Anton's Odyssey by Marc Andre Page B

I even did my math homework extra credit. I got a message from Mrs. Hallisworth that read, “Congratulations, you are no l onger failing math.” which was good news.
    Every day after lunch, the dorky kid with the giant glasses would come in and do his advanced math. I didn’t talk to him and he didn’t talk to me, which was just fine.
    After the fourth day of my sentence, I got back home and Cotton asked me if I wanted to go to open rec. I told him I was tired, which was a lie. He left without me. He had made a few friends of his own, mostly slow smelly kids, kind of like himself, only fatter.
    Lying on my rack, I took out Hammond’s father’s old skin mag so that I could spend some quality time alone. Hammond was right, the skin mag was an oldie but goodie. I leafed through the pages. All the exposed flesh made it easy to ignore the ductwork as it rattled and shook along the far wall. There was a particularly alluring photograph of Fiona Mammalot in her prime, sometime after Lewd Dude Magazine rated her “Best Bust of all Time” and long before she was carted off to jail on fene-related charges. She was sitting by a swimming pool, wearing a bikini bottom but no top, buxom, her dark red hair had been slicked back with water. Granted, there was no reason for anyone to ever assume a pose like that, but I didn’t particularly care, as the camera’s point of view was rather revealing. All of a sudden, the grate popped off the vent from the ductwork along the far wall. Cotton stuck his head trough the vent and guffawed. Startled, I bolted upright and struck my head on the ceiling. Shooting white pain, I dropped the skin mag.
    Cotton climbed out of the vent, dusty and dirty. Any normal person would find the confines of a ventilation duct extremely uncomfortable, but Cotton was different and liked that sort of thing, often hiding in laundry baskets so that he could ambush me.
    As I rubbed the back of my head, I planned a rather brutal series of wrestling moves that would leave Cotton crippled for life. However, by the time I made it to the floor, something peculiar had happened. Cotton was holding the skin mag and was looking rather perplexed. His look was far from lustful and had the particular intensity one usually sees on the faces of honor students as they struggle with particularly challenging math problems. I saw it on the face of that geeky kid Allen a few hours earlier. The expression was not normal for Cotton and curiosity caused my rage to subside.
    “What is it?” I asked.
    He said nothing. I pulled the mag forward and saw the upside down picture of Fiona Mammalot.
    “She’s on the ship,” Cotton said.
    “What? No!”
    “I swear she’s on the ship.” He sounded serious. He was seldom serious, which made me doubt that he was lying.
    “Impossible!” I said. “She’s in jail. She shacked up with a fene-dealer who shot some cop during a raid. She was sent away for three to five years as an accessory and that wasn’t even two years ago.” The news had made all those cheesy tabloid shows on TV.
    “Well, they must have let her out early,” said Cotton, “because I know I saw her on the ship.”
    “When? Where?”
    A pause, Cotton looked pensive, “I can’t remember.”
    “Pig crap! You’re making this up!”
    “No, I swear I saw her on the ship! I remember these.” He pointed at her high cheekbones, and the mole on her right cheek. “Her hair was also pulled back just like that.” He pointed at her bright red widow’s peak. The features in question were rather unique, and despite having a limited capacity for logical thought, Cotton had a good memory for faces.
    “When did you see her?” I asked. I could imagine nothing more exciting than telling Hammond that there was a real live boob model on the ship. Maybe she’d even give us a private show if we asked nicely.
    “It couldn’t have been that long ago,” Cotton said. “Just a few days, I think.”
    “Where?”
    A pause, “I don’t