Free Playing for Keeps by Joan Lowery Nixon Page B

badly needed the money. You don’t know anybody who’s got a few thousand dollars he doesn’t know what to do with, do you?”
    “Oh, sure,” the woman said. “Lots of people.”
    One of the elevator bells dinged, the doors opened, and the two of them stepped in. I stayed where I was. I didn’t like being ignored, and I didn’t want to hear any more of Tommy’s complaining. As soon as their elevator left, I pressed the Up button, and in just a few seconds another elevator arrived— an empty elevator, I was glad to see.
    When I stepped out onto deck twelve, there was no sign of Ricky. Aft on the deck, past the swimming pools, I could see tiny figures silhouetted in the golden glare of a sweep of bright windows, creatures in another world, far away and soundless. I walked from the light of the elevator area into the darkness near the rail. Ricky had been right. The night wind was chilly, and I shivered.
    “Rose.”
    Ricky took my hand and led me through an open doorway into the dimness of the prow. But suddenly I stopped, alert to the sound of footsteps behind us.
    “Someone else is on deck with us. Wait here,” I whispered to Ricky. I retraced my steps to the pool of bright light at the elevator doors. The footsteps ahead of me quickened. I heard the ding of an elevator and the doors opening. When I reached the elevator, it had already left, and the area was empty.
    Ricky stepped up beside me. “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “Someone was just enjoying the night air. Or maybe he lost his way. If he had been looking for me, he wouldn’t leave just when he found me.”
    “I guess you’re right,” I said. Reassured, I strolled the darkened deck with Ricky, putting the incident out of my mind. Ricky had asked me to meet him, and I wasn’t about to spoil our time together by jumping at every little sound. The darkness pulled the stars down, magnifying their brightness, and Ricky’s hand in mine was warm and comforting.
    We found two deck chairs tucked into an inside nook, out of the wind. Ricky pushed them together; we sat down, and he took my hand again. “Tell me about yourself,” he said. “You’re the person who is so kind to help me.”
    “There’s nothing to tell,” I answered. “There’s just Mom and me . . . and Glory, my grandmother.”
    Ricky studied my face. “There must be much more to tell about yourself. You go to school, don’t you? What do you study?”
    Looking into his eyes, with his handsome face so close, I couldn’t think. “N-nothing special. I—I just take the regular classes everyone else takes,” I said.
    “I think you must be the most popular girl in school. Am I right?” He smiled.
    “Not exactly.” Miserable at the sudden memory of Cam’s dumping me at Cassie’s party and the police coming and Mom so angry, I tried to change the subject. “Tell me about Cuba,” I said.
    “It is a beautiful island,” he answered, “but why should we talk about Cuba? I want to know more about
you.
”
    “Why?” I asked.
    Ricky didn’t answer. He turned on his left side so that he was even closer to me. He put a hand behind my shoulders, drawing me closer, and his lips met mine.
    “Does that answer your question?” he asked, and I opened my eyes, trying to make myself believe that I was back on Earth.
    “If we stood in the prow of the ship,” I whispered in a trembling voice, “and if you held me while I stretched out my arms . . .”
    Ricky glanced ahead at the prow, gleaming white in the moonlight. “It is off limits,” he said. “See the barriers?”
    I nodded as reality caught up to me with a thump. Discarding the romantic dreamworld Becca had put into my mind, I said, “You and I are also off limits. We have just five days left until the ship docks in the United States, and then—”
    “The United States,” Ricky echoed. I could see that the yearning in his eyes was not for me.
    “Ricky,” I asked, “if your request for political asylum is granted