Liars and Fools Read online

  Liars

  and

  Fools

  Liars

  and

  Fools

  ROBIN STEVENSON

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2010 Robin Stevenson

  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.

  Issued also in an electronic format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-248-4

  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 is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  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

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, STN. B

  VICTORIA, BC CANADA

  V8R 6S4 ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 468

  CUSTER, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  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 t
he 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 liars and fools 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.