Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise Read Online Free Page A

matter which way you’re going.”
    “Well, that’s confusing. Why would they call it the port side when the port is on the other side?”
    “Can we just find the rooms?” Darren asks, and I can tell we’re already giving him a headache.
    But Marko’s grinning. “I wonder if our rooms are fore or aft.”
    “I’m guessing forward of here,” Marissa says. “Since we’re closer to the stern than the bow.”
    I shake my head. “Please. This is already too hard. I can’t memorize a whole vocabulary list just to know where I’m going! My brain is full up with Avogadro’s number and the stupid periodic table!”
    Marissa’s eyes get huge. “Tell me you didn’t bring homework!”
    “I had to, and my brain’s already full of stuff I don’t understand, so can we please just use simple English? Forward, backward, left, right, up, and down?”
    Darren laughs. “Amen.”
    “Whatever,” Marissa says. “But you’re gonna get turned around because the signs all say
fore
and
aft
, and when the captain makes his announcements, he’ll say
starboard
and
port
, and how will you know where to dash to see the dolphins if you don’t know what he’s saying?”
    I give her a little squint. “I’ll follow everyone else?”
    We go by a big balcony view of the open area between the sets of glass elevators, and looking down makes me kinda dizzy. “Whoa.”
    “Yeah, don’t fall,” Darren says, pulling me away.
    Not that I could fall.
    Well, unless I did some climbing first, but why would I do that?
    “They’re right here!” Marko says, diagonaling to the right. And sure enough, “staterooms” 9606 and 9608 are at the very beginning of a hallway right by the elevator area.
    “Whoa,” I say again, ’cause now I can see that the hallway goes off in both directions and seems to go on
forever
. Suddenly the layout is feeling very disorienting. Like you
could
be walking down one of these long hallways and forget which direction you’re going. I look at Marissa. “Uh … which way’s the front of the ship?”
    “Forward, or
fore
, is that way,” Marissa says, pointing to the right.
    I nod, ’cause she’s made that easy to remember.
    “It takes you to the
bow
,” she says. “You
bow
forward, right?”
    I give her a little bow and smile because I know she’s trying super-hard to be nice about this.
    She points to the left. “That way is
aft
. It’s
after
everything else. Like your back end, right? Which on a ship is called the stern.” She rolls her eyes a little. “Don’t ask me why.”
    “So are we on the port side?”
    “Yes!” she cries.
    Like I’m her star pupil.
    Which actually makes me feel pretty good until I remember that she had
said
earlier that we were on the port side.
    Marko gives me a piratey look. “Arrrg! What’s this mutiny of simple English?”
    I laugh. “Don’t worry. I still know how to speak it.”
    Darren’s already opened 9608 with his sea-pass card and tells Marissa and me, “Go check out your room, then let’s eat!”
    Darren and Marko’s door is in the very corner of the elevator area, but ours is definitely
in
the hallway. Marissa nods at the doors across the hallway from us. “Those are interior cabins,” she whispers. “No windows. I’m glad your dad got us one with a balcony.”
    “Call him Darren,” I tell her, and it kinda bugs me that she already knows what our room is like when we’re not even inside it yet.
    Anyway, we go in and pass by a little bathroom on the left and a closet on the right, and then enter the main part of the cabin, which has two beds, a little couch, a TV, a compact armchair, and a built-in desk.
    “Check it out,” I laugh, ’cause there are white towels folded into the shape of turtles on the beds.
    “They do a different animal every day,” Marissa tells me.
    “Who does?”
    “Our steward.”
    “What’s a steward?”
    “Like a maid? Only they come in and tidy up two or three times a day.”
    “Two or three times a