Lifeboat Lighthouse

Chapter 4

Cruise Day 4 - Still somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea (Becky's POV)

I silently snuck out of our suite at 1:50am whilst my parents slept in their bed, completely oblivious. I kept my hood up as i made my way up to Deck 3, worried in case someone my parents knew was still up and wandering the ship. I was completely on edge, jumping at every noise I heard and hiding my face from every person I saw. It occurred to me that I was probably drawing more attention to myself by looking so suspicious. Deep breaths Becky, I told myself, as I tried to forget the fact I was walking towards something completely unknown. This was so out of character for me, but maybe that's what I needed.

I arrived at the point of the ship that the note had instructed, just as I noticed a crowd of people walking towards me from the opposite direction. Freen was one of them, but the younger girl was deep in conversation and hadn't noticed me yet.

I had begun to contemplate whether it was too late to turn around, but just then I caught a glimmer of her beautiful brown eyes, spurring me on to ignore my instincts and keep walking towards them. She had asked me to be here; for some unknown reason, this girl wanted me to be here. Finally, she looked up and saw me, and a small smile crept onto her face. She broke away from her group, walking confidently straight towards me.

"I wasn't sure that you were going to be here," she said, just before she reached me.

"Me neither if I'm honest." I admitted, feeling immediately more at ease now I was in her presence. "What exactly are we doing?" I asked uncertainly, glancing over to her friends, who had almost caught up to us now.

"You'll see." Freen replied with a devilish grin, before spinning around to face her friends and gently placing her hand around my wrist to pull me towards them. The contact made my heart race in my chest and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end.

"Guys, this is Becky, she's going to join us." Freen announced. I noticed one of her male friends give her a concerned look.

Freen rolled her eyes. "Chill Tack, she's cool, she's not going to rat on us."

He gave Freen a nod, obviously trusting her judgement.

Freen continued. "Becky, this is Tack, he's one of the waiting staff like me. Faye, Nop and Mind work behind the bar." She gestured towards three people who all gave me a friendly smile. "This is Charlotte, she's part of the entertainment staff, and then Heng is a lifeguard on top deck." I smiled awkwardly back at the group, who I guessed were all some of the youngest members of staff on board. I'd only really taken in half of their names because I'd been distracted by the fact that Freen still had a hold of my wrist, but I recognized Charlotte and Heng. Charlotte had been singing in the dining hall on the first night of the cruise, she was outstanding.

"Okay, now introductions are out of the way, let's do this." Tack said, before reaching to pull a key out of his pocket. He looked around cautiously before putting it in the large double doors beside us and clicking it to the right.

Suddenly it dawned on me that these were the doors to 'Jungle Jump', the kids play center on the boat, but I still had no idea what the hell we were doing here.

Tack pushed the doors open, before quickly ushering us all in and locking them behind him again. He switched on one of the dim lights so that we could see where we were going, but it was still pretty dark. I looked around me. I hadn't been in one of these in about ten years, but this was one of the biggest and best indoor jungle gyms I'd ever seen. Foam pits, ball pits, slides, rope swings, a maze of plastic tunnels, trampolines; it was literally a kids paradise, but I still didn't really understand why we were here.

"The lovely Becky here hasn't played before, so I'm going to go over the rules." Heng announced, pulling my attention back in. "There's eight of us, so me, Freen and Tack will be the chasers, the rest of you can be runners. I'll give everyone a beer and a shot, the runners have three minutes to down their beer, take a shot, then whatever time they have remaining is time for them to run and hide. Once the three minutes are up, the chasers then have to drink their beer and shot as quickly as possible before they can run in. If one of the chasers finds you, you can try and run away, but if you're caught then you become a chaser and the person who caught you becomes a runner. Does that makes sense? It's basically tag, meets hide and seek, meets alcohol and immature adults." He looked over at me to make sure I'd understood and I smiled back in response. I was the biggest kid there was and this game sounded like a hell of a lot of fun to me.