Through the Cracks
Alrighty, first things first. The idea for this story came from BellaVision, and she is just as much a part of it as I am, so if every once in a while you could pop in and thank here [if and] when you review this one, that'd be great.
Secondly, because this is a new story, updates might be a bit slow. I'm hoping to update Endless Diamond Sky once a week, and this one once every week or two. When I'm done EDS, this one will get all of the attention for a little bit, and then, like I said, I have another story planned out. Once I publish that one, the same thing will apply; that is to say, this one will get updated a little more often.
Lastly, this is quite a bit... err, I guess you could say darker than EDS, but it actually is what I'm more used to writing, so hopefully it comes out okay.
Tell me how you like it! :D
Chapter One
The life that I knew - it's through, and I'm gonna need you more than ever.
April 10th, 1912
Today is the day that I'm going to start a new life in America. I am leaving behind my dead mother and father in England to spend the rest of my life in America with my uncle Caledon, whom I've only met four times in my entire life, ever. How exciting.
I have not shed a single tear for my parents, not because I wouldn't like to, but because I know it would just make Uncle Cal angry. He wasn't very close with my father – his brother – and the only reason he has me now is because they had no other siblings. If I could have it any other way, believe me I would, but I guess that's just the way it's going to be from now on.
Any minute now, we'll be pulling up to the Southampton docks, where we'll board the RMS Titanic,bound for America. I don't particularly want to go to America, because I've heard that the people there are rude and eat poorly, and they will surely make fun off my accent. Uncle Cal is a shining example of the type of person Americans are supposed to be, which doesn't bode well for them. The only remotely pleasant things about this new chapter of my life, the only reason I'm holding out the slightest ounce of hope, is Uncle Cal's fiancée Rose. I don't know her very well, but from what I've seen thus far, she's in the same boat as me- pardon the pun.
Rose comes from a well-to-do family whom, from what I've seen, absolutely despises her and vice versa. She is seventeen and engaged to my uncle, which means that she and I are doomed to the same fate. At least we'll have each other. After all, Rose is only four years older than me. Hopefully we can become friends.
As we approach the docks, Rose takes my hand in hers and squeezes it in a silent gesture of support.
"Are you excited, Maddie?" she asks me. Before I get the chance to answer, Uncle Cal jumps down her throat as usual.
"Her name is Madeline, Rose, not Maddie. I would appreciate it if you called her that from now on." For someone who is marrying her, he sure treats Rose like dirt.
I try to hide my anger as I say, "It's okay, Uncle Cal. I like being called Maddie. It's what my parents called me," I explain, turning to face Rose as I say this. I thought I made it pretty obvious that that last bit was directed at her, but apparently my uncle didn't get the message.
"Well, it's not the name they gave you," he snaps, just as the car pulls up at the Southampton docks. This is it. We are on our way to start our new lives. For Uncle Cal and Rose's mother, Ruth, the Titanic is truly the ship of dreams- dreams of money, luxury, comfort and eternal satisfaction. For Rose and I, it's like a slave ship- the stuff of nightmares rather than dreams.
Uncle Cal helps first me, then Rose, out of the car. As always, people stare at us. I really can't blame them.
The dock is full of all sorts of people, a lot of them evidently third class passengers. People like us- Rose, Uncle Cal and I- we aren't supposed to care about them. They have nothing to do with us. My heart can't help but break, though, when I think of the enormous fortune that awaits me in Philadelphia, and how I'll be unable to share it with these people who deserve it so much more than I do.
Tearing my eyes away from the poor people in front of me, I look up at the brand new ship that awaits us. I have to admit, Titanic is breathtaking. Rose, however, did not appear to agree.
"It hardly looks bigger than the Mauritania," she says dryly.
"Nonsense," Uncle Cal replies. "It's at least 100 feet longer than the Mauritania, and far more luxurious. You can be blasé about some things, Rose, but not about Titanic."
I choose to keep my comments to myself on this one, not wanting to cause a fight. Things are stressful enough as it is. Uncle Cal continues to rant and rave about the stupid boat, which apparently God himself could not sink- what a lie! It's made of metal. Anything made of metal can sink. Instead of listening to him babble like a mad man, I take in everything that is around me.
Our servants unload our luggage as we make our way towards the ship. Beside us is a little girl sitting on her father's shoulders. She reminds me of myself perhaps six or seven years ago, and the image tugs at my heart. She is so very lucky, I think to myself.
"That's a huge boat, isn't it, Cora?" the father says to the little girl. He has a British accent that I swear sounds just like my father's, and I begin to feel tears welling up behind my eyes. I quickly swallow them down so that no one will see my weakness.
"Daddy," the little girl replies, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, "it's not a boat. It's a ship!"
She is so cute, so innocent. It wasn't such a long time ago that I was like that, too. It just feels like it was.
"Come on, Maddie," Rose says, linking her arm through mine. "We don't want to get lost in this crowd."
Such a statement sounds strangely profound if you're listening with the right mindset. Rose and I are both young, small and confused, not just about this trip but about life in general. Perhaps it is not getting lost in the literal crowd that scares her- after all, everyone's headed to the same place. Maybe she's afraid to dwell too long in what this group of third class passengers represents - excitement, joy, and, most of all, hope – at the risk of being left behind in the only world she's ever known.
As sad as my story is, I cannot imagine how Rose must be feeling. At least Cal is my uncle. He must, in some small way, at least care about me, even if he doesn't exactly love me. He has no such connection to Rose- no biological duty to look after her. No reason to treat her like more than a piece of dirt off the bottom of his shoe. Unfortunately, this lack of obligation is apparently very clear to him, and he has no intentions of becoming an overachiever any time soon.
The Titanic truly is massive. Uncle Cal gives our tickets to someone, and another man directs us to our room. We are staying in some sort of special room with a specific name; I forget what it's called but it's like a suite, only bigger. It has two semi-detached bedrooms for Rose and Uncle Cal, with a shared breakfast area and two other bedrooms for Ruth and I. It also has a sort of living room, although I don't understand why. It is such a waste of money when the third class passengers are sleeping six to a room or something just as ridiculous! They don't even have a bathroom in their room; we have three.
As I walk around what is to be my bedroom, I think of the little girl I'd seen out on the docks. I had been jealous of her because she was with her parents. Sitting down on the bed that was covered in brand new, luxury silk sheets, I wonder where she'll be sleeping tonight. Maybe she's not so lucky after all.
Just as I think that, there's a knock on my door.
"Can I come in, Maddie?" asks a soft, sweet voice that could only belong to one person. "It's Rose."
"Please do," I say, really not wanting to be alone.
Rose opens the door and sits down on the bed next to me. A few stray hairs float about her delicate face, having been blown out of her tight updo by the brisk April wind. Rose is the prettiest person I've ever seen in my life. She has long, amazingly curly red hair, fair skin and big green eyes. She looks very grown up for her seventeen years. Sometimes I wish I looked like her. Some of the girls I went to school with in England were jealous of my long blonde hair, but I never understood why. In my opinion, Rose is far more beautiful than I could ever imagine being.
"So how do you feel about all this, since nobody's bothered to ask you so far?"
I could have said the exact same thing to her, but I wouldn't. For someone so intuitive, Rose isn't very good at figuring out her own life.
"It's alright, I suppose," I lie. "It's not like I really have a choice in the matter anyway."
"I suppose it's not," Rose says. Her voice is completely void of emotion as she speaks, which is something I've noticed about her many times. Just to look at her, Rose seems like an amazingly kind, happy and exuberant type of person, but even one really good conversation will tell you otherwise. In fact, she seems to be standing on the edge of a cliff, about to fall into an eternal canyon of darkness. Maybe I'm the only one who notices because I'm the only one who feels even remotely the same way, or maybe the other do notice but like to pretend they don't. Either way, time and again it seems that people forget that Rose has feelings, too.
We are both silent for a long time. I wonder if she'd thinking the same thing I am- that life, in general, is grossly unfair. It is unfair that we have to spend the rest of our lives with the most selfish man on earth. It is unfair that some people get a whole bedroom and bathroom to themselves while other have to share a cabin with five people they've never met before. It is unfair that parents have to die. It's all unfair, and that's just the way it is.
"Cal and I are going to hang some painting up in my room," Rose explains. "Would you like to help?"
"Alright," I say, preferring to be with Rose than to be alone rather than actually wanting to hang up paintings.
She and I start to leave, but she stops and turns back around, as though remembering something very important.
Laughing, she says, "Maddie, are you going to take that silly hat off any time soon?"
I laugh with her, reaching up to touch the brim of my pale green hat adorned with pink ribbon that matches my dress perfectly. Rose absolutely hates hats, and I can fully understand why. They're a symbol of our social status- a status which Race can't stand. For some reason, though, I've always loved them.
Growing up, my family wasn't quite as well off as Rose and Cal are, but we certainly had money, and my mother always wore hats. Big ones, small ones, white ones, feathered ones... she always had one on her head. I've picked up the habit from her, and now it was a way of preserving the influence she's had on my life. I now own a couple of hats that used to belong to her, and of all her possessions, they are the only ones that still smell just like my mother. As dumb as it sounds, I think of her every time I put one on, and it reminds me that no one is ever really gone once they've loved us and left their mark on our lives.
"I like my silly hat, thank you very much. C'mon, Rose," I say, shutting my bedroom door behind us. "Let's go see about those paintings."
Inside Rose's room, Uncle Cal is already examining the paintings she brought with her from England. Personally, I don't think he has a right to be in the bedroom of a woman who is not his wife. Not that she was sleeping or anything, but still. He was in there even before she was.
"Ah, Madeline, Rose," Uncle Cal declares, spreading his arms out wide. "Just the people I was looking for. Whose paintings are these, again, dear?"
Rose thinks about it for a moment, picking on of them up and looking at it with an approving eye. I could have told him right away- they're done by a Spanish man by the name of Pablo Picasso, one of the most skilled artists I've ever seen.
"Something Picasso," Rose explains, hanging the painting in her hands beside a window. Through the window, the sun is shining, and I can already smell the sea. All of a sudden, I yearn to burst out onto the deck and stay there all day. I feel hot and suffocated in these room- like I need to break free.
"Something Picasso..." Uncle Cal echoed. "He won't amount to a thing."
My God, he's an idiot. He knows absolutely nothing about art. Rose is too shy to respond to his lunacy, but I'm sure not.
"I like them," I say simply. Even a small defiance like that is sometimes enough to tick Uncle Cal off, but I couldn't care less at this point. "They seem... oh, I don't know... magical, almost."
Uncle Cal laughed coldly. "Please, Madeline. You and I both know as well as I that magic doesn't exist, least of all in these... finger paintings."
It's not his words that hurt me- I really couldn't care less what he thinks of the stupid paintings. It's the deeper meaning behind them. Uncle Cal has no sense of wonder or appreciation for the world around him. All he cares about is money and power and getting richer than he already is. He's like a constant force pressing down on me and destroying my spirit.
"I'm with Maddie," Rose says, jumping to my defence immediately. "They're almost like dreams- there's truth but no logic."
Rolling his eyes, Uncle Cal turns away, saying, "Whatever, ladies. I'm off to go find a brandy." Of course.
"Well, that was nice of him," Rose says, half-joking, whole-hearted.
We stood in silence for a few long minutes. The room we were in was all a dark wood- the floors, the walls, the ceiling. It was empty and rather depressing, to be honest. There were windows to let the light in, but even that didn't get far. The deep brown of the walls appeared to suck out every ounce of life that tried to get in. Rose and I were going to spend the next hour or so covering it up with colourful images of the outside world, but we would never really be able to fill the gaping hole where the feeling of home was supposed to be. In a way, that was what our lives were going to be like from now on. On the outside, it would be beautiful and luxurious. Underneath all of that, though, it would be empty, with no source of life. When you look at it like that, you have to ask yourself what is even the point of going on?
"So, Maddie," Rose says, hanging a landscape that I recognize as Monet on the other side of the room, "what do you think of Titanic so far?"
"It's big," I sigh, unable to think of a better word. "Really big."
Rose smiles at me sympathetically, as though she understands how I am feeling. She probably does, after all.
"It is, isn't it?" She sighs and rubs her hands together. "You know what, Maddie? I haven't gotten a chance to really talk to you yet. What do you say we save all this for later and go take a walk on the deck?"
For a moment, I am hesitant. I do very much want to talk to Rose, but I worry that she'll want to talk about things I'd rather avoid. Rose's father died a few years ago, so in a way she understands my situation. Still, I don't want to talk about it- the wounds are too fresh; too raw. On top of that, Rose has enough stuff going on in her life- I don't need her worrying about me. I also don't was to talk about Uncle Cal, America, or the RMS Titanic, because they all just generally make my life more horrible.
I take my chances when I say, "That sounds nice."
Outside, the sun is shining and seagulls are flying overhead. I notice two mean at the bow of the ship, pointing at something far in the distance. One of them has sandy blond hair and blue eyes. I can't help but notice that he is very handsome. Evidently Rose didn't see him, because she would surely have said something if she had.
It's really warm for April, and the deck is full of people. In fact, it's basically a perfect day. Too bad God couldn't spare a bit of that sunshine and put it into my life.
"Maddie," Rose says, linking her arm in mine like she'd done earlier, "I know you must be scared. You've hardly said a word, and that's not like you. I understand completely; in fact, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared myself. But I want you to-"
"I'm not scared," I say, cutting her off. "I've already seen the bad side of life. This is where it starts to get good, isn't it? I'm off on a new and exciting adventure." I can't tell what the smile on my face looks like, but it sure feels fake.
Rose stops walking and gazes at me for a long time. I start to worry that I've upset her. What I'd said was a blatant, outright lie, and it wouldn't surprise me if she knew it. Still, I had to say it. I have to be strong, for Rose's sake. Her journey was going to be difficult enough, and I don't need her thinking she had to look after me as well.
"Okay," she says simply, after a long silence. "I just want you to know that I'm here, if you ever need someone to talk to. I know this must be hard for you, after losing your parents and all..." her voice trails off after she says exactly what I'd been afraid she would.
"Rose, it's okay," I say through my teeth, more to assure myself than anyone else. "Truly, it is."