Every Little Thing in the World (22 page)

And if Mick hadn't been along today, sitting on those rocks, or if, say, he'd been caught for the murder he'd committed last summer and sent to jail, maybe I and the small being inside me would have gone flying over those rocks, down the waterfall, my oxygen supply cut off. I imagined the umbilical cord squeezed tight, a thrashing and a gasping within my deepest regions. How strange, the small amount of space I took up: Within the small circle of my waist, an entire person was spinning into being.

I tried for one minute to imagine that person, if that could be my contribution. I tried to imagine myself giving birth, and changing diapers, and carrying my own baby around in a BabyBjörn the way I carried Rebecca. All these images seemed just only impossible, like science fiction, like trying to imagine walking on the moon.

I looked across the water at Mick. Although he would never admit it, would never even boast about it, I knew he felt proud of my rescue. I could tell by the way he paddled, and the way he looked at me—shy and then triumphant, then looking away. As much as Mick could still be a jerk—an insensitive, unfeeling, and downright frightening jerk—he also had these moments of touching vulnerability, even sweetness. Sometimes it made me think of that story we'd read in ninth-grade English,
“Flowers for Algernon.” It was as if this trip, being with all of us, had made Mick a better and nicer person. But then we would get these glimpses of the person he had once been and would always become again. Two Micks, and I pictured the good one floating and falling over the waterfall, disappearing forever like I had almost done. So sad.

But maybe saving my life would be a moment he could actually carry away with him. Maybe it could almost be redemption for what he had done, really through no fault of his own, last summer. And it struck me: Almost dying was the closest thing to altruistic that I'd ever done.

Unless, of course, I decided to have the baby.

At camp that night, Natalia came over to help me as I set up our tent. I had just dumped the contents from the carry bag onto the sand. She knelt down and started to fish out the stakes.

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Does this mean you're staying with us tonight?”

She looked up at me, and I noticed her eyes were red-rimmed, either with exhaustion or from crying. I knelt down to help her look for the stakes, so she could whisper to me.

“I don't know,” was all she said.

I stood up and started locking the poles together. Brendan came over to help us. He stood on the other side of the tent as I threaded the center pole through. When Mick sauntered past, carrying the other tent, he looked over at Natalia.

“Hey, Brendan,” he called, his voice booming through the
campground. “You picked the right girl. How was I supposed to know the mousy one would be the goer?”

Natalia threw the stakes down and marched over to Mick. She followed him past the fire pit, over an embankment, where he apparently planned on setting up the tent—as far away from the rest of us as possible. For a second I wondered if the rest of the trip would see five of us in one tent and Mick all alone in the other. This division seemed clear and sad to me, but quickly faded as I watched Natalia and Mick at the edge of the woods, standing toe to toe as they exchanged intense words. On the one hand, I felt relieved to know that Natalia had not had sex with him. On the other hand, they had never so clearly and obviously looked like a couple. Brendan walked over to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded.

“You know the weird thing?” he said. “Sometimes I feel like every day I know Mick I hate him a little bit more. And yet I'm still very attracted to him. Isn't that sick?”

“No,” I said quickly. “I know what you mean.” I felt like I should say more, instead of cutting off the conversation by agreeing so quickly. It made me feel guilty, and sick to death of not being able to return Brendan's confidence.

It was exhausting, to always feel so confused and conflicted: about Mick, about Natalia, about Mick and Natalia. About myself and my future. I kept thinking about that morning, and how I'd almost died, and how in that moment I felt calm and powerless, almost accepting. And then, through no fault of my
own, a hand had reached into the water and plucked me back into life.

Life. Not so long ago I'd had the clearest picture of my own life: school, and friends, and one day college. Now everything was all screwed up. I tried for a second to think of Tommy as something besides a troublemaker. For the first time it occurred to me how rude I'd been at the keg party, running away from him like that. Sure he was drunk, but he was also so happy to see me.
Hey, baby
, he had said. Like a boyfriend. Maybe if I went home and told him, he
would
come up with some kind of solution. Maybe he'd marry me. I wondered for a second what our life together would be like. I would have a husband, and sort of a cute one at that. Maybe we could live the way my dad and Kerry did, borrowing a house on somebody's farm. I tried to picture my days, what they would look like, and all I could see was Kerry, standing in the kitchen rolling out pie crust. I saw a mountain of diapers. I tried to picture the baby, but the image very stubbornly would not come to me. All I could conjure was an image of Rebecca, and Kerry somewhere in the background, waiting to take her from me if she started screaming.

And then a very clear aftermath presented itself. Because really Kerry wouldn't be there, and after a few years neither would Tommy. It would be just me and a little kid, alone in a ratty apartment—me resentful all the time about everything I'd missed.

There was no way to tell what might come from doing
nothing. Weeks ago I hadn't said no, or insisted on a condom, and now I was pregnant. I hadn't done anything to end the pregnancy, and now I was on this canoe trip. I hadn't fought for my life in the water, and here I sat—alive and rowing on a summer day in Canada. And all I could do was wonder what would happen next, because pretty soon doing nothing would lead to the biggest something I could ever imagine. A baby.

Unless I found a way to change my strategy.

chapter twelve

the biggest

delinquent

who ever lived

Now that Natalia rowed with Mick, she and I communicated even less than before. I rowed in the front of Brendan's canoe, wishing for my phone so I could text her. It was impossible to talk to her alone, and I couldn't tell whether Mick shadowed her so constantly because of devotion or because he wanted to keep her away from everybody else.

Today, though, felt a little bit like old times, the four of us floating along together—this time at the front of the group. Natalia looked tan and weary in her red bikini, yawning between oar strokes, her hair escaping from its ponytail. I closed my eyes and tried to remember the girl I knew from home—her hand-me-down designer shoes, her made-up face and manicured nails, her hair carefully tousled with Catwalk styling cream (of course at my house, we used Suave). But by now Lake Keewaytinook Natalia seemed like the real Natalia, the only one who'd ever existed. It was like the lake had stripped away everything extra—clothes, makeup, Steve, her parents/grandparents and
sister/mother—and left this sad, muscular, Indian princess of a girl in the old one's place.

Mick's loud voice startled my eyes open. “What time is it?” he shouted to a canoe coming around the bend. Dark blue like ours, the pair steering it looked vaguely familiar. Another identical canoe followed it, and I heard Silas somewhere behind us shout a greeting. The next thing I knew we had all come to rest together, floating on the water, suddenly nine canoes instead of four.

“Hey, stranger,” a voice said, as another blue canoe smashed into ours. It took me a second, as if it had been years rather than weeks. But I found myself smiling back into Cody's long-lashed hazel eyes.

We set up camp not far from where we all met, the two groups together. Cody and I walked down to the water for a swim. I waded out and then plunged in headfirst, wishing for a pier so I could show off the swan dive I'd spent eight summers perfecting. Cody splashed in after me. I noticed that he, like everyone at Camp Bell, had improved in some ways and deteriorated in others. He had gained a tan and significant muscle on his upper body. But his hair was wild and matted, his jaw scruffy and unshaved. Despite all the time we spent in the lake every day, none of us had been using much soap. Instead of individual body odor, we all seemed to travel under a collective musk, part lake-floor moss and part weeks-old sweat.

“You look good,” Cody said, treading water next to me. “You look cleaner than everyone else, somehow.”

“It's the hair,” I said, tugging on a thick, unruly curl. “Even water won't tamp it down, so it doesn't get all stringy like everyone else's.”

“So,” he said, “I see you're riding in the movie star's canoe.”

“We're just friends.” The words, escaping from my mouth too quickly, sounded like an admission. My face instantly burned red, giving even more away.

Cody reached under the water and grabbed my hand. I could feel my blush fading away. Of course every second Cody had suspected that Brendan and I were together, his interest in me skyrocketed, and I was fairly certain the interest had been substantial to begin with.

I could feel our legs, kicking near each other underwater. It was nothing like swimming with Brendan. The cool water felt charged with sexual currents. The waves that lapped against my shoulder sent tingles down my spine, along my arms and legs. I avoided looking directly at Cody and splashed backward, away from him.

“I'll race you back to shore,” I said, and started in on the crawl—my specialty event. I knew that for at least a few minutes I would look graceful and competent. But I had no hope of beating Cody, an athlete
and
a guy. When I got back to shore he was already waiting for me, holding a towel open. I stepped into it and he wrapped it around me, half hugging my shoulders, half drying them off. I had a vague memory of
my mom doing the same thing for me when I was little after a swimming lesson.

“Hey,” Mick called to Cody, as we walked up from the water. His face had that look, taut and predatory. I could tell that Natalia had just done something to piss him off, and I was about to pay for it. I braced myself as he said, “You don't have to bother with the Galahad moves, dude. She's a goer.”

Of course my heart dropped, and my stomach sank in embarrassment. At the same time, just the other day Mick had saved my life. I couldn't ignore my debt for that long enough to worry about his corrupting Cody. So instead I rolled my eyes and brought my finger up near my ear, twirling it in the universal symbol for c
uckoo
.

Cody laughed. “That's too bad,” he said. “Ours is pretty cool. His name's Jesse. The whole reason we were backtracking this way is he heard there's a package store called Backwater Jack's on the water.”

“Really?” I had a hard time believing this. In three weeks we hadn't seen one commercial building, only scattered summer homes and camps. The one liquor store I'd seen had been way back in North Bay, and its sign had said it was run by a government agency.

“I guess it serves fishermen and summer people,” said Cody. “It's on one of the counselors' maps. We're going to try to find it tonight after our counselors go to bed. Want to come along?”

“Sure,” I said. In my head I started calculating, trying to figure out ways to leave Mick out of this particular adventure.

*   *   *

But by afternoon Mick and Jesse had bonded like the tribesmen they were, and Mick had transformed into the co-mastermind of the plot. He decided we should go while it was still light instead of waiting for dark. Mick, Jesse, Cody, Natalia, and I gathered at the water. The counselors were so involved with one another they would barely notice if we got back in time for dinner. And for all we knew, they'd be elated if we returned with beer. I considered asking Silas to pitch in money, but Mick quickly shot this idea down.

“No way,” he said. “It's not necessary, anyway.”

“Why?” I asked. “Do you have money?” My father had given me a twenty-dollar bill at the airport, and it still lay rolled up and untouched in the front pocket of my pack.

“I've got enough,” he said, using the tone I'd come to know well, the one so sure that its speaker knew everything in the world.

“How are we going to buy liquor, anyway?” said Natalia, pulling her boat out into the water.

“The drinking age is nineteen in Ontario,” Jesse said.

Natalia and I looked at each other. Considering that the oldest of us was seventeen, the drinking age might as well have been forty. Jesse shrugged. “I'm guessing they don't card much out here,” he said.

Natalia and Mick rowed in one canoe. Cody and I rowed the other, while Jesse sat in the middle and read the map. I had taken a quick look before we set off, and it struck me as an
unreadable document—little islets with pine trees, and winding portages along the shore, everything looking exactly the same. But Jesse seemed confident, and within half an hour we floated up to a tiny island, most of it taken up by a small wooden building with a small, barely readable sign:
BACKWATER JACK'S
. It didn't have glass windows, just mosquito screens, and the wood boards were gray and damp. There were no lights on inside, or any other signs of life.

“It looks closed,” Natalia said. We rowed our canoes up and pulled them ashore. Mick trotted up to the flimsy screen door and pulled it open. He poked his head in and whistled.

“Hellooo?” he called, in a mocking, high-pitched voice. “Anybody home?” We watched him disappear into the store. In another minute he emerged, carrying a case of Molson. He trotted down the embankment and dumped it in the canoe.

“Oh,” said Natalia. “There must be a clerk there after all.” As Mick headed back in, she followed him. I knew she was probably hoping the store sold chocolate as well as beer. I walked up the hill and through the door after Natalia. The store consisted of a single room, its walls lined with shelves stocked mostly with Molson and Moosehead. A few boxes of Nestlé bars sat in front of the cash register, behind which were various fishing supplies—nets, bait, lures, and line. What the little store lacked was any kind of cashier, which didn't stop Mick from helping himself to another case and heading toward the door.