Fariza’s hand quivers as she turns the page. Her small voice fills the quiet room.
“I stayed in my room under the covers a long time. Then I had to pee really bad. So I got up and opened my door. Mami and Parveen were lying on the living-room floor. I tried to wake them up but I couldn’t. I started to scream. Mrs. Marshall, from next door, came and pulled me away from Mami and Parveen. I heard the sirens. Mrs. Marshall took me to her apartment and made me hot tea with a lot of sugar. The police came and talked to me. I told them about Papi and Amir yelling at Parveen and Mami. I told them about the two big booms.
“I slept on Mrs. Marshall’s blue couch. In the morning, a woman came and told me that Mami and Parveen were dead. I wanted Papi, but she said he and Amir were in jail. I wanted to stay with Mrs. Marshall, but I couldn’t. She has two jobs and three little kids already. So I went to stay with strangers. I always said please and thank you. I wanted Mami and Papi to be proud of me.” Fariza’s voice wavers as she closes the book.
Sid doesn’t know what to do or say. Vomit rises in his throat, but he chokes it back. Fariza is sitting very still, her hands resting on the notebook.
“Do you hate me now?” she asks when Sid doesn’t speak.
“Hate you?”
“Because of what I did.” Fariza starts to cry. She rocks back and forth, making a noise like a hurt kitten. Sid wants to wrap his arms around her, but he is afraid it might frighten her. She crawls into his lap and buries her face in his chest as he grasps for words. He understands now why she has chosen not to speak. Words are so inadequate, so insubstantial in the face of such pain. Words can’t protect you. They can’t clean your wounds or quench your thirst. They can’t stroke your hair or wipe the tears from your face. Words fly out of your mouth and evaporate. And still he has to try.
“No, no, no, no,” he manages to say. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But I didn’t get out of bed,” she wails. “I didn’t help Mami and Parveen. And I told the police about Papi and Amir.”
“You were right to stay in your room,” Sid says. “I don’t think you could have helped Mami and Parveen. And it wasn’t wrong to tell the police about your dad and brother. Not if they hurt your mother and sister.” There are so many things he wants to say: Your father and brother are evil; they would have killed you too; you’re better off here. Maybe someday he’ll be able to say those things to her, but for now he searches for something simple, something innocent that will comfort her.
All he can think of is a song Megan used to sing to him when he was cranky or upset, a song that always calmed him down. He still remembers all the words.
When you’re down and troubled
And you need a helping hand
And nothing, nothing is going right.
When he gets to the part about people trying to take your soul, he wishes he hadn’t started, but he keeps singing until the end.
Ain’t it good to know you’ve got a friend.
You’ve got a friend.
By the time he stops singing, Fariza is asleep in his arms. He is about to stand up and carry her to her room, when he hears someone clapping.
“Trust you to know all the words to that dumb hippie song. What are you—sixty?” Wain says.
Sid brushes past him, taking care not to bump Fariza against the door frame. “Shut up, Wain,” he says. He climbs the stairs and tucks Fariza into her bed, nestling Fred next to her under the duvet. When he goes back downstairs, Wain has disappeared. Megan is in the kitchen, wiping the counters.
“Caleb says he can take you and Wain out on the Caprice today. Elizabeth and Fariza and I are having lunch with Irena and Chloe. Where is Fariza anyway?”
“She was tired, so I put her back to bed. You know how crabby she can be if she doesn’t get enough sleep.”
Megan nods. “You look as if you could use a bit more shut-eye yourself, buddy. Everything okay?”
The weight of Fariza’s story is suffocating him, but all he says is, “Yeah, I didn’t sleep very well last night. I don’t feel much like going out on the boat. Will Caleb mind?”
“You know how rare it is for Caleb to get a day off this time of year,” she says. “He really wants to do this. He thinks it might help.”
“Help what?”
“Help you and Wain figure out your relationship.”
“I already figured it out. We share some DNA. That’s it.”
“You know there’s more to it than that,” she says.
“Not if I don’t want there to be. He’s a jerk.”
“Yes, he is,” Megan says. “But not all the time.” She folds the dishrag and hangs it from the faucet. “So do this for Elizabeth.”
“For Elizabeth?”
“She thinks you’re good for Wain.”
“You’re kidding, right? Wain thinks I’m a loser. No, wait, he’s upgraded me to a loser hippie. And I think he’s a psycho. I can’t wait for him to leave.”
“And Elizabeth?”
“I’ll visit her. She can come back here.”
“Her life is in Victoria, Sid. Yours is here. Wain is the bridge. Think about it.”
“Yeah, a bridge I’d like to jump off.”
“Sid.” Megan’s voice has a note of rebuke in it.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “But I’m going for a bike ride first. Tell Caleb I’ll be back in an hour.”
Caleb honks the horn, and Sid lugs a cooler down the front steps to the van. No way is Wain riding shotgun this time. The front seat is covered in an old beach towel and the backseat is buried under a crab trap. The van smells as if someone has set up a brewery in a fish-packing plant. Orange float vests are piled on top of coolers filled with empty bottles. Tangled ropes snake around yellow deck boots stuffed with rolled-up charts.
It’s always like this when Caleb gets back from a charter. He just throws everything in the back of the van and sorts it out after he takes the clients to the pub for one last beer.
Sid heaves the cooler into the back, moving aside a pail with a dead fish in it.
“Can I chuck this?” he says, holding up the pail.
Caleb turns around, peers into the bucket and grimaces. “Forgot about that one. Let’s dump it at the wharf.”
Sid climbs into the front seat and slams the door as Wain comes down the front stairs. He glares at Sid and yanks the crab trap off the backseat.
“It reeks in here,” he says.
“Welcome to my world,” Caleb says with a smile.
When they get to the boat, Caleb hands them both orange flotation vests. Sid puts his on without argument. He knows the rules.
“Life jackets are for pussies,” Wain says.
Caleb slips his arms into a vest. “So I must be a pussy,” he says. “Better a pussy in a life jacket than a drowned pussy, I always say. You want to go or not?”
Wain zips up his vest as Sid and Caleb prepare to leave the dock.
“Spent much time around boats, Wain?” Caleb asks.
“A bit,” Wain says.
“Rowboats,” Sid mutters.
“First and only rule is this,” Caleb continues. “The captain is always right.”
Wain snickers and salutes. Caleb raises an eyebrow at him. “Cast off then, sailor. Let’s get this party started.”
They pull away from the wharf, heading for the strait. As they pass the islet in the mouth of the cove, Sid says, “I’m gonna catch some zees. Wake me up for lunch.”
Caleb nods. “We’re going to head up to the Narrows, take a look at Ripple Rock—Elizabeth wants some pictures, even though there’s nothing much to see—and then duck in behind Maud Island.”
“Sounds good,” Sid says. He climbs down into the galley and makes his way to the bow of the boat. He opens a door with a small hand-painted sign: Sid’s Space. The triangular stateroom is both tiny and tidy. He reaches into a small hammock that serves as a bedside table, extracts a piece of Juicy Fruit gum and lies down on the bunk, snapping his gum and listening to the growl of the engine and the slap of water against the hull of the boat. He often falls asleep when he is out on the Caprice, and after a nap on board he always feels rejuvenated, as if under the influence of a powerful yet beneficial drug.
When he closes his eyes, he dreams that he and Devi are snorkeling inside a reef in some tropical paradise. The water is warm and clear and full of fish that seem to have no fear of the strange, clumsy creatures in goggles and fins. A huge school of fish shaped like enormous darning needles surrounds him, and for a moment he panics, afraid that he will be pierced and that his blood will draw the sharks that lurk beyond the reef. He uses his rubber fins to propel himself toward the beach, and when he looks back, Devi is gone. He swims back out to where the needle fish had swarmed and finds nothing—no sign that Devi had been there five minutes ago, swimming with the clown fish and laughing at Sid’s cowardice. Sid screams Devi’s name, but there is no reply. He rips off his snorkel and mask and dives into the silence of the reef, scattering a school of tiny yellow fish and disturbing a small octopus whose tentacles brush his arm as he swims by. A green sea turtle swims toward him, impossibly graceful in its huge shell. It nudges him with its extraterrestrial head and speaks to him. “Wake up,” it says. “We’re here.” For once, Sid is glad to hear Wain’s voice.
They are anchored behind Maud Island; Caleb has put up the cockpit table and opened the cooler. “Help yourselves, boys,” he says, grabbing a sandwich and a Coke. “We’ll row to shore after lunch. See what’s what.”
Sid takes a bite of a turkey sandwich. A single gull circles the boat, waiting for scraps.
“Sid, you should tell Wain how the Caprice got her name.”
Sid knows Caleb is trying to make him interact with Wain. He doesn’t want to, but he also doesn’t want to upset Caleb.
“Aye aye, Captain,” Sid says. “So, Megan is obsessed with this book called The Curve of Time. It’s about some woman who took all her kids—she had, like, six of them, I think, and a dog—up and down the coast in her boat. It was called the Caprice. She was always sending her kids off in the dinghy to play on some remote beach while she cooked dinner or repaired the engine.”
Caleb takes up the story. “No life jackets, ever. Drinking from streams. Running away from bears. Climbing moss-covered cliffs looking for huckleberries. Shooting some of the most dangerous rapids on the coast. It’s a wonder they survived. They even took artifacts from Indian villages. It was years ago—a different time—but it still makes me cringe to think about those kids crawling around in abandoned burial boxes.
“A few years ago, Megan decided it would be fun to recreate some of the original Caprice’s voyages. You know, take a bunch of local kids, spend the summer on the water. Sort of like a mini Outward Bound. This was before I had the charter business, when I was still working in town. She studied the charts until she knew them inside out and backward and she practically memorized the whole book. Remember that time she took you, Sid?”
Sid takes a bite of a cookie. Peanut-butter chocolate-chip. His favorite. “Yeah, I remember. It was a nightmare,” he says. “I hid in my bunk most of the time, hoping that a big storm would wash the other three kids overboard. I was only ten. They were a lot older and they thought I was a freak. They liked to piss on the skylight over my bunk. Especially if it was open. Their idea of a good time was lighting up a joint when they thought Megan wasn’t looking and throwing pop cans at seagulls.”
“Yeah, but Sid got his revenge,” Caleb says, tapping the back of Sid’s wrist with his can of Coke. “Megan was pretty angry at him,” he says, turning to Wain, “but those kids were jerks.”
“So what did you do?” Wain asks. He has been unusually quiet since they anchored, and he’s only picked at his food. Sid wonders if he is seasick. He hopes so.
“I hijacked the Caprice,” Sid says simply. “We were anchored in Teakerne Arm and Megan sent the guys to shore in the dinghy one afternoon—told them how to find the little lake. I could tell she was pretty sick of them too. They didn’t like her cooking, they complained about sleeping in bunks, they hated not having TV and Internet access. As soon as she saw they were safely landed, she went to have a nap. I watched them leave the beach and then I slipped over the railing and swam to shore. I was a good swimmer, even then. I rowed the dinghy back to the boat, pulled up the anchor, started the engine and chugged away, all without waking Megan up.
“I had to stand on a crab trap to see over the wheel. After about an hour Megan woke up. You should have seen the look on her face!” Sid opens his eyes very wide and makes a perfect O with his mouth. “Man, she was pissed! She grabbed the wheel, turned us around and opened up the throttle. It was dark when we got back to the beach and those guys were freaking out. I mean really freaking out. Sobbing, calling for their mommies, bargaining with God. Megan made me row in to get them. I had to promise to tell them what I’d done. I thought they’d kill me, but they were so glad to be rescued they didn’t do a thing. Never even threw a pop can at my head. We went home the next morning, and they never told anyone what happened. I guess they were afraid I’d tell someone what pussies they were. Gave them a whole new respect for freaks.”
“No kidding,” Wain says, just before he leans over the side of the boat and pukes.