Liars and Fools (3 page)

Anyway, somewhere in there the math itself had gotten weird. The Mouse started wanting us to add letters instead of numbers, and move triangles around on grids. “I hate math,” I told Abby at last.

She pointed at the pages of equations on the back of my test. “What do you call this?”

I picked up the top page. Latitudes and longitudes. The course I'd been plotting from Victoria to Maui. Sailing west at an average speed of
5
knots…
2
,
308
miles divided by
5
…equals
461
hours…equals
19
days. Of course, the wind is unpredictable and
5
knots might be unrealistic. Still, it shouldn't take much more than
3
weeks.

I didn't know why I was wasting time thinking about the trip. It wasn't like it was ever going to happen, not without Mom. The numbers started to blur and I put the page down, blinking back tears. “That's not math,” I said. “That's sailing.”

three

Dad and I live near Willows Beach in a yellow stucco house with blue wooden trim and a wide front porch. It is only a few blocks from the water—close to the marina—and Dad always says that if we had to buy it now, we couldn't afford more than the downstairs bathroom. Mom and Dad moved here when they got married, and I've lived here my whole life. We've got tons of pictures all over the walls: Mom and Dad at their wedding; me as a toddler dolled up in dresses before I was old enough to object; the three of us at the beach or camping or on vacation in Tofino. Mom and Dad are holding hands in most of them, smiling at each other or at me. None of the pictures are from the last few years.

I pedaled slowly on my way home. Dad never got home before five thirty, and I hated being alone liars and fools in the house. I usually went to Joni's after school, but she had called this morning to say she was sick and that I shouldn't come in case she was contagious. I'd asked Abby if I could go to her place, but she'd said she had a piano lesson.

I slowed to a stop before I turned onto my street. Maybe I'd go to the marina and hang out there for a while. Dad wouldn't know the difference. I could spend an hour on
Eliza J
, even clean the deck and the stanchions, if I could borrow a hose or find a few rags. I could be home by five, boil up some pasta or heat up some soup, have dinner ready by the time Dad got home
.
I sped up, dropped my bike in the driveway and ran into the too-quiet, too-empty house. I crammed a few rags and a water bottle into my backpack, got back on my bike and pedaled as fast as I could toward the marina.

The wind had died down since the morning; the sun was warmer and the marina busier. A boat was making its way to the dock, its sails bundled loosely on the deck, an older man at the helm carefully maneuvering into a slip. Some people sat in their cockpits, talking loudly, laughing; others were striding down the docks, lugging coolers to their boats, untying lines, getting ready to go out.

I ignored them all, walking quickly past them to get to E-dock. The first job was to get rid of that green sludge around the cockpit drains, I decided. Mom had been a total clean freak when it came to the boat. In the house she sometimes let things slide, but the boat had to be perfect. Now
Eliza J
just sat there, her deck grimy, her steel railings rust-stained and her waterline dark green with algae. It made me sad to see it, but at the same time, I couldn't stay away. I'd feel like I was abandoning
Eliza J
if I didn't at least do what I could.

As I got closer
,
something caught my eye. A white and blue rectangle, dangling from her bow rail. I squinted.

FOR SALE.

It didn't make sense. I stared at the sign. It wasn't our phone number on it.
Blue Pacific Yachts
, it said. A yacht broker. I thought of
Eliza J
as Mom's boat, but legally, she was Dad's now. And Dad was selling her. I stood, staring at the sign for a long moment, barely able to breathe. He couldn't do this. He couldn't sell
Eliza J
.

“You okay, kid?” a man's voice asked.

I spun around. It was the old guy who owned the blue-hulled powerboat in the next slip. “Fine,” I said. My voice didn't come out right; it sounded tinny and hollow, like it was echoing inside my skull.

He nodded. “Beautiful boat.”

“Yes. She is.” My eyes were suddenly stinging, and everything blurred. I turned and walked away, opening my eyes wide. If I blinked, the tears would spill out, and I was scared they might never stop.

Before Mom died, I hardly ever cried. Once when I was tying up
Eliza J
, a gust had pushed the boat away from the dock and the rope had torn a layer of skin from my palms. Some of our boat neighbors— including the old guy who had just spoken to me, as well as all the others who now nod to me and look away—made a huge fuss. Mom squeezed my shoulder.
Fiona never cries,
she said. She grinned at me.
Next time, let go of the rope.

I sat on the couch, half-watching
TV
while I waited for Dad to get home. With every minute that passed, my anger got hotter and harder and more solid inside me. I knew Mom wasn't coming back, but that didn't give Dad the right to get rid of the things that were most precious to her. All the things I wanted to say to him were rushing through my head, all the angry words crammed together in broken sentences and unfinished thoughts. He was going to be upset that I'd gone to the marina, but too bad. I couldn't believe he'd put Mom's boat up for sale without even telling me. What if I'd gone down there one day and the boat was gone? My stomach was starting to hurt like it did right after Mom disappeared.

Finally I heard Dad's key in the lock. The front door opened and closed. I could hear him taking off his shoes and hanging up his coat.

“Hi there, Fiona. How was your day?” Dad walked through the living room and right past me without looking up. He started sifting through a pile of mail that the cleaner had left stacked on the kitchen counter.

I wanted to hit him or throw something across the room. “Not so good,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” He ripped open one envelope. “Bills, bills…”

He wasn't even pretending to listen. He obviously didn't care how my day was. “Why bother asking?” I said.

“Huh?” He looked up. “What's that?”

“Nothing.” I turned off the
TV
, stood up and headed upstairs. I don't think Dad even noticed.

I was probably the only kid in my school who had no phone and no computer in her room. Mom had always said technology was bad for relationships. Personally, I couldn't see how making communication more difficult was supposed to help my friendships. Anyway, Dad had both a computer and a phone in his own room now. It made enforcing Mom's rule with me seem a bit hypocritical.

Mom had been opposed to technology on boats too. She was a purist, she'd said. She'd believed in doing things the traditional way—roller-furling systems were for fat and lazy weekend sailors who couldn't be bothered to leave the comfort of their cockpits to adjust the sails; radar was just one more thing to break down;
GPS
navigation systems and other high-tech gadgets were bad, bad, bad. In her words, these things were destroying the closeness of the relationship between sailor and sea.

It was one of the things she and Dad used to fight about.
Bad enough that you take off to the South
Pacific or the Caribbean for weeks at a time,
Dad had complained. I'd been sitting at the top of the stairs, crouched on the landing and straining to hear every word.
The least you can do is take along the technology
to communicate. A satellite phone, maybe.
Tell me, how would a satellite phone interfere with
your experience?

Peter, if you don't understand by now, there's not
much point in me trying to explain.
Mom's voice was angry and loud.

Well, one of those
GPS
rescue things at least, so the
coast guard could find you if you needed help. You
don't even have to use the damn thing unless it's an
emergency.

Mom shrugged him off.
I'll be fine, Peter.

Right. You'll be fine,
Dad said.
And that's all you
care about, isn't it? You, you, you.
He stood up
. I've had
enough of this, Jennifer. It isn't fair to Fiona or to me.

I leaned over the railing.
Leave me out of it, Dad,
I shouted.
Anyway, Mom knows what she's doing.

Dad looked up, red-faced and angry.
Fiona! What
are you doing up?

Go back to bed, honey.
Mom's voice was firm, but she smiled up at me, like she was glad I was on her side.

Stop trying to tell her what to do all the time,
I said to Dad.
She knows what she's doing. You don't even
know how to sail.

He opened his mouth and closed it again, shaking his head as if he couldn't find the words. Then he turned and walked right out the front door. At eleven o'clock at night. Mom made hot chocolate for me and told me about the trip to the South Pacific she was planning. She was going to fly down and spend three weeks with a friend who had been cruising for the last two years. She showed me a picture of the boat: a new-looking, white thirty-six footer with a center-cockpit, flashy, but not as pretty as
Eliza J.

I tried to sound like I was excited for her, but I couldn't help thinking about what I had overheard. They'd had arguments before, but this was different. What did Dad mean,
I've had enough of this
? For the first time, I wondered if they might actually get divorced.

When I was little, Mom had a different boat—a smaller one, called
Banana Split
. Dad used to come sailing occasionally, but he never liked it much. He got seasick, and anti-nausea drugs made him sleepy. And
Banana Split
was so small, he couldn't stand up in the cabin or stretch out in the bed. When I was eight, Mom sold
Banana Split
and bought
Eliza J
. Bigger beds, standing headroom, and sturdy enough for any conditions. She wanted to do a long trip: the three of us, sailing down to Mexico or across the Pacific to Hawaii, living on the boat together for months or years.

But Dad wouldn't do it. He said that even on the new boat, he would still get seasick, and besides, he couldn't afford to take that kind of time off work. Mom was—in her own words—devastated. They started fighting all the time. And Dad stopped sailing completely. He wouldn't even set foot on
Eliza J
. Mom got more and more into it and started crewing on other people's boats, helping them on long passages in the South Pacific and the Caribbean. She took off for weeks at a time. You'd think Dad would have been happy that she'd found a way to pursue her dreams, but all he said was that it cost way too much money. He was always going on about what things cost.

I hated it when my parents fought, but I was secretly glad I didn't have to share sailing with my dad. It was the one time my mom slowed down enough to really talk to me. It was our special thing.

Now I sat on the edge of Dad's bed, on the side that used to be my mom's. Back when she was alive, there were always messy stacks of books and magazines on her bedside table. A few weeks after she died, Dad tidied it up. It stayed bare for months, but slowly he had taken over Mom's side, so now he had two bedside tables covered with his junk. I didn't like to look at it. It was like even the space Mom used to occupy was slowly disappearing.

I looked at the phone and considered calling Abby. Then I remembered the way she'd looked away from me when Mrs. Moskin said we could work with partners for the science project. I still hadn't asked liars and fools her about it, and she hadn't brought it up either.

Maybe I should call that psychic instead. I wondered how much it would cost to see her again. Probably Abby was right, and psychic readings were a scam. I'd never believed in psychics before, but the reading had seemed so…well, so real. I stood up, feeling restless, but couldn't decide what to do. The room was quiet, and the air felt too still. Finally I sat back down, picked up the phone and dialed Joni's number.

“Hello?” Joni's voice sounded croaky.

“It's me. Did I wake you up?”

“No, no.” She laughed and then coughed. “Well, yes. I was having a bit of a nap. But that's okay. You know I'm always happy to hear from you.”

I relaxed. Hearing Joni's voice always made me feel better. “Um…I went to the marina after school.”

“Did you?” Joni's voice was neutral. She knew I wasn't supposed to go there. She also knew that I needed to. Mostly I didn't mention my visits to the marina because Joni told me she didn't want to have secrets from my dad, but I needed to talk to someone.

“Um, Joni…” My voice was suddenly thick, and I had to swallow hard and clench my teeth to hold back tears. “There was a For Sale sign on
Eliza J.
”

Joni waited for a long moment before she answered. “Oh dear,” she said at last. “Oh dear. I've been wondering when this would happen.”

“You have?”

“I'm surprised he's hung on to the boat for as long as he has, love. You know how much it costs to keep a boat in the water.”

Actually, I didn't have a clue. “Maybe I could pay. If I got a job after school or something.”

“Honey, it's hundreds of dollars a month. There's no way you can cover that with babysitting. In any case, I don't imagine it's only about the money.”

“Mom loved that boat,” I said fiercely. “He's got no right to sell it.”

“Oh, Fiona.”

I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. Joni sounded so sad. “She was your sister,” I said. “You know how important sailing was to her.”