Liars and Fools (7 page)

“Yeah, I remember. That is so weird.” Abby bit her lower lip and shook her head slowly. “Freaky weird.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I kind of thought you were taken in by that reading,” she said. “When you wouldn't talk about it, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.” I shrugged. “But I thought about it later. And I think you were right. She totally could've been just tossing words out. Waves could be anything. Microwaves, radio waves, a wave pool, waves of sadness, somebody waving.” I stopped walking and let the rush of kids part around us on their way into the lunchroom. “What I can't believe is that Dad seems to be taken in by her lies. He's all, like, ‘Well, Fiona, who's to say it isn't possible?'”

She winced. “Tedium. He doesn't seem the type to fall for that kind of scam.”

The bell rang, and I looked Abby in the eyes. “Lunchtime,” I said quickly. “We have to talk. And I have to come up with some kind of a plan to get her out of my life.”

I don't think I heard a word Mrs. Moskin said that morning. All I could think about was how I could get rid of Kathy. Unfortunately, most of my ideas involved things like rare untraceable poisons, cliffs or zombies. None of which was very practical.

Finally we were set free, and Abby and I grabbed seats in the back corner of the lunchroom. Abby tipped her sandwich out of its plastic container: thick brown bread with seeds on the crust and leafy bits sticking out. The kind of sandwich my mom used to make. Dad mostly buys packaged things, like Baby Bel cheeses, and applesauce or pudding, and those little containers of crackers with cheese spread. When he makes sandwiches, they're plain peanut butter or gross greasy salami on thin squares of supermarket bread.

“Fiona? Earth to Fiona?”

I looked up. “Sorry. What?”

“I've been thinking about this all morning. Listen, I know it isn't likely, but what if Kathy really can do stuff? You know? Like talking to spirits or whatever. People who've died.”

Like your mother.
She didn't say the words, but I knew we were both thinking them. If Kathy was for real, maybe I could actually find out what had robin stevenson happened to Mom. Maybe I could even talk to her again. I started to get a tight ache in my stomach. “She can't,” I said shortly. “No one can.” My breath caught in my throat, and that panicky feeling started building up in my chest. I looked around the lunchroom: dozens of kids eating, talking, laughing. Acting normal. Sometimes I felt like there was a thick wall of glass between me and the rest of the world.

Abby looked at me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded.
I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. Deep breaths.
My breathing eased, and the panicky feeling started to recede. “I don't believe in any of it,” I said flatly.

“Yeah, I guess I don't either. Not really.”

“Mom and I saw a palm reader once,” I told her. “Did I ever tell you that? Last year, at the fall fair in Sidney?”

“You did? I thought they just had horses and pigs. Well, and rides and stuff.”

“And this woman. Joanna something-or-other.”

Abby looked curious. “And? What did she say?”

“She said that Mom had a long life line.” I couldn't read Abby's expression. She was looking at me, head tilted, but not saying anything. “Well, so obviously she was a fake,” I said. “You can't ask for clearer proof than that.”

Abby nodded slowly. “I guess that doesn't prove they all are though. Right? It doesn't say anything about Kathy either way.”

“I don't care. The only tricks I'm interested in seeing Kathy do are disappearing tricks. Poof. And her stupid kid too.” I put down my half-eaten sandwich and peeled the lid off a pudding container. “I can't believe Dad's doing this to me.”

“It is kind of weird that he'd pick someone so flaky.”

“Yeah, I know. He doesn't usually go for that kind of thing. He's always made fun of people who read their horoscopes. I mean, he used to teach
science
. And he's always said he's an agnostic because there's no proof either way of God's existence.”

“An agnostic? Is that like an atheist?”

“Sort of. It's saying you don't know whether there's a god or not. He says it's unknowable. Atheists believe there is no god, which is what I think. Well, most of the time at least.” I licked the back of my plastic spoon. “Dad and Tom used to go on and on about this stuff.”

We used to spend most Thursday nights together: me, Mom, Dad, Joni and Tom. We'd have dinner and play Balderdash or Labyrinth or Pictionary, Dad and Tom would argue about philosophical things, and I'd be allowed to stay up late. But since Mom died, that's fallen apart too. I see Joni and Tom a lot, but Dad never seems to want to go over there anymore.

Abby fiddled with a piece of lettuce that had fallen from her sandwich. “I believe in God. It's something you're supposed to take on faith, right?”

I had never understood how Abby, who was so logical about everything else, could make this one exception. She went to church every Sunday and to a Christian camp for two weeks every summer. When we were little, she used to say her prayers before she went to sleep; and I suddenly wondered if she still did. It wasn't the kind of thing you could ask someone. “Dad doesn't usually take anything on faith,” I said instead. “He's all about evidence.”

She shrugged and popped the lettuce in her mouth. “I guess he must believe Kathy's for real though.”

“I don't know. I guess so.”

“Well, I'm assuming. He wouldn't want to be with someone he thought was lying, right?”

I didn't know how to make sense of Dad and Kathy. I spooned the pudding into my mouth slowly, letting it melt into a warm sweet liquid on my tongue. If Dad believed her, wouldn't he want to try to speak to Mom? But if Kathy had actually given Dad a message from Mom, surely he'd have told me.

Abby took my silence as agreement. “And we know her psychic thing has to be phony, right? I mean, she isn't actually talking to dead people or predicting the future or whatever.”

“Obviously.” I couldn't see how any of this was helping. There was a long depressing silence. Kathy was liars and fools a liar, Dad was stupid if he believed her, and I was stuck with a big phony in my life whether I liked it or not. I couldn't believe Dad had been taken in. If only…I gasped. “Abby!”

“What?”

“I've got the best idea.” And it didn't involve poison, cliffs or zombies.

She looked apprehensive. “What is it?”

“Well, like you said, Dad wouldn't want to be with her if he thought she was a fraud. If he realized she was making all this stuff up.”

“Maybe.” Abby balanced a plastic container lid on one edge and tried to spin it around.

It skittered across the table toward me, and I put my hand down on it hard, like swatting a fly. “What do you mean,
maybe
?”

She shrugged. “If he likes her, you might be stuck with her anyway.”

No way was I letting that happen. “If we prove she's a fake, Dad will have to forget about her.”

Abby's eyes widened. “What if we did that for our science project? Mrs. Moskin said anything was okay as long as we had a hypothesis that we could prove or disprove.”

I snorted. “Yeah, I can really see her going for this. ‘Oh, Mrs. Moskin? Our hypothesis is that my dad's girlfriend is a big liar.'”

She shook her head impatiently. “We wouldn't word it quite like that, obviously. Maybe…hmm. hmm.” She drummed her fingers against the edge of the table.

Something occurred to me. “Abby! Does this mean you want to be partners?”

“We're always partners.”

“I know, but you seemed like you weren't sure.”

She shrugged. “It's just that grades are really important to me, and lately you haven't been so much into schoolwork. But we're still partners, Fi. I wouldn't want to work with anyone else.”

One of the knots inside me loosened and untied itself. “I'll do my share of the work, don't worry.”

“I'm not worried. If we do this topic, you'll be motivated, right? Success is all about motivation.”

I rolled my eyes. “Quit analyzing me.”

She ignored me. “What if our hypothesis was that predicting the future is not possible? Or that psychic, um, psychic phenomena can be explained by…I don't know. I think we need some books.”

Maybe we really could find a way to prove that Kathy was a liar. A spark of hope flickered and caught, and suddenly the room seemed brighter. “Abby? You're a genius.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” After a moment, her grin faded and was replaced by an anxious frown.

“What now?”

“I just don't know if this is a good idea. I wasn't too sure about my dad dating either, but his girlfriend turned out to be okay.”

“She's not pretending to channel dead people or read palms.”

“You were upset about your Dad dating even before you knew who his girlfriend was,” Abby pointed out. “I don't think you should do this, okay? For the record.”

“Got it,” I said. “For the record.”

“It might not be as bad as you think,” she said. “With Kathy and your dad, I mean. She actually seemed pretty nice to me. Maybe you just don't like changes.”

“Abby!” Sometimes she drove me crazy. “Quit analyzing me already and help me figure out how to get rid of her.”

“Okay, but Fiona…”

“I want her gone.” I looked at Abby. “Poof.”

She hesitated; then she sighed and nodded. “Poof.”

eight

I considered stopping by the marina on my way to Joni's after school but decided not to. It might be officially spring, but it sure felt like winter. My hands were practically frozen to my bike's handlebars. Besides, the thought of seeing
Eliza J
with that For Sale sign on her depressed me. I couldn't see any way to convince Dad to let me keep her. Even if, by some miracle, she didn't sell, he'd never let me sail her again anyway.

It wasn't like Mom's accident was
Eliza J'
s fault.
Eliza J
was built back in the seventies, and she was strong and solidly made. Mom said that modern boats were so thin-hulled you could see the fiberglass flexing when you hit the waves. When we installed liars and fools a new compass on
Eliza J
, she'd sawed a four-inch circle of fiberglass out of the bulkhead.
Look at this
, she'd said, holding it up triumphantly so that it glinted in the sunlight like a medal.
At least an inch
thick. She may not be fast, our Eliza J, but she's damn
near indestructible.

Eliza J
wouldn't have been battered apart on a reef. It'd take a bomb to smash her to bits. The boat Mom had been on in the South Pacific had just cracked like an eggshell on the edge of a mixing bowl.

Eliza J
had never been south. The farthest Mom and I had sailed her was up to Desolation Sound a couple of summers ago. I swallowed hard, remembering waves lapping on rocky shores and snow-capped mountains towering against blue sky. We had hiked for hours, swum together in the icy water, run out shivering and laughing, scampered across the stones on our numb feet to find our beach towels. We'd watched bald eagles soaring overhead and otters feeding and seals poking their heads out of the still waters. In the evenings, we'd sat in
Eliza J
's cozy cabin and played Crazy Eights and talked about all the trips we'd make in the future.
Hawaii,
Mom had said.
Maybe next year, or the
year after.

Maybe never, I thought, pushing the memories aside. “Bad day?” Joni asked when I walked into the kitchen.

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Don't want to talk about it?”

I didn't know what I wanted. I sat down on a stool, leaned my elbows on the counter and looked up at Joni. Her gray hair was a wild mass of frizz. She'd traded the hot pink reading glasses for a leopard-print pair that hung on a beaded chain around her neck. She didn't say anything. She just sat there and waited, like she had all the time in the world.

I had an urge to put my arms around her and lean my head against her big soft shoulder, but Joni's not the huggy type. She looks like she would be, but she isn't at all. Mom wasn't either. I blinked a little. “Did you know this woman Dad's seeing is a psychic? Or a medium, or something?” I made air quotes with my fingers and talked in a fake-spooky voice. “Messages from your dear departed. From those who have gone beyond.”

“Peter mentioned the medium thing.” Joni shifted on her stool and made a face. “You know I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to that sort of thing, but it takes all kinds, doesn't it? And who's to say that her beliefs are any stranger than anyone else's?”

I thought about telling Joni that I'd met Kathy before and that she'd done a reading for me, but I decided against it. If I described what Kathy had said—the waves, the flares, the fear—she might think Kathy really was psychic. “Believe me,” I said, “they're stranger.”

Tom popped his head into the kitchen. “What's stranger?” He was wearing bright green plaid flannel pajamas with his ratty old housecoat untied over top.

Tom is the man Joni lives with. He's not her boyfriend or anything, so, technically speaking, we're not related, but he's lived with Joni for my whole life, and we consider each other family. Tom is an alcohol-and-drug counselor and does some night shifts at the Youth Detox, so he sleeps odd hours and half the time he's wandering around the house in his pajamas in the middle of the day.

“My dad's…This woman Dad has met,” I said.

Tom rubbed his curly hair with one hand. “Ahh. Yes. Peter's new girlfriend.” He crossed the kitchen, squeezed my shoulder with one hand and took a cookie from the tin with the other.