Free The Trouble With Destiny by Lauren Morrill Page B

it over the side,” he says. Huck is a champion babysitter, but he’s never been good with vomit. It’s a good thing neither of us drinks, because I’m pretty sure I can’t trust him to hold my hair back.
    “I’ll be fine,” I say. “I just needed some air.” I take a step toward the railing and look down at the waves churning against the side of the ship, one hundred feet below us. The water is so deep and dark it’s almost black, little whitecaps cresting on the waves. By now, we must be hundreds of miles from the shore and even farther from my house back in Tennessee. The view is certainly different from the one I see when I’m leaning over the back deck of our house, where my backyard gives way to trees, which break to show off the gently rolling foothills of the Smoky Mountains.
    “At least this is better than climbing the hills of San Francisco with a perky blond secretary,” Huck says, nudging me with an elbow.
    “She’s an associate,” I say. But Huck is right. Dad wanted me to spend spring break with him in his shiny new condo in San Francisco. His email went on and on about the views of the Golden Gate Bridge and how we could get chocolate milk shakes at the Ghirardelli place. Of course, the “we” there would be me, him, and his new girlfriend, Kimberly, a pretty young associate at his law firm. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that everything in that equation—except for the chocolate milk shakes—sounded like my version of hell.
    Huck sighs and leans next to me, staring out over the ocean. “Look, I know you’re under a lot of pressure, what with school and the parade of potential future stepmonsters and this newly cultivated need to win, but acting like a crazy stressball isn’t doing anyone any good. What can I do to get you to relax?”
    “I don’t know,” I say, allowing irritation to creep back into my voice. Hillary basically said the same thing. If only they knew that I
can’t
relax. “Can you make sure that Mr. Curtis doesn’t turn psycho vigilante on the captain of this ship? Or go back in time and erase our horrible performance? Or prevent Russ from turning this cruise ship into a reenactment of the
Titanic
? Better yet, maybe you can figure out a way to keep the captain from watching the surveillance video that’s probably going to show us vandalizing the ship?”
    Huck pauses, using his fingers to stroke an imaginary beard.
    “The time travel issue is, well, difficult. Video? I’ll mull. And making sure that Mr. Curtis stays distracted…hmmm,” Huck says. He grabs a bunch of my windblown hair and gives it a little tug. “That I can do. But you’ll need to meet me by the pool if you want to make it happen.”
    “Are you serious?” I stare at him.
    He shrugs a shoulder, fake-modest. “I already have an idea. It won’t solve
all
our problems, but it’ll be a start.” Huck pulls me into a bear hug.
    “What would I do without you?” I say, my words partly muffled by the green fabric of his T-shirt.
    “Be a lot crazier, that’s for damn sure,” he says. He pulls back and stares into my face like a naturalist observing some kind of endangered species. “So what do you think? Are you in?”
    I know setting Huck loose is a risk, but we’re at that point where it’s time to go all in. So I take a deep breath and plaster on a smile. “Let’s do it,” I say.
    Huck slaps me on the back. “Attagirl. Now go change into your suit. Meet me on deck in five. My plan commences in ten.”

As I make my way down to the Laguna, the largest of
Destiny
’s three outdoor pools, I pull the towel tighter around my waist like it’s my own personal cloak of invisibility. It’s bad enough that we’ve lost another practice opportunity, but I also acted like a hormonal lunatic and yelled at all my friends. I’m hoping a moment of lounging by the pool will help me get control of life and the band, and maybe, possibly, get me back to my normal self. I do
not
like being