Floating by

Chapter 6: Falling

It's the third day of the cruise and Zach has no plans, so he wanders the ship.

He's already seen the arcade, the table tennis room, the pool room, the board game room, the video game room, the PC gaming room and the darts room. It was probably time for a change, like maybe one of the musical entertainment shows he's heard about.

Waiting for the lift to take him to the ground floor, he pulls out his copy of the cruise ships' entertainment brochure. He scans the list of musical entertainment and settles on two.

Shrek: The Musical

Or

The Lion King Musical

He can't really decide which one to see because he loves them both. He looks down at his watch for the time.

I've got time, might as well see both.

Yeap, that's what I'll do, see both.

He decides to watch The Lion King first. As he enters the theatre he hears a boisterous but familiar laugh and looks in the direction it came from. He smiles when his eyes land on Kayla sitting at the very front row with Margaret, who is out of her wheelchair. He doesn't want to disturb them, so he chooses to sit further back. They continue joking around till the lights dim, signalling the start of the show.

About an hour in, there is a 30 minute interval and people start getting up to either get a snack or use the bathroom, Zach decides to stay put and so does Kayla and Margaret.

From his seat, he watches them. Kayla has turned to Margaret and Zach could see her glistening eyes, as though she'd been crying. Her sad smile was only present for about a minute before it was replaced by her laughing out loud at something Margaret had said. He watched them for a little longer before turning away to look around and admire the theatre.

Soon the interval ended and the show began again. Zach was fully immersed into the rest of the show and couldn't believe when it had ended an hour later.

He slowly got up and left with the rest of the audience after they'd given the cast a rousing standing ovation. He almost forgot that Kayla was around until he heard her laugh again. This time he saw her wheeling Margaret in her wheelchair down the corridor as fast as she could making them both jerk and laugh when they had to do a sudden stop at the end. They disappeared round the corner after that and Zach carried on to his next show.

Emerging from the dark theatre after the 2 hour musical, Zach wasn't sure what to do next but he knew he needed food.

He decided to walk down the same corridor that Kayla had wheeled Margaret down and turned the corner. He kept walking until he saw a sign saying 'Food and Laughs'. He was getting hungry, so he walked in only to discover that it was a stand up comedy club.

He found a nice corner table at the back and looked through the menu. He settled on a burger with fries and a nice vanilla milkshake.

After placing his order, he sits back down and takes a good look around the place. It was a little dark, with a spotlight focused on the stage. The stage was just a small platform with a mic stand, long red velvet curtains adorn both stage left and right and there's huge neon lights behind it saying 'LAUGH, or don't'. There's a few small round tables, each with two chairs, just in front of the stage as well as booths along the room's perimeter. There's also a bar to the right of the room for customers over 21.

His food arrives just as someone steps up to the mic on stage.

"Hey everyone, my name is Joe and unlike my two brothers, I CAN actually sing."

He was met with silence until someone in the front screamed out.

"BOOOOO! No wonder the band broke up!"

Some of the audience members chuckled at this but Zach just sat there shocked, because the person who just heckled the comic was none other than Kayla Davis.

Throughout the comic's set Kayla and Margaret took turns to heckle him, getting more laughs out of the audience than the comic himself. Zach just ate and watched, chuckling to himself here and there.

Once he finished his food, he left the comic club reluctantly. He wanted to see at least one more show before he went for a quick swim and then met his moms for dinner.

He decided to watch an acappella quartet performance but couldn't really focus because all he could think about was the feeling he got whenever he saw Kayla smile or heard her laugh.

He knew he was screwed.