Mask on the Cruise Ship by Melanie Jackson

least, was serious about physical fitness, I hopped from one foot to the other, stomp, stomp, stomp! , as well as vigorously windmilling my arms.
    â€œLavinia, you’ve got to speak to Captain Heidgarten. Tell him Gooseberry Eyes crashed into you at the cruise ship terminal. Mr. Trotter thinks I’m just causing trouble by talking about Gooseberry Eyes. But the same guy tried to break into my house, I’m sure of it,” I puffed, starting to get out of breath.
    Lavinia dropped her arms, which she’d been holding up in an arc shape, and glared at me. “The Captain did ask me about that, Dinah Galloway. Most embarrassing it was, too — right in the middle of a bingo game! Dreadful, being stopped and questioned, with everyone listening in.” Lavinia drew a deep breath through her nose and scowled at me down the length of it, as if I smelled. “A lady, Dinah Galloway, does not become involved in notoriety!”
    I had no idea what notoriety was. Maybe some other game the ship was offering? “But you’re involved in bingo,” I pointed out.
    Lavinia screamed, “THERE WAS NO GOOSE-BERRY EYES! I NEVER SAW HIM! NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!”
    The room, not surprisingly, had gone silent. The instructor strode up to me. “You may be the Empress ’s singing sensation,” she snapped, flicking her long, blond hair back so angrily that a couple of her students had to duck. “I guess that gives you a giant ego as well as a giant voice. Fine .” The instructor turned a blazing pink. “But it does not give you license to intrude on my class and mock us — by gyrating .”
    â€œGyrating!” I put down my arms, which, absentmindedly, I’d been continuing to flail about. “Well, that’s nice. After I’ve been trying to set a good example.”
    She marched me out of the room.
    I stood outside, doing some meditating of my own. Another chunk of yesterday’s icy memory was thawing.
    Just now, Lavinia had been pretty mad at me. I realized I’d glimpsed her fury once before. Through binoculars, yesterday afternoon. She’d been the person stomping around the Visitors’ Center looking irritated and baleful.
    What had Lavinia been so upset about?
    And today she’d denied Gooseberry Eyes had bumped into her at the cruise ship terminal.
    Why was Lavinia suddenly so reluctant to talk?

Chapter 13
Musical chairs on the scenic tour
    M r. Trotter put Mother in charge of the scenic tour tickets, each in an envelope labeled with a passenger’s name, to be handed out at the train station. The program director had informed us, with a pointed glance at me, that he was far too stressed to hand out the tickets himself.
    Not everyone had signed up for the three-hour tour to the Yukon gold fields. There were lots of shops to explore in Skagway, and friendly locals to greet you in a hearty, cowboy drawl.
    It’s a Skagway tradition to recite poems to visitors. I stopped and listened to a man with gold teeth intone one that started:
    Skulls, skulls, in the midnight sun,
Bleached by snow, every one!
    Now that was my type of poetry. None of this “I wandered lonely as a cloud” stuff that we had to memorize at school.
    I grinned at the man. He grinned back, his gold teeth blinding me. I don’t know about the midnight sun, but the noonday sun this far north was intense, almost white.
    â€œCome along,” urged Mother as I shielded my eyes. “I want to get to the station before everyone else.”
    She bustled me off. The man called after us:
    Better get sunglasses!
Or else be fated to burn
In the Gold Rush passes.
    â€œI wonder if he always speaks in rhymes,” said Madge, hurrying along with Jack to keep up with us. “Maybe he’s got some kind of syndrome, like the one that makes people swear all the time.”
    Jack finished her thought. “So instead of swear words pouring out of his mouth, you get rhyming