Chapter 18
As soon asAlice and Sylvester depart, I climb up on Jordan’s bunk and untie the brown and white cone-shaped shell hanging from a mesh net.
This could be a trick, I warn myself.
Or there’s a hidden microphone tucked inside.
I untangle it from the net, half expecting a worm or snake to jump out, but there’s only a small slip of paper.
I unfold it to read:Password: Loki
Password to what?
“Jordan, I’m not amused,” I say out loud in case the miscreant has indeed snuck back on board and is secretly recording me. “I don’t care what Alice and Sylvester said, it was dirty of you to work for Stephen and not tell me. You can take your stinking password and shove it.”
I’m going to have to assume my room is bugged and my phone is being monitored.
I scramble in my purse and encounter a lock screen. I type in my code, but it remains locked. Horror dawns on me when I type in the numbers corresponding to L. O. K. I., 5654.
My phone unlocks, and the first thing that pops up is a gallery of pictures of me both on board and off the cruise ship. There’s me going through security and getting hassled about my foil-wrapped vibrator. Another series of shots has me taking pictures for the reunion folks. Jordan photobombs me in some of the pictures, and in other ones, I’m trying to play shuffleboard while wearing a slinky, red dress.
Who took these pictures if it wasn’t Jordan?
Had to be Stephen, but why would he pretend to be a crew member and spy on me himself when he has so many other important things to do?
Oh, right, he too, had two weeks of vacation for our supposed wedding and honeymoon. But he was the one who called off the wedding, and I would have expected him to vacation somewhere else.
I scroll through the pictures. There’s me dancing the waltz with Sven. Jordan and I doing the jitterbug. Jordan talking to me on the top deck under a moonlit sky. Jordan and I disembarking Christmas Day. There are no pictures of us in the cave, thankfully.
But they got us at the Poke Bar sipping red and green shaved ice. There are hundreds of pictures of me at every jewelry store in Oahu and several shots of me, Alice, and Sylvester at the Hula Girl Bar playing shuffleboard.
Someone even followed us around Kauai when we rented mopeds, and oh no! The red dirt T-shirt factory fight was recorded on video. Every messy, muddy bit of it.
Who would be that obsessed with me and Jordan?
There’s me sitting with Joy and Sheri on board the ship. Another set of shots at the spa getting massages. The cakewalk and musical chairs. Me judging the Banning Pilots cheer squad and helping them do their human pyramid. The big guy wearing the red and black disco outfit and a 1970s’ style hat, red and black, over his afro.
All of us hula-hulaing away at the luau at Kona. Joy, Sheri, the big guy, Alice, and Sylvester, me and Jordan, all of us wiggling our hips, followed by a video of the entire reunion crowd singing and dancing to the Banning High School Fight song.
I play it and watch over fifty senior citizens prance and dance, tap their walkers, and wiggle their hips. There’s Sheri and Joy jumping like the cheerleaders they were, and the big guy in the disco outfit shouting into a megaphone.
Fight, fight, fight for ol’ Banning High
Win the victory
We’re gonna win this game
For the red and the black
Best in the west
You know we all do our best, So
On, on, on, on, fight till the end
Honor and glory we must win
So, fight, fight, fight for ol’ Banning High
