Chapter 9: SARINA - Bottomless Pits and Mushy Brains

I couldn't believe her. I mean Tory is my friend and all, but sometimes she lacks what we call common sense. My brain was in panic mode.

"Tory! Can you hear me?" I screamed practically busting my lungs. The bottomless black pit gave no answer.

"Jack! Will! Stinky Pirate! Anyone! HELP" I yelled frantically. Momentarily all of the above came dashing towards me; skittering to a halt in front of the hole's edges.

"Quit yer hollerin' girl." growled Jack, obviously annoyed. "What's yer golden 'aired friend got 'erself into now?"

"Well you see, despite the fact that I told her it was stupid, and she knew it was stupid, and it looked, smelled and felt stupid; Tory ignored all of that and jumped down that pit," I said quickly. "And I'm really worried something happened to her. I've been calling her and she hasn't answered."

Will's face grew grave. I know, I think it's funny when Tory falls over things, or walks into something or trips, but I didn't want her to actually be hurt.

"Sarina," said Will softly, "That's where we keep the extra cannon balls. For all we know she could be crushed."

"No, it's not ye nemotoad!" hollered Jack through uncontrollable laughter. "Tha's where we keep the extra stash of food! Now quit yer blubberin'"

"But Tory-" started Will.

"We ain't ever goin' get 'er out alive." said a Stinky Pirate.

"Gents," said Jack smoothly, "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?"

"Savvy." we all muttered glumly.

"Urgh." Tory moaned as Jack carefully tied a piece of linen to bind Tory's sprained wrist. "It feels like I've been pounded by an insane monkey wearing a golden lampshade over its head."

"Yer lucky girl. That this," Jack said gesturing to the wrist, "is all ye hurt on yer pretty lil' self."

Jack had been amazing in the last hour. Somehow he had gotten Tory's attention. She was only slightly conscious, but he persuaded her to hold onto a rope. I heard him mutter something to her about the rope being made from his back hair. Will saw my disgusted expression and explained to me that Jack was trying to give her something to think about as she was being pulled up so she wouldn't black out again (ancient pirate technique). Once laid on the table in Jack's quarters, he took Stinky Pirate #1's shoe and passed it under Tory's nose. This revived her immediately. Then he rubbed some sort of sea salt salve on Tory's wrist to reduce swelling. I never would have thought it but Jack could have easily given up piracy to become a doctor.

We sat down at the shining wooden table. The mood was considerably heavier than last night's food fight dinner. It was hard to believe that so much had happened from between then and now. I sat with Will on one side and Tory on the other. Next to Tory sat Ellie and then Luc. Jack was in his study reading over the translations Tory and I had written of the book. I don't know how he could find it interesting though. From what I could tell, it was just some stupid story about canned peaches and a dark lord who would stop at nothing to gain world dominance and all the riches in the world . Sounds a lot like one of those sleazy romance novels if you ask me. Wonder why Jack thought it was so important.

Tonight we were served soup, not the tar like kind though, because we had used it all up while patching the book together. We all sat in silence sipping our soup until Ellie broke out-

"Something's smelly." Everyone looked at Tory.

"What?" she asked.

"Um, Tory? I don't know if you remember this but that pit you fell into..." I said slowly.

" ...was full of seastinkers." finished Will.

"Oh."

We all burst into laughter. I looked over at Luc and noticed his amazing smile. How can someone live for so long with no toothpaste or modern orthodontics and still have such a hot mouth? I saw Tory staring in awe at him too. She shot me a dirty look, so I quickly turned away and resumed my horribly interesting (NOT!) conversation with Will. He was trying to hold my attention by giving me a blow by blow account on every type of sword he had ever blacksmithed (w/e) in his life. It's quite a challenge educating someone who has a short attention span in this field.

"Sarina?" Will said softly breaking away from his monotonous narrating voice, "Are you even paying attention?"

Immediately I broke out of my daydream (LUC!) and tore my eyes away from the object of interest (LUC!) and brought them back into focus on Mr.- Should-Have-Been-a-Teacher-Voice- Man (Not LUC!).

"What? Oh, um, yeah." I said sheepishly.

"Oh, alright." Will said sounding kind of hurt before he started his droning. Again.

"OH MY FRICKEN WORD!" Tory said almost bursting with excitement (she's gotten into that habit of saying 'Oh my Word' from one of her friends) .

"Did you see how hot Luc was tonight?"

"I know. And what about all of the hot looks he was giving me?"

"Um. No. He was giving those hot looks to me!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"YES!" Tory grew more insistent.

"NO- okay, Tory, this is stupid. We're not normally the prissy girls you see in that hallway at our school."

"Ugh yes. The dreaded laffy taffies and seventh grade barbies. But you're right. It wasn't worth fighting for. He's mine."

"Tory!" I yelled raising my hand.

"Ok just kidding." I lowered my arm. "Sort of."

SMACK!!!

The next morning Tory and I washed our faces and hands in silence before going to breakfast. I knocked glumly on Jack's cabin door.

"Come in, girls." he hollered from inside. We stepped in solemnly and took our seats. The atmosphere was somewhat silent and uncomfortable.

"What's wrong, girls? Yer quiet'er than the dead." Jack grumbled looking concerned at Tory.

"Yes. I was wondering that also." said Will. "What happened to your eye?" He asked leaning closer to me.

"Oh. My eye. Well it's BLACK because Tory punched me."

"You started it." Tory grumbled from across the table.

"No!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"YE-" As usual Tory was cut off.

"Girls, girls, girls, why are ye fighting?" Jack inquired.

In unison we looked over at Luc who was silently eating his quail egg.

"What?" Jack said coming into realization that Tory and I had our eyes glued on him. "Uh oh. I see ." he comprehended. Will looked at him with understanding.

"What?" asked Luc through a mouthful of toast.

"Girls, now don' let non of this rubbish get in the way of yer translations. Savvy?"

"Savvy." Tory and I grumbled.

"What?" asked Luc again, completely oblivious to the situation.

"Jus' do yer self a favor," said Jack, "nod yer head and say yes."

After a hard day of translating Latin, conjugating verbs (Imperfect, perfect, present, infinitive, passive etc.) and Romanafiying our little measly minds, we were stressed. The fact that we had to do it all in silence considering our little "disagreement" also contributed to this over stressing-ness. (A/N: I know, bad vocab, but my brain kind of turned to mush on the account of all of those standardized tests). Whenever anyone talked to either me or Tory we ended up lashing out at them because of the stress.

So to make a long story short Tory and I were stressed. Finally at the end of our day we were dismissed to go back to our rooms and get ready for dinner, not that we had anything nice to change into or anything. We trudged back to our cubical or room or imprisonment or whatever and sat on the floor avoiding each other's eye contact. I figured I might as well do something useful like yoga. Suddenly a sharp knock interrupted my meditation.

"Come in." Tory unenthusiastically said.

It was Jack. Tory immediately jumped up from her sprawling-on-the- floor-position. I hopped out of my meditative pose and scrambled to stand up.

"Um, girls," said Jack tentatively." I wanted to point out that the two of yeh have been tense then a rabbit foot on a spring bored and , uh, I wanted ter loosen up the mood with a li'l, um party."

Tory and I shared shocked faces. Jack, seeing this, continued on.

"Nothin' too fancy mind ye. Just celebration to lighten yeh up again. Of course, I will expect you to change out of those ratty old cabin boy garments though."

"But we don't have any other clothes." said Tory.

"Oh I would be so sure of that, Tory." Jack said almost mockingly. "I'll expect you at my quarters in abou' oh, 20 minutes. Ta!" He called tipping his hat as he left the room.

"Where are we going to find another set of clothes?" Tory inquired, speaking to me in a non-argue mental tone for the first time all day.

"Well, Jack claimed that there were more clothes for us around here somewhere." I answered. "Let's check our dresser."

Sure enough as Tory and I peeked over the edge of the top draw we discovered tons and tons and tones of clothes. So naturally, being ourselves, we yanked all of the clothes out of the drawer and threw them into the air yelling "It's raining clothes!! Bwhahahahahaha!!"

After we had calmed down a little I looked over at Tory.

"Can you believe we have been wearing these stupid preppie clothes for so long when there was an entire store inside of our wardrobe?" I said disbelievingly.

"Yeah. Now all we have to do is figure out what to wear!" Tory said smiling at the thought of changing out of her grimy collared shirt and khaki pants.

Now would be a good time to explain that neither Tory nor I are big clothes people. We will get dressed up on occasions and we both like to look good, but we are by no means clothes fanatics. For example if someone walked up to either of us an said "Have you like totally seen the new V- neck sweaters at Aeropostal?" Tory would probably say "Aero who?" and my reaction would most likely be to go on a rant about how name brands stamp their names on all their products as to make customers walking advertisements. Anyways these clothes excited us. They had everything from togas (horror of horrors) to British soldiers' uniforms. After much contemplation, Tory decided to wear a pair of dark green slacks with somewhat of a sheet-like halter top. She had also found an elaborately beaded belt that she had tied around her waist. I, on the other hand chose a long flowy skirt and a blue Chinese silk shirt with a high collar. We both attempted to wash our faces and tame our hair. Our end result, from what we could tell by our reflections in the rust tin pan on the wall, was quite good.

Pleased with our outfits and with our re-united friendship, we happily marched to Jack's quarters and knocked on the door.

Jack answered the door quite courteously wearing the same outfit he always wore, but cleaner. Also, we could tell that he had curled up the ends of his moustache.

"So girls, found something to wear?" he smirked.

"Where did all of those clothes come from?" Tory asked as we stepped inside.

"Let's just say that you're not the first victims we've held captive." said Jack.

As we took a moment to observe our surroundings we realized what a huge change the dining room had overcome. All of Jacks chairs and lounging thingys were pushed to the sides of the room and the large table which had been pushed into a corner, was creaking under the enormous weight of many different kinds of food. Will and Luke stood chatting in a corner. They had both washed up and I must say that they both (especially Luke) looked very hot. We started out by dancing to a fief and fiddle that the Stinkies (as I called the other pirates) played. Will and Luc were very interested in learning the moves that Tory and I could teach them, though they gave up after a while. By the time we were all tired Jack appeared from the darkness of a corner with five large silver goblets. He handed one to each of us and toasted to a safe mission and the recovery of the lost book.

"Drink up, me Hearties!" he roared in a crazed rendition of "A Pirates Life For Me". Tory and I gulped down the drink and immediately jumped back on the dance floor to teach Jack the Hobbit Drinking Song (Ho ho ho, to the bottle I go...etc) .

Then all of a sudden I began to feel woozy and I stumbled to the chairs at the edge of the room as I saw Tory doing the same. My vision got all blurry and a heard someone calling to me.

"Are you alright?" asked the disembodied voice.

"Yes.... I think." I answered.

"Luc" I thought dreamily. That is all I remember.

When I woke up I was laying on a cot. I looked around and did not recognize the setting. I rolled over and saw Tory sitting on a cot next to me yawning and rubbing her eyes.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"I dunno," her voice slurred with sleepiness" but I have a killer headache."

"Yeah. Me too." I said sitting up and cringing at the sharp pain at the back of my head."

"What happened last night? I remember someone talking to me and then I think a kiss." said Tory.

"That's strange. So do I." I replied.

"Luc." we both said dazedly in unison.

"Wait a second." said Tory snapping out of a daydream. "I kissed Luc not you."

"Um, no way, I did. I think I know who I kissed." I retorted.

"Yeah but so would I." said Tory starting to get angry. "I kissed Luc."

"No, I did!"

"No."

"YES!"

"NO!"

"Yes."

"No!"

Suddenly the door of our room burst opened and Jack and Will strode in.

"Ah, girls, glad to see you're feeling better." said Jack.

"Where are we?" asked Tory again.

"You're in my quarters." said Will.

I looked around and noticed that there were several maps hanging on the walls, a hammock piled with blankets hanging in one corner and a bookshelf with several tattered books in the other.

Jack and Will sat down on two chairs in between Tory and my cots.

"What exactly happened last night?" I asked "Why did we blank out like that?"

"Well," started Will hesitantly, "Jack saw how stressed you were and wanted to make you relax with a Bloody Mermaid."

"Um, ewwww. I know I fainted and everything but I don't remember any Bloody Half fish, half woman on board this ship."

"No ye see Tory, a Bloody Mermaid is, er, a drink-" said Jack

"With rum," finished Will "Lots of rum."

"Yeh see I didn't think it would take such an effect on yer pretty li'l heads, but I guess yev' never had any pirate's drink before. Ye two were knocked out like a piranha in an appleseed."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"Let's just leave it at you were knocked out." said Will quickly.

"Okay whatever. " Tory impatiently said "Now that you're here you can tell us who kissed Luc last night."

Jack and Will exchanged looks of surprise.

"Em girls, neither of you kissed Luc." whispered Jack.

"What?!?!!?" yelled Tory and I in unison (a/n: HAHA unison what a weird word.)

"I kissed yeh." said Jack directing his gaze at Tory.

"And, Sarina, I kissed you." Will said quietly almost sounding guilty.

All of a sudden it went completely silent. Then Tory and I slowly turned to each other and started screaming in unison.

Authors note: Hi! Okay I hope you liked this chapter. It is very long so therefore took me forever to write (as Tory knows) I'm sorry about all of Tory and my little inside jokes their just for our own amusement. Okay um review please and thank you to all those who did. Bye!