Changes in Latitudes Page 2

  Meet her halfway? How? By saying “Oooh, sounds fun! Hey, I get to be captain!”? Sure, that’ll happen.

  Because when you’d love nothing more than to put as much distance as possible between yourself and the mother who took a crap on your blissful life, purely out of her own selfishness, the thing you’d most want in the world is to be stranded at sea with her.

  For four freaking months.

  She can’t pull the rug out from under me. Not again.

  “I’m not going,” I state. “I’m old enough to live here on my own until you get back.”

  “That option is completely off the table, so put it out of your mind right this second.”

  I can tell by her tone of voice she won’t budge on that, so I tuck my knees up under my chin, wrapping my arms around my legs. I lower my eyes and voice and try another tactic. “Mom. You don’t understand. I have my own plans for the summer. Tara, Jess, and I are getting all of the details of our trip in order! And with everything that happened this year, what I really need more than anything is to be with my friends in my familiar surroundings. I need my own bed in my own room and—”

  Mom cuts me off. “About that . . .”

  I yank my head up. “What?”

  “Honey, this is the bad-news part. I’m sorry. This trip pays well, but we can’t overlook any opportunity to shore up our savings right now, so—”

  She breaks off and reaches for my hand, but I snatch it away and tuck it under my butt.

  Holding eye contact with me, she continues, “I’m still in touch with the dean of Dad’s department, and she mentioned a new professor they’ve hired for the fall semester. He and his family need a short-term rental while they house hunt, so I told them . . . well . . . they’ll be subletting our house while we’re away.”

  Not only can’t I stay here, but she’s invited strangers to live among all our things?

  No.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  My eyes fill, and I’m riding a crazy-fine line between heartbreak and rage. I’m like one of those blow-up balloon people outside car dealerships, with the bodies that wave around as they fill with air from beneath. When the wind knocks their torsos over, they fold in half, then bounce back. Hit with a wind gust, bounce back. Hit, bounce back.

  When do my hits stop coming?

  “Another family in our house?” If my words were printed instead of spoken, they’d be in six-point type, that’s how small my voice is.

  Mom slides up close and puts her arms around me, my folded knees between us. I consider jerking free, but I’m so defeated by this plot twist that I don’t even bother. She caresses my hair.

  “I’m so sorry, baby. I know it’s weird to think of other people living here, but this is what the situation requires. When Dad and I got divorced, we never expected I’d lose my job so soon after, and maintaining two households on a single income is outrageously expensive. We’ve already cut back on a bunch, and Dad’s doing all he can to conserve on his end, but with the cost of living in Hong Kong . . .” She sighs, then adds, “It’s only temporary—they’ll be all moved out before we get home.”

  But I’ll know they were here. This house is the keeper of 99.9 percent of my memories of life BD. It’s bad enough that living in it without Dad feels unnatural, but to think of some other girl’s foot dangling off the side of my bed as she sleeps, or of her spending an afternoon reading graphic novels in the window seat on the landing of the stairs, or happening upon the heart-shaped rock collection I arranged in a hidden circle at the very base of my favorite forsythia bush, or—

  My thoughts skid to a stop.

  “What about my garden?” I ask.

  My backyard is my sanctuary these days. It’s calming, digging in the dirt and cradling the new plants as I nestle them into the ground, experimenting with different fertilizers and charting their growth. I’ve devoted countless hours to maintaining it. I can create order there, and I can keep it that way. No sudden surprises.

  “We’ll have to leave very detailed instructions for taking care of it,” Mom says, not sounding reassuring at all.

  And just like that, I can tell that my garden will become the next casualty of the Divorce That Just Keeps Taking. I press my fingers into the corners of my eyes, trying not to let my emotions circle the drain.

  “I don’t understand why we can’t stay here and figure out some alternate plan. I can pitch in with my earnings from Heavenly Licks—”

  That would mean giving up my August vacation with Tara and Jess, since my summer job was funding my portion of our expenses. Either way, I’d be missing my trip. But at least in this scenario we’d have the rest of the summer to hang out. That would almost—almost—make up for not being with them to witness the World’s Largest Ball of Yarn.

  My mother sighs. “I appreciate the offer, sweetheart, but I have to think beyond just getting us through the summer. This sailing fee plus having our living expenses covered for four months plus the money from the sublet will buy us a lot more time.”

  “My college fund, then,” I offer. “I can take out student loans. If it means getting to stay here . . .”

  I’m clearly desperate, but I mean every word.

  “Absolutely not. We’re not touching that account. Besides, the money’s a motivator, but it’s not the only one. I honestly, truly believe I’m offering you and Drew something special with this adventure. Once you’re out there on the water and you see how amazing it can be to live that kind of lifestyle, things back here won’t seem as all-consuming as they do right now. I think you, especially, could use a break after the last six months, Cass.”

  But not from my life and my friends and my plans with them. What I need is a break from her. Not more of her, in my face, 24-7.

  She brushes a strand of hair from my cheek, waiting for a response, but I don’t answer.

  Mom is silent too, and I can tell she’s searching for the right words. I could save her the effort. There are no right words for when you turn your daughter’s life completely upside down.

  Again.

  If she hadn’t cheated in the first place, none of this—none of this—would be happening.

  “Maybe I’ll leave you alone to process for a bit,” she says, ending her words on a sigh. She puts her hands on her knees and pushes to a stand. “It’s a lot to take in, and I’m really sorry to spring it on you, Cass.” Her voice catches. “I just wanted to wait until all the plans were solidly in place before I said anything. I really do think this’ll be an incredible experience for all of us.”

  Solidly in place. Ha!

  The Pacific Ocean is the very opposite of solid.

  4

  The only freezer on board is . . . under my mattress. On a long list of recent injustices, beginning with “you have to leave the only home you’ve ever known to move onto a sailboat the size of your bedroom in said home, which, oh, by the way, someone else will be enjoying” and including “you’ll miss the first two months of your senior year of high school, which is supposed to be the exact time everything magical happens to you, if every teen movie ever made is to be believed,” the freezer thing isn’t the worst offense.

  But still.

  Let’s say we’re under sail somewhere off the coast of California and Drew decides he wants a Hot Pocket. His big sister, Cassie, will then have to go into her stateroom (which makes it sound like it might actually be stately, instead of postage-stamp-sized), pull up the piece of foam that is supposed to pass for a mattress, lift a wooden hatch on the frame, and dig into an ice-cold compartment.

  I will, quite literally, be reenacting “The Princess and the Pea” every time I go to bed. Except there will be an entire bag of peas under me, instead of just one. And they will be frozen.

  Mom keeps going on about how clever the boat designer was to utilize every square foot of space, but I’m busy wishing he or she had thought to include about a thousand more of them.

  I refold a fuzzy sweater and squeeze it against my chest
to flatten it. There’s hardly room to stand in here, and everything I brought has to fit into a series of small cubbies built in above and beside my bed/freezer. Not only that, but since Drew has to sleep in the main cabin, on the cushioned seats that run alongside the built-in table, he’ll be using half my cubbies for his own clothes.

  “Cass! Come up! We’re getting ready to leave the dock!” Drew calls.

  I sigh. Poor kid. He’s treating this like one big vacation, even though he’s the one stuck sleeping on a glorified bench for four months. And I really don’t think he’s thought through the ramifications of missing the beginning of his freshman year. Our high school has three middle school populations feeding into it, and those initial months include an epic reshuffling of the social order. He’ll practically be the new kid come November, and there’s only so much a big sister will be able to help with that.

  I’m hoping my own classmates won’t forget my name by the time I get back. Okay, I may be exaggerating, but it’s one thing to be away for part of the summer—plenty of kids go to camp, their grandparents’ place, or beach houses. Missing the start of school is something else entirely. Everyone will be settled into new routines by the time I reenter the scene.

  “Cassie!” my mother yells. “We’re about to christen our voyage. You don’t want to miss this!”

  Oh, but I do. I want to miss all of it.

  I drop the sweater and climb the few steps up to the cockpit (turns out the hull is the entire underbody of the boat, whereas the cockpit is the area in the back of the boat where we sit and steer. I hate that I now know this).

  Drew and my mother are beaming in the bright sunshine, but I can’t work up more than a scowl. Mom chooses to ignore my dark mood the same way she’s been ignoring it for the last six weeks, since she first sprang this trip on us.

  I hang behind them as they crack a bottle of cheap Champagne (encased in a plastic bag so no shards of glass pollute the riverbed) against the boat’s hull, while a guy on a yacht in the next slip takes a picture on Mom’s cell.

  “Bon voyage!” he wishes us, handing her phone across the narrow strip of wooden dock dividing our boats.

  Mom’s answering laugh seems to hold all the sparkles dancing on the water right now.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this!” she tells him before turning to toss her arm over Drew’s shoulder. “Okay, gotta hit the seas if we’re gonna meet up with the other sailboats by dinnertime. Ready, first mate?”

  “Ready, cap’n,” he answers, hopping onto the dock and unwinding the rope to free Sunny-Side Up. He’s so into this trip, he’s been practicing tying and untying different nautical knots night and day for the past several weeks.

  “And we’re off,” Mom says, breathing deeply. She glances in my direction again, but I pretend to be absorbed in picking at a thread on my yoga pants. As soon as I feel her gaze leave me, I return below deck to finish unpacking my “room.”

  I’m here, but I don’t have to like it.

  This boat may not have all the comforts of home—or even half of them—but at least it has a Wi-Fi hot spot. I’d planned to take full advantage of this to at least maintain all aspects of life back in Pleasant Hill that don’t require an actual physical presence. In fact, one of my tearful good-bye promises to Tara and Jess was that we wouldn’t have to be out of texting range from one another for more than five seconds. But not thirty minutes into our trip, I’ve had to abandon scrolling through Instagram on my phone and am instead digging in the dreaded freezer under my mattress for that bag of peas. I place it on my forehead, but even the soothing cold on my skin can’t stop my stomach from rolling worse than the waves passing beneath our boat.

  Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I can’t take four more minutes of this, much less four more months.

  The diesel fumes of the engine stick in my nostrils, and the vibrations of the motor are especially torturous on top of the back-and-forth motions of the entire cabin.

  I stand, but it takes both hands to steady myself as I lurch from my room into the vertical box that passes for a bathroom. A mist of seawater sprays through the open hatch when we encounter another wave. My stomach heaves and I bend over, aiming for the toilet, except the boat rocks again and I miss. Now I see the merit of the entire room being the shower “stall,” with a drain in the center of the floor.

  When I emerge a few minutes later, Mom is waiting outside the door with a lollipop and a box of Dramamine. Because, of course, she heard everything. There’s zero privacy when you live in a shoe box.

  “You’ll feel better if you come up into the fresh air,” she says quietly. “Focusing on the horizon is the best cure for seasickness. The waves are always worse where the river meets the ocean; once we’re in open water, the seas should calm down.”

  I don’t answer, but I do grab the lollipop and peel off the wrapper as Mom returns above to reclaim steering duties from Drew. It’s lemon-flavored and goes a long way toward getting the taste of vomit out of my mouth. I hang at the bottom of the stairs for a minute or two, debating whether I’d rather have my stomach hurt down here or my heart hurt up there, but the next lurch sends me climbing in search of relief.

  Mom is standing at the wheel. She gives me a small smile and nods at the bench that contains our life jackets. I grab one and fasten it around myself, something Mom has decreed non-negotiable any time we’re on deck and not at anchor.

  I ease myself into a seat and take in my surroundings as I allow my lungs to fill with the cooling sea breeze. My stomach thanks me by unclenching just a tiny bit.

  We’re still in the river, but only barely, as our boat enters its mouth and aims for the expanse of Pacific Ocean just beyond. The wide sea stretches to the horizon, where it meets with the wispy clouds. I gulp at the endlessness of it. It’s cold out here, with the wind and the fact that coastal Oregon—even in July—is far from tropical, but the bright sun makes the whitecaps appear as if they’re dusted with glitter. It looks magical, though it feels menacing. Vast. Bleak. Just like the time stretching before me until we’re back home.

  Drew is at the very front of the bow now, and when he spots me he gestures. “Come!”

  My first inclination is to shake my head, but my stomach wonders if standing and stretching might not be the worst thing. I stumble up the narrow pathway along the side of the boat, the fiberglass below my feet angled to shed water. Every so often I encounter a rope coming off the sails and connecting to the deck, and I have to maneuver around it. I’m basically left with no choice but to clutch at the waist-high metal bars that line the perimeter like a fence; they’re the only thing keeping me from sliding into the yawning water below. It doesn’t help that the boat is pitching from side to side, and that my belly has clearly scored an invite to the dance party too.

  When I reach Drew at the very front, I grasp the railing just below his hand. After a few gulps of air to push down the queasiness, I say, “I’m not reenacting that ‘king of the world’ scene from Titanic, if that’s what you have in mind. . . .”

  He makes a face. “Eww, don’t be gross. You’re my sister. Anyway, that was the annoying kissy-kissy part of the movie. The sinking scenes were the only ones worth watching.”

  “Yeah, maybe we can skip talking about sinking ships while out to sea on one?” I request blandly.

  Drew snorts. “Only if you stop referencing romances that are super shi—” He cuts off as we both steal a quick glance back at the Language Police.

  My brother is about as enamored with curse words as every other freshman boy the world over. Which is to say: a whole lot. He’s usually pretty good at restraining himself around my mother and other authority figures though. Luckily, Mom is blissfully steering, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. She’s oblivious to us as the wind whips her hair around.

  For a second, I’m struck by how intent but relaxed she seems. I haven’t seen her look like this in a while, though it used to be beyond familiar. When I was in elementary school, she let me
read her the entire Harry Potter series, half a chapter at a time, night after night. Order of the Phoenix alone took an entire winter. And every bedtime she’d lie curled next to me, rubbing circles on my back and wearing this exact expression anytime I glanced up from the page.

  I ignore the sudden tightness in my chest and turn back to my brother, poking his arm. “So. First mate, huh?”

  He ducks his head. “Whatever. Just ’cause I don’t feel like having a four-month pity party doesn’t mean you need to be on my case about it.”

  “I’m not on your case. I’m merely trying to get how you’re so totally into this.”

  “You mean sailing around like pirates, something new and different to look at every single day, learning to surf on Mexican beaches while everyone else is stuck in algebra? I don’t get what you don’t get. No offense.”

  I turn my face to the sun and close my eyes to avoid answering. (Note to self: don’t close eyes while seasick.) I wonder how I’d have felt about this trip last year, back when I used to be glass-half-full too. I wish more than anything I was still as ignorant as Drew, so I could be that way again. Of course, he might also be different if he knew about Mom’s betrayal . . . which is exactly why I’ll never tell him. I’m perfectly fine having it be my cross to bear, if it means he gets to stay happy-go-lucky Drew as long as possible. There’s no reason for us both to wallow in this muck.

  “Oh crap! I almost forgot!” he says, scrambling up and nearly losing his balance. He rights himself and laughs. “Whoa. Gotta work on my sea legs. Be right back.”

  He drops his narrow hips easily through the open hatch and onto Mom’s bed beneath, then disappears. I take unsuccessful steadying breaths to counteract the motion of the waves. A minute later, heavy metal blasts through the cabin and filters up. Drew’s grinning face appears below me.

  “I made a playlist! Starting with ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Iron Maiden. Sea references plus it’s our maiden voyage. Get it?”