And now I was walking away from a table with my back to all three of them and I felt nothing pulling at me, no invisible thread demanding I turn around and check whether they approved.
The thread had simply been cut.
I got into the glass elevator and watched the buffet fall away beneath me, all those pale upturned faces getting smaller, and I realized I was rising, quite literally, out of their reach — and that the feeling of it was not triumph, exactly, but something quieter and far more durable.
It was the feeling of a compass needle, after years of being dragged around by a magnet held too close, finally swinging back to point at true north.
At myself.
Chapter 13 — Three Days of Weather
For the next three days, the ship was a paradise for me and a slow education for the rest of them.
The gold band gave me the run of the parts of the ship they couldn’t reach — the VIP sun deck, the quiet lounges, the private dining rooms.
I spent my mornings on a daybed with a book and a glass of something cold, watching the turquoise water slide past, and I felt the strangest sensation settle into me, one I kept having to name to myself because it was so unfamiliar: I was not waiting for anything to go wrong.
I had spent every family vacation of my life braced for the moment I would be needed — the argument to defuse, the bill to quietly cover, the tears to manage.