Free Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

the abyss looks into you,’” the parrot says. “Let’s hope the abyss finds nothing of interest.”
    In spite of the captain’s disdain of the crow’s nest, I still make the climb twice a day to have my cocktail, and commune with my fellow crewmen—although few of them are social once their potion is in hand.
    Today the sea is a roller coaster, doing everything short of corkscrews and loops, and the ship’s rolling motion is always worst in the crow’s nest, which pitches to and fro atop the mainmast like the weighted tip of a metronome. Even as I try to hold my drink steady, it sloshes within the glass, spilling a little bit on the ground, where it flows into the dark spaces between the planks and disappears.
    “It’s alive, you know,” says the master-at-arms—a seasonedcrewman in charge of the cannon, with unpleasant tattoos up and down his arms. “It’s alive, and waits to be fed.” I then realize that the voice isn’t coming from his mouth, but from one of the skulls inked on his arm. The one with dice for eyes.
    “What’s alive?” I ask the tattoo. “The ship?”
    The skull shakes its head. “The dark sludge that holds the ship together.”
    “It’s just caulking,” I tell it, and that makes all the other skulls begin to laugh.
    “Keep telling yourself that,” says the dice-eyed skull, “but when you wake up with a few less toes, you’ll know it’s been tasting you.”

42. Spirit of Battle
    I climb out to the bowsprit in the middle of the night, avoiding the crewmen on watch. Once there, I intentionally slide off the well-polished pole, and the maiden—the ship’s figurehead—catches me, as I knew she would. At first she holds me by my wrists, but then she pulls me close, embracing me with her wooden arms. Although there’s nothing but her arms keeping me from plunging into the depths, somehow I feel safer here than I do on board.
    The sea is calm tonight. Only the occasional swell sprays us with a light, salty mist. As she holds me I whisper to her the things I’ve learned.
    “The captain believes that you are good luck,” I tell her. “That your gaze will charm the sea monsters.”
    “Good luck?” she scoffs. “How lucky am I if I must pose forever on this bow and take all the abuse the sea doles out upon me? And as for sea monsters, nothing will charm them but a full belly—of that you can be sure.”
    “I’m just telling you what he said.”
    We hit a swell and the ship rides high, and then dips low. She holds me so tightly that I don’t have to hold on anymore. I reach out my hand and run it gently across her flowing teak-wood hair.
    “Do you have a name?” I ask.
    “Calliope. Named for the muse of poetry. I’ve never met her, but I’ve heard she’s beautiful.”
    “So are you.”
    “Careful,” she says with the faintest of grins, “false flattery might make me lose my grip, and then where would you be?”
    “All wet,” I say, grinning right back at her.
    “Do you have a name?” she asks.
    “Caden.”
    She considers it. “A goodly name,” she says.
    “It means Spirit of Battle,” I tell her.
    “In what language?”
    “I have no idea.”
    She laughs, I laugh. The ocean seems to laugh, but not in a mocking way.
    “Keep me warm, Caden,” she whispers, her voice like the tender creak of a sapling branch. “I have no warmth of my own—onlywhat the sun brings me, and the sun is halfway around the world. Keep me warm.”
    I close my eyes, and radiate body heat. It’s so nice being there, I don’t even mind the splinters.

43. It’s All Kabuki
    “Do you know why you’ve been called in here?” the school counselor asks. Her name is Ms. Sassel. Kids like to say it because it sounds like something else.
    I shrug. “To talk to you?”
    She sighs, realizing this is going to be one of those conversations. “Yes, but do you know why you’re here to talk to me?”
    I hold my silence, knowing the less I say the more control I have over the situation.