The Ship of Lost Souls 1 by Rachelle Delaney

pirate I will be.
    Â 
    Mine ain’t your typ’cal childhood.
    I bet you’d be astonished.
    I wield a cutlass and a knife
    And never get admonished.
    (Well, sometimes.)
    Â 
    A jolly life we lead upon
    The fair and sparkling sea.
    I won’t go back; forevermore
    A pirate I will be.
    Â 
    See, here upon the
Margaret’s Hop
,
    No grown-ups are allowed.
    No one to tell us when to stop
    or when we’re being too loud.
    (Except Tim, when he snores.
    Yes, you do, Swig. I have to listen to it.)
    Â 
    A jolly life we lead upon
    The fair and sparkling sea.
    I won’t go back; forevermore
    A pirate I will be.
    Â 
    Although everyone had heard the song before, they all laughed—even Lucas Lawrence, who rarely joined in on anything that didn’t involve raiding other pirate ships and counting pillaged pieces of eight. Scarlet had to admit, however, that even though Lucas had the social skills of a giant squid, he did valuable work on board, like repairing the
Hop
’s hull and mast. Lucas had apprenticed as a carpenter’s assistant for a year before joining the Lost Souls and was almost as useful on board as a real grown-up. Well, as useful as grown-ups could be.
    One person, however, didn’t join in the merriment. Jem Fitzgerald sat on a barrel off to the side of the mainmast, chin on his fist, lips clamped in a tight line. Scarlet watched him for a moment, then resolved to draw him out of his gloom. As captain, it was her job to make everyone on board feel at home. She called for another Lost Soul to take her place on the fo’c’sle and skipped down to the main deck, glad to be out of her Lost Soul disguise and feeling like herself again in a shirt and trousers, without a cap to hide her hair.
    Jem was staring out at the black sea, not even paying attention to Smitty’s antics and Liam’s jigging feet. Scarlet sidled up to him and hopped up onto the barrel beside his. She swung her legs in time to the music and looked straight at the boy until he could no longer ignore her. He muttered an uncomfortable hello.
    â€œSmitty’s a bit of a nut.” Scarlet nodded toward the light-footed boy pirate, who was now searching for a word to rhyme with “landlubber.” Jem didn’t respond, so Scarlet pressed on. “No one knows his real name, see. ‘Smitty’ comes from ‘Smith,’ his last name. It’s like you calling yourself . . . oh, I don’t know, ‘Fitz,’ short for Fitzgerald. Hey, that’s not a bad name, is it? Fitz. I like it.” Scarlet was fond of nicknames.
    â€œAnyway,” she continued, “from the first day he joined the crew, about a year ago, Smitty refused to tell anyone his first name. ’Parently it’s a painful one. That’s why you’ll hear us sometimes call out ‘Horace’ or ‘Ignatius,’ just to see if he answers.”
    Jem nodded, glanced at Smitty, and returned his gaze to the water. Scarlet, who ranked awkward silences nearly as high as raw oysters on her list of Most Despised, pressed on again.
    â€œSmitty comes from a rich family that owns a plantation on one of the islands. Sugarcane, I think. Or tobacco. Anyway, he saw us clowning around and stealing supplies in port last year, thought we looked like better companions than his boring old parents, and followed us back to the
Hop
. Then he threatened to rat us out to everyone we’d stolen from unless we took him with us. Came on board that very day, Smitty did. He’s a lark.”
    Jem’s eyes flitted from the ocean to Scarlet and back to the ocean. “He left his family?”
    â€œHe did,” she answered, happy to have finally enticed the boy to speak. She added, “And who wouldn’t?” at the same time as Jem asked, “But why?”
    â€œWhy?” Scarlet repeated. “I just told you why. We looked like better companions.”
    â€œI know,” Jem