Sweet Amanda

My Modern Met

The vintage car pulled up
To the pier,
And a feeling of dread
Engulfed me.

Mr. Peterson was,
In one word,
A Prick.
According to his press releases,
He was a self made man
Who built his fortune
From a little lemonade stand
He had when he was about 7 years old.

The sad thing is
That prick was my boss.
He owned the yacht I worked on
And twice a year,
I had the displeasure
Of being in his company.

To ensure that he never
Knew my true feelings towards him,
I plastered a smile on my face
And greeted him
Like my favourite uncle,
Going into a spiel
On how well the boat was doing.

This time,
He appeared to be distracted.
His eyes darting to me,
The pier, then the car.
Something was off.

“You’ve been doing a great job
On the boat, Tom.”
Don’t I know I do
A great job on this mega yacht.
“How about you take
The weekend off.
I’m not taking it out,
But I need some alone time.”
No problem,
Lara was talking abut going upstate
And this weekend was as good as any.

Something is off.

I packed up my stuff
And made my way to my ride.
On the way home,
I called Lara
And shared the good news.

Saturday morning,
The ride was packed,
And the road was calling,
But I forgot my pocket knife
At the yacht.

It was no problem,
I’ll just stop on the way.

It was still pretty early,
So I decided to sneak on,
Find the knife
And be on my way
Without disturbing Mr. Peterson.

As I passed the main stateroom,
I heard moaning
And something akin
To a struggle.
I slowly cracked the door,
Making sure not to make any noise.

What I found
Was Mr. Peterson on top
Of his twelve year old daughter,
Amanda.

He didn’t see me,
But she looked right into my eyes.
Her eyes spoke volumes.
They told me that this
Was not the first time.
They told me she didn’t
Want to be here,
Doing this act with anyone,
Much less her father.
They told me that
She was about to give up.

At this moment,
I chose to do the right thing.

Sure, I could have walked away,
I could have called her mom,
Called the police.
I could have done
These things anonymously,
But I didn’t.

Instead,
I pulled Mr. Peterson
Off of his daughter,
Shoving him against the wall.
As he was a bit shocked
By the intrusion,
I was able to get off
A good uppercut
That knocked him out.

I threw clothes at Amanda,
Giving her time to get dressed,
As I waited just outside of the room.

Five minutes later,
She stood at the door.
“Do you want me to
Take you back home?”
She shook her head. No.
“Where do you want to go?”

It took a while
For her to answer
And I was not expecting the answer.
“I want to go with you.”

As we approached my ride,
I read the questions
That were written across Lara’s face.
“Later,” was all I said.

Later, as we drove
To Lara’s parent’s house,
We learned about
The Petersons,
And what emerged from
The lips of Amanda Peterson
Shook us to our core.

Amanda, in our minds
Was not returning home,
Amanda was never going
To step foot on the mega yacht
Where her father violated her.
The same boat he called
The Sweet Amanda.

Fortunately, the Petersons didn’t want
The scandal to smear their “good” name.
They told friends and family
That Amanda was attending
A Swiss boarding school,
But the truth was they signed
Guardianship over to Lara and me.

We moved to the west coast,
I’m still working on boats,
Lara found a good job,
And Amanda,
Well, Amanda is doing great.