Chapter 1

Mom and Dad booked us on a 10 Day cruise. I was less than thrilled. It was so not what I intended to do with my Spring Break. But at 17½ I'm not out on my own, not quite yet! And so I got dragged along, and so did my sister and kid brother. The less said about them the better. But we had a two-bedroom suite. Mom and Dad had their room, Suzy (Suzette) and I had a room, and Bill got to sleep in the living room in a rollout bed. What fun.

The cruise was out of Ft. Lauderdale. Now if it'd been to Cancun, maybe I would have been excited from the beginning. After all, how many girls at school got to go to Cancun? Precisely zero, that's how many. But we were off to the Eastern Caribbean. Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and several smaller islands. Plenty of opportunity to shop, at least that's what Mom said, which excited Suzy. She's three years younger than me, and she's discovered shopping. She's also memorized Mom's credit card number, which is something I haven't told Mom yet.

I was kind of down the last few days before we left. I had a long list of things I'd rather be doing than getting on a boat and bobbing up and down for 10 days. I would probably be seasick the entire time, and that just isn't cool.

I had a blast.

It was the best 10 days of my life, and the most educational.

] When I got on the boat in Ft. Lauderdale—no, they didn't let me go to the beach—I was Mom's little angel, the first born, the apple of her eye, the one she had all of these plans for. When I got off I wasn't the girl of 17 years, 6 months, 2 weeks and 3 days who had boarded. I was a woman who knew a lot more about men, and myself.

This is a brief recounting of what happened to me, Adelle Dominique Porter, and how I really grew up.

First, to briefly set the stage. I'm of average height for a girl of my age, with nice curves, a little more here and there, but not enough to be called lush. My mother's family is Creole, hence my name, my dark hair, and my pale skin. I'm fifth in my class academically, and really am that ideal of young Southern Womanhood, more or less inexperienced when it came to boys, but with what I thought was a pretty good idea of what went on.

There are a lot of things that happen when you get on a cruise ship. First, you have to find your cabin. The ship appears to be a maze, but it's logically laid out, and that doesn't take long. Then you wait for your luggage. To kill time, and comply with some law, we had lifeboat drill. The alarm goes off, seven short blasts, and one long one, as if we would count carefully in a real emergency, we grab our life preservers, and head off to our muster station. As oldest, of course, I had to keep Suzy and Bill in line. I did so by telling Suzy what floor, I mean deck, the shops were on. There was a video arcade, and I told Bill that if he behaved himself, he could head there when we were done.

After they counted us off and we answered to our names, we were let go. Mom spoiled a little of Suzy's fun by accompanying her to the shops. Bill disappeared into the video arcade, where he found a couple of other guys, and together they slaughtered aliens or Nazis, or something. Orcs, I think. Me? I pulled out the ship guide. I'd overheard someone say something about a night club.

Now I'm not old enough to drink, but as long as I stay away from the booze, and get home at a reasonable hour—that's a moving target if there ever was one—I can go. Dad asked me what I saw there. Boys. Not many, all of the good looking ones seemed to be on the crew, and we were told we couldn't fraternize. But there had to be some boys my age on this tub, and if there were, I wanted to meet them right away.

I had this much figured out. These 10 days wouldn't count. Whatever happened on the ship would stay there. The girls at school would ask me what happened, and I'd look them right in the eye, and lie like a sleepy dog. That didn't mean I wouldn't imply. They could think all they wanted. Karen, my best friend, had gone to Vegas, and come back with a lurid tale of a romance, some guy from Argentina who had charmed and seduced her. The truth? She did meet a guy, they danced, and that was that. Nothing happened. But that's not what everyone wants to hear. Our teenage dreams are built on fantasies and wishes, and you never let on that those dreams are just that.

So, as the ship left the dock, I followed the map to the topmost part of the ship. True enough, there was a nightclub there, just like the map said there would be. There was this bridge to it that they called the Sky Walk, so natch it was Skywalker. I only wished the real Luke Skywalker would show up, but I knew that wasn't to be. Unlike some people I know, I try to keep the movie fantasies separate from the world I saw around me.

We headed out into the Atlantic, and I got fascinated by that in spite of myself. I mean c'mon. The ship weighed something like 60,000 tons and was more than 500 feet long, and yet the Captain handled it like a skateboarder weaving in and out of the jumps in a skateboard park. In no time at all he had us cruising past other ships, condos, beaches, and everything else. We hit the first swells of the Atlantic, and I could feel the ship moving under us. Things moved, the walls creaked, and the floor/deck trembled. I had to grab something and hold on. But after a bit I realized it wasn't as bad as I expected. We were swaying up and down and side to side, but they were little movements. I'm told that was because there were stabilizers. Whatever. This was no worse than the bus, but it went on and on all of the time.

I'd had a look at the Daily Planner, and nothing would happen up here until well after dinner. So I hooked up with Dad and we went exploring. In an hour we had a general feel for where the pools were, the exercise equipment—he had been developing a paunch and seemed happy to see those stationary bikes and treadmills—the fancy restaurants, and on. We also took part in the 'Welcome Aboard' party. There were over a thousand passengers, and after looking around I decided that the average age was 90. There was a lot of bald spots and white hair dancing to 'Y.M.C.A.' and other things. They all seemed to have these fruity drinks with little umbrellas, something I wouldn't be allowed to touch until I was older; the glass of champagne I was allowed on New Years didn't count.

By then we had to return to our cabins and dress for dinner. This wasn't the formal night. Mom and Dad were looking forward to, and I thought it would be good for them. They didn't get out all that much, and I personally thought Mom needed some pampering. I saw from the folder that she'd made an appointment in the spa. Suzy wasn't invited, but she'd made one for me too. I'd never been to a spa, so I thought that might be kind of fun.

I didn't realize it at the time, but all of the food is pretty much paid for. Oh, they charge your room for alcohol and you have to pay extra in the fancy restaurants, but I could understand that. Everything else was paid for in the ticket, and so that first night, while Suzy ordered Salmon, I picked crab legs off the menu. And the waiter called her 'Young Lady', and me 'Lady'. Take that! Of course the waiter had to crack the crab legs because they were too tough, but Suzy's snide comment died on her lips when Dad couldn't crack open the legs either.

I'd worn this black dress with gold beading that I could dance in, and after dinner I excused myself and went up to the nightclub. Mom just had to accompany me, but she relaxed when she saw that they refused to serve liquor to just anyone. After a bit she went back to the cabin, and I began trying to spot any unattached males that I could get to know better.

After a while I realized that nearly every guy in sight was claimed. Nearly. There was this one guy at a table set in the corner. There were three couples with him, and they were tight. Their drinks were just fruit—I checked—but they were constantly touching, leaning against each other, and laughing. I noticed that from across the dance floor. They were having a great time, and they weren't even having to get drunk to do so. That was a lesson some of the boys back at school needed to learn.

I danced with him several times. He had a hot body, and I'll confess I had very specific fantasies about getting him alone. Now, truth be told, I'd never gotten very far with a boy, or let them get very far with me. I'd let them do a little groping, and I'd felt them get hard when we danced—if boys only knew what thoughts went through a girl's head when she felt their things pressing against us(!)—but that was all. But Hank ... Let's just say I could imagine getting naked and sweaty with him, not that it was likely to happen.

"Are you going to be back here tomorrow night?" I asked as we left the dance floor. It was nearly pumpkin time when I'd have to head back to the cabin, and I really wanted to see more of him.

"Maybe," he said. We got to the table, and he caught the eye of the woman with red hair. "Mary? What do you think? Tomorrow?"

Mary looked me up and down. I was a little uncomfortable under her gaze, but I gave her a smile. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Seventeen, and then some, nearly 18." I shook my dark hair back over my shoulder—I keep it back with a band, but not tonight. "Old enough, back where I live."

A smile touched her lips. "Old enough, but for what?"

"I have to be back before 11:30," I said, "but it's not what you might think. I have a younger sister and brother I have to mind while my folks go out."