Every Little Thing in the World (16 page)

“I'm sorry,” Lori said, “but this trip just isn't what I thought it would be. I want to go home.”

Jane frowned and poked at the fire while Silas kept strumming his guitar as if he hadn't heard a thing. Lori shifted nervously on her feet, waiting, looking slightly hysterical in her silence. I found myself a little frustrated with Silas. Now would be the time for him to speak up and ask Lori to stay. It would mean that much more because he usually seemed so indifferent. But he didn't say a word, just let his music ripple out all around us.

“Look,” Lori accused Jane. “All our equipment is from the Stone Age. And practically the only food you'll cook is coffee and marshmallows.”

It was true. To avoid having dishes to wash, Jane tried to feed us almost everything raw. The only thing she'd really cooked had been the chicken, after which she'd made Sam and Charlie scrub out the reflector oven. Now that we ate mostly canned goods, Jane would often rip off the label and heat the food directly in the fire, then pass the can around with a single fork. Lori routinely complained that we would all end up with lead poisoning.

“For example,” she said, “what are you planning on giving us for breakfast this morning?”

“I myself planned on peanut butter,” said Jane. “But you're welcome to go through the food supply. I'm not the official cook here, you know.”

“That's what I'm saying,” Lori shrieked. “You never cook anything!”

“That's not really fair,” Sam said. We all looked over at him, and he immediately blushed bright red. He looked like he'd grown an inch or two, and I almost expected him to defend Jane on the basis of her awesome boobs.

“If you go home,” said Jane, not looking at Lori, “you'll leave us with a one-manned canoe. Someone's going to have to row and portage all alone. It will totally throw us off, having an odd number.”

“Meredith's coming with me,” Lori said. I snapped my head toward Meredith in surprise, waiting for her to deny this. But she just stared at the ground. I guessed if I could see her eyes they would be filled with tears, and I wished I sat closer to her so I could pat her nice, broad back. I wondered if somehow the two of them had overheard Mick's story last night and decided his delinquency—his dangerousness—was the last straw.

“Fine,” Jane said. “Suit yourselves.” Lori turned around and ran back to her tent, as if it hurt her feelings that Jane hadn't begged her to stay. Behind Jane, Brendan sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. The way he pressed his fists into his lids convinced me that my first impression had been wrong, and that he couldn't possibly be wearing contacts. The bright clear blue of his eyes was natural.

He saw me looking at him and smiled. I smiled back. When he stood up to walk down to the lake, I decided to go along with him. We splashed our faces in the water, then sat down
next to each other. A calm day; the lake stood still as a mirror, reflecting the cloudless blue sky.

“Why did you give him your sleeping bag?” I asked Brendan.

Brendan shrugged. He had perfect skin, no signs of a beard along his jawline, unlike Mick, whose stubble was beginning to change into a full-fledged beard.

“He's always freezing,” Brendan said. “I tried giving him my down jacket, but it didn't fit him. So I wear the jacket and Mick uses my sleeping bag.”

“Every night?” I said. “You must be so cold.”

He shrugged again. “It's not so bad,” he said. “Mick seemed to have a much more difficult time dealing with the cold. And it'll get warmer as summer goes on.”

I wasn't so sure about that, but I didn't say anything. What struck me was Brendan's face, beautifully chiseled and as usual radiating no sexuality whatsoever—at least not toward me.

“That was quite a story he told last night,” Brendan said, and I could hear the unlikely tone of admiration.

“Do you believe it?” I said.

“I believe his life is a lot harder than ours.” He pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his crumpled, unruly, and luxurious hair. We sat there together, our knees touching ever so slightly. I put my hand on his thigh.

“Brendan,” I said softly, “have you told anyone?”

He didn't look at me but kept his gaze out toward the water. “No one here,” he said.

“Will you promise me something?” I said.

“Sure.”

“Don't tell Mick.” I didn't complete the sentence, but two possible phrases could have filled in the blank.
Don't tell Mick you're gay
, would have been one possibility.
Don't tell Mick you're in love with him
was the more important one.

“Not to worry,” Brendan said, once again the British boy from TV. “I don't have a death wish, after all.”

From behind us and to the right came a thick clattering, something enormous moving through the trees. Brendan and I started at the same time, throwing our arms around each other, his perfectly smooth cheek pressed against my own. I don't know if we were scared of being overheard, or if we were reacting to something more primal—face-to-face with a thousand-pound beast. Because from out of the trees lumbered a moose, its long and comic face staring soulfully at us, the palms of its pale antlers curving fingers toward the motionless sky.

“Shit,” Brendan whispered. “My camera is up at the tent.”

We clung together, taking in the animal with trembling awe. Brendan and I felt grateful for the unexpected sight of him, and also for being rescued. Because the moose had saved us from moving beyond anything but an unspoken agreement: that whether or not we strictly believed his story, we had greeted this day with a new impression of Mick, our friend, as murderer.

chapter nine

directive

Did I think about telling Brendan my own secret, now that I knew his? Maybe if he could have guessed, in a flash of intuition like I had with him, I would have admitted to being pregnant. But the fact that only Natalia and I knew about my pregnancy protected me, not only from discovery but by making it seem less than real. The moment the information started to spread, it would move from the realm of secret to fact. I couldn't face that transition, not just yet.

It struck me more than once: Human reproduction was just a bad system. Three months for the first trimester didn't seem nearly long enough to process, decide, and act. For example, I couldn't spend time thinking about Natalia's request. How in the world could I seriously consider having a baby? Linden Hill Country Day was not the sort of school where pregnant girls showed up for junior year. Wasn't I already enough of an outsider with my singlemother? Not to mention a father who hailed from the boondocks rather than the 50 percent income bracket.

And what about when the baby was born? Would I give
it away and live my entire life knowing that somewhere out there I had a child? I hated this idea, this secret that would dog me throughout eternity. When I went to college, there would be this huge thing from my past that nobody knew about. Eventually I would have to tell my roommate, and my new boyfriend, and anyone I became close to ever again: this thing about me, this child out there. No one would ever really know me unless I admitted it. On my wedding day I would walk down the aisle with a bouquet of flowers and a white veil, all the while knowing that miles away a little kid lurked, and I was its mother, and I had given it away. Even though I didn't want a child—didn't know if I would ever want a child—the thought of losing one was simply too huge. Not to mention the thought of explaining myself if the kid ever managed to track me down.

Abortion seemed different, the loss of a possibility instead of the loss of a person. If I lost the possibility, I might sometimes remember dates and imagine what life would be like. It would be weird, at twenty-six, to imagine I could have a ten-year-old kid, but that would be a lot different from wondering every day for the rest of my life where it was, how it was, who it was.

I could never be that girl, the one with the huge, gloomy, and tragic past. I only wanted to be me, myself—just normal. God knows it had been hard enough being me
before
this stupid pregnancy. Cross that out and I still had my angry mother and my fixated, distant father. I was still the only one of my friends
who didn't have nice clothes or spending money. I still had Greg, my AWOL first love, and his cheerleader.

With an abortion, I could at least return to these normal problems. I could at least stay myself, and this whole thing would just be over with a simple procedure, a sterile metal scrape. The pregnancy would be a temporary layover, a phantom memory. I would remember my time on Lake Keewaytinook in pictures: the clear water, the silent moose, Mick's crazed face in the firelight. In time I would forget almost completely that I'd ever been pregnant.

“You could keep the baby,” Natalia said, the day after Truth or Dare. We rowed along the lake, and for once I didn't worry about anyone hearing us. The whole group had rowed ahead, completely out of sight. Mick—either still mad at Natalia and me or freaked out by his confession—had rowed like a madman the minute we set our canoes in the water, taking him and Brendan far out of sight. But Natalia and I knew we were rowing toward the longest portage of the trip, over a mile, and we conserved our energy with slow and measured paddling.

“Natalia,” I said. “Please give me a break. I really don't want to be a sixteen-year-old mother.”

“You could live with your dad,” Natalia said. “It would be a good life for a baby, having all those brothers and sisters.”

“Those are
my
brothers and sisters,” I said. “They'd be my kid's uncles and aunt.”

We laughed, it sounded so preposterous. To me the very idea
just highlighted the obvious, that this baby—this dust speck—could never become a reality.

“But wouldn't it be great,” Natalia persisted, “to have someone who was all your own? Who really loved you unconditionally?”

I stopped rowing. On the waveless water the canoe stopped almost instantly, the hull turning gently toward shore. Natalia had taken to tying the halter of her bikini around her back, so her shoulders were a smooth and lineless brown. My daily focal point had become her back, the birdwing shoulder blades, the silky ponytail.

I couldn't understand why she of all people would express this longing for love. Natalia had two doting, smiling parents—grandparents. And Margit had always showered her with affection and gifts. To say nothing of Steve, the boyfriend who loved her with a passion I'd only seen in movies and books. If anyone should be longing for someone to love her completely and unconditionally, it was me. Natalia was the most adored person I'd ever known, and I told her so.

“Really?” She considered this in profile, her eyes staring blankly across the water. “I guess Steve loves me. I know he does. But it's so weird, being away from him. Some days I try to remember what he looks like, and I just draw a blank.”

I could have told her. I remembered Steve exactly, his kind blue eyes, his slow and red-lipped smile.

“Maybe we should go home,” Natalia said. “Like Lori.”

“What do you mean?” I said. This suggestion panicked me even more than her pro-life pressure. I couldn't imagine
leaving all this, the outdoors, the wide blue sky, the clear blue lake.

“I mean, maybe we should go home. If all the girls on the trip want to leave, our parents will let us. They'll know it's bad.”

“Bad,” I said. “Do you think it's bad? I thought you were having fun.”

“I think it's bad they have someone like Mick on our trip,” said Natalia. “My parents would never have sent me here if they knew I'd be living with a juvenile delinquent.”

Somehow I knew in that moment what I'd haltingly suspected was true: Natalia liked Mick too. I wished I could say this surprised me, but of course it didn't. Not at all. I picked up my oar and began rowing cross strokes to right the canoe. Natalia still sat with her oar across her knees, resting. I wondered with a sudden, irrational stab of anger what would have happened if Natalia hadn't come on this trip. Maybe Mick would have fallen in love with me instead. In that instance I couldn't decide whether I'd been cheated or rescued.

“If we go home now,” she said, “I can figure out a way to see Steve. You can figure out what to do about the baby.”

It drove me insane, the way she insisted on calling it “the baby.” Still, my heart went out to her a little bit, thinking how scary it must be to feel herself falling for Mick. Next to him, Steve was an Eagle Scout. If they could catch a single glimpse of Mick, Natalia's parents would beg her to run away with Steve. At the same time I thought of everything we had risked
this past year so Natalia could be with Steve. And now she wanted me to give up this last refuge, the canoe trip, because she felt drawn to someone else.

I closed my eyes against the sun and imagined the murdered man lying on the ground, blood trickling out of his ear. I tried to remember if Mick had mentioned how old he was, but only one detail—the ugly word, saying more about Mick than his victim—had lodged in my brain.

“Do you really think it was self-defense?” Natalia asked, though I hadn't said a word. She picked up her paddle and began to row.

“I do,” I said, and I meant it. I hated the image, but at the same time I couldn't blame Mick. I even admired him, for doing what needed to be done in order to protect his own world.

We reached the portage at what I guessed was noon. The sun shone strong and bright overhead. So far, the portages on our route had been very brief, but today's stretched more than a mile across a portion of abandoned road that had once led back to Keewaytinook Falls. Summer cabins—long since gone to seed—sagged, forlorn, beside the path. At one point there was a small bit of pavement under our feet. Grass and poison ivy poked up through its cracked median line. It comforted me, somehow, to see nature reclaiming a site so easily.