She rolls her eyes at me, marching toward the door, her green plaid skirt swishing behind her. She already has a run up the back of her stockings, and she’s wearing the same big, clunky vintage Docs that she’s owned since Junior high.
“You’re looking very kawaii,” I say, grinning at the sight of her in a skirt.
Anna whips around, narrowing her ice-blue eyes at me in their ring of heavy black liner.
“Don’t start with me,” she hisses.
“I’m just saying—“
“Don’t say anything. Not a fucking word.”
I’m guessing she’s sensitive because Anna’s ability to express herself through her clothing matters to her. Even though it looks like she wears the same depressing shit every day, I know her well enough to differentiate between her fetish-wear ensembles, her Victorian vampire look, and her punk-rock goth. It’s a good indication of her mood. For instance, the more chains she’s wearing, the more I know I better not fuck with her that day.
“My lips are sealed,” I promise, throwing my duffle bag over my shoulder and following her out of the room.
We have to run to make it down to the dock in the remaining seven minutes. Thank god we picked a hotel so close to the water.
Our boat is leaving from the very last berth. They’ve only just started loading, and the dock is still crowded with students from all over the globe.
I can guess where some of them are from: one boy has a traditional dragon tattoo extending down his arm from beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his dress shirt, the scaly, curling tip of the tail wrapping around the base of his thumb. His friend is probably Yakuza too, though not a very obedient one. He’s missing the tip of his right pinky, which means he’s had to commit yubitsume, the apology ritual where the offender has to amputate his own finger.
Next to those two, I see a girl with flaming red curls who wipes the sweat from her face, saying loudly, “Jaysis, it’s quare warm today, isn’t it?”
The dark-haired girl she’s speaking to stares back at her blankly. “What?” she says, in an accent I can’t quite place—it might be Galician.
“It’s fierce hot!” the Irish girl reiterates. “Anybody got a mineral?”
“I thought we were all supposed to speak English,” the dark-haired girl says, tartly.
“I bloody well am!” the Irish girl cries.
I glance over at Anna to see if she’s enjoying this exchange, seeing as she’s half Irish herself. She doesn’t seem to have heard a word of it—she’s gazing up at the ship instead. It’s bigger than I expected, and not at all the bus-like ferry I was imagining. Instead, I see a four-masted barquentine with a navy and gold hull, and crisp white sails.
“Why’s it so big?” I say out loud. There can’t be more than two hundred Freshmen, and the trip isn’t that long.
“The water around Dvorca is rough as hell,” a boy with close-cropped dark hair answers me. “If you tried to sail over in some fishing boat you’d get tossed around like corn in a popper. Some parts of the year you can’t come and go from the island at all.”
“How do you know?” another kid demands.
“I’ve had five siblings go through Kingmakers,” the boy replies, shrugging. “I’ve got a pretty good idea how it all works.”
“Where’re you from?” I ask him.
“Palermo,” he says. “I’m Matteo Ragusa.”
“Catholic?” I ask.
“You know it.” He grins.
“I’m half-Italian too.” I put out a hand to shake. “Leo Gallo.”
“Chicago, right?” he says.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“Two of my brothers live in New York. There’s plenty of Italians at Kingmakers. More Russians, though.”
“I’m also half-Russian,” I tell him.
He laughs. “I won’t hold it against you. Can’t say the same for the rest of them.” He jerks his head toward our fellow students.
“What’s wrong with Russians?” Anna demands.
“Everything,” Matteo says, laughing. “They’re blunt and rude. Mean as hell, though not as mean as the Albanians. Then you’ve got the Italians, you know we’re all hot-headed and a little bit lazy, then you’ve got the Irish—”
He breaks off, seeing Anna raise one darkly-penciled eyebrow.
“Just kidding around,” he says, raising his hands in defense. “You’ve got twenty different kinds of mafia families, with a hundred kinds of prejudices and grudges. And yet somehow we’re all supposed to get along for four years. Until we go out in the real world and get to battling again.”
“I’m not worried,” I say, mostly to annoy Anna. “I get along with everybody.”
Anna snorts, tossing her head.
People who don’t know me very well are always impressed by me. Anna knows me best of anyone, and she’s never impressed. I’ve done the craziest things to try to force her to admit that I’m funny, or skilled, or just a fucking badass. But she’ll never admit it.
I don’t know what kind of guy would turn her head. While I’ve gone through a dozen girlfriends, she never seems to fall for anybody.
A whistle blows and one of the deckhands motions for the students to start boarding.
“Here we go,” Matteo says nervously.
I spot Ares joining the queue, carrying one small and battered backpack in place of a suitcase.
“Morning,” I say, looking him over for signs of a hangover.
Like Anna, Ares looks a hell of a lot better rested than me. Fuck, am I the only lightweight?
“You made it.” He grins.
“Just barely.”
“Come on,” he says. “We better get on board if we want a good spot up at the bow.”
Anna and I join Ares in the line, and we all scale the gangplank up onto the ship.
Those with bigger suitcases left them in a pile on the dock for the deckhands to load below. I see a French girl arguing furiously with one of the crew, because she brought at least three matching Tumi suitcases, while our acceptance letters stated we were only allowed one bag each.
“How am I supposed to fit everything I need in one suitcase?” she demands, as if the idea is obscene.
“I’m only puttin’ one on the ship, so you better tell me which one, or I ain’t taking any of ‘em,” the deckhand says sourly.
I don’t see how that drama plays out, because I’m stepping up onto the deck of the ship already swarming with uniformed students. Plenty of them have already ditched their vests or jackets, since the sun is blazing. At least there’s a sea breeze.
“Why do we have to wear wool?” I complain to Anna.
“It’ll be cooler on the island,” Ares says. “Out in the ocean, it gets chilly in the winter. Not freezing, but close to it.”
Ares spots a piece of netting strung between two masts like a giant hammock.
“Come on,” he says, chucking his backpack up into the net. “Let’s sit up here.”
Anna and I follow him up. Even though we’re only five feet in the air, we have a much better view of the activity on the deck as the sailors get ready to cast off. We can see more of the port, and the wide, dark expanse of the water leading out of the bay.