Every Little Thing in the World (11 page)

I paddled back to Brendan and Mick. “Maybe for now you guys should just switch sides,” I said. “When you want to go left, both of you paddle on the left side. When you want to go right, paddle on the right side. Straight, just paddle on opposite sides.”

When Mick looked up, the fury in his eyes startled me. I couldn't tell whether it came from the frustration of trying to canoe, or from being bossed around by me, a girl. But in
a few seconds his face rearranged itself, and he followed my directions as if he didn't care—about anything.

A few minutes later, the four of us paddled side by side—the boys with their awkward, semifrantic shifting, and Natalia and me at an even and elegant pace.

We spent the morning in sight of the rest of our group but a good clip behind. It was hard not to feel leisurely on such a bright summer day. A family of mallards floated upstream, the father in the lead and the mother taking up the rear, four ducklings in a fluffy, proud line between them.

“So sweet,” Natalia said. Brendan smiled but Mick just kept staring straight ahead, squinting. He was the only person on the water not wearing sunglasses.

“You need shades, man,” Brendan said, though he couldn't have seen the squint.

Mick shrugged, then after a minute said, “They're in my pack.”

“Want to stop so you can get them?”

“No, it's straight.”

We paddled a little farther. And then Mick said—as if that small exchange about sunglasses had spurred his ability to speak, “Shit. Whoa. Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?”

We were far behind the group, and sun slanted sharply in front of our eyes. But I saw what Mick meant. From where we floated, it looked like Jane had peeled off her shirt. It also looked like she wore nothing underneath.

“Is she just floating down the lake topless?” Mick said.

“No,” said Natalia. “She must be wearing a halter, or something like that.”

We saw Jane's canoe come to a stop. She stood up in what looked like full, unashamed nakedness and plopped into the water.

“I'm getting closer,” Mick said. He started paddling like mad toward the gaggle of canoes up ahead. Brendan struggled to keep up, switching his paddle from one side to the other. Natalia and I laughed, watching them go.

“Ah, nudity,” Natalia said, “bringing together all men, everywhere.”

“We had Brendan to ourselves for a minute there,” I said. “Wait till we tell Kendra and Ashlyn and everybody.”

“Maybe you can date him,” said Natalia. “After all, here we are, out on this lake. Those two other girls are certainly no competition for you. And I can't, because of Steve.”

“Maybe,” I said, without much enthusiasm, still thinking of Cody. And then I recognized a hint of condescension in her comment, like being stranded on a remote lake, with no other girls as possibilities, was the only way I could ever hook up with someone like Brendan.

“You can go back home with a movie star boyfriend,” Natalia said.

“Sure,” I said, but my voice sounded stony. Natalia and I had been friends since kindergarten, and best friends since the seventh grade. In all that time, I couldn't remember feeling
so much as annoyance toward her. It was upsetting, now, that every few hours a surge of something like fury welled up toward her.

“We'd better get going,” Natalia said, “or they'll leave us behind.”

We stepped up our paddling. The others seemed to be waiting for us now, a little blue flotilla up ahead in the sunlight. I dug my paddle deep into the water, curious to see whether Jane actually swam topless, or simply wore the world's most invisible bikini top.

Topless, as it turned out. Our canoe banged lightly into Brendan and Mick's, and as Jane hauled herself back into the canoe we got a perfect view of her breasts, which looked surprisingly heavy for such a small girl, with a complicated network of blue veins. She rested her paddle across the stern and soaked up the sun—like floating half naked among nine strangers was the most normal thing in the world. Everybody looked away from her. In the bow of her canoe, Meredith's plump cheeks glowed bright red. I'd expected Mick to stare frankly, but he kept his eyes glued to the bottom of the boat. Charlie had taken off his sunglasses and squinted straight ahead into the sun, like some sort of stoic cowboy, and Sam looked so panicked and shuffly I felt sure he was trying to hide a giant boner.

“Okay,” said Silas. “Onward.”

“Hey,” Natalia objected. “We just got here. I need to rest my arms.”

“That's the penalty for lagging,” Jane said, a stern and military stripper. “No rest.” She pulled her T-shirt back on, and in a few minutes the other three boats had paddled far ahead of us. Mick splashed his paddle and whooped. “Awesome,” he said. “I didn't know this was going to be a topless canoe trip.”

“It is not going to be a topless canoe trip,” Natalia said. She had pulled her black hair into a high ponytail that sprouted directly from the top of her head. In shorts and a white tank top, I thought she looked much sexier than any topless girl.

“Come on,” said Mick. “Our fearless leader took off her shirt. Now you girls have to do the same.”

While this should have been threatening coming from someone who looked as thuggish and unfamiliar as Mick, it had exactly the reverse effect. His behavior so exactly mirrored all the guys we knew from home that we couldn't help laughing. Natalia scooped up water with her paddle and splashed it at him.

“Hey,” Brendan said, hunching over to protect his gear from the wet invasion. “I'm just an innocent bystander.”

Mick peeled off his own shirt. He had the whitest skin I'd ever seen. It looked very wrong amidst the bright blue river and lush green banks, a sudden shock of colorlessness.

“Come on,” Mick said. His eyes traveled back and forth between me and Natalia. In a funny way, I appreciated that he included both of us instead of singling out Natalia as the object of his flirtation. “I took off my shirt,” he said, “now you take off yours.”

“Forget it, thug,” Natalia said. I tensed for a minute. But she had said the word with throaty fondness, making it a term of endearment. We all laughed, then paddled to catch up with the rest of the group: suddenly best friends, the new in-crowd, the final four.

We had so much fun talking and splashing water at each other that we held up the entire group. In addition to our laziness, I found myself having to pee at almost hourly intervals. Every time, Natalia and I would paddle over to shore and squat behind trees (she always joined me, as a sign of solidarity). Mick and Brendan would stand guard, promising not to peek and making sure our canoe didn't float away. At the first sign of late afternoon, a slight chill skimming off the water, we paddled up to where our group had already started setting up camp.

“This is way far down from where we were planning to stop,” Jane scolded, when we had landed our canoes and walked over for instruction. She had put on a T-shirt, plus a fleece pullover, so we were able to look her straight in the eye. “You four will have hurry tomorrow,” she told us.

“Aye, aye, cap'n,” Mick said, and gave her a little salute. She gave in, smiling. Silas called us over to show us how to set up the tents.

There were three. One was for Jane and Silas, which of course made us assume they were a couple, even though we hadn't seen anything like affection pass between them. One tent was for the four girls and another for the four guys. “You'll
be responsible for setting up your own tent whenever we reach camp,” Silas told us. We knelt beside him, watching him plant the stakes and pull the tarp. His fisherman's sweater seemed looser than it had the day before, as if one day of canoeing had cost him significant body fat.

Brendan, Mick, Natalia, and I all labored setting up the same tent. I wondered if that meant we—and not the girls—would be sharing it. Somehow I couldn't imagine topless Jane and distracted Silas insisting on segregating the sexes. I threw my pack inside the tent, then climbed in. After I spread out my sleeping bag in the far corner, I dug through the jumble of clothes for a fleece jacket. Natalia knelt beside me, doing the same. She pulled out a bright white pullover, made of soft fleece that looked like fox fur.

“Natalia,” I said, “you can't wear that jacket out here. The mosquitoes will eat you alive.”

“No, they won't,” she said. “The guy at EMS said bright colors repel mosquitoes.”

In the tent's muted evening light, I imagined Natalia and Mrs. Miksa, breezing into EMS and purchasing top-of-the line everything. Under the most ordinary circumstances, the Miksas hardly ever refused Natalia a thing. Her knowing about Margit probably made them even more eager to please her. They probably dropped thousands in a single shopping trip.

At this very moment, back at the mall in Hackensack, a clerk at EMS was smiling through his retail drudgery, picturing all the mosquitoes that were feasting on Natalia in her
four-hundred-dollar Marmot pullover. At least he hadn't talked her out of bug spray. She pulled out a little bottle of Bullfrog, also—unfortunately—deet free. “We'll use lots of this,” she said.

“Don't bother,” I said. “We're going to find out who has the most toxic bug spray and become his best friend.” I had barely finished my sentence when into the tent flew Mick's useless, childlike sleeping bag. He stuck his bald head in after it.

“Hey, girls,” he said. “What's the chatter?”

“Is that some kind of expression?” Natalia said. “‘What's the chatter?' The chatter is, this tent belongs to the girls.”

Never mind what she said, her tone could not have been more inviting. Mick crawled in and spread out his sleeping bag next to hers. “Come on,” he said. “You don't want to break up our group, do you? Wouldn't you rather share a tent with Brendan and me than those boring white kids?”

Natalia and I looked at each other, confused. Was this another expression? Or was Mick just a major weirdo?

“Um,” Natalia said. “Don't look now, but we're all white kids too.”

“Shit,” said Mick. “You noticed.”

Natalia and I burst out laughing. “Hey,” Jane's voice called, from somewhere in the camp. “Everybody needs to look for sticks. We're roasting hot dogs for dinner.”

Surprisingly obedient, Mick climbed out of the tent, leaving his gear right where he'd put it. While he and Natalia started searching for sticks (“Not too dry,” Jane shouted. “Find one
that's a little green at the tip.”), I walked over to Brendan, who stood watching Jane work on the fire.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Do you have any bug repellent?”

“Sure,” he said. I followed him to his pack, which like everyone else he'd rested against a tree, apparently waiting for our ruling on Mick. He pulled out a huge bottle of Off ! Deep Woods Sportsmen—98 percent deet. I could have kissed him.

I closed my eyes tight and shielded them with my hands while he doused me with the poison. It should have been kind of an intimate moment, but Brendan acted more like a mom taking care of me than an interested guy.

“You better save some for Natalia,” I said. “She'll probably have a million bites before dinner starts.”

“Sure,” he said. “I'll hide this in here for us.” By “us” I knew he meant him, me, Natalia, and Mick. He stuffed the bottle deep into his pack then carried it over to our tent and tossed it inside—zipping everything tight, to keep out the bugs.

In my mind, Brendan had already faded from movie star to platonic guy-friend. It seemed very normal standing there next to him. We both let our eyes travel across the campsite, to where Mick searched for sticks.

“Interesting guy,” Brendan said. “I'm going to really study him, in case I ever have to play someone like that.” I tried to picture Brendan dressed up to play someone like Mick—tattoos, shaved head, and all—and thought that the best acting coaches and costume designers in the world wouldn't be able to make it convincing.

Though no one had said a word about his acting, Brendan didn't bother pretending we didn't know exactly who he was. Still, I didn't find him cocky. He just seemed kind of nice and easygoing. And although I got absolutely no vibe of interest toward myself, he also didn't appear to be lusting after Natalia, which struck me as a refreshing change. We could all be just friends, with no messy sex to interfere with alliances.

That night we had a feast around the fire. We sat on logs and roasted hot dog after hot dog on our whittled green sticks. We cooked potatoes on sticks too: They tasted charred and crispy on the outside and firm and green on the inside. We passed around cans of peaches and a roll of cookie dough that Jane didn't feel like baking. No silverware, just sticks and fingers. Everything had a slight tinge of ash, dirt, and bark, but after our day on the water it all tasted delicious.

“We have to eat all the perishables this first week,” Jane said. “They won't last much longer in the cooler.”

Because Jane had masterminded our entire meal on sticks, there were no dishes or pots to wash. After we'd all gorged ourselves, Brendan brought out his guitar. I had somehow won the spot next to him—Natalia sat next to me, and Mick next to Natalia. Meredith and Lori sat on the other side of the fire with their heads together, their chins in their hands, staring swoonily as Brendan strummed corny old songs like “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Kumbaya.” He had a sweet, earnest voice and only missed an occasional chord. Silas left his guitar in his
tent, and I wondered if that meant he played better or worse than Brendan. Everything seemed companionable enough until it was time to go to bed.

“Hey,” Meredith said. “The boys' sleeping bags are in the girls' tent.”

Silas and Jane were already heading toward their tent. They stopped and looked at each other. Then Jane gave Silas a look that seemed to say,
Your turn
, which he handled by shrugging and smiling, then following Jane off to bed.