Every Little Thing in the World (14 page)

Mick's shoulders sagged in defeat. He looked as if he knew he'd just exposed himself and been found sorely wanting by all of us—including and maybe especially Natalia. As we paddled on into the afternoon, even though I agreed he'd shown himself to be a complete asshole, I couldn't help it. I felt sorry for him.

That night after dinner, when Silas and Jane had disappeared into their tent, Sam told us that smoking deer moss would make a person sterile.

“A guy at base camp told me,” he said. He looked so happy to have all our attention, the youngest kid in the family finding a way to steal the spotlight. “If you smoke deer moss,” he told us, “you're sterile for, like, seven years.”

“Does it work for just guys, or girls, too?” Natalia asked.

“Both,” Sam promised, though he didn't look sure. Everyone but Brendan and I left the fire to scrape the stiff green moss from the rocks. Brendan came around from the opposite side to sit next to me. My stomach lurched. The chicken Jane had roasted in the reflector oven had looked slightly gray before she smothered it with barbecue sauce. I worried that we'd all wake up in the middle of the night with salmonella.

“Is it okay if I keep you company?” Brendan asked. “The smoke keeps getting in my eyes over there.” At that very moment the wind shifted and a thick gust of smoke from the fire whipped our faces. We laughed.

“It's your fault,” I said. “Smoke follows beauty.” I didn't worry that Brendan would take this as a come-on. Since even Lori had tried to flirt with him, this seemed like the new and accepted course of action. Anyway, I already felt firmly sisterly. Brendan's good looks were too overblown, almost caricature: He was so perfect, he couldn't possibly be sexy. All I could think of when I looked at him were my own flaws, my buck teeth and the zits that were no doubt multiplying on my forehead in spite of the Stri-Dex pads. Since waving good-bye to Cody at the dock, I had felt totally unflirtatious. Commenting on Brendan's beauty was more like stating the obvious then delivering a compliment.

Brendan himself didn't sound flirtatious, only diplomatic enough to float the words back to me when he said, “The smoke must be following you, then.”

“Yeah, right.” I laughed. The interaction was so without sexual tension that it made us friends in a final and comfortable way. We sat quietly for a minute, staring into the fire. Then, because I was tired of nobody directly addressing the other elephant on the lake, I said, “Natalia and I used to watch you on
The New Mill River.
”

“Oh yeah?” he said, as if this were a big surprise.

“You were good,” I said. “We totally thought you were English.”

“Thanks.”

I asked questions about the various actors on
The New Mill River
, whether they were nice or stuck-up. He gave me a little
rundown on everybody. The star, he said, was a self-obsessed bitch who spent most of her time primping in front of the mirror and putting other people down. Although she played a very saintly and loving character, this information did not surprise me in the slightest.

“So why are you here?” I said. “Shouldn't you be in Holly-wood making a movie or something?”

“I've been trying out for parts since I was four,” he said. “I wanted to take a break this summer. Do something outdoors.”

Mick's voice broke into our conversation. “We got the stuff,” he said, holding up fistfuls of deer moss. The others trailed behind him, each with a mossy little stash. There was some discussion of letting it dry out over a few days, but they decided to go ahead and smoke it wet. Natalia reasoned that if it didn't work, they could always try again. From what we could tell, every rock in the area was covered with a thick blanket of the supposed birth control.

“Wait here,” Mick said. “I got rolling papers in my pack.” We all wondered, as he crawled into his tent, what else he had stashed in that sparsely packed bag. Within a minute he emerged from the tent and rolled a few deer moss cigarettes, then passed one around in each direction. Everybody puffed and coughed: Charlie, Sam, Lori, and Meredith.

“I wonder who they're planning to have sex with,” Natalia whispered. “Do they think they're going to lose their virginity to the movie star?”

I felt tempted to tell her about the Amish guys, but I didn't.
I thought it was kind of touching—the way Lori fluttered around Brendan. Meredith just stood back, as if there were some sort of agreement between the two that Lori was the prettier one. Thinking of this, I felt a stab of indignation on Meredith's behalf, her rosy cheeks and silky braids.

When Brendan passed the cigarette to me I took a deep, lung-filling puff. It crackled as I inhaled, too moist, tasting sweet and ashy. My chest contracted and sputtered in protest. I might have wondered what kind of effect it would have on my pregnancy if I believed for a single second that the deer moss would work.

I coughed out my hit. Brendan thumped me companionably on the back. “This stuff probably causes pregnancy more than anything else,” I said, “if people really think it works for seven years.”

“Never hurts to have a backup,” said Mick, inhaling deeply.

Natalia patted my knee, and I grabbed her hand. Ever since the afternoon, I had been waiting for her to say something about the hooded merganser—how that bird was so fiercely devoted to her baby, and here I was, planning to flush mine. I had formulated all these arguments in my head about how the duck had been rescuing a chick, not an egg. Having an abortion wasn't like leaving a chick upstream. It was more like breaking or abandoning an egg, something that ducks probably did all the time. But I didn't have to use any arguments, because Natalia didn't say a word.

Later on we lay inside our tent, working on questions for
Margit by the light of the solar lamp.
Were you the one who named me
? she wrote.
Was the father Jewish? Did you breast-feed me at all, or just hand me straight over to Mom? Did you love the father? Do you know where he is now? Did you plan on ever telling me? Did you ever wish I knew? Wasn't it hard, seeing me all the time with Mom and Dad? Didn't you want to tell me? Were you ever
going
to tell me?

I lay next to her in the muted light, blinking at her yellow pad, trying to think of more questions for her to ask.

chapter eight

truth or dare

One night toward the end of our first week, a fishing boat motored past our campsite. Its broad spotlight shone on the water, the largest artificial light we'd seen since leaving base camp. Mick sprang up from his log and ran down to the edge of the lake.

“Hey,” he yelled, his hands cupped around his lips. “What time is it?”

The fisherman's voice came echoing back to us across the water, its sound bounding like a skipped rock. “Nine thirty-five,” he said, which surprised me. I would have guessed ten thirty, or maybe even eleven.

Mick trotted back. He, Natalia, Brendan, and I had been playing Truth or Dare. Everyone else had gone to sleep. The four of us stared at one another through the smoky darkness, trying to figure out if knowing the time made us feel any different. Earlier today, when we all stopped for lunch, I'd had the distinct impression that it was only about ten o'clock in the morning. Now, in this small moment of knowing, I thought about the meaninglessness of the numbers. Nine
thirty-five. Who cared? What was time, anyway, but some random code a bunch of Romans had invented? What did it matter to the likes of us, fearlessly riding our natural rhythms through the North American wilderness?

“Sydney,” Mick said, returning to the game. “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” I said.

This was my third turn, and also the third time I'd chosen dare. Usually when I played this game I always chose truth—much less afraid of confessions than failing some fake-dangerous task. But now there was too much I couldn't risk revealing. So far Brendan had made me climb to the top of a scraggy pine tree and Natalia had sent me into the lake wearing all my clothes. Before the fishing boat appeared, I had changed out of my wet things and tied Mick's bandanna around my still damp hair.

Now Mick looked at me with the same tense/excited expression he'd had before chasing after the hooded merganser. “Take off your shirt,” he said. I blushed and looked away from his handsome, disturbing face. I had brought a couple of jogging bras on the trip, but they remained buried in my pack in favor of my bikini top—which I'd hung out to dry before dinner.

“Shut up,” Natalia said to Mick. “Haven't you seen enough tits for one day?” All week Jane had kept up her topless swims. We never knew when she would peel off her shirt, stand up in the canoe, and dive into the water. Charlie and Sam—not to mention Lori and Meredith—had stopped looking her in the eye altogether, though interestingly, the former two seemed to be puppy-dogging around Jane more than Natalia, which
showed what a little nudity could do for a girl. Brendan and Silas were the only guys who seemed completely unaffected by Jane's toplessness. I assumed Silas saw them on an even more regular basis, but I didn't know what Brendan's story was.

“Who said anything about tits?” Mick said. “It's a dare.” His eyes looked wide and ultrafocused, like a predator or a sociopath. “I want her to stand topless and let the mosquitoes go at her. One full minute. And you can't slap at them.”

“I'll do thirty seconds,” I said.

“Sydney,” Natalia objected.

“You can't negotiate a dare,” said Mick. “You have to just do it.”

“Fine.”

I stood up and pulled off my fleece jacket. Then I stepped back from the fire, out of the light, and took off my shirt. I twirled it over my head like a lasso, then threw it back into the circle so that it landed on top of Mick's head. He laughed, pulled it off his face, and began a loud, slow countdown from sixty.

What bug repellent I'd applied was on my hands and around my face. The mosquitoes attacked immediately, beginning their stinging, itchy feast. Clear, wintry air closed in around my skin, goose bumps rising along with the bug bites, and I battled the urge to close my eyes. I had a clear view of my three friends, sitting around the fire and peering at me through the smoke. I felt sure that the most they could see was my silhouette, and I liked this image: the gesture of revealing without the exposure. Most of my energy went to not slapping the bugs, which I wanted to do more than I'd ever wanted anything in my life.

“Come on,” Natalia said when Mick got to thirty. “That's enough.”

“It's all right,” I called from the darkness. “I can do it.”

“You're such an asshole,” Natalia said to Mick, who counted more loudly.

“Looking good, Syd,” Mick called. I shivered and hugged myself so that my arms covered my breasts.

“I know you can't see me,” I yelled. Mick laughed. By now I'd grown used to his very particular laugh, a mean and sneering bark. It made me hate him, and at the same time, strangely, it made me long for his approval.

Finally the countdown ended. Natalia snatched my T-shirt from Mick and tossed it back to me. I pulled it over my head, then trotted back to the fire, clawing at the hundred welts across my stomach. “I hope somebody brought calamine,” I said, struggling back into my jacket. For some perverse reason I sat down next to Mick. He put his arm around me and pulled me close, a friendly attempt to warm me up. It worked: A nice heat pulsed from his skin, the chemistry of testosterone and cheerful cruelty.

Something strange had been happening over the past few days. Although at first I'd been sure he was in love with Natalia, Mick had started alternating between us in his taunts. I thought maybe this meant he didn't know how to communicate with girls, other than by sexual jeering. The fact that he'd barely said a single word to Meredith or Lori either confirmed this theory or showed actual sensitivity. Maybe he realized they were still
terrified of him and he was trying to be considerate by keeping his distance. At different times he seemed capable of both or either possibility.

As for Natalia and me, something stopped us from being afraid of him, even when we felt we maybe should. He seemed so clearly eager to be our friend. It was a little like having a wild animal—a wolf or a tiger—for a pet.

“Your turn to choose, Syd,” Mick said.

“Mick,” I answered.

“Big surprise there,” he said.

“Truth or dare?” I asked him.

“Truth.”

“That's kind of girly, isn't it?” I said. “Shouldn't a tough guy like you be willing to do a dare?” I had planned to make him unzip Jane and Silas's tent and peek inside. We had a running debate over whether they were having sex in there.

“That depends on the question,” said Mick.

I dropped my chin into my hands. Honestly, there was a lot I wanted to know about Mick. He'd told us he came from Pittsburgh and that he lived with his mom—which had been a surprise, because we'd assumed he was a Yout at Risk kid. He'd mentioned a brother, so we knew he had at least one sibling. But that was all we knew. I wondered what he'd done to become a Youth at Risk, if the title referred to his financial status, or the place he lived, or trouble he'd gotten into. I thought of asking whether he'd ever committed a crime, but that seemed too vague. And oddly, I thought it could insult him: not that
I'd assumed he was a criminal, but that it would occur to me he might
not
have committed a crime.

“Come on,” Mick said. “Isn't there a time limit on this?”

I decided to avoid the word “crime” altogether. “What's the worst thing you ever did?” I asked him.

“Worst in what way?”

“You know,” I said. “Most illegal.”

“That's easy,” said Mick. He took his arm off my shoulders. Until then, I hadn't realized he'd still been holding me. “I killed a guy.”