Not So Different

38. Not Missing Much

Sonny realised he had just yawned hugely right into the phone. 'Sorry', he said.

— 'S'okay.'

Jane's voice sounded just as slurred with fatigue as his own. They were both watching an all-night Sick, Sad World marathon, and they were sharing the experience by phone.

Jane's first idea had been that they should share the experience in person, and Sonny had had to explain the facts of life to her again.

'There's just no way my parents are going to agree to you and me spending all night alone together on a couch, at your place, at my place, or anywhere else', he had said.

Jane had protested that they'd only be watching television.

'Right', Sonny had replied, even more flatly than usual (if possible). 'Now convince them of that.' Jane had been silent, and Sonny had continued. 'Even if they believe your intentions, they'll say that it's just too easy to get carried away.'

'It's like they've never met you', Jane said. 'Do you suppose they're speaking from their own experience?'

Sonny had refused to think about that, and the subject had lapsed. So now he was on the couch in his living room, sprawled across some cushions, with one hand clutching a blanket half-covering him and the other cradling the cordless phone, with Jane at the other end of it possibly similarly arranged. She yawned back at him.

The woman on the screen said, 'I didn't mean to hurt him.'

Recognising the story from its original screening, Sonny muttered, 'The knife just slipped … sixty-seven times.'

'What can you say?' came Jane's response. 'Some people are just klutzy.'

Doing this over the phone wasn't the same as being on the same couch, but Sonny found the experience had its own distinctive charm. As the marathon continued his eyelids drooped more and more and as he became less and less aware of anything in his field of vision outside the screen it mattered less and less that Jane wasn't physically present. For that matter, he became less and less aware of what was on the screen, but he could still hear, and he and Jane had already watched nearly all these stories together before and could fill in any blanks. So long as he held on to the phone, Jane's voice was closer than it would have been in real life. He felt surprisingly comfortable as both visual and auditory perception became progressively disordered and disjointed.

Later he wasn't sure whether he'd stayed awake long enough to notice the sunlight leaking back into the room. The sun was definitely up when a full bladder roused him close enough to wakefulness to stagger to the bathroom. After relieving himself he must, in his state of semi-conscious confusion, have drifted back to the couch, because he was there, dozing fitfully, late in the day when he became aware of his family, all dressed up in evening formal wear for the Casino Night which the school had organised on the Princess Fairy luxury liner. They began rousing him to join them, despite his best efforts to burrow into the cushions. Sonny and Jane had initially resisted all efforts (made by Jodie Landon: of course) to sell them tickets to the event, but then Ms Li had made it mandatory. Besides that, the owners of the cruise ship were known by Sonny's father to be looking for a new advertising campaign, and so he was volunteering for the fundraiser as a stealthy opportunity to pitch for the business. Sonny's mother had volunteered to play the part of supportive wife. Quinn, of course, could never have resisted such a social occasion, but she was even more eager because she had somehow managed to get a date with an actual model called Marco. None of this was of interest to Sonny, but it had seemed like just too much effort to weasel out of, what with the prospect of the Sick, Sad World marathon absorbing his attention.

When Sonny's mother tried to get him moving again, he said, 'Just carry me to the car.'

His father said, 'You got too big to be carried to the car a few years ago, champ.'

Sonny groaned in protest, but was enabled to snatch a delicious few more slumberous seconds among the cushions as Quinn agonised over Marco's failure to appear. Sonny was delighted at the thought that Quinn might have been stood up.

'Shut up, Sonny! I have not been stood up.'

'Okay', Sonny said, without removing a cushion from his face. 'My mistake.' He drifted back to the edge of sleep.

When he roused again, Quinn was being cajoled by their mother with the suggestion that Marco might have gone to the dock to meet them there. With that, it was by Sonny's count a nett total of three Morgendorffer-equivalents that got into the car and set out: Jake, Helen, Quinn half-willing, and he himself half-conscious.

Disappointment awaited both half-Morgendorffers at the dock, in the form of the absence of Quinn's date Marco and Sonny's not-a-date Jane. For Quinn, this was agony; for Sonny, it was just life. Jane was probably asleep, which was frankly a better idea than Casino Night—it was where Sonny would have been had fate not pranked him again. Jane's parents would not have woken her for an occasion like this, and as for Trent …! Sonny would just have to find somewhere on the liner where he could take a nap undisturbed. He slouched through a room full of gambling fools, passing a poker table where Ms Li was being distracted from her play by Ms Onepu, whom Sonny would not have taken for the kibitzing type.

She wasn't kibitzing. She was saying, 'Are you sure this ship is safe, Ms Li? We're responsible for the children. I don't think the ship looked safe. We have to think of the children! We're responsible!'

In her way, Onepu was a glass half-empty person, but it wasn't Sonny's way. He steered clear of the poker table only to be waylaid by Mr DeMartino near the roulette table. For some reason he wanted Sonny to take his chips off his hands.

'Excuse me?' Sonny said.

'You know, as a thank you for making me want to kill myself a little less than the processed sausages who call themselves your classmates.'

'Either you kill yourself or you don't, Mr DeMartino. You can't kill yourself a little less.'

While DeMartino was trying to figure that one out, Sonny shook him off and found his way out on deck. With all the action inside the gaming rooms, the deck was almost deserted. He found a comfortable deck chair and stretched out luxuriously. It was good being short.

It was not good to be on a ship with his classmates. They weren't all staying inside. He had just plunged into a contented snooze when he was roused by Kevin Thompson suggesting to Brittany Taylor an initiation into the 'Mile High Club'.

Sonny surfaced in order to say gruffly, 'Don't you mean the "Mile Deep In The Ocean Club"?'

Kevin snarled and clenched his fists but fatigue made Sonny care even less than usual, if possible. He let his eyelids fall on the sight, hearing Brittany dragging Kevin to somewhere more private before he drifted off again.

But Kevin and Brittany had not abandoned their foreordained mission of marring Sonny's life as often as possible. His dream of a fire-breathing cyclops was invaded by the noise of their screaming an alarm. Wait a moment, though—could that be the sound of the cyclops screaming in his dream? Yes, he could get back to that—or he would have, if Onepu had not come out on deck at that moment.

'Sonny!' she squealed. 'Sonny Morgendorffer! Did you hear some of your classmates screaming?' Her voice was too piercing for him to sleep through. He sat up reluctantly.

'I thought I heard something in my dream', he said flatly.

'There it is again!' she said. 'Listen! Do you recognise those voices? Has anybody been out here?'

'I've been asleep most of the time.' He lowered his voice and grumbled, 'As much as people let me', but Onepu's attention wasn't focussed on him.

'I knew this ship wasn't safe! I told Ms Li! We have to think of the children! We're responsible for them! What if some of them have fallen overboard!'

Sonny grunted resentfully. 'If you think somebody has fallen overboard, shouldn't you find the captain and give the alarm?'

'Yes! You're right! Thank you, Sonny! I'm so glad you know what to do!' Her shoes clattered on the deck as she ran off and Sonny sank back wearily into another doze.

The next time, just to top things off, it was his arch-nemesis that broke in on him.

'Sonny, I need your advice.'

Sonny had a sudden distressing flashback to the time when he had asked Quinn for advice. She had said that it was like a fairytale and that he was waking up from an enchanted sleep. With the roles reversed he didn't feel like that at all.

'Okay', he said. 'Who are you, and what have you done with my sister? On second thoughts, I don't care what you've done to my sister. Just go and be somewhere else.'

'But everybody's talking about how I've been stood up!'

'So? Let them.'

'I don't want them to talk about me like that. It upsets me. I do the things I do, I wear the things I wear, I say the things I say, so that people won't talk about me like that.'

'There's your answer. Do the things you do, wear the things you wear, say the things you say. Act as if you're not upset and it doesn't make any difference. Then they'll stop talking about you. It'll be a nine days wonder.'

'Nine days? I can't stand this for nine days!'

Sonny sighed, but before he could say any more they were interrupted by two voices shouting.

'The lifeboat! Where's the lifeboat?'

The second voice was Onepu's. 'I knew this was dangerous! We're responsible for these children! Oh, what's happened? What are we going to do?'

As they heard footsteps clattering towards them Sonny said to Quinn, 'As usual, Fortune smiles on you. There's going to be a huge distraction that will give everybody something else to talk about, so long as you go back to acting the way you normally do.' He looked hard at her. 'Including not being around me.'

Before Quinn could react, Onepu hurried up to them, talking volubly with a man Sonny took to be the captain. 'There!' she said, pointing at Sonny. 'He's been on deck all the time! Haven't you, Sonny? Are you sure you didn't hear anything? The lifeboat's missing and I'm sure I heard some of your classmates calling out. Who's been out on deck with you?'

'Quinn', said Sonny, waving a hand in her direction. 'Before that, you, and before that Brittany and Kevin.'

'Brittany and Kevin? I haven't seen them all night.' Sonny resented her good fortune. Onepu continued. 'Have you seen them, Quinn?'

'No, Ms Onepu, not tonight. Um … there's some … uh … other place I have to be to … do something now.'

'That's a good idea!' said Onepu. 'You ask everybody to find out who saw Brittany and Kevin last and where they went.'

'Right!' said Quinn. 'I'll … go and get everybody talking about that.' She hurried off.

Onepu paused long enough for the man to speak.

'If they've taken that lifeboat, we have to find it! Do you know how much those things cost? I'll get the captain to put the ship on a search pattern.' He hurried off too.

'I thought that was the captain', Sonny said indifferently.

'No', said Onepu, 'that's the owner.'

'Oh.' Sonny looked in the direction the man had gone. 'I think my father might have been looking for him.' Then he collected himself. 'Ms Onepu, shouldn't you find Ms Li and tell her what's happening?' As she dithered, he added, 'I can stay here and keep a lookout on deck if need be.'

'Yes', Onepu said, 'that's a good plan. Thank you, Sonny! It's such a good thing that you're here!'

As soon as she'd gone Sonny took an executive decision that there wasn't a need to keep a lookout on deck, stretched himself out on his deck chair again, and lapsed straight back into a hypnogogic state. A few minutes later he was deep in a dream of Dr Moreau's island. There were near-humans there constructed by alteration of animals and yet strangely recognisable as Sonny's schoolmates: a mandrill-Kevin, a coyote-Upchuck, a panda-Andrea, a sloth-Tiffany, a Quinn somehow composed of gazelle and marmoset.

He was woken so abruptly that for a moment he imagined there were other humans on the island. But it was only his mother, asking whether he'd seen his father. Before Sonny could deny all knowledge, his father answered the question by appearing and the two of them started squabbling about something of no interest to Sonny. Sonny thought about shifting his chair to the other side of the deck, but didn't have the energy. He brought his hand to his face to massage the outside of his eye sockets.

'There he is!' cried Onepu, returning. 'The hero of the hour! Well done, Sonny! Thanks to you those children have been rescued! Mr and Mrs Morgendorffer, you should be very proud of your son. Thanks to his alertness, the alarm was raised in time, and Kevin Thompson and Brittany Taylor have been saved from an untimely watery grave!'

'I hope so much that I'm still asleep and this is only a nightmare', said Sonny under his breath.

'I shudder to think what might have happened had you not been here, Sonny. Mr and Mrs Morgendorffer, as a teacher I take very seriously the responsibilities we as a school assume for the welfare of your precious children. We must always think of the children! I must find Ms Li again so that I can tell her all is well and discuss with her what we can learn from this experience for the benefit of the children in the future.'

When Onepu was gone, Sonny's father asked him who she was.

'That's Ms Onepu', Sonny said. 'She was hired last year to fill the vacancy in the Science department left by Ms Barch's transfer.' Speaking of what might have happened if I had not been around, he thought.

His mother spoke up. 'Don't you remember anything, Jake? She was at that school paintballing trip!'

'Now wait a minute!' But before Sonny's parents could extend their quarrel on to new ground, a loud outburst from forward drowned them out.

'Hey there, Dee-Dee! What do you think you're playing at with him?'

Sonny recognised the voice of the ship's owner as both his parents swivelled their heads in that direction. The next moment Brittany and Kevin came up to him. Kevin looked as if he'd fallen in the water, and Brittany had been splashed as well.

'Sonny!' Brittany said. 'Ms Onepu told us that it's thanks to you that we were rescued!'

'Hey, babe', Kevin said. 'I was with you the whole time. You know you're always safe with me. We'd don't need any brains to look out for us.' He gave Sonny a contemptuous look.

Sonny could see his father preparing to take offence. He heaved himself regretfully from his chair to forestall that. 'I'm sure that in that crisis, Kevin displayed all those egregious personal qualities of the intellect that so mark him off from individuals such as myself. But hadn't we better go and find out what all that fuss is about?' He gestured in the direction of the sounds forward. The owner was clearly quarrelling with two other people: one was a woman with a brassy voice and the other could not be heard clearly but only inferred from the pattern of the exchange. 'Isn't that the owner shouting?' Sonny said. 'There might be something wrong. Could be a job for the QB.'

Sonny's parents, Kevin, and Brittany all trooped forward, with Sonny trailing behind as much as possible. The squabble resolved itself into the three figures of the owner, a woman presumably his wife, and—Mr O'Neill! Then, before Sonny could figure out just what had been going on, Onepu reappeared with Li in tow, fretting shrilly about the effect of this scene on impressionable young minds and about the school's responsibility.

Having seen that there was enough going on to occupy everybody's attention, Sonny slipped away back to his deckchair. He lay there grumbling for a while at the difficulty of getting back to sleep again, but eventually managed a fitful doze on which nobody intruded again until the ship finally returned to the dock.

By the time they disembarked Quinn had caught up on all the gossip and was breathlessly telling both her parents and Sonny the full story of how Kevin and Brittany had somehow managed to launch the lifeboat accidentally so that the ship had to turn round and rescue them. Then she went on to explain to them (regardless of the fact that they'd known most of it before she did) about how the owner had caught Mr O'Neill holding his wife by the waist in a re-enactment of the scene from Titanic, and about how the owner and his wife had had a blazing row about it. Sonny suspected that his parents were as relieved as he was when something distracted her after they reached the dock. She squealed 'Marco!' and darted away from them, towards a dark-haired man standing by a red sports car.

'Quinn!' exclaimed Helen. 'What do you think you're doing? Come on, Jake!' She hustled her husband with her to interfere in their daughter's life.

Sonny sank down on the dock, propping himself against one of the posts in the railing, but before he'd got properly settled his whole family returned to disturb him again. He stumbled groggily after them to the car. On the drive back he gathered hazily from Quinn's delighted babbling that Marco had mistaken the time and place for their date and had made her a deep apology. Apparently he wanted to take her out somewhere special to make it up to her, but Helen and Jake were reluctant to let her out with an older man unchaperoned. Sleep claimed Sonny before he found out any more. Later he had a vague recollection that they were still bickering as he staggered from the car to his bed.

The next day he went out with Jane for pizza. They rehashed the Sick, Sad World marathon. Casino Night was not discussed.

Some dialogue from 'Just Add Water' by Peggy Nicoll