Captain Jack Sparrow lay in his berth. Fully dressed. Alone. Thank whatever gods I might possibly believe in, he thought, vaguely. He was almost asleep. His mind drifted through events of the past day. His lips curved in a smile. His hand gripped the empty air, imagining the helm of the Pearl beneath it. Memory merged seamlessly into dream as the pirate drifted.
He stood at the helm of his world, body swaying with the rhythm of the waves, the tattered strands of his long brown hair blowing in the wind. His brown eyes sparkled madly as he scanned the horizon. Just keep a straight face; no sense gettin' her more worked up than she already is, he thought. It was good advice, but Jack had to struggle not to grin each time he glanced at the woman standing by his side.
Anamaria stood with her arms crossed over her chest, her jaw thrust out pugnaciously. She narrowed her eyes as she watched the new sailor nimbly descending the shrouds. Anamaria's annoyance was palpable. Jack cast his eyes sideways at her from under lowered lashes, smirked surreptitiously, and returned his gaze to the horizon.
The new lad trotted across the deck, came up short in front of Anamaria, saluted smartly. "Tops'l reefed, Anamaria, sir !" Jack's lips twitched. The boy had spent the past forty-five minutes aloft, laboring heroically to reef the topsail all by his lonesome, a job normally requiring half a dozen men. The fact that it was a clear, sunny day with no sign of foul weather only made the situation more hilarious, in Jack's eyes. There was no need to reef the topsail, a fact that Anamaria knew full well.
Anamaria stood rigid, glaring at a spot
roughly four inches above the young sailor's head. Jack squinted,
trying to make out what she saw there to interest her so. The sailor,
named Edward but promptly nicknamed Eddy by the crew, maintained an
equally rigid stance. He stood at attention, waiting for his salute
to be returned. Commodore Norrington could not have shown better
military form. Jack's eyes went from Anamaria to Eddy, and back
again, his shoulders weaving slightly as his concentration shifted
from one to the other. Neither was going to submit, he saw. The
battle of wills amused him. Especially seein' as the boy doesn't
even know there's a battle goin' on. Jack had no difficulty
picturing the two members of his crew standing frozen in this tableau
for hours. He stifled a laugh and decided to break the stalemate.
What will she order him to do next ? With effort, he
maintained a fairly straight face as he returned the salute, sidling
back from the helm and bowing slightly as he did so.
Annoyance
hung in a thick cloud around Anamaria, raising the hairs on the back
of Jack's neck and causing him to flinch aside even as his body shook
with suppressed mirth.
"Shift the ballast," she gritted tightly.
Eddy sprang to attention again immediately, his fresh young face glowing with pure joy at the possibility of obeying yet another pointless order. "Ay, ay, sir !" He spun smartly on his heel and moments later disappeared into the hold of the ship.
"Anamaria, love," Jack began, sliding away from the woman slightly and raising one hand in a gesture designed to placate. Without his noticing it, his feet moved to a defensive stance. "I don't mean to be interruptin' yer work, but ye do know that once young Eddy succeeds in shiftin' the ballast, the Pearl will be heeled over quite a bit, right ?" He listed to one side, his body unconsciously illustrating his words. "Not that that'd be a problem," he added hastily, as her eyes met his.
"When he's done, I'll have him shift it back," she retorted.
Jack cocked his head, listening. "Wot's that noise -" he began, puzzled, then realized. It was the sound of Anamaria's teeth grinding together. "Ah. Never mind." He returned his gaze to the horizon, chuckling to himself at the thought of Anamaria's ongoing struggle to acclimate to the new crew member.
Jack's mind, dreaming, carried him effortlessly back to Tortuga, where they had found the young sailor. Eddy was an orphan, he'd told them, son of a prostitute who had died of consumption. Not all that improbable, really. But Eddy's mum had actually secretly been some sort of noblewoman. Countess ? Baroness ? The details weren't clear. She had been kidnapped from her palatial home by a pirate, who had promptly fallen in love with her, then been killed; hit by a cannonball. Convenient, thought Jack. Eddy was the result of the star-crossed love affair between baroness and pirate.
Anamaria had been incensed by the boy's story. "If yer goin' to lie, at least make it convincing," she had grouched to Mr. Cotton.
"Love hurts," responded Mr. Cotton's parrot, incongruously. Anamaria had taken that as agreement. The rest of the sailors, used to dealing with lunatics and liars, had accepted the boy's story at face value. For one thing, he seemed too open and innocent to deliberately lie. And if his harmless story was a lie, so what ? If Eddy wanted to hide his past, the crew of the Pearl was not about to judge.
Eddy had endeared himself to the entire crew with his cheerful naivete. He was a surprisingly good sailor, a hard worker, and clearly adored the Black Pearl as much as the rest of them did. Within a week, they had accepted him as one of their own. All except Anamaria.
The pirate captain's mouth quirked into yet another smile as he dreamed, picturing Anamaria. Eddy's sincerity elicited her distrust. She was offended by his competence. His insistance on calling her 'sir' irked her beyond all reason. His adoration for the entire crew, bordering on worship, disgusted her even more than if he had attempted a pass at her. If the boy had made a pass at Anamaria, she would have simply decked him then and there, and the matter would have been settled a week ago.
Eddy was too crazy or too naive to even contemplate it, though, which had led to Anamaria's attempts to break the boy, a battle that had begun early that morning with her ordering Eddy to clean the head. Jack drifted in his berth, dreaming, remembering. Eddy had cleaned the head with an enthusiasm that enraged her, then swabbed the deck. The entire deck, by himself. Jack stirred in his berth, laughed, almost inaudibly.
She'll give up on hatin' him long before he'll give up on carryin' out her orders, Jack thought. He knew that Anamaria would come around soon. The rest of the crew had it right; young Eddy might be a lunatic, but he was their lunatic. The pirate's hand fell open on the rough blanket as he sank deeper into sleep, beyond the reach of memories or dreams.
Rumble.
"You sittin' out here again ?" The boy regarded her from atop his skateboard as he rumbled by.
He was ok, Lauren decided. "Yeah, locked my key in the house," she replied as he turned and rumbled back.
"That sucks. Can you break in through a window, maybe ?"
"Nah, my mom would kill me." He has nice-looking brown eyes. Long eyelashes. He was a lot shorter than her, though.
"Tough luck." The boy flipped his skateboard off the ground with his foot, propped it against his leg. They looked at one another awkwardly for a moment.
"My name's Lauren," she offered.
"Uh, hi. I'm Leonard. Leonard Nichols." He hesitated. "Wanna walk over to Pizza Hut, get a coke ? Since you're stuck out here anyway," he added, diffidently.
She wavered for a moment. "Yeah, why not."
"You mind ?" he asked, stashing the skateboard in the bushes beside the stoop. Lauren shook her head. They walked up the street. Shari and one of her friends were hanging out by the mailboxes.
"Uh, let's cross here," she suggested, trying to sound casual. They crossed the street, passing by the girls without looking in their direction. The jeers started after they had passed by.
"What a freak."
"Yeah, cute couple."
"Just ignore them," said Leonard.
"I hate them," Lauren gritted. "Why can't people leave you alone ? I mean, the popular girls like Shari hate me because they think I'm a goth. And you know what ? The gothic chicks hate me and call me a wannabe."
"Yeah, I know, kinda like all the Hispanic kids think I should speak Spanish, and then when they find out I don't, it's like they think I'm some kind of fake or something."
"What, you're not Hispanic ?" You look Hispanic, she thought. But not with a name like Leonard Nichols, I guess.
"My dad was, so yeah, I am, I guess. But he and my mom broke up when I was a baby. I never see him. My step dad is, like, Irish or something. It's no big deal. Some people are just prejudiced, you know ?"
"Yeah. That's so stupid. That's one of the things I hate about school." She looked at him sidelong, from under her bangs. "My parents divorced last year. That's why my mom and I moved here."
"That's too bad... so, you hate school and you're bad at math," he grinned, changing the subject.
"I am not bad at math, well, much," she denied. "I'm good in English, though."
"I hate English !" announced Leonard. "With math, there's like, one right answer. It's either right or wrong. With writing, it's so dumb, I mean, look at the English language, the word 'there' has three different meanings, and spellings ! How stupid is that ?"
They had reached Pizza Hut. Leonard held the door for her. Lauren walked through, feeling clumsy. They ordered cokes, got the drinks, sat down at a booth. "I like English," Lauren ventured. "I love writing. I have some stories posted on line, on this fan fiction web site." Oh, that was great, just great. Why not just have dork tattooed on my forehead ?
"Hey, that's cool," Leonard responded. He seemed sincere. "Dumb question, uh, what's a fan fiction ?"
"It's when you take a movie, and write your own story about it, you know, based on the characters. Or people write them based on TV or books," she added.
"So what do you write about ?" he asked.
"It's stupid, really." What if he wants to read my stuff ? I would die. It was one thing to have complete strangers read her stories, but not someone she knew.
"No, really, what ? Our computer at home sucks," he added, "I can never get on line, the thing is so slow."
Well, that's a relief. "Um, you know 'Pirates of the Caribbean' ?"
"Yeah, that was a good movie. I actually saw it twice."
"I've seen it four times," she said, looking to see if he thought that was weird. He didn't look as though he was creeped out. "I write stories about what happens after the movie, new adventures for them, you know ? Some people write these dorky stories about how the Captain, you know, Jack Sparrow, like, falls in love with them. It's really dumb," she trailed off.
"Yeah, like girls thinking they are gonna marry Johnny Depp," Leonard responded. "My older sister is like that. As though some famous Hollywood actor is gonna magically appear in the McDonald's drive through and ask a sixteen year old girl working there to marry him," he snorted. "So, what do you put in your stories ?" he asked.
"Well, don't laugh, ok ?" He shook his head, looking at her intently. "I just wrote one about this orphan boy. He's really poor and all, but he's not what he seems, and he joins the crew of the Black Pearl. Then he has all these adventures." Leonard didn't laugh. He actually looked interested. "I just put up chapter 3 last night. The story already got 14 reviews," she said happily.
