Foxworth Academy (11 page)

Sry I interrupted.  Want 2 get ice-cream?

Confusion swept over him once again.  He’d known her for years and she was a great friend, but a girlfriend was something he was unsure about.  She was decent looking, outgoing and funny.  But then there was Ally who had all of the same traits as Krista but was way better looking.  At least in his eyes.  But did he even have a shot with Ally?

He picked up his phone and replied.

Sure.  Will meet u @ 7

Brett looked at his cell phone for the time.  He had twenty minutes to change and get over to Lucy Lu’s Ice Cream store just a few blocks away.  Brett went upstairs to his room, took off the sweat suit he was wearing, threw on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved Sixers t-shirt, donned a baseball hat and ran down the stairs.  He grabbed his phone, money clip, and keys and shouted “Getting ice-cream with the guys!” as he left through the front door.

Lucy Lu’s was on a corner and just about the only commercial business within a mile of his house.  The top floor looked like an apartment and the main floor was the ice-cream shop.  Krista showed up within seconds of his arrival and she looked amazing.  She was dressed in tight jeans and a pink Philadelphia Eagles t-shirt.  She wore pink flip flops, and Brett noticed a toe ring on her left foot.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he replied.

“You order?”

“No.”

Krista walked to the counter and asked for a cup of chocolate peanut butter.  Brett followed her, ordering a chocolate chip on a cake cone.  They paid, got their ice cream, and found a seat at one of the outdoor tables.

“So, how ya feelin’?” she asked.

Brett, confused, said, “Fine, why?”

“Dude,” she replied, “You had a concussion.”

Brett lowered his head and let out a sigh.  “Yes, I’m fine.  How’d you know anyway?”

“Well, my new friend Cori is friends with Jenny Murray whose brother Alex is on your team, right?  Well, anyway, she told me.”

“Gotcha.”

Krista stared at Brett.  He looked back at her. 

“Yeah, so, are you and that girl Ally seeing each other?” Krista asked.  “Cause’, I mean you did ask me out and all.”

Her bold statement caught Brett by surprise, and he stumbled in his quick reply.  “No, no, no.  What do you mean?  We’re in history together.  That’s all.”

She looked him in the eye and took his hand in hers.  “Brett, what you do in history class is fine.” 

He licked his ice cream as he thought of what to say.  “Krista, I’d like to try this dating thing.  I just don’t want it to ruin our friendship.”

“It won’t,” she replied.

“It might.”

“It won’t,” she pleaded.  “I think we can be great together.”

He looked her in the eyes and said, “Then let’s try it.”  He leaned it to kiss her and she backed away.

“Dude, PDA!” she said, laughing.

He looked around and saw a family of four sitting on a nearby bench.  “Sorry,” he said to her, clearly embarrassed.

“Let’s go to the fair on Friday night,” she said.  “Just us.”

“Okay,” he replied.

This is it
, Brett thought.  They were now dating whether he wanted to or not. 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

B
rett and Ally awoke in the bunk beds on the Titanic once again.  Brett sat up slowly, remembering the low ceiling.  He cautiously rolled over and jumped down to the wooden floor below.  Ally followed, fixing her hair in the small mirror on the wall.

“I hate this hat,” she said.  “It makes me look all old or something.”

Brett stared at her hat and said clearly for the camera, and more importantly for Mr. Martin, “I like my hat very much.”

“Brown-noser,” she said.

“Just speaking the truth,” Brett replied.

“Yeah, right.  Now, what are we going to do?”

“Let’s tour this ship.”

“We did that already,” she pleaded.

“Not under the ship.”

“Under?”

“Yeah, the engine room, the boiler.  Whatever is down there, I wanna see it.”

“Not sure how seeing the engine is going to save the Titanic from hitting an iceberg.”

“Got any better ideas?” he asked.

She shook her head and opened the door.  “Let’s go.”

They exited the room and went down the hallway to the stairs, this time going down instead of climbing up.  They passed the third class area and reached the end of the steps.  It looked like a dead end until they noticed that there was a cut-out in the wall which read: Engine Room - Crew Only.  Brett tried pulling on the small handle but it was locked.

“Now what?” Ally asked.

“Let’s go back up to the captain and ask him for a tour,” Brett replied

“You think?”  Brett looked at her and she sighed before saying, “No, no. I don’t have any better ideas.”

Getting from the third-class cabins in the rear of the massive ship to the front of the boat and the bridge was no easy task.  They climbed the staircase which, when they reached the top, was a full seven flights of stairs.  Then they had to walk the length of the ship.  Fifteen minutes later they finally made it to the bridge, which was, of course, locked.  Without hesitating, Brett knocked.

“What are you doing?” Ally said, giving him a playful slap on the arm.

“Asking the captain for a tour of the engine room.”

Before she could argue, the door opened.  A man dressed in the same type of blue suit as the men they’d seen the night before asked them what they wanted.

“We’d like to see the captain,” Brett said.

“Boy, the captain is very busy sailing this ship.”

“I understand, I just want to ask him a question.”

“I’m sorry,” the man said and started to shut the door.  Brett held out his hand to keep the door from closing.  “Bugger me, I will have you thrown in the brig, boy!”  There was some pushing and shoving of the door in either direction before the door swung fully in.  Brett stumbled in and looked up.  The captain was staring right at him.

“What’s going on here, Thomas?” Captain Smith asked softly.

“This...this boy here demanded to see you and burst his way onto the bridge.”

“Ah, you two again,” he said, nodding at Ally who was still standing outside the doorway.  “Son, whatever it is you need, arguing with the crew and causing a ruckus will get you nowhere.  What can I do for you?”

“Umm, hi captain,” Brett said confidently.  “I, or we,” he turned to Ally, “were wondering if we could have a tour of the ship.”

“You were?  Well just go take a walk around, son,” the captain said emphatically.  “This ship will take you all day to tour.  Just don’t go stormin’ into the first-class dining hall, understood?”

“Yes, sir.  We’ve seen the ship, but we were wondering if you could show us how the ship moves.  Like what makes the ship go?”

“You wanna see the engine room, don’t ya?”

Brett shrugged and replied, “Yeah, I guess so.”

The captain brought his hand up to his face, rubbing the white mustache between his fingers.  “Son, I can’t go nowhere so,” he nodded toward the officer.  “Thomas here will take you on a little tour.”

“But sir, I have to plot the maps and...,” Thomas pleaded.

“I’ll have that taken care of.  These are paying customers and that young lady saved me from some embarrassment earlier.  You go and give these two a quick tour of the engine room and all of the intricacies.”  He looked at his watch.  “Shouldn’t take you more than an hour to be back up here.  Now go.”  He turned and went back onto the bridge.

Thomas looked at Brett and then Ally and said with a snarl, “You two are gonna pay for this.  Let’s go!”  He walked past, and they followed quickly behind. 

It took about fifteen minutes this time to get right back to the door that Brett had seen locked before.  Thomas pulled out a set of keys that were clipped to his belt.  He found one that was silver, unlike the others which were brass, inserted it in the keyhole, and opened the door.  He walked through the doorway and Brett and Ally did the same.  They were in a cramped hallway that shed little light from the occasional light bulb every twenty feet or so.  After a few twists and turns they came to another door, but no key was needed this time.  When they opened the door, Brett was overcome by the sound.

It was loud, almost to the point that he needed to cover his ears.  There were grinding sounds, loud voices, metallic clanks, and what sounded like shovels hoisting dirt somewhere.  The heat was intense too.  Broad- shouldered men covered in grease, grime, and dirt walked about the large engine room, some shouting orders, others following them. 

“We can’t have civilians in here!” a man with a full head of red hair and an even fuller beard shouted.

“Captain’s orders,” Thomas shouted back.  “He instructed me to give them a brief tour.  Now quiet your yap and let me get on with it.”

The man shook his head, looked at Ally, and smiled.  Ally turned her head and grabbed Brett’s hand, cowering behind him.

“Here is the engine room.  You satisfied?” Thomas said to them.

Brett looked around and asked, “What are they doing?”

“What are they doing?  They be running the bloody ship!” Thomas belted.

“Yeah, but how?” Brett asked.

Thomas sighed before finally raising his arm to the vast room.  Large, steel columns moved about, enormous wheels rotated left and right, and steel walkways intersected each other like the Los Angeles freeway.  They could see gauges, knobs, wheels, pipes, trellises, ladders, doorways, and above that, steam filtered through the air.  To the side were three fire pits and men could be seen with shovels nearby watching the fire with intense scrutiny.

“Those guys,” Thomas said pointing, “are shoveling coal into the furnaces to provide fuel to the engines.  The guys over there,” he said waving toward the large propeller-like steel columns, “are pouring water on the engine to cool it and stop it from overheating.  This here,” he pointed to a nearby compass-looking thing, “tells the crew the orders from the bridge.” 

Brett and Ally walked toward the brass and glass cylinder that looked like a large clock with a handle at the top.  Words were placed vertically from top to bottom.  Starting from the left they read: Full, Half, Slow, Dead Slow, Stand By, Stop.  This was repeated for the Port engine. 

“Here is where we get a telegraph from the bridge and decide what speed to reduce or increase to and what engine shall be used.  Well, if there’s nothing else, we should be on our way,” Thomas said.

“What about the coal?” Brett asked for no apparent reason, other than to stall him.

“Over ten thousand tons of coal was loaded onto the Titanic.  The coal is burned and used to heat water which turns into steam which propels the ship.  Hence the term ‘steam engine.’  This ship uses about eight hundred tons of coal a day.”

As Thomas spoke, Brett took in all of the action around him.  He tried to absorb the look and feel of the room in case he had to return.  After Thomas’s speech on coal, they left the room, walked up the stairs, level after level, floor after floor, until they reached the deck.  The sun was high above them, providing warmth from the chilly Atlantic.  They went over to the railing that hugged the outskirts of the massive ship and looked out at the ocean.  Nothing but open water could be seen for miles and miles everywhere they looked. 

“Look how blue it is,” Ally said, pointing straight down at the churning blue wake the ship created as it carved through the ocean.

“Man, this is cool,” Brett replied. “We’ve got to get a plan going,” Brett said softly.  “This ship is going to sink in about ten hours.”

T
hat night, Brett had a dream.  He was on his grandfather’s boat.  His dad was steering while his grandfather pulled up the crab traps.  And then the morning alarm sounded, waking him.  There was something about the boat that bothered him that morning as he made his way to school.  All he could remember was his granddad looking at his dad, yelling at him to do something. 
But what?

There was a light applause as Brett and Ally made their way into the classroom the following day.  This could be the day they’d all find out whether Brett and Ally would save the Titanic.

“Okay, okay class settle down.  Any questions for Brett or Ally before they continue their journey?” Mr. Martin asked.

A few hands went up.  Mr. Martin called on them in order.

“Mr. Martin,” a boy asked, “why is there smoke coming from only three of the four smokestacks on the ship?”

“Good question, Mike.  The ship’s builder put the fourth one in for aesthetic purposes only.  They wanted the ship to be grand and different from every other ship.  The smokestack serves no purpose other than its visual significance.  Next question, Chloe?”

“How are you going to save the Titanic?”

Mr. Martin answered that one by simply saying they would all have to wait and see.

“Is it weird going back in time?”

Mr. Martin did not answer but instead turned toward Brett and Ally who stood near the front of the room. 

Brett shrugged.  “It’s cool.” 

Ally smiled.  “Yeah.  It is cool.”

“Well,” Mr. Martin said, “enlightening.  Shall we?”  He motioned toward the closet.  Brett and Ally followed the professor to the closet.  They performed their daily ritual of changing clothes and laying in the time machine, then vanished.

Coming back into the classroom, Mr. Martin was about to turn on the TV for the class to watch Brett and Ally when a voice snickered softly behind him.  He turned quickly around trying to catch the boy who just spoke and everyone was quiet.  His focus centered on a group of four, three girls and a boy, all of whom had a devilish grin on their faces.  He knew who it was.

“Something to say, Mr. Hawk?” Mr. Martin asked Lance.

Lance, playing the joker, looked left and right before saying, “Me?  Nothing, sir.”

Mr. Martin scratched his beard and watched Lance intently.  He was not going to back down to this young troublemaker.  “Mr. Hawk, are you enjoying this class?” he asked.

Lance shrugged his shoulders and said sarcastically, “Yeah, sure.”

Mr. Martin had an idea.  Instead of turning on the TV, Mr. Martin went to the back of the room and came out of the closet with the bingo cage.  He moved it to the front of the classroom.  The students looked on, puzzled.  Mr. Martin opened his desk drawer and pulled out a clear plastic bag with blue and pink papers inside of it.  The kids watched with intensity as Mr. Martin loaded just the pink little bundles of paper into the rotating machine.