'and they lived happily ever after' is the appropriate ending," said Hickory, and then stopped and looked closely at me. "You are crying," it said.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I was remembering. The parts of it I was in."
"We told them wrong," Hickory said.
"No," I said, and put up my hand to reassure it. "You didn't tell it wrong, Hickory. It's just the way you tell it and the way I remember it are a little..." I wiped a tear off my face and searched for the right word. "They're just a little different, is all."
"You do not like the myth," Hickory said.
"I like it," I said. "I like it very much. It's just some things hurt me to remember. It happens that way for us sometimes."
"I am sorry, Zoe, for causing you distress," Hickory said, and I could hear the sadness in its voice. "We wanted to cheer you up."
I got up from my seat and went over to Hickory and Dickory and hugged them both. "I know you did," I said. "And I'm really glad you tried."
PART I Chapter Nine
"Oh, look," Gretchen said. "Teenage boys, about to do something stupid."
"Shut up," I said. "That couldn't possibly happen." But I looked anyway.
Sure enough, across the Magellan's common area, two clots of teenage males were staring each other down with that look of we're so gonna fight about something lame. They were all getting ready for a snarl, except for one of them, who gave every appearance of trying to talk some sense into one guy who looked particularly itchin' to fight.
"There's one who appears to have a brain," I said.
"One out of eight," Gretchen said. "Not a really excellent percentage. And if he really had a brain he'd probably be getting out of the way."
"This is true," I said. "Never send a teenage boy to do a teenage girl's job."
Gretchen grinned over to me. "We have that mind-meld thing going, don't we?"
"I think you know the answer to that," I said.
"You want to plan it out or just improvise?" Gretchen asked.
"By the time we plan it out, someone's going to be missing teeth," I said.
"Good point," Gretchen said, and then got up and started moving toward the boys.
Twenty seconds later the boys were startled to find Gretchen in the middle of them. "You're making me lose a bet," she said, to the one who looked the most aggressive.
The dude stared for a moment, trying to wrap whatever was passing for his brain around this sudden and unexpected appearance. "What?" he said.
"I said, you're making me lose a bet," Gretchen repeated, and then jerked a thumb over toward me. "I had a bet with Zoe here that no one would start a fight on the Magellan before we actually left dock, because no one would be stupid enough to do something that would get their entire family kicked off the ship."
"Kicked off the ship two hours before departure, even," I said.
"Right," Gretchen said. "Because what sort of moron would you have to be to do that?"
"A teenage boy moron," I suggested.
"Apparently," Gretchen said. "See - what's your name?"
"What?" the guy said again.
"Your name," Gretchen said. "What your mother and father will call you, angrily, once you've gotten them kicked off the ship."
The guy looked around at his friends. "Magdy," he said, and then opened his mouth as if to say something.
"Well, see, Magdy, I have faith in humanity, even the teenage male part of it," Gretchen said, plowing through whatever it was that our Magdy might have had to say. "I believed that not even teenage boys would be dumb enough to give Captain Zane an excuse to kick a bunch of them off the ship while he still could. Once we're under way, the worst he could do is put you in the brig. But right now he could have the crew drop you and your family at the loading bay. Then you could watch the rest of us wave good-bye. Surely, I said, no one could be that incredibly dense. But my friend Zoe disagreed. What did you say, Zoe?"
"I said that teenage boys can't think beyond or without their newly dropped testicles," I said, staring at the boy who had been trying to talk sense into his pal. "Also, they smell funny."
The boy grinned. He knew what we were up to. I didn't grin back; I didn't want to mess with Gretchen's play.
"And I was so convinced that I was right and she was wrong that I actually