reading

Liars
and
Fools

ROBIN STEVENSON

ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Stevenson, Robin, 1968-
Liars and fools / written by Robin Stevenson.

Electronic Monograph
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 9781554692491(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554694990 (epub)

I. Title.
PS8637.T487L52 2010 jC813’.6 C2010-903573-9

First published in the United States, 2010
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010929088

Summary: Still grieving the loss of her mother, Fiona resists the idea of moving on with her life, especially when her father starts dating a psychic.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover Design by Teresa Bubela
Cover photo by Getty Images
Typesetting by Jasmine Devonshire
Author photo by David Lowes

In Canada:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 5626, Station B
Victoria, BC Canada
V8R 6S4

In the United States:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer, WA USA
98240-0468

www.orcabook.com
13 12 11 10 • 4 3 2 1

To David and Genevieve

Contents

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

eleven

twelve

thirteen

fourteen

fifteen

sixteen

seventeen

eighteen

nineteen

twenty

twenty-one

twenty-two

twenty-three

twenty-four

twenty-five

acknowledgments

one

“Grand Opening!” Abby read out loud. “Free Psychic Readings! Today Only!”

She was pointing at a hand-lettered sign in front of a small store called The Mystic Heart Healing Center and Gift Shop. I stepped closer and peered through the window. Inside, brightly colored scarves billowed like clouds from a high ceiling. “Looks like one of those incense and wind chime places,” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“Want to go in?”

“About as much as I want to get my math test back on Monday. Come on, let’s go get ice cream.”

“Oh, it’ll be fun.” Abby pulled me toward the door, laughing. “Maybe your psychic reading will tell you whether you passed.”

“Like I need a psychic for that.” I reluctantly followed her into the store, and my shoulder brushed against a cluster of dangling bamboo pipes, setting off a melodic jangle. “See?” I muttered. “Wind chimes. Told you.”

The shop was tiny but crammed to overflowing with candles, Buddha statues, carved elephants, Tarot cards, crystals, beads, aromatherapy jars and books. One title caught my eye: How to Read Palms and Predict the Future. I turned away quickly, trying to stop my thoughts from rushing toward the whirlpool that was always lurking at the back of my mind, threatening to pull me in. So many little things could make me think of my mother. So many thoughts were best avoided.

“Too much incense,” I said, clearing my throat. “Makes my eyes water.”

“I like the smell,” Abby said. “What is it, lavender? Or lilac? Oh hey, look.” She gestured to the back of the store, where a small table was set up. A woman with wild red curls and big silver hoop earrings was standing there, fussing over the precise arrangement of the floral tablecloth. “She must be the psychic. Come on, Fiona.”

“You go ahead,” I said.

The woman looked up. “Welcome to the Mystic Heart. I’m Penny.”

“Can we get free psychic readings? Like the sign says?” Abby asked.

The woman laughed. “Not from me, I’m afraid. My friend Kathy is giving free readings, but she just nipped across the street to get a coffee.”

“Let’s go,” I said to Abby. “It could be ages.”

The door opened, and the wind chimes jangled again as a tall woman in black cords and a thick sweater came in, gripping a large paper coffee cup in each hand. She grinned at us. “You girls waiting for me?”

“If you’re going to tell us the future, we are.” Abby grinned back. “You don’t look like a psychic though. We thought she was the psychic.” She nodded toward the red-haired store owner.

The woman laughed. “Nope, Penny’s the hardheaded business owner, and I’m the psychic.” She let the door swing closed behind her and handed one of the coffees to the red-headed woman. “I guess I don’t look the part, do I?”

A picture flashed into my mind: the palm reader Mom and I saw the fall I was starting grade six. We’d been at a fair—roller coasters, candy floss, Ferris wheels, all that stuff—and there had been a tent set up with a sign out front that read: Psychic readings! Palmistry! Tarot!

Mom had pointed and giggled. Want to do it?

Nah. Let’s go on the Scrambler.

She made a face. Not right after lunch. Actually, not ever. Come on. It’ll be good for a laugh.

Inside the tent, an old woman introduced herself as Joanna. She had pale skin as softly wrinkled as tissue paper, red lipstick smudged onto her front teeth, dangling silver earrings and a sparkly purple scarf draped over her shoulders.

She took my hand in hers and told me that I was good at art and had a creative mind, and that I was determined and strong-willed. Then she took Mom’s hand and studied it for a few seconds. You’re a lot like your daughter, she said solemnly. Creative, strong-willed, adventurous. Mom winked at me, and I tried not to giggle.

I see many, many grandchildren, the woman continued. Yes, you will have many grandchildren.

I started to laugh. Not if it was up to me, she wouldn’t.

Mom nudged me with her knee under the table. And how about traveling? Do you see any traveling? On a boat, maybe?

Yes, yes. You will still be traveling when you are an old woman. And you have a very long life line. She traced a line on my mother’s palm with a long red finger nail. Yes, yes. A very long life line.

Well, that’s good to know, Mom said, laughing.

Six months later, she was dead.

“Earth to Fiona,” Abby said, nudging me hard.

“What?” I blinked.

She looked exasperated. “Haven’t you been listening at all? She wants you to go first.”

“Me?” I looked over at the psychic, who was sipping her coffee and watching me over the rim of the paper cup. Her sweater was blue with white snowflakes, and her dark hair was tied back in a loose ponytail.

“I just have a feeling about this,” she said.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I don’t want a reading, thanks. Abby’s the one who wanted to come in.”

“I know it sounds weird, but…” The woman hesitated. “I feel as if there is someone who has a message for you. I don’t mean to pry, but have you lost someone close to you?”

Abby—who usually prides herself on being the Voice of Logic—looked at me wide-eyed. “Fiona! That’s…”

I cut her off. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go first.”

The psychic adjusted two chairs so they were facing each other and motioned me to sit down with her. I hung back for a second, suddenly nervous. “So how does this work?”

She laughed again. She had a nice laugh: low and easy. “No crystal balls or tea leaves, I’m afraid. I’m rather boring. Just sit quietly for a minute and I’ll see what I pick up.”

“Do I close my eyes?”

“Only if you want to.”

I sat down, stared at my sneakers and tried to relax. I didn’t believe this stuff for a second, but this woman seemed nice enough, and I didn’t want to be rude. At least she wasn’t as weird as that awful palm reader.

“I see waves,” the woman said slowly. She closed her eyes.

I caught my breath and looked up at her. “Like in an ocean?”

“Maybe…I think so. Yes, it is an ocean,” she said. “I can smell salt and hear the waves crashing. It’s dark…”

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take my eyes off her face.

She opened her eyes and looked at me. “You’re awfully pale. Do you want me to stop?”

I shook my head. “Keep going.”

Frowning, she closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she looked at me again, her expression was puzzled. “I see bright lights,” she said. “Dazzling. Fireworks, perhaps.”

Flares. Red and white parachute flares, burning bright a thousand feet above the waves…

“And I’m picking up strong emotions. Fear. Intense fear. And regret.” She leaned toward me. “Does this make any sense to you?”

“Yeah.” I blinked away tears and tasted salt. “Yeah, it does.”

“Someone…a woman, I think? Older than you?”

“My mother.”

“Yes. She wants you to know that she loves you”— the woman paused as if she was listening to something I couldn’t hear—“and that she is sorry. She wants you to know that she is sorry.”

My eyes were stinging, and I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. I took a long choking breath and rubbed my sleeve across my eyes. “Can you see her?”

“It’s fading out now. Just darkness.”

“Is that it then?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m not getting anything else. Are you all right? I know how overwhelming this can be.”

“I’m fine.” I forced a smile.

“It’s hard to know how to interpret things sometimes. It could be the past or the future. The waves might not even be real waves at all. They could be symbolic.” She sounded worried. Apparently my smile hadn’t fooled her.

I stood up and put my hand on the chair back for balance. I felt shaky. “They were real waves.”

Abby was watching me and biting her bottom lip. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I zipped my jacket up and shoved my hands into my pockets. “Can we please go now?”

“You sure you don’t want to stay for a few minutes?” the woman asked. “You still look sort of pale.” The wind chimes jangled again, and a cluster of middle-aged women wandered in, talking and laughing loudly. “Oh dear. Looks like I have some more clients.” She looked at Abby. “You’re next though, if you’d like a reading too.”

I jumped in. “Abby, I want to go. You can stay if you want, but I’m going.”

Abby cast a longing glance at the psychic. “Maybe some other time,” she said. “I’d better go with my friend.”

The woman rummaged in her purse and pulled something out. “My card. In case you want another reading. Or if you need to talk about this one.”

“Thanks.” I took the card and put it in my jeans pocket without looking at it. I could almost see the waves crashing on the reef and the flares lighting up the darkness. I could feel my mother’s fear, tight and urgent beneath my ribs.

As soon as we were outside, I turned to Abby and held up my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” I started to walk quickly down the sidewalk, the late afternoon air cool and damp against my face.

“Come on, Fiona.” Abby hurried to keep up. “You look totally freaked out.”

“I’m not,” I protested. Actually, I was, but I also felt closer to my mother than I had in months and I didn’t want to ruin it by talking about what had just happened.

“Fiona? Don’t get carried away here. I know I got excited back there when she said she had a message for you, but let’s face it: the things she said were pretty vague.”

“Vague?” I stared at her. “An ocean? Flares?”

“She didn’t say that. She just said waves. You were the one who said ocean.”

I frowned, trying to remember.

“Waves could be a standard opening line, you know? Someone else might not say anything, or they might look puzzled, and then she’d throw out another word. Trees or a road or whatever.”

I wrapped my arms about myself tightly and tried not to listen.

“Look, you can’t take it seriously,” Abby said. “She was pretty good at her routine, but it’s just acting and guesswork.”

“You were the one who wanted to go in there.”

“Yeah, for a laugh. Not because I believe in it. There is no way anyone can really bring messages from people who have died. You know that, right?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Abby was quiet for a minute, walking along by my side, looking unhappy. “So. Ice cream?” she said at last.

Ice cream was the reason we had come downtown. There’s this place at the mall that will mix any kind of topping right into whatever flavor ice cream you want. Mom used to get cherries and Oreo cookies in vanilla ice cream, but Abby and I always got gummy bears. “Yeah,” I said, trying to smile at her. “Ice cream.”

But I had a feeling that even gummy bears in chocolate ice cream weren’t going to make me feel better today.

two

I was still thinking about the psychic woman on Monday morning as I crouched low over the handlebars of my bicycle, eyes watering and fingers half-frozen in my thin gloves. Gravel skidded under my tires as I coasted down the hill and into the boatyard. Across the parking lot, a forest of masts rose from the water. The sky was a hard cold blue, the sun a flat white disc. I jumped off my bike and leaned it against the chain-link fence. A stiff breeze blew steadily onto shore. I hugged myself and shivered. It had officially been spring for a week, but the air still held the damp chill of winter.

It wasn’t quite eight, but already there were a few people around, working on their boats, carrying gear along the narrow docks, drinking coffee from travel mugs. I ignored them and they ignored me. I figured that everyone knew what had happened to Mom. I’d even overheard two women talking about her in the marina washroom once, gossiping while they washed their hands and fixed their hair.

Jennifer wrote her own ticket, one of them said. Not that I’m saying she had it coming, but there’s gutsy and then there’s stupid. Through the crack in the stall door I could see the backs of their heads, one blond and one gray. Mother and daughter, maybe. For a moment I thought about bursting out and shouting at them, and making them feel terrible. But underneath my anger was something like shame. Dad had known Mom was taking too many risks. He’d tried to get her to take safety precautions. And what had I done? I’d taken my mother’s side.

So I didn’t shout at the women. I stayed hidden in the stall, my cheeks burning, until they left.

Everyone down here at the marina stayed away from me now. It was like that at school too. Except for Abby, people seemed to avoid me. Maybe they thought disaster was contagious. Or maybe they didn’t know what to say.

The tide was low, and the ramp down to the docks was steep and wet from the morning dew. I walked quickly, almost running, my feet finding the nonskid strips on the steel walkway. School started at 8:45, so I only had a few minutes. I would have liked to have more time, but Dad would wonder why I was leaving for school so early. He didn’t know I still came here. At least, I didn’t think he knew. We didn’t talk about it.

As always, setting foot on the docks calmed me down. I didn’t really understand it, but whenever I was around the boats, it was as if something changed inside me: slowed down, settled. Softened and lifted me up. It felt like magic of some kind. It was the one place I could still see my mother’s face clearly when I closed my eyes. The one place that I could think about her without getting sucked into the whirlpool of memory and guilt.

Which was why I had to keep coming, no matter what my dad said.

And if the psychic was right, if my mother was out there somewhere, thinking about me, then where was she more likely to be than here?

Our boat, Eliza J, was at the end of E-dock. I could see her sitting there, heavy and solid in the water, her white hull stained with greenish streaks, the blue canvas of her dodger and sail cover faded from the sun. I wished I could spend the day scrubbing her deck and polishing the surface rust from her stainless steel stanchions and rails. I looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to me; then I stepped on board. The boat rocked slightly under my weight.

The cockpit floor was dirty, and thick green algae grew in rings of slime where water pooled around the drains. The companionway boards were locked in place. They’d been locked in place for a year: the padlock was probably rusted shut by now. I pressed my nose against a porthole, trying to get a glimpse of the dark cabin down below. I could see the table folded against the wall, and the edge of the portside berth. My berth, the one I used to sleep on. I remembered the scratchy-soft feel of the beige fabric against my cheek and the faint smell of it: mildew mixed with the citrus tang of laundry soap and something else, something almost sweet.

“Hi, Mom,” I whispered. That was all I ever said. I didn’t try to have conversations with her or anything; I’m not crazy. It was just that I could remember her most vividly here. I could picture her standing at the tiller, laughing as Eliza J sailed into the wind, adjusting the sails, talking to me. Fiona, tighten up that jib sheet, would you? Isn’t this absolutely gorgeous sailing? Be a love and grab those cookies from down below. I’m starving.

There was a sharp stabbing feeling in my throat, and my eyes were suddenly wet. It was a relief to feel something. Lately it felt as if even my memories of my mom were slipping away. No one talked about her anymore. Not Dad, not my Aunt Joni, not Tom. It seemed like they were all starting to forget her. I wouldn’t let that happen. Not ever.

I pedaled hard, flew down the streets to school and managed to slip into my seat seconds before the bell rang. Just as well. I’d been late way too many times this year. For the first few months after the accident, the teachers all treated me like I was made of glass. They gave me tentative smiles, asked if I was okay, told me they were there if I wanted to talk—that kind of thing. Even if I was late or skipped homework, they never gave me a hard time about it.

Lately though, it seemed like there was some kind of time limit on grieving. The first anniversary of Mom’s death was March 1, which was three weeks ago. Maybe they had it on their calendars. Maybe they’d talked about me at a staff meeting and agreed that it was time I got my act together. All I knew for sure was that the sympathetic nods had recently been replaced with lunch-hour detentions. My free pass had expired.

I looked around the room, only half-listening to the announcements over the PA system. Abby was grinning at me from the next row. I grinned back, but stopped smiling abruptly when I saw what Mrs. Moskin was handing out. Last week’s math quiz. Ugh. The teacher gave me a funny look when she put my paper on my desk: almost a smile, but not quite. So maybe I’d done okay?

I lifted the corner and peeked at the grade. Nope, not okay. Not even close to okay. A fail. Dad was going to flip. For a moment, I considered dropping the paper in the garbage and not telling him, but I’d be bringing a report card home in a month. He’d find out anyway. After last term’s grades, it wouldn’t exactly come as a shock.

I folded the paper in half and started to stick it in my binder. The back of my math test was covered with scribbles and notes. I paused and ran a finger along the first line. It read: 20° 52.45' N; 156° 40.77' W. Lahaina Harbor, Maui.

I’d been daydreaming, imagining sailing to Hawaii. It was a trip Mom and I had planned to do together someday. Dad used to say he’d meet us there: he got too seasick to want to spend much time offshore. I picked up my pen and drew a little sailboat on the edge of the page, its sails set for a downwind course across 2,300 nautical miles of blue-green ocean. I closed my eyes for a moment. Dolphins, sunsets, Pacific Ocean trade winds… Mrs. Moskin cleared her throat.

“Would you care to join us, Fiona?”

My cheeks flushed hot. “Sorry?”

Mrs. Moskin fluffed her hair. She’s always doing that. She’s a small, skinny woman with thin white hair and a pink scalp that shows through in places. Her eyebrows are penciled on, two brown lines arching above pale blue eyes. She’s twitchy, and everyone calls her the Mouse. Though not to her face, of course.

“Unless you have something more important you’d rather be doing?” she asked me.

“Well…”

The Mouse read my mind. “It was a rhetorical question. I think I’d rather you didn’t answer it.” She took her beady eyes off me and addressed the class. “As you’ll know if you were paying attention, I was talking about the science fair,” she said. “This will be a chance to explore any topic that interests you. You can pose any question you want, provided you can come up with a hypothesis and devise an experiment to put it to the test.”

“Can we do our project with a partner?” I asked.

Mrs. Moskin nodded. “Yes.” She looked at me and then at Abby. “If you do your project with a partner, you will share the grade. So be sure you pair up with someone who will do their share of the work.”

As if I’d ever let Abby down. I glanced across the aisle, trying to catch her eye, but she quickly looked down at her desk. My stomach started to hurt.

Ayla Neilson put up her hand. “Mrs. Moskin?”

“Yes, Ayla.” Mrs. Moskin sounded tired. Whoever said there is no such thing as a stupid question had never met Ayla.

Ayla twisted a red-blond curl around her finger. “Well, what kind of topic? Like, what is a science topic? Do we have to dissect anything? Because I don’t believe in killing animals or, like, plants or anything.”

The Mouse sat down on the edge of her desk. “Any topic, as I said, can be suitable for scientific exploration. You do not have to dissect anything. I don’t usually feel a need to spell this out, but let me be clear: please do not kill anything. If you have a topic in mind and have questions about it, please see me after class.”

I looked over at Abby again, but she didn’t look up. “Pssst. Abby.”

Mrs. Moskin frowned at me. “Fiona. Please save your private conversations for lunch hour.”

As the morning went on, I felt worse and worse. I couldn’t believe Abby would actually think I wouldn’t do my share of the work. We’d done practically every project together since we started hanging out in the fourth grade. We were always partners. Always.

By the time the lunch bell finally rang, I wanted to go home. I dragged my feet to the cafeteria and sat down beside Abby in my usual spot. Mrs. Moskin’s words were stuck in my head, and I couldn’t decide whether to bring up the subject or not. I crumpled my paper lunch bag in my fist and sighed. I didn’t think I could stand to hear Abby admit she didn’t want to work with me.

Beside me, Abby pulled out a set of matching plastic containers. She took the lids off and stacked them neatly, uncovering a sandwich, some applesauce, and sliced carrots and celery. She brought the same thing every day. “How did you do on the math test?” she asked.

I wondered if my answer was going to make a difference to whether she’d want to work with me. “Not too well.”

Abby waited, eyebrows raised.

“Okay, okay. It was bad. A fail.” I really wanted to ask her about being partners for the science project, but I was scared to push for an answer. As long as we didn’t talk about it, I wouldn’t have to hear her say no.

“Can I see?”

I pulled the page out of my binder and held it out to her. Abby took it, biting her lip when she saw the grade. “Fiona! I told you how to do these problems. They’re exactly the same as the ones we studied.” She turned the paper over and studied the scribbles on the back for a few minutes before handing it back to me. “I don’t understand how you can do this stuff but flunk an easy math test.”

I didn’t answer right away. I did okay in math last year, but after Mom died, I missed a lot of school— most of the last couple of months of sixth grade. Dad had stopped going to work. He stayed awake all night and slept on the couch in the afternoon. He didn’t care if I went to school. I don’t think he even noticed. There was never any food in the house unless Joni brought dinner over, and in the end I went to stay with her and Tom for a while. Eventually Dad got better, and I moved home and went back to school for grade seven, but I got a lot of bad stomach aches, and I had a hard time concentrating.

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 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.

Eliza J Eliza J