Chapter One

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

–George Santayana

"The date, Miss Bellamy?" Mr. Kerger's voice pulls me back to the current task at hand: school.

I tap my pencil against my open palm. "Uh, I think it's the fifteenth?"

Laughter from the class follows. Mr. Kerger gives me a stern, disapproving look. "I was not asking for today's date, as you are well aware, Miss Bellamy."

I was aware. That was not the date he was concerned with. However, I didn't know the answer, and one of my rules to live by? When in doubt, laughter is a good route.

"Is anyone capable of providing the date of such a historically tragic moment?" Mr. Kerger addresses the class, my mistake fueling his already irritable mood.

A kid in the back of the class with excess pudge on his cheeks and round, monacle-like glasses raises his arm proudly, nearly jumping up and down in his seat. You'd think that by senior year, all of us would have lost our baby fat, but this poor guy seems only to have gained it. It gathers around his chin in a very unattractive way, and the small, unruly knobs of stubble he has sprouting from his chin only add to the overweight effect. We've never really been friends, this kid and I. He's never been very out-going. Ethan, I think his name is?

"The Titanic began sinking on April 14th, 1912 in the evening, and became completely submerged in the early morning of the following day." Ethan responded, his face lighting up with the excitement of knowledge.

"Smart ass," I mutter under my breath, and the people closest to me shoot me bemused smirks.

"Someone knows something in this class!" Mr. Kerger clasps his hands together once before launching into a lecture onto the tragic story of the Titanic, allowing me to drift back into my mind.

Cara, my all-time best friend, kicks me with her high-heeled boot. I eye her warily. She mouths "3-2-1" synchronizing perfectly with the bell that indicates our final period before lunch…and our final period before final exams. Then, after one hideous week of finals, follow two glorious weeks of spring break, which will include a cruise from the San Francisco Bay, around the Islands of Hawaii, and up towards Alaska, where my family and I will port and finish our vacation in our cabin.

Cara leaps from her seat, not wobbling in the slightest in her five-inch knee-high leather lace boots as she swings her bag onto her shoulder and tugs at my hand. "Sometimes I don't know why I signed up for AP History." She groans, giving my hand another tug as I collect my stuff.

"Wait, I do know why. It's because of your stupid peer pressure. 'Cara, take AP History with me. It'll be fun, blah, blah, blah,' you said. You're an awful friend!" She whines as we make our way towards the cafeteria.

"You could have said no." I say indifferently. Cara's not truly mad, and we both know it.

"And put up with your big blue puppy dog eyes the whole semester? No." She shakes her head, making her shoulder-length blue and black hair fly wildly. "No way was I ready to put up with that."

We slip into line, and I grab a slice of cheese pizza and an apple before paying and sit down, almost immediately joined by the rest of our group.

Emma and Colton sit down so close, Emma is practically sitting on his lap. Her beach-blonde hair slips all the way down her back, and although her eyes are blue, I swear they are the color of pink roses, because she is so crazy in love with Colton, whose green eyes barely ever flicker away from Emma. They've been together since Sophomore year.

Cara makes a gagging noise, very nearly choking herself with her forefinger as she sticks it down her throat. Damien sits to my left and bumps my hip with his own, taking a large bite of my pizza as he offers me his fork to steal some salad. I smile at him as he wipes his long fingers on a napkin. Damien is gay, but just barely came out about it last winter. He gets teased often, but I don't see the big deal. He definitely helps when I'm checking out a guy.

Leah runs up to our table in a hurry, nearly knocking the chocolate milk she has on her tray over as she bumps into Colton's back. We all look up at her and she smiles really wide, like those invisalign commercials where every tooth is shown.

"No braces!" I yell, smiling just as widely. Lead nods frantically, her brown bob swinging back and forth. She's had to have braces for all of high school, and just barely got them off in time for senior year.

"It's a miracle!" Colton throws a hand up, one hand still tightly wrapped around Emma's waist.

"Shut up," Leah mutters before taking a seat by him, filling the available seats at our table. "It feel so slimy to have them off. Almost like my teeth are fake, you know?"

I don't know. I've never had to have braces; my teeth have always been naturally straight. Cara, on the other hand, nods. "Definitely. It feels like moss in the water; super slippery!"

I chuckle. Descriptive analogies are Cara's unique way of speaking, and they are weird at first, but now they are comforting to me. It's like knowing that she's around, that her mind is there, that's comforting.

Damien comes back to my house after school to start studying for our Physics final.

"You do plan on bringing back a guy from this cruise, right?" Damien asks, subconsciously clicking his fingernails against one another. "Or two; one for me!"

I laugh. "Let's not be too hasty. I'm not really sure how many attractive guys our age will actually be on the cruise ship, or in Alaska."

"That's why you're stopping in Hawaii!" He exclaims. "If you're not going to take advantage of this opportunity, then I will. I'll just dress up like you and then flirt with all of them. There will be no single straight men within a hundred mile radius of me after that."

"I'm screwed," I tell him, keeping a straight face. "With you around, no guy will even look at me!"

Damien hits my arm. "Don't even pull that excuse out, Anya. You know you're gorgeous."

I'm not ugly, if that's what he was saying. I have really, really dark blue eyes and a delicate but square jaw, and my auburn hair is long and thick, but in my eyes, I look more like a Weasley than anything else. Or, at least, a ginger.

Damien disagrees. He says to be a ginger, you need freckles, really light skin, and orange hair. Mine just has a red tint, and I'm golden, not pale. The freckles aren't there either. Still, it doesn't change my perception of myself.

"Oh Damien, let's not get into this again," I groan as I flip open `my Physics book. "Let's just get this studying over with."

And so we do. Finals week comes and leaves me feeling emotionally and mentally exhausted, but the following Sunday I am driving from Santa Clara to San Francisco with my Mother, Father, and older Sister, Kayla, on the way to our first cruise.

I had no idea it would be the final trip I would take with my family.

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