Take It Off by J. Minter

of my mom.”
    Then an image of Suki and his mom doing yoga together sprung into his mind, and he shuddered in horror.
    The sun was coming up over the water now, and they could see that they were in the port of a new city. Out on the Paseo Maritimo that ran along the bay, shopkeepers were setting up fruit stands. Cathedrals and fortresses of another era rose up behind them. Patch seemed to have drifted off for a moment. When he looked back at Arno, he said, “Listen, all I’m saying is we’re on this boat for another week. You’ll have a whole lot more fun if you aren’t trying to go up against a mad Pardo the whole time. Naw mean?”
    Arno nodded. There was nothing he hated more than being told what to do. So he turned to Patch and said, “So what’s up with you and that RA chick?”
    But as usual Patch wasn’t listening. He had a thinking look on his face, and after a few beats, he turned to Arno, as though Arno hadn’t just said something, and said, “You know what I like? When I come home after skating around or whatever, and you guys are all just in my house. It makes me feel like that place might actually be home.”
    Arno’s first instinct was to say
You know what yousound like?
in a sort of mimicking tone. But what came out of his mouth was totally different: “Yeah, sometimes I just feel like we’re always going out. It’s nice to feel like there’s somewhere that is our, you know, home base.”
    â€œHow about tonight the crew just shows up at my cabin, like we would in New York, and we see what happens?”
    They heard a footstep overhead.
    â€œWhat’s the plan?” Suki asked. Before either of them could say anything she knelt down and kissed Arno. It was the sort of gray-area peck that could either be romantic or friendly. She stood up and threw her arms in the air. “
Wooo-hooo
, I feel
so good.
”
    Arno watched as she reached into her bag—it was one of those sack things you can buy at health food stores—and took out a cigarette. She smoked those hippie clove cigarettes that smell like a Morrocan bazaar. She took two drags, and then slapped her forehead dramatically. “Silly me! I
completely
forgot that I quit smoking these things forever this morning,” she said, handing the lit clove to Arno. “I’m such a goose. You’ll take care of that for me, won’t you? Thanks. I’m going to go shower and stuff, but I’ll see you guys at morning meeting at eight thirty, right?”
    With that, she skipped off—literally skipped—acrossthe deck and was gone. The two guys remained on their bellies, watching the city slowly come to life. Arno took a long, meditative drag of the clove. Then he stubbed it out because it tasted absolutely disgusting.

Patch makes teacher’s pet look like a dream job
    â€œGood morning, sailors!” Stephanie was standing behind the lectern of the lower-level lecture hall. The rest of the faculty were sitting on the stage, to her left. They were mostly college-age kids like her, and as usual they were a wearing a lot of polar fleece and Gore-Tex. Patch walked down the middle aisle behind Arno, and Arno thought he saw Stephanie wink at Patch. They surveyed the room for a minute and then saw Mickey in the fifth row. He was sitting next to Suki and Greta. Arno cocked his chin in their direction, and Patch followed him over. As they took their seats, Stephanie continued to talk.
    â€œNow, we’re going to have a beautiful day trip to Mallorca in just a few hours. But before that, I want to tell you about the survival test. It’s the biggest challenge you’ll face here at Ocean Term, and it’s going to begin tomorrow morning. The survival test will take place over twenty-four hours. You will divide yourself up into ‘survival teams,’ and each team will earn points basedon their creative abilities in the wilderness and on their