Every Little Thing in the World (10 page)

Both of the other boys in our group were barely taller than me. Charlie looked like this might be his full and final height, and he seemed to be compensating with a lot of bodybuilding. His muscles bulged everywhere—biceps, calves, forearms—in a cartoonish and slightly grotesque way. It was sad, because he had a very handsome face. The last boy, Sam, had that clumsy, puppyish look some boys have just before their big growth spurt. He had blond hair and a chubby face, but his legs were long and spindly, like he'd spend a lot of time tripping over himself.

Last but not least: our fearless leaders. When Jane, the girl counselor, told us she was twenty, Natalia rolled her eyes at me. “She is not,” Natalia hissed, hopefully not loud enough for Jane to hear. Jane was tiny and slim. She had long, dark hair, exotic eyes under black bangs, and a faint mustache. If she'd told us she was fourteen, I would have believed her.

Silas, the guy in charge, was enormous. He wore a huge fisherman's sweater that stretched painfully over his belly. He had curly blond hair and a jovial face. He said he was twenty-two. He refused to make eye contact with any of us, just went
over the basics of our trip. When he'd finished with his uncomfortable lecture about portaging, and how we'd set up camp the second we landed anywhere, and how we'd all have to learn J strokes and do our share of the cooking, he asked if there were any questions. We all stared back at him in silence.

Silas and Jane pulled out the equipment we would be using on our trip. They showed us the collapsible reflector ovens that we could supposedly use to bake cakes, but I was dubious. The metal oven was full of dents. It looked like something my father would use to store bread in his moth-eaten pantry. Everything at Camp Bell—the cabins, the bathrooms, the equipment—looked about thirty years old. I couldn't help thinking how my mother would snort if she were here. She would say it was just what she'd expect from my dad.

“Okay, then,” Silas said. “I'll see you all at the landing at ten a.m.” The departure times were staggered, two groups at a time.

Silas and Jane walked away, leaving the eight kids together. We all stared at one another, not sure what to say. Then Mick spat on the ground and walked away. The rest of us watched him go.

“Do you think we should take that personally?” Brendan finally asked.

We all laughed, a little uneasy. “Will there be some kind of weapons check before we get going?” Natalia asked.

“There was one at the airport,” said Lori, dead serious. “He couldn't have gotten anything metal onboard the plane. And there's no weapons here.”

“He could have stolen a knife from the dining-hall kitchen,” Brendan said.

“Or fashioned some kind of shiv from barks and rock,” Natalia said, the only one of us confident enough to banter with the movie star. She and Brendan laughed. The other girls looked worried.

“At least we won't have to sleep in the same tent with him,” said Lori. “The girls get their own tent, Silas said.”

“Yeah,” Brendan agreed. “Canvas and zippers are excellent security systems.”

He and Natalia laughed again, and I joined in, a little uncomfortable. We'd be traveling in very close quarters with these people for a long time. I thought it would be smarter to forge allegiances than tease them. Lori blushed furiously, probably kicking herself for looking priggish in Brendan's eyes. Truthfully, I couldn't really blame Lori and Meredith for being scared of Mick. So far, he looked like a pretty scary guy. In fact, he looked like the quintessential scary guy, like how you would want someone to look if he were playing a scary guy in a movie about scary guys.

After a little while everyone walked off in pairs—Lori and Meredith, Natalia and me, Charlie and Sam. Only Brendan stayed behind by the water, gorgeous and alone in the bright sunlight.

“Is he following us?” Natalia whispered, as we walked up to the bathrooms.

I looked back over my shoulder. “No,” I said.

He just sat there, throwing pebbles into the great, shimmering lake. Even from this distance, he looked kind of sad and lonesome. You'd think someone who had a camp of two hundred people dying to meet him could muster a little more cheerfulness.

“I'm voting everybody off, except for you and Brendan. And maybe Silas. He seems kind of cool, in a big-brother way. You, me, Brendan, and Silas will be the final four.”

“Who'll win?”

“Us, of course. You and me.”

“Great,” I said. I didn't remind her that there could be only one survivor. And these days, I hardly felt that word applied to me. Sometimes I wasn't even sure I wanted it to.

“Cheer up,” Natalia said, and patted my belly in an affectionate, probably unconscious gesture of comfort. I pushed her hand away, not wanting her to make a habit of this. “Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry.”

“It's okay,” I said. Suddenly I couldn't wait to get away from base camp, out on the water. Then, I felt sure, I would think of nothing but paddling and portaging for four weeks straight. Bliss.

When we got to the bathroom I lingered inside my stall much longer than I needed. I listened to Natalia pee, wash her hands, and wait for a few minutes before walking back outside. I heard her sigh as her feet touched down outside, a heavy and preoccupied sound.

I felt bad that I wasn't paying more attention to her crisis.
The truth was, I didn't want to think about any crisis at all. I just wanted to sit and focus on the coming weeks. I wanted to appreciate the luxury of a porcelain seat and flushing toilet. Not to mention running water. Finally I stood up and went to the sink. Washing my hands, I stared in the mirror, aware that over the next month I would not be seeing my own face. I studied it closely, making a mental map of my flaws and strong points, not wanting either to grow in my imagination. I looked, too, for changes. I didn't see any. It was only me, staring back, a little more thoughtful than usual, a little more serious.

Remember
, I told myself, looking into my own eyes. It would be important to know, when I got back, if anything was different.

chapter six

a motley crew

We had a rocky departure. Of the eight kids in our group, only Charlie and I had ever been in a canoe. Nobody else knew how to steer, and nobody understood how to load the boats so they wouldn't tip over.

Natalia, scrubbed of her makeup, was determined to transform into Wilderness Girl. She waded right into the water with me. “I refuse to be one of those chicks who squeals over spiders and worries about chipping her nails,” she told me. We piled our gear plus a share of the communal equipment into the surprisingly sturdy canoe. Natalia strapped a solar-powered lantern on top of our things. All day the lantern would soak up the sun while we rowed, then at camp we could use it to read in our tents. Of course the lamp belonged to Natalia: She and her mother had bought it at Riverside Square with her other new equipment. Camp Bell didn't have anything so modern or snazzy.

I held the boat steady while Natalia climbed into the bow. Then we just sat there, floating, while the rest of the group tried to organize itself. The two other girls barely knew how to step
into their canoes. Lori threw one leg over the side too aggressively, sending the bulk of her and Meredith's gear—including sleeping bags—into the lake. I winced when I saw the splash. There was nothing in the world worse than trying to sleep in a wet sleeping bag.

Cody belonged to the group that shared our departure time. Most of them were return campers like Cody, and their expertise made our lameness even more obvious. The male leader from that group slapped Silas on the back and said, “Bummer, dude,” not trying to lower his voice or disguise in any way that “bummer” had become another word for us.

In the time it took us to load six canoes and topple one, Cody's group had set off in pairs, athletic and efficient. As his boat floated away, he turned around and waved at me. I waved back, ignoring the chaos around me.

Last night, Cody still hadn't kissed me. But Natalia and I had had the best time, playing football with him and his friends. “Touch football is too wimpy for us,” one of his friends had said when we started the game. “But if you two want, touch can count for you.”

“No way,” I said. “I want to tackle. And I want to be tackled.”

“Sydney,” said Natalia, her voice full of warning.

I ignored her, not that it made a huge difference. The only guy willing to tackle me was Cody. Because I sucked at football, he got me about a million times, several when I didn't even have the ball. He would run up next to me, put both arms around my waist, and pull me down to the grass. Every time I
hit the ground, I would laugh hysterically. But I longed for a more jolting thrash. Cody held me gingerly, mindfully, using his body to break every one of my falls. When the bell rang for bedtime, he held my hand and walked me back to the girls' cabin. “I wish you were in my group,” he said.

“Me too.” We stood there in the twilight. A mosquito landed on my arm, but I didn't want to swat it away for fear of breaking the mood. When Cody noticed it, he smacked my arm. The mosquito died with a splat.

“Hey,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Haven't you hurt me enough for one night?”

“It's all for your own good,” he said. Instead of kissing me, he reached out and ruffled my hair, then trotted across the lawn to his cabin.

Now, watching him paddle away, I felt the same sort of delicious, forlorn ache. I wondered if this was how Natalia had felt when she first knew Steve, this combination of comfort and excitement.

“All right,” Jane, our leader, finally yelled. “Enough of this bullshit. We're going to assign you partners. Boys in the back of the canoe, girls in the front.”

I saw Meredith and Lori exchange terrified looks. Neither of them wanted to end up in a canoe with Mick, who sat at the edge of the dock, running his bare feet back and forth in the water.

Natalia's hand shot up into the air. Jane ignored her, continuing about her business. So Natalia swung her long limbs
out of the canoe, splashed through the water, and tapped Jane on the shoulder. Jane turned around and looked up. Natalia towered over her by a good eight inches.

“Your plan doesn't make any sense,” Natalia said. “Sydney knows how to steer. So why can't I go in the front of her canoe?”

Silas stood on the dock, unrolling Meredith and Lori's sleeping bags to let them dry out. “She's right,” he said to Jane. “There are four people who can do a J stroke. You, me, her”—he pointed to me—“and him”—he pointed to Charlie. Unlike Jane, Silas didn't seem to care if we got off any time today, even though the eleven o'clock groups were starting to gather behind us on the hill. He picked up a bird book and interrupted his reasoning to leaf through it. “I think that's a warbler,” he said, pointing in the sort-of direction of a nearby tree. I didn't know who he was talking to, and I didn't see any bird.

“Silas,” Jane pleaded, wanting some help.

“Okay,” said Silas, snapping out of it. “You.” He pointed to Brendan. “She'll teach you how to do a J stroke.” At first I thought he meant Jane, but then I saw his finger pointed directly at me. His attention wandered off again, this time to the placement of his guitar in his own canoe, and Jane took over. Brendan waded out toward me, and I paddled to him. We met halfway, in water that hit him just above the knees. I climbed out of the canoe and stood next to him.

“It's pretty easy,” I said, willing myself not to be starstruck, or even attracted. Already I felt loyal to Cody. “Just think of
a
J
,” I told him, “and think of using the water as leverage for the direction you want to go. The person in the bow keeps paddling in straight strokes, and then you use the J stroke to pull the stern around.”

Brendan stood close enough that I could feel his breath on my neck. He smelled good, a musky jasmine scent that would draw every mosquito and black fly in Ontario. By now, everyone else had finally teetered into a canoe. Meredith and Lori, looking relieved, sat in the bows of Silas and Jane's canoes. Charlie had Sam, and of course I had Natalia, which left Mick—still sitting on the edge of the dock like he wanted nothing to do with our entire operation.

All of our canoes were painted bright blue. Brendan walked back to the dock, and Natalia splashed her way back to ours. Brendan didn't get into his canoe but pulled it through the water and over to the dock. Like Silas, Brendan had brought along an acoustic guitar—the only oversize item Camp Bell allowed. He had wrapped the case in plastic and tied it carefully to the bar in front of the stern seat, which we now knew—thanks to Jane—was called the aft thwart.

“I guess you're with me,” he said to Mick, and then climbed into the stern seat.

Mick shrugged and dropped his pack into the middle of the canoe. His bag looked half-full, and so light that I couldn't imagine it contained a sleeping bag. Which I guess it didn't, because a minute later he threw in another bulky bundle that looked like it was made of cloth, like the old zippered Snoopy
blanket I used to bring to slumber parties. It hit Brendan's guitar, striking a muffled chord. I thought about telling Natalia we didn't have to worry about Mick, because he was going to freeze to death during these frigid Canadian nights. But I would have had to speak in a normal voice for her to hear me, and I remembered how sound carried across water.

Mick hopped into the bow of the canoe and took up his paddle. The two boys pushed away from shore. For a second Brendan, the professional actor, looked like he knew what he was doing. He was dressed so exactly right, wearing a khaki Aussie hat with a feather peeking out of the band, Patagonia shorts, and a maroon Harvard Crew T-shirt. But they made it just past the dock before the canoe's bow started drifting back toward shore.

By now our group was already far down the lake. If we didn't hurry, we'd lose them around the first bend. Despite Jane's brief flurry of authority, I didn't quite trust her and Silas to wait for us, or even remember we belonged to their group.