Page 140 of Damaged

“Clap and smile,” Michael tells me.

I listen and watch as Bernard leans into a pitcher’s pose and chucks the bottle. He somehow throws the bottledown. I watch it disappear and hear it splash into the water.

“That can’t be good luck,” I say.

The crowd exclaims in disappointment, and an aide quickly brings the billionaire another bottle of champagne, as if this was expected.

“It usually takes him a couple tries,” Michael says.

He hurls this one, and now the bottle breaks and everyone cheers. Bernard raises his arms in victory.

The entire show, captain hat and all, gives this voyage the feel of a rich boy’s play project.

And if Michael had been withholding the worst of this place for me… what is Bernard really like at sea?

A tyrant, probably.

Maybe I deserve this. I clap along with the others. Seventy thousand. Seventy thousand. Seventy thousand. I repeat it over and over. Even if I already have a nest egg, it would be stupid to pass this money up. I don’t think I’ll ever have a job that brings in six figures. Plus, it’s June, and I wouldn’t be able to start a master’s program until at least the spring semester.

Bernard walks onto the ship via the gangplank, and everyone starts to scramble to stand in a line. “Crew inspection,” Michael says.

Bernard walks slowly down the line of us. His eyes are squinted appraisingly. What is there to inspect? Michael is wearingcargo shorts.

“As you were!” Bernard shouts after reaching the end, and everyone begins to disperse.

I don’t want to go back into the bowels of the boat. Michael is tasked with some errand in the engine room, and I stay on the research deck and help move some smaller crates to make myself handy and try to make friends. But it’s about ninety degrees, and there’s no conversation. Just grunting and pointing.

When we’re finished and I’m standing with my hands on my hips, feeling like a bona fide deckhand, a woman steps out from inside the ship.

“Sophia Simms?”

“Yes?”

“There’s a package for you.”

“Here?”

She stares at me blankly. “Yes.”

I try to explain my confusion. “I was at the post office earlier, and there wasn’t any mail.”

“We pick up all the crew’s mail first thing on departure day.”

“Oh.” I follow her inside to the mess room, where the long plastic table has a few piles of mail on it. She points to a box of flat cardboard. It’s about the size and shape of a textbook.

“Thank you,” I say, and she leaves without a word.

There’s no return address. I find a knife in one of the cabinets and cut the packing tape. I pause as I lift the lid.

There’s not a folder of tax documents. There’s just a hat. Thick wool the color of oatmeal. A blue ring of fabric near the bottom. I smile and open the hat.

There’s a note inside. Stapled to it is a newspaper clipping. A headline.

James Callaway’s Security Company Aquarius Set to Sell For 1.7 Billion

I read it once. Twice. Then I see the edge of a note also sticking out from the hat.

Sophia, you’re right.

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