Chapter 4
The next few days passed in much the same way. Endless hours of hiding my books from Raynee, relaxing in the sun, and dragging the twins away from the sweet factory next to the book store. The boat really was like some kind of mall and hotel all rolled into one. I talked to Kate on MSN every night after dinner, exchanging news -- thank goodness that the boat had wireless Internet. I stayed up late and slept in every day, as though it were still summer. I knew I was going to pay for it when we arrived in Canada and I began school again, but I didn't care. Kit was able to convince me to come with her and spy on Raynee and Josh on some afternoons. These afternoons were spent peeking at the two of them from behind plants and newspapers. And before I knew it, there were only two days left on the cruise.
"Paisley," said Dad when I emerged, blinking, into the bright sunlight on the top deck, as I did every morning. He was sitting with his feet up on a patio table, reading a book. He loved long books, but he was an extremely slow reader; he'd been reading the same book for almost two weeks, every day for several hours, and he still wasn't finished it.
I sat down beside him. "Yeah?"
"The twins are with Raynee and that boy -- Josh? -- at the pool," he explained, "but..."
"But Raynee won't be paying too much attention to the twins," I finished for him, standing up again. "I'll go and keep an eye on them."
"That'd be great," said Dad, breathing a sigh of relief.
The pool was a zoo. I managed to find Raynee, immersed in a conversation with Josh, after a solid five minutes of searching.
"Raynee," I said, "where are the twins?"
"Swimming," she said vaguely, waving in the general direction of the pool.
"I can't find them."
"Keep looking. They're over there somewhere," she assured me, turning back to Josh.
I sighed. For an older, 'responsible' sister, Raynee sure was terrible at looking after kids. I spun on my heel and walked around the pool for a good ten minutes, scrutinizing every kid that I saw. There were no strawberry-blond heads in sight, so I returned to Raynee. "They aren't here," I reported.
"Of course they are," she said, without looking away from Josh. "You aren't looking properly, that's all."
I gritted my teeth. "Raynee, I've been looking for them for ten minutes. You've just been sitting here talking to Josh. Help me find the twins!"
Raynee smiled and batted her eyelashes at Josh. "Would you excuse me for just one minute?" she asked sweetly. But when she turned to me, her bright blue eyes were spitting fire. "Leave me alone," she hissed. I know Kit's put you up to this, trying to keep me away from Josh --"
"What?" My mouth fell open. "How can you --"
"Don't think I haven't noticed the two of you, sneaking around behind my back, spying on us," she continued. "I can't believe that you two would do this to me -- every time I really like a guy, you two have to ruin it!"
"How can you think that -- Raynee, the twins are missing!"
Raynee groaned. "Puh-lease," she snapped. "They're perfectly fine. Probably having an underwater race or something."
"Listen to me, Raynee! The twins aren't anywhere around the pool! Where did you last see them?"
"I don't know, okay?" exploded Raynee. "Now leave me alone!"
I couldn't believe her. Our brothers were missing, and all she cared about was stupid Josh and her stupid, bright red hair with its stupid, perfect curls. She ran her fingers through those curls as she turned back to Josh. I raced around the boat, looking for the twins, asking everybody I saw if they'd seen them. Raynee shouldn't be allowed to supervise the twins. Big sisters were supposed to keep little brothers out of trouble, and at least care when they were in trouble!
An employee with a cart of toilet paper and soap told me that she'd seen the twins running downstairs several minutes ago. I frowned; this was the lowest deck open to passengers. Unless...
And then it hit me. Something that only the twins would come up with. I thanked the lady and ran down two flights of stairs to where the cars were parked all in rows. This was the closest that people on board could get to the water. God only knew how the twins had gotten down here. God only knew how I got down there. There were big circles cut out of the wall, no glass, about twenty feet from the surface of the water. I raced along the rows of cars until I heard their voices. It was hard to follow their voices, given that the surfaces surrounding me were coated in cement, with any noises bouncing off, echoing around me. It sounded like twenty or so people were all running along beside me, their flip-flops flapping about as they ran, splashing through little puddles on the cement-coated floor. Finally, I saw them.
"Chase! Jadin!" I cried. They were poised by a porthole, Jadin peeking out at the rolling blue waves as Chase tied a thick rope around a cement pillar. Chase looked up and grinned at me.
"Hi, Pais," he smiled. "Will you help me tie this knot? I don't want it to come undone."
"What are you planning to do with it?" I asked, praying that I was mistaken.
"Well, the pool was full, so we found a new pool!" said Jadin excitedly. "Chase is going to tie the rope around me, and I'll jump into the ocean. Then he'll pull me out and he'll take a turn!"
"Oh, no, you don't," I said, grabbing Chase's arm as he started to take one end of the rope towards his brother. "That's very dangerous! Which one of you came up with this?" I looked from one to the other.
"Chase," said Jadin.
"Jadin," said Chase.
I shook my head, grabbed Jadin's wrist in my other hand, and led the two of them back up to the top deck.
"Having fun?" asked Dad, glancing up from his book. He noticed the expression on my face. "What's wrong?" He was alarmed now. He closed his book without putting the bookmark in. Dad placed the book on the table and brought his feet back to the deck.
"These two," I said grimly, "were about to jump off of the boat when I caught up to them."
Dad's face turned that colour that it only did when he was mad and scared and confused all at the same time. "Wh-wh-what?" he spluttered, as if he hadn't heard me the first time. His head snapped around to look at the boys. "What were you two thinking?" And he began his lecture. "You could die doing that. You --"
"But we thought of that," cut in Jadin, as Chase nodded eagerly. "We had a rope."
"We weren't going to jump in at the same time," explained Chase, as though talking to a six-year-old. "How would we have gotten back onto the boat?"
Dad sighed. "Paisley, got tell Raynee I need to speak with her -- now. If she's with Josh, get Kit to help you. She should be close by, behind a plant or something." He sat the boys down and continued his lecture as I returned to the pool. Raynee was still sitting there, chatting animatedly with Josh. She saw me as I approached, but only rolled her eyes at Josh. I knew that she was telling him something about how annoying I was, and blah, blah, blah. Josh laughed. Yes, I'd been right. I walked right up to her and opened my mouth to speak -- and Raynee dumped her diet soda all over me.
"Oops," she said, sugar-sweet.
I glared at her. "Dad wants to talk to you," I said, grabbing a napkin and trying to blot some of the diet Coke off of my white tank top.
"I'm busy," said Raynee, turning back to Josh.
"Doing what?"
"Go away, Paisley."
"Dad wants to talk to you," I said.
"Go away!"
"Dad wants to talk to you," I repeated, attempting the broken-record technique. After a minute or so of this, she whipped her head around to glare at me.
"Shut up, Paisley," she whispered furiously. "Go and find the twins. I don't know where they are."
"That's why Dad wants to talk to you," I told her. "The twins were going to jump off the boat because the pool was too crowded. I don't think you did a very good job of taking care of them. You were too busy talking to your precious Josh." I spoke his name spitefully. Raynee threw one anxious glance at Josh, and then she did the one thing she'd never done to me. Ever.
She slapped me.
And then, without even a second glance, she turned back to Josh and continued whatever story she'd been telling him before I arrived.
I stared at her, my cheek stinging, vaguely aware of Kit's ice-blue eyes staring at me from behind a potted plant. I'd suddenly become an ice statue. I stood there in shock for a few minutes. Raynee's sparkling blue eyes never strayed from Josh; Kit's eyes stayed on me the whole time. After a few minutes, I felt Kit's hand close around my wrist and tug gently. I willed my legs to move; they refused. Finally, Kit managed to drag me away, to the elevator, back to our cabin. Kit went to tell Dad what had happened. I sat numbly on my bed, waiting for her to return. As I sat there, my shock finally passed, only to be replaced with a wave of hot anger.
How could Raynee do that to me?
I stood up and stalked across the cabin to Raynee's bed. I flung open the suitcase beside her bed and pulled out some clothes. A shirt was flung onto the bed, followed by a dress, then a pair of shorts... Soon enough, the room was covered with Raynee's clothes. Next, I walked stiffly into the bathroom and emptied all of her eyeshadows onto the cold tile floor, carefully avoiding Kit's things, and my own. I grabbed the six bottles of perfume that she had brought with her and returned to the main room, spraying all six bottles -- nearly full, expensive perfumes, they were -- all over her things. I went back to the bathroom and put the plug down in the sink. Then I emptied all of Raynee's shampoos and conditioners and face wash and soaps into the sink. It all stayed there, all mixed together. I left the bathroom and padded over to her bedside table, pulling out her iPod and laptop. I snatched her hair straightener from her suitcase as I went back to my bed, depositing the things in my own drawer and then returning to hers. And then I pulled out the greatest treasure I'd found yet.
Raynee's diary.
It crossed my mind how evil I was being. But then, as Kit always said, What are little sisters for?
The pink pages were full of girly X's and O's and hearts and "Mrs Spencer Norris" and "Mrs Robert Gallaghy" and, from the past couple of days, "Mrs Josh Telson."
Just as I put the point of Raynee's beautiful, pink fountain pen to the pretty pink paper, the door swung open and Kit burst in. She sneezed from the overwhelming smell of perfume, then looked around the room in awe.
"Jillian Jiggs, Jillian Jiggs," she recited dryly, then cracked up laughing. Regaining her self-control, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. "Seriously, Pais, what happened in here? It looks like a bomb went off." Her eyes fell upon the diary sitting open in my lap. "Is that Raynee's diary? Where'd you find it? I've been looking for it for ever!"
"The drawer," I said, pointing.
Kit groaned. "Of course! The most obvious place in the world. So obvious that you think, no, she'd never put it there, she knows that I'd find it there..." She sighed. "So, what happened in here?" she asked again.
"I was mad."
"She's gonna be pissed."
"I don't care."
Kit put a hand on my shoulder. "I'll miss you," she said solemnly. "But seriously, I'd be scared, if I were you. You'll need to protect your stuff. And, uh, sleep with one eye open. You never know what she'll try." She grinned. "Well, I'm going to go and distract her if she shows up. Keep up the good work!" She gave me a thumbs-up and disappeared out the door.
The door clicked shut behind her, and my hand shook as I wrote three little word on the next blank page of Raynee's precious pink diary, three little words in my neat, unmistakable, Disney-esque printing, three little words that described exactly what I was feeling.
I. Hate. You.
***
Author's Note: A little bit of a wait, but that was a pretty long chapter, by my standards. :P So Paisley's kinda angry, I suppose... Raynee's going to be soooo mad!!! Thanks to HPobsessssssed7 for reviewing! I'm hoping that more of my Mudblood readers will come to Paisley now... :) Yeah, so you're right, HPobsessssssed7 -- I do kinda have a thing for killing off one or both parents. I kinda decided that there were too many people in Paisley's family, so I decided that her mom died. I'm so nice, right? And everybody in this family has really unique names, or at least I think so. Lane's from a different fanfic I read, can't remember which one, I've read so many! If I have a little girl I want to name her Lane! Raynee's from a Sim (just like Elle, haha!). I wanna name a kid Raynee, too... Paisley's this adorable little eight-year-old girl I met at my dad's soccer practice a few weekends ago. She is sooooo cute! I want to name a girl that, too. (Wow, I have a lot of girls' names picked out!) And Kit's from "Failure to Launch." And Jadin's a four-year-old boy I met in Africa last March. And Chase is just a cute name! So apparently I'm having a lot of kids, if I want to use all these names. I have others, too... Mostly girls' names, but the boys have a bunch, too. Just not as unusual. For guys I have: *Clears throat importantly* Jadin. Chase. Logan. Jonathan. Jordan. Matthew. For girls I have: *Clears throat again* Briannah, Lane, Makenna, Paisley, Veralidaine (Daine), Summer, Autumn, Kit, Mikayla, Raynee, Tazmine, Cale, Elle, Hayden, Taylor, Juliana, Joelle, Stacey, Lilianna, Ashley, Kate, Lily. Apparently I'm going to be a busy mom!