A DIFFERENT TALE
Chapter Five
The stewards were looking for me
on every deck, and I was on the third deck from the bottom. Still no sign of
Jack, and the water was up to my knees. I didn’t believe the stewards would
come after me so far down, but apparently I was wrong. When I reached the second
to last deck, the water was up to my waist.
"Jack! Jack?" I called
down the corridors.
No response. I began to panic,
thinking maybe something had already happened to him. I searched a few rooms
until I finally found the one Jack was in. The cop was walking over to Jack.
"I have been asked to give
you this, as a token of our appreciation."
Then he swung and punched Jack
right in the stomach. Jack doubled over and I bent down and reached into the
water. My hand closed around a pipe or something and I walked into the room. I
smacked the man with a stick, it turned out to be, and he went down.
"Oh, Jack!" I
exclaimed, and threw my arms around him.
The water was a bit higher, and
there wasn’t much time.
"Marie, open that cabinet
and look for a silver key," Jack said when I had let go of him.
I opened the doors and looked at
all the keys.
"These are all brass
ones!" I said.
Suddenly, cracks in the porthole
started to appear.
"Go find some help!
Hurry!" Jack ordered.
I nodded and took the cop by his
shoulders. He was beginning to wake up, so I left him on the third deck from
the bottom. I searched around and found, in a fire case, an ax.
I used my elbow and smashed open
the glass. Quickly, I ran back down to the second to last deck. The biggest
problem was that the water was already touching the ceiling. I pulled off a
jacket I had borrowed and dove into the water.
It was cold, just as the last
time I remembered it. I didn’t have to swim to Jack’s room; the water pulled me
to his room. I swam up to the ceiling and took a quick gasp of air. Jack was
almost completely under.
"Use it!" he gasped.
Before I got a chance to swing, I
noticed the key floating away. I quickly grabbed it, just as the water came
over my head. I swam down to Jack and jammed the key into his cuffs. He was
free!
He took my hand, and we somehow
made our way back to the stairwell. Once we were on the third deck from the
bottom, we stopped to catch our breath.
My body was trembling like mad,
and Jack pulled me up and close to him.
"This is just as bad as last
time, eh?" he asked, smiling and shivering.
He went and kicked open a few
doors, finding some really warm coats. As we ran to the upper decks, I thought
about the last time.
*****
I watched as Jack walked away
with Tina to go by the frozen pond so Jack could draw a picture of his
beautiful girlfriend. Before he left, I took his arm.
"Jack, you’ve only known
her for two months. Are you sure you should be together?"
He smiled and nodded.
"I think she’s the
one."
I smiled, trying not to show
how weak it was.
"Jack, dearest, do you
have the money for the ride back?" Tina asked.
"Yes, darling."
Jack winked and walked out the
door. I stuck my tongue out as the door shut.
"Jack, dearest, do you
have the money for the ride back?" I mocked Tina’s high-pitched voice.
I decided to follow them, just
in case. I hid as Jack sketched Tina sitting next to the pond. The snow danced
as it fell from the sky and landed on my head, trying to block my view of the
two of them.
Tina suddenly walked up to
Jack, said something, then took his arm. She put her hand on his leg, but I saw
the other hand reach into his coat pocket and pull out his money. Before I had
a chance to yell out a warning, Tina grabbed Jack’s arm and slid him across the
pond. Don’t ask me how she did it, but she did.
Immediately, the ice began to
crack. Jack yelled for Tina, but she laughed and ran off. I got up and started
running towards the pond.
"Jack!" I screamed.
His eyes went wide with fear
and he sank under. I pulled off my jacket and stretched out as far as I could
without my whole body on the ice. My jacket reached into the water, but Jack
didn’t grab it. So I crawled onto the ice and stuck my hand in there.
I felt Jack’s hand and I
pulled. The ice began to crack around me, but I had gotten Jack up and out of
the water. Once we were back on land, I tossed my jacket around him and led him
back to the house.
"Thank…you…" he
said.
*****
Jack and I had reached the upper
decks and most of the lifeboats were gone. There was one that was loading the
rich people.
"Women and children
only!" a man hollered.
"Jack, I’m not going without
you," I told him.
"No, Marie. You have
to!"
"Not without you!" I
objected.
Suddenly, Cal appeared behind
Jack.
"I have a boat waiting for
us," Cal said.
"See? I have a boat waiting.
Now, go," Jack replied, turning back to me.
Before I could ask why Cal as
helping us after he had just had Jack arrested, I was hauled into the boat and
it began to lower.
Jack bent down, kissed my
forehead, and I was slowly pulled away from him. But soon I realized I wasn’t
going to let Cal take Jack away from me. When we approached a window, I got up
and jumped from the boat back onto the Titanic.
I ran up the steps in the rich
section and Jack met me just at the base of the area. He started kissing me,
both of us crying.
"You’re so stupid, Marie.
Why’d you do that? You’re so stupid," he said between sobs.
"Jack, we’ve been together
forever, and if you’re going down, I’m coming down with you. Remember?"
Jack smiled, the tears still
spilling down his cheeks.
"I remember."
But at that moment, something
tragic happened. Shots rang out, and before the two of us could run in the same
direction; a mob of people ran to the upper decks.
And we were separated!