Dead in the Water (2 page)

She didn't miss a thing. “What's your problem?”

“What's yours?”

Olivia stalked off, skinny shoulder blades practically twitching with irritation as she climbed the companionway steps.

Patrick chuckled. “Let's all go get some dinner. We have an early start tomorrow.”

We trudged along in the cold drizzle, following Patrick down the docks. I was relieved when he stopped at a small restaurant near the harbor. I was starving.

My heart sank when we stepped inside. White tablecloths, candles, glossy hardwood floors. I didn't even have to look at a menu to know that I wouldn't be able to afford much more than a Coke.

I guess Patrick caught my expression, because he jumped in pretty fast. “Dinner's included. Halibut burgers and fries.” He winked at me. “This is my family's restaurant.”

“Sounds great,” I said, surprised.

Olivia was looking at the menu. “Abalone? Abalone? Please tell me it's not...”

I stared at her. “What's the big deal?”

“Baloney? You want baloney?” Joey asked, bewildered.

Patrick cut in. “Relax, honey. It's imported.”

She ignored me and Joey and kept talking to Patrick. “Would you mind not calling me honey? My name's Olivia.”

Man, she needed to chill out. I nudged her. “You allergic to shellfish or something?”

She looked at me scornfully. “For your information, abalone in BC is a threatened species.”

“Lots of places serve it,” I argued. “The Chinese place we go to back home does.”

“Yeah? Well, you should ask where it's from. Make sure it's not local.”

I doubted anything they served was even fresh, let alone local. Anyway, now that I thought about it, it might have been mussels or clams or something. I shrugged. “So don't eat it.”

“Don't worry,” Olivia said. “I wouldn't.”

The halibut burgers arrived at our table—big, juicy, dripping tartar sauce and

surrounded by huge piles of steaming hot fries. I licked my lips. Joey and Blair dug in.

“I'm a vegetarian,” Olivia announced. “Are the French fries cooked in animal fats?”

I sighed. It was going to be a long week.

The next day, we got up early and sailed out of the harbor. It was awesome: a gentle breeze was blowing, the water was calm, and we hummed along under full sail. A curious seal popped its head out of the water and watched us go by. Fishing boats motored past. I couldn't stop grinning. Patrick told us we were headed for Bull Harbour, up on Hope Island, and that we'd spend the night there. Tomorrow, he said, we'd round Cape Scott and start working our way south toward
our eventual destination of Tofino. Wind and weather permitting, he'd added with a wink. That's why the course was eight to ten days—with sailing, you can't predict exactly how long a journey will take.

We had all signed up for an intermediate cruising course through the yachting association. We had to learn a whole list of practical skills as well as a book full of theory—everything from adjusting the sails to anchoring the boat to tying an unbelievable variety of knots. If I passed, I'd be qualified to bareboat charter—which basically means I'd be allowed to rent a boat from a charter company anywhere in the world. Of course, I couldn't afford to do that. Still, the official sailing qualification would help me to convince someone to take me on as crew. I'd be one step closer to my goal of becoming a delivery skipper.

We practiced man-overboard drills that morning—Patrick kept calling them that, despite Olivia's insistence that the correct term was “crew overboard.” We practiced a ton of other stuff too—tacking and jibing
to turn the boat, reefing sails to keep control in heavy weather and adjusting sails for maximum speed and comfort. The wind picked up around lunchtime, and the water got rough, kicking up a steep chop.
Jeopardy
started to pound into the waves, and suddenly lunch lost its appeal.

That was when Patrick yelled, “Man overboard!” and I made a total ass of myself. Joey couldn't stop laughing, and Blair kept punching my shoulder for some reason.

“You really didn't realize it was a drill?” Patrick finally asked, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

I shrugged sheepishly. “You sounded real serious, and then I couldn't see Joey...”

“Man.” He shook his head.

“Spacey Drake,” Joey said, cracking himself up.

After that, everyone started calling me Spacey instead of Simon. Everyone except Olivia, that is. I'd say she was being nice but I think she just wanted to do the opposite of what everyone else did. She was like that.

We made it up the channel between the islands and into Bull Harbour late that afternoon. I was glad when we got out of the waves and into the protected water of the anchorage. Sailors don't talk much about it, but seasickness is utter hell. Your mouth gets all gross feeling, like you have too much saliva. You yawn until your jaw aches, and you feel irritable and tired and achy and nauseated. And then you throw up, and you think that might help, but it doesn't help at all. It just goes on and on and on.

I didn't want to let on how lousy I was feeling, though obviously everyone noticed that I kept leaning over the edge and chucking up. Still, when we got into Bull Harbour I was the one up on the foredeck, lowering the heavy Bruce anchor into the calm dark water.

It was beautiful there. The water was so still it was shiny, and the trees along the shoreline were reflected as long dark fingers reaching out across the bay. The sky was a pearly gray, and once our engine was switched off, it was incredibly quiet. There was only
one other boat there—a cabin cruiser, maybe a forty-footer, anchored a little closer to shore—and not a person in sight.

I wrapped the anchor rope around the cleat in a figure-eight pattern, twisting the last loop once to secure it.

Olivia appeared beside me. The girl had cat feet: even in the silence of this anchorage, I hadn't heard her coming. She nodded toward the cabin cruiser. “Odd, don't you think?”

“What's odd?”

“They have scuba gear on the deck.”

I stared at her. “So they like diving. Lots of people like diving.”

“I guess,” Olivia said.

Patrick appeared on the deck and beckoned to us. We headed back to the cockpit and sat there, rubbing our sore muscles and waiting to hear what he had to say.

“For a first day,” he drawled, “that wasn't too bad. You all have areas you need to work on though.” He lit up a cigarette.

Olivia frowned. “Are you supposed to smoke while you're teaching?”

“My boat, honey. I make the rules.” He winked. “Olivia, you're quick on your feet and you have an instinctive understanding of the how the wind works in the sails. What you need to work on is your attitude. Try acting like you want to be here, okay?”

She shrugged. “I didn't know we were being graded on our acting ability.”

He shook his head in mock disgust and moved on. “Blair and Joey, you're big strong guys, but you need to understand the theory so you know what to do with all that muscle power. There's no point in cranking the sail in as tight as you can if we're sailing on a broad reach. If the wind is behind us, you need to let the sails out. You need to work with the wind.”

Patrick took a drag on his cigarette and turned to me. “Simon, you're getting called Spacey for a reason. You've got the best understanding of sailing of anyone here, but most of the time you're off in your own world. You need to work with the crew. If the sails need adjusting, ask someone to do it instead of fighting the boat. We could've
been going a good two knots faster if the sails had been trimmed properly.”

“I was at the helm,” I protested. “Trimming the sails wasn't my job.”

He met my eyes. “But you were the only one who knew it needed to be done. I bet you've got some sore muscles now, right?” He glanced around at the others. “Did any of you notice the problem?”

They all shook their heads.

“Looked fine to me,” Joey offered.

Patrick nodded. “That's what I thought. So, Simon? Try to be a bit more of a team player.”

I stared at my runners and said nothing. Delivery skippers sail alone.

We had a schedule worked out for cooking meals, and Olivia and I were on for dinner. Cooking isn't my thing, so I was a bit apprehensive. Fortunately it was very straightforward:
Jeopardy
had a surprisingly large freezer, and all we had to do was pull out a lasagna and stick it in the oven. Even I could manage that.

“I can't eat it,” Olivia announced. “It's beef.”

I picked up the package and pointed to the picture on the front. “Look at that. It
doesn't look like beef. It's just a miscellaneous meat-like product. I bet it didn't come from a cow.”

She just looked at me. “I'll make a salad.”

“You're gonna get pretty hungry,” I said. “There's steak kebabs on the menu for tomorrow night.”

Olivia ignored me. She sat at the table and sliced up tomatoes and cucumber while I washed lettuce for a salad. She was fast: the knife flew up and down and the vegetables collapsed into neatly sliced and diced piles.

I tossed the greens into a large plastic bowl. “You worked in a restaurant or something?”

“Nope. I just concentrate on what I'm doing.”

I could feel myself flushing. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” She bit her lip.

I slammed the salad bowl down on the table harder than was strictly necessary. To be honest, I was a bit worried about this whole concentration thing. I'd been getting
in trouble for zoning out my whole life. A couple of years ago, my teacher told my folks I should be on medication for it. Dad told them what they could do with their pills and that was the end of that.

“So, how come you're in such a bad mood?” I asked. I wasn't that interested, but I didn't want to think about the spacing-out thing anymore.

Olivia scooped the chopped veggies up and dumped them on top of the lettuce. “Told you already. I don't want to be here.”

“So how come your dad made you?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He sails. He spends most winters down in the Caribbean on his boat and he wants me to come.”

I couldn't keep the disbelief out of my voice. “He's in the Caribbean. On a boat. And you don't want to go?”

“His new wife is there too,” Olivia said darkly. “His new wife who's about twenty-five and used to be his student.”

“His student?”

“PhD student. Dad's a marine biologist.”

I shook my head. “Whatever. I can't believe you're passing up a chance like that... Hey. Think your dad would take me instead?”

“I think he wants to bond with his daughter. So, no, probably not.”

“Figures.”

Olivia grinned at me. “Cheer up. And take the lasagna out before it burns to a crisp. I'm not eating it, but I'd hate for the cow to have died for nothing.”

Over dinner—slightly blackened but nonetheless delicious—Patrick quizzed us on the parts of the boat. I knew them all, and I took some small satisfaction in discovering that Blair and Joey did not. They might look like junior yacht clubbers, but they barely knew port from starboard, let alone the leech from the luff.

Blair and Joey were on dish duty, so Olivia persuaded me to go ashore with her in the dinghy. Not that she was particularly enjoying my company: She'd rather have gone alone, but Patrick had vetoed that idea. I didn't mind. I wanted to stretch my legs anyway.

The dinghy was a rubber Zodiac inflatable. They're fast enough with an outboard engine, but they're crap to row. It was a long way to shore, so I automatically started to lower the propeller into the water.

Olivia grabbed my arm. “No, don't spoil the quiet.”

I rolled my eyes, but actually I didn't mind. It was really peaceful. All around us, the trees and the clouds were reflected in the water like it was a big dark mirror. I dipped the oars in and started to row.

“If I was a guy, you wouldn't have assumed you had to row,” Olivia said.

I thought about that for a moment. “You can row back,” I told her.

She grinned. “I was just teasing you.” Then she frowned. “Hey, Simon...row past that other boat, okay?”

“Why?”

“Why not? We can say hello. They're our neighbors for tonight. We might as well be polite.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Uh-huh.” I didn't think politeness was usually high on
her list of priorities. Nosiness, maybe, but not politeness.

“Come on. Why not?”

The cabin cruiser was a few hundred feet away, between us and the shore. I shrugged. “Sure. It's on the way.”

We rowed in silence for a while, listening to the dip-splash of the plastic oars in the water. At one point a seal poked its head up right beside our dinghy, and we drifted for a while, watching while it stared at us. Neither of us said anything, but our eyes met and we both grinned. Some people would have had to talk about it, but Olivia wasn't like that. It was all right, hanging out with someone who didn't feel the need to talk all the time.

I glanced over my shoulder. We were getting close to the boat. I could see its name—
Salty Mist
—written in script on the stern. I lifted the oars out of the water and let our momentum carry us until we bumped alongside. The boat looked empty. A small runabout with a powerful outboard engine was tied at the stern. The scuba gear Olivia had noticed earlier was in the smaller boat.

Olivia opened her mouth to say something. Just then, a tall man with a scruffy blond beard stepped out of the cabin onto the boat's aft deck. “What do you two want?”

“We're on the sailboat over there.” I pointed. “
Jeopardy
. We just thought we'd say hi.”