This meant that very few girls could get close to him. In person, he wore huge headphones at all times, so he was very difficult to approach. It was a big deal that he liked—or maybe liked, or at least was writing—Dani. Somehow, she had slipped through the cracks of his consciousness, which she believed to be a moral, self-protective, and upright place. Sebastien’s pant legs were the perfect width. His mother was a nurse. He liked music made in generations long ago. She didn’t know much more than that, but she didn’t need to know much more than that. The last time she had seen him, on the girls’ ship, she had experienced a sudden, warm drop in her stomach. She hadn’t known of his existence before he entered the dining hall, where their eyes had met, and that was when she felt the warm drop. It was the first time a boy had made her feel that way. She had the attention deficit disorder, but she was able to think about Sebastien for hours on end. Surely this was good for her brain. Maybe it was even making her smarter. Thinking about Sebastien, she could lose all sense of time and space.
Now Dani knocked on the door of the cabin that Lorraine and the delicate Flora shared. When Flora opened the door, Dani rushed in and fell on Flora’s bunk, dramatically throwing the flyers everywhere.
“What’s the point of the talent show now? You’ve heard the news, haven’t you?” she asked them.
“Yes,” Lorraine said, turning from her desk and regarding Dani with pity. Lorraine had the moral superiority of a girl who had never been in love. “Now you won’t know if some boy with a girlfriend likes you.”
Dani made significant eye contact with Flora. Surely Flora understood. The point wasn’t to learn whether Sebastien liked her—he probably didn’t even know what his feelings were. No, the point was to experience the warm drop or something similar. She was eager to have more of those same feelings, the very feelings that inspired verse and song. The point was not the pedantic collection of information. Only Lorraine would think that.
“Sebastien wouldn’t be writing Dani letters if he didn’t like her,” Flora said. Flora was one of those rare people who had the beautiful quality of the middle pedal of a piano, as if everything that came from her, sounds and gestures, was slightly dampened or softened.
“Where’s the worth in being liked by a two-timing bastard?” Lorraine asked.
This hurt Flora, whose father was a philanderer.
To put an end to the conversation, Dani stood up and began collecting her flyers off the floor. “I was just being silly. Of course he likes Erica. He went to kindergarten with Erica. Who’s going to dislike someone they went to kindergarten with?”
A photograph of Audrey hung above her former bunk. Audrey had been Lorraine and Flora’s roommate before she was dropped off in London for a movie shoot. She was a popular child actress, and she liked looking at her own face. Flora had kept the photograph up, even after Audrey left the ship. It had become a joke, but also an oracle.
“I think I’d better ask Audrey,” Dani said, and she climbed the ladder to Audrey’s bunk and bowed down before the picture. “Audrey, famous Audrey, speak to us from afar. What is the situation with Sebastien and Erica? Is it true love?” Even Lorraine couldn’t help glancing at the picture. At that moment, a bright white beam of sunlight came in through the porthole and struck Audrey’s left eye.
“It’s a no! Audrey said no! ” Dani cried joyfully, jumping down from the bunk. This confirmation of the lack of true love between Sebastien and Erica was even better than if she’d learned that the boys’ ship had changed course and would be visiting their ship on the night of the show. It was so rare for Audrey to speak, and to speak as unequivocally as that!
“So what if he doesn’t see you sing,” Flora enthused. “He loves you, so he’ll imagine it. And because he won’t be seeing you in a few weeks, he’ll long for you more.” Flora had no idea what she was talking about. “He’ll imagine you, and whatever he imagines will be much better than you actually are.”
“It’s true,” Dani said. “He’ll imagine the best girl possible and think it’s me!”
“Audrey didn’t say that he loved Dani. She said it wasn’t true love with Erica.” Lorraine felt it was important to be precise. Even if she didn’t believe in the Oracle, the picture of Audrey was in her cabin, which put it under her jurisdiction.
“I wish I liked someone as much as you like Sebastien,” Flora said dreamily as Dani began to leave. She didn’t even care whether Lorraine heard. Flora was used to Lorraine’s stringent disapproval and no longer tried to hide from it.
That night, there was a mood of dismay in the dining hall. The St. Alwynn girls had been at sea for three months now. They looked gloomily into their pea soup, gloomily at their plates of meat and potatoes and peas. The chandeliers shook gently with the motion of the waves, sending shadows dancing in a nauseating rhythm all throughout the room. Lorraine felt smug. She was strong and bespectacled and had a serious expression that the other girls interpreted as an inability to adopt the carefree attitude, which was true: she wasn’t carefree. She was deliberate, introspective, and highly suspicious. She was glad the boys’ ship wouldn’t be visiting. She had been dreading watching the girls become so crazy in the weeks leading up to the visit, as had happened the time before. She couldn’t understand how anyone could value the attention of a boy so highly—a boy who was nothing special, which was obvious to everyone but the girl with the crush. It was bizarre that a girl could esteem one boy so highly while not caring a thing about the rest, yet be unable to see that the boy she liked was exactly like all the rest—just as undeserving of worry or care. It was a cognitive distortion, of which humans had so many. They had learned about this in social-studies class, but somehow only she was immune. It’s what keeps the species going, Lorraine understood. She felt privileged not to be at the whim of species blindness, that she could choose what to think.
“Girls!” their headmistress, Madame Ghislaine, called. She was standing at the teachers’ table. A hush fell over the dining hall as the girls looked up.
“There has been a rumor that the boys’ ship will not be attending the talent show,” she said, “and I must confirm this rumor as true.” Madame Ghislaine paused. “Since they won’t be coming, there’s no point in showcasing our talents.” She looked around, searching the girls’ hollow eyes for any hint of protest. Sensing only a general deflation, she concluded, “We’ll use our energies to knit socks for the soldiers instead. A talent show during wartime is a frivolity, anyway.”
It was Madame Ghislaine who had come up with the idea of bringing the girls onto a ship where they would be safe from the bombings, and, once she’d had the idea, she had called the principal of a nearby boys’ school and proposed he do the same. It was never suggested that they would charter the same ship; at that age, boys and girls had to be kept separate. Some parents preferred to keep their children at home rather than having them board a ship and be sent to sea until the war’s end. That was why a school of two hundred and sixty girls had been reduced to a school of forty-three. You’d think more parents would have wanted to take advantage of Madame Ghislaine’s solution, but many of them had chalets or homes in other countries, and simply took their children there. Only the families that did not have second homes or relations in distant lands sent their daughters onto the ship. Same with the boys’ ship, which was carrying twenty-two boys. Sebastien, of course, Greg, Terry, Jason, Raif . . . Madame Ghislaine had received a star pin from the government for coming up with the idea and implementing it. Naturally, there had been newspaper articles written about privilege and waste, about how these schools were polluting the sea, and how it was unfair. Madame Ghislaine wasn’t bothered by the articles. She cared about the girls.
The principals agreed that, for the sake of sanity, their ships should meet every month so the boys and girls could socialize, as they would have done on land. A large drawbridge sort of contraption was loaded onto the girls’ ship, and it could be unfolded in such a way that the other end landed on the boys’ ship, so the boys could walk across it. That, or they could dock in the same port. But there was a lot of paperwork involved in docking, so staying in the middle of the ocean and using the gangplank seemed best. The boys liked hearing the fighter planes thrilling through the skies, and would sneak out in the night and stand on the deck and watch the colorful lights of the planes flying overhead, but the majority of the girls had little interest in leaving their warm beds and standing in the cold air and staring up into the sky, unless it was to search for shooting stars. It was hard to tell the difference, though, between shooting stars and planes that had been shot down and were now falling heavily into the ruby-dark sea.
Dani had terrible manners, but she was wily and could get people to do her bidding. In fact, it was probably because she lacked any sense of social correctness that she was able to pull off her plans. She did not feel any hesitation in manipulating the other girls. There was some higher good she always had in mind—the higher good of things happening. She was the one who’d told the girls that Audrey was an Oracle and had first demonstrated her use.
That evening, Flora and Dani were in the activities room, sitting on spindly chairs, explaining to Gala, Pip, and a handful of others what had happened earlier in the day. “The left eye flashed,” Dani told them, “immediately after I asked if it was true love between Sebastien and Erica.” Nobody needed to ask who Erica was; everyone knew she was Sebastien’s girlfriend, who either was or was not standing in Dani’s way.
“That doesn’t mean that Audrey is an oracle,” a small girl ventured.
Flora grew nervous. It was important that the girls continued to believe in the Oracle. As she wanted to one day know everything, it was necessary that she be privy to all the intimate questions that came fluttering heavily from each of the girls’ hearts.
“I think it makes sense,” Gala said, gently. “Signs have always appeared in the form of natural things like lightning, or birds landing somewhere. Just because it was ordinary sunlight doesn’t mean we should take it any less seriously as a sign.” Gala was sulkily pretty, and she loved the Greek myths. She loved them so much that it was almost revolting to the others, a sign of some deeper perversion.
“It sounds like wishful thinking to me,” said Lorraine, annoyed. She thought Dani was an attention whore. “Of course Dani doesn’t have a chance with Sebastien. He has a girlfriend! Is everyone here an idiot?”
“A lot of people cheat,” said Flora, who knew it from her own family. The fact that her father had cheated on her mother so flagrantly and frequently made Flora feel as if she were already sexually active, or at least had more experience than the other girls, although she had none. “Some people like having double lives. It turns them on. They don’t feel quite right unless they have a secret.”
Lorraine rolled her eyes. She could see right through Flora—the way she tried to turn her father’s affairs into some sort of tragic status for herself. “Shut up, Flora,” she said. “We’re talking about a thirteen-year-old boy, not your father.”
Flora, hurt, shut up.
It was time for evening prayers. The girls were in their bunks, in their linen nightgowns, and as they lay, Madame Ghislaine’s calming voice came from the ship’s loudspeakers. She began:
And, since she was aspiring to be a great war poet, she tried out this one:
On Monday morning, the girls woke to the disembodied voice of Madame Ghislaine, welcoming them to the day. They had half an hour until breakfast. The girls washed their private parts in the sinks. They pulled on their bloomers and bras—those who wore them—buttoned their starched shirts, tied their ties and knotted them tightly, pulled up their blue socks and laced their oxfords, slipped into their navy tunics, and fastened their fabric belts. Some pulled on cardigans, while others wore red blazers. They brushed their hair, looking in the inadequate mirrors, then left their cabins for the dining hall. Breakfast that day was oatmeal with dried toppings, orange juice, and wilting bananas. It was the last of the bananas. They didn’t keep fresh at sea.
That morning, Flora had awoken from terrible dreams about her naked mother dying, writhing beneath a street light. Sitting at breakfast, soaked in the feeling of the dream, she felt a terrible, rising humiliation. It had been wrong to speak about her father as she had done the day before. One’s family troubles should be kept private, even if one’s classmates already knew everything. She didn’t have to keep reminding them! Obviously she kept bringing up her father because she thought it would give her a certain cachet—the cachet of maturity. But the other girls didn’t respect her for it. They didn’t think she knew more than they did or that she was sophisticated. They thought of her as slightly soiled, as if she came from a messy home. Yet somehow she believed that if she could only present the story of her father’s infidelities in the right way, she would win the approval she was looking for. But it had not once worked out! Their reactions were nowhere in the neighborhood of awe. Now she vowed, over oatmeal, to never bring him up again. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to keep this promise without some sort of cosmic help, she stood up from her plate and went over to where Dani was sitting. Although you were not supposed to get up during breakfast, there was something about Flora that was a little bit invisible, and she managed to get to Dani unnoticed.
“I need to speak to Audrey.”
“Now?”
“Yes, before class.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Dani, who had early on made the rule that, when speaking to the Oracle, one always had to have a witness.
Five minutes later, they were in Flora’s cabin.
“What do you want to ask her? Or do you want me to ask?” Dani secretly felt that it would work better if she, Dani, asked, but she was trying not to be too pushy. “Maybe I’d better ask,” she offered.
“All right.”
Dani began setting herself up on Audrey’s bunk. “Well?”
Flora hadn’t quite formulated her question. “I guess . . . ask her . . . if at the end of my life I will be vindicated, if this will all make sense—the way my father lived—and whether it will prove to have been a good thing . . . in a way I can’t yet understand.”
Dani bowed down before the picture, which with its sweet smile said, Audition me!
“Audrey, famous Audrey, speak to us from afar: Will any good come of Flora’s father being a philanderer—good for Flora, that is? Is all this leading her somewhere great?”
The girls looked closely at the picture, which rippled a little bit on the left side, possibly from Dani’s breath.
“I think the left side rippled,” Dani said. “That’s a no.”
“Right. O.K. Thanks anyway.”
Dani climbed down from the bunk, and they left the room together. Dani didn’t know what to say. She liked to orchestrate good things, but when the good things she was orchestrating went bad, she wasn’t sure what to do. She suddenly felt that none of this was her responsibility, that Flora had some bad luck attached to her. She didn’t want to be near her anymore.
“Bye,” Dani said and turned down a corridor toward her classroom.
Flora pushed herself into the nearest washroom, locked the door, and began to cry. The Oracle had confirmed what she had suspected all along: some bad things were simply bad and couldn’t be confectioned into something sweet just because you wanted them to be. Her father was a bastard, he caused her mother to suffer, he brought shame on all of them and just didn’t care. She would have to find a man like that when she was older and suffer the same pain as her mother, because that was what the women in her family were made for: humiliation and suffering. She would find a gorgeous roué and allow him every license, and have a daughter and name her Flora, and send her to a school on the sea. And now she felt that she was not herself but her daughter, and in this way she was able to comfort herself, saying, “Silly girl, there is more to life than what the man you married—or your father—gets up to. There is a whole world outside the shame a man brings upon a woman, a world far from that. Ignore the man, forget about him, he’s smaller than a bug. You are bigger than he is. You are beautiful and bright and shining and tall.” Even though she was not tall, she did stop crying. Then she left the bathroom and went to class.
After dinner that evening, the letters were handed around. Madame Ghislaine pulled them from the canvas mailbag one by one, calling out names. The chosen girl would then rush from her seat and collect her letter, secreting it inside her pocket for later, or else she would hurry to her seat, where she would rip it open, or else she would wander slowly back to her seat, reading it as she walked. Dani was in this last camp. Receiving her envelope, she saw at once that it was from Sebastien, and, removing the letter, she scanned the page while weaving blindly between tables and chairs, knocking into one girl who, hurrying to collect her own letter, cried out, “Hey! Watch it, Dani!” Dani was bathed in glorious feelings, so she didn’t snap back. She merely glanced up and smiled vaguely.
Then she was back at her seat with her head bowed low as the other girls watched her closely, trying to guess from her expression what Sebastien had written. Dani gazed up at them. “Do you want to hear?”
They nodded intently.
“Dear Dani,” she read, in her most musical voice. “It’s another boring day on the ship. Last night we had turkey with gravy, and cake for dessert since it was Marcel’s birthday. The cake wasn’t even all that good. Marcel received a box of chocolates from his parents, and he gave some to me. I have been practicing Prince songs. Hopefully I’m getting better. Erica sent me some gum, thirty dollars, and a few paperback books that I wanted—plus a Kurt Vonnegut. Have you ever read him? I can send them when I’m done. I miss being able to go into a corner store to buy something. I miss pizza. I miss the basketball court. But most of all, I miss Erica. Yours, Sebastien.”
The girls looked blankly at one another. It was a very mysterious letter. On the one hand, he said he missed Erica. On the other, there was that “yours,” and just the fact that he had written her at all. One of the girls suggested that his mention of Erica could be seen as proof of his strong feelings for Dani; he was using Erica as a mask to hide them, so as not to seem too vulnerable, too available, too needy. They generally agreed that the letter seemed to confirm the Oracle’s revelation that Sebastien didn’t love Erica. But, Lorraine suggested, “it’s also possible to interpret the letter the other way: that he loves Erica and doesn’t give a shit about Dani.”
“Then why is he writing me?!” Dani shouted, slamming the letter on the table, her heart beating faster.
“Boredom, distraction, he likes to be liked, it’s good for his ego to get letters from you—there’s a million reasons.”
Flora nodded to herself: it was even possible for Sebastien to have no feelings about Dani and also no feelings about Erica, but since none of the other girls had suggested this, she decided to keep quiet. Anyway, none of them would have believed it. A boy had to love someone, so it was either Erica or Dani. “What if there’s a second girls’ ship,” Flora said, “and he’s writing a third girl, not just Dani and Erica?”
The girls rolled their eyes. Here again was Flora with her messed-up vision of the world because of her messed-up home.
“There’s not a fucking third girl he’s writing!” Dani shrieked. “Why did I even read you the letter! There’s a special energy between Sebastien and I, an intimacy, I can feel it!”
“Where?” Lorraine asked.
“In the feeling of it! In the handwriting! He misses pizza, he misses Erica, he misses spending money in stores. The thing he doesn’t say but wants to say but is implied is that he’s also missing me!”
This sounded plausible to Pip, who was willing to believe anything, as long as it was good. She was like a little yellow bird whose very being lifted all of their spirits—just the fact that someone like Pip could exist. “I think Dani’s right,” she said in her delicate voice, as if pitched with silver. “He also mentioned chocolates and cake. He’s trying to pass these good things on to Dani. Or he’s saying that she’s good, like they are.”
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