Every Little Thing in the World (23 page)

“Hey,” Natalia said. “We can't just
take
it.” I shuffled in agreement. It was one thing to borrow her mother's car without
asking, or steal a couple of paltry plastic rum bottles from an airline company. But taking all that beer from this quaint, family-owned operation seemed not just illegal, but flat-out mean. Besides, what if we got caught? On the wall behind the cash register hung a dusty framed certificate with the initials LBCO. It was the only sign of law or government I'd seen in more than two weeks, and I wondered what Lake Keewaytinook's version of police officers might be.

“Who's going to stop us?” Mick said.

Natalia and I stood there, watching him elbow his way out the door. Neither of us were angels, it was true, but robbing a liquor store seemed a little extreme. Even Steve had never committed anything so close to a felony. I watched Natalia's face, a little blue vein bulging gently on her forehead. I couldn't tell whether she felt anxiety or excitement at crossing this new line.

“We could leave money,” I said. She turned and looked at me, startled, as if she'd forgotten I was there. I walked over behind the cash register. Not electronic, it had round keys with numbers. It looked like something that might have been at the Linden Hill Children's Museum when we were little, donated by an old business that had finally upgraded to computers. I pressed the No Sale button, and a tinny bell chimed as the drawer heaved open with a spastic click.

Backwater Jack's had no hours posted on the door. The LBCO certificate and a neon Molson sign, unplugged or broken, were practically the only indications to non-natives that the house was anything more than someone's raggedy
summer cabin. But apparently it did a brisk enough business: ones, fives, tens, and twenties were piled in the till. I stood there, staring at the money, which just lay there, taunting me with its possibilities.

The pile of twenties was thick and green. I imagined the time it had spent on the lake, damp air curling its edges and sharpening its mossy money smell. It looked to me like salvation, like the answer to all my worries. I thought that I wouldn't take any more than I needed. I would carefully ease the stack out and count out three hundred dollars. Three hundred dollars should be enough, I thought. And if not, I would be three hundred dollars closer.

I heard Natalia's soft and resolute voice. “Don't do it,” she said. I didn't know if she meant
Don't take the money
, or
Don't have the abortion
. Or both.

I heard Mick coming up the steps and slammed the drawer shut. Stealing the money seemed so flatly unheroic. What chance did I have of saving Mick if I helped myself to the money in this till? On the other hand, what other choice did I have?

“Anything in there?” Mick said, jutting his chin toward the cash register.

“No,” I said. “It's empty.” He hesitated, not sure if he believed me. Then he went back to pilfering cases of beer.

Natalia stepped forward and patted me on the shoulder. “We'll find another way,” she said quietly. “If that's what you decide you want.” She reached across the counter and helped
herself to a small stack of chocolate bars. Then she reached into her pocket and took out two twenty-dollar bills. I put mine on top, and we weighted them down with a small stapler.

We rowed back to camp with three cases of Molson. Mick and Jesse didn't bother hiding the beer from either the counselors or the campers: Everyone but Meredith greeted us like conquering heroes, even Silas and Jane cheered at the sight of the beer, and Bucket Head added his rusty bark to the general happiness. It was almost like the counselors had handed out the information—the lone, floating package store—so that we would go out and get beer for them, no questions asked and no answers offered. Maybe they did this every year.

Back home, we would have opened the warm beer on the spot and started swilling immediately. But our time on the lake had taught us to be patient and resourceful. We unloaded the cases from the canoes and plunged the bottles, one by one, into the sandy bottom. As everyone else headed up to the fire to check on dinner, Mick and I knelt knee-deep in the water, arranging rocks to keep the beers in and create a kind of makeshift refrigerator. We worked together silently, occasionally offering each other suggestions on rock size and markers.

“I bet they'll be cold enough for us to split one by the time we're through,” Mick said. I didn't look up at him, just kept stacking rocks. Late-afternoon sun beat down on my bare back, but my legs, toes, and fingers felt deliciously chilly from the water.

“So how are you feeling, anyway?” Mick asked. I stopped working and looked up at him. I could tell from his expression, full of unlikely concern, that he meant my pregnant state. It was the first time he'd mentioned it without jeering.

“I feel fine,” I said. “I'm dying for a glass of lemonade, but except for that I feel totally normal.”

“That's weird,” he said. “When my aunt was pregnant, she couldn't go an hour without puking. She was always clutching her stomach and running to the toilet.”

“My stepmother was like that,” I said. “But not me. I feel fine.”

I hadn't been around much when Kerry was pregnant with the twins, which was during my nightmare-induced exile. But often during these last weeks I had thought about her pregnant with Rebecca, how she would stretch out across the sofa eating Saltines while the twins rode Big Wheels around the living room. Her skin had taken on a perpetually green cast, and I'd thought that if I ever wanted children I would seriously consider adoption. Maybe my own symptomlessness had something to do with my frame of mind. My body, I thought, must be listening to my intentions. Maybe people like Kerry and Mick's aunt experienced nausea and exhaustion because of the looming, awesome, and terrible responsibility of parenthood.

“You know,” Mick said, “I know someone in Pittsburgh who could help you out. All you'd need is a ride there, and she'd only charge you, like, fifty bucks. I had a girlfriend who went to her once. She just feeds you this cocktail of herbs and cleaning fluid, and then in, like, three days the thing's gone.”

I sat back on my haunches, submerging my shorts in the water. Mick looked at me, his face relaxed and normal. His hair had grown out a tiny bit, enough so that I could tell which direction it would flop across his forehead. In his bathing suit, minus the bandanna, his blue eyes looked uncharacteristically calm—as if the afternoon's heist had satisfied his hunger for excitement. He seemed very close to normal. As if he had no idea that what he was offering could end up killing me.

What would my mother think if she could hear this conversation? How ridiculous would it be if a girl like me—educated, with parents she should be able to turn to—ended up doing what Mick suggested? Except that really, if my physical well-being were the most important thing to me, I would have told my mother immediately. I remembered what she said that night in our living room.
I don't know why such a smart girl does such stupid things.
And I knew she meant in terms of my health, my future—which never seemed quite real to me, quite important. The future was so far away, it might as well be happening to a different person. And my health was a matter of course. What mattered to me was just myself, this me inside—away from her—and she always had to stomp that down. A part of me wanted to protect that self and keep it from her, even if it meant drinking some underground abortionist's toxic brew, or going ahead with a pregnancy that no part of me wanted.

“Maybe,” I said. “Thanks, Mick.”

“Sure.” He reached out to pat my head. He looked pleased that I would consider accepting his help. We stood up and
walked together to the campfire. Anybody watching would have assumed we were the best of friends.

Just before and then during dinner, before the beers were opened, Cody and I began a strange kind of dance, keeping mostly to our own groups. Cody milled about with his friends, talking and laughing, at one point even putting his arm around one of the girls. But then at regular intervals he would look back at me, not necessarily smiling or even acknowledging the glance, but paying enough attention that I knew before long he would sit next to me, hand me a lake-chilled beer, and the physical side of our romance would begin.

“My girlfriend,” Brendan lamented, as we spooned peanut butter out of a jar. One of the other group's leaders was busy preparing some sort of elaborate hash—not heated in the can, but pan-fried and seasoned—but for us Jane had put out an assortment of condiments, including the last of our wild blueberry preserves, which—when we opened it—turned out to be completely fermented. So as a prelude to our beer party, we passed around makeshift blueberry wine. After I took my first, nose-squinching sip, Brendan handed me the peanut butter and said, “I'm losing my girlfriend to an outsider hottie.”

“You think he's a hottie?” I asked, wanting my own opinion seconded.

“I definitely do,” he said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I've got a couple condoms in my pack, if you need them.”

“You
do
?” I said. Brendan shrugged, nonchalant.

“Sure,” he said. “You never know.”

I absorbed this for a second. Then I had a thought. What if Cody and I had sex tonight, and then in two weeks I got in touch and told him I was pregnant? The timing would be exactly right, and it would give me just enough time to get my abortion in under the wire. Getting the money would suddenly be his responsibility. He wouldn't even have to come get me; Natalia and I could take care of that. I could always turn to one of my other friends if Natalia didn't want to help.

I shook my head sharply, remembering my hand hovering over that cash register. First an almost thief, and now an almost con artist. What was happening to me?

The sun began to dip, the evening slowly turning to mauve. I thought of what Lori had said, about everything on the lake looking the same, a statement that was equal parts true and preposterous. The sunset, for example—every night its color came up with a subtle surprise, the last bit of sunlight reflected off the lake from a different angle. I thought of those twenty-dollar bills, abandoned in the till. Maybe tonight I would blow Cody off and sneak away in a canoe. Help myself to the twenties and rescue myself from all this uncertainty and indecision. However rotten that scheme, it sat better with me than lying to innocent Cody.

The blueberry wine came my way again. I took another sip and it spread, sweet and spoiled, inside my chest. My head began to buzz, and from across the fire I could see Cody, eating
his more elaborate meal. He caught my eye, and instead of looking away he grinned. My stomach dropped a little.

The problem was, I couldn't figure out a solution that didn't bring at least a little shame. If stealing money and tricking Cody was out of the question, no other option—abortion, adoption, giving up my own life for all eternity—seemed any less terrible.

People began floating down to the lake and fishing out beers. Although most of them had Swiss army knives, and we had two can openers with church keys on the handles, the guys all tried to open the bottles without tools. Nobody except Mick could actually do it. He would rest the bottle against a boulder and then tap the cap off with the flat of his palm.

When Brendan stood up and headed down to the lake for a beer, Cody took only a minute to take his seat beside me. No show-off, he opened two bottles of beer with the can opener Jane had left next to the fire pit, and handed one to me. Then he gave me a plate of corned beef hash.

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Your dinner looked pretty lame,” he said.

“But look,” I said, picking up the nearly empty preserve jar. “At least we have fine wine.”

Cody leaned over and took a sniff, then exhaled—half coughing, half laughing. “No thanks,” he said. “I think I'll stick to this Canadian vintage.”

“Good choice,” I said. “I'm sure last month was a very good year.”

I looked back down toward the lake. Brendan was talking to a tall, muscular guy from Cody's group. I wondered if they knew each other from base camp.

“So,” Cody said, trying to sound casual, “you and the movie star have become pretty tight, huh.”

“Didn't we already have this conversation?” I said, flattered that he was still jealous.

Cody smiled, his lips still damp from his last sip of beer. “Just checking,” he said.

I jutted my chin toward the lake, and Brendan. “We're good friends,” I said. “But the truth is, he would be more interested in that guy there than in me.”

I felt an instant stab of guilt, sacrificing Brendan's secret in the name of getting closer to Cody, who just nodded and said, “He might actually have some luck with Roger.”

“Don't tell anybody,” I said.

“I won't.” He let his knee move a little bit, pressing against mine. We could hear laughter and splashing: the drunken skinny-dipping had begun.

“You feel like going for a swim?” he said.

“Sure.” We stood up, carrying our beers, and I followed him down toward the water. Darkness closed in around us, along with the first hints of chill. I thought about running back to the tent to grab my jacket—it would be freezing when we got out of the lake—but I didn't want to run into anyone.

Just at the mouth of the water, where everyone else had gathered, Cody grabbed two more beers and then took a turn into
the woods. I could see Natalia, her head bobbing out on the water, watching us disappear behind the trees. As Cody and I walked down the sandy path, stepping over roots and rocks, he reached his hand back to me. I grabbed it and kept following. His white T-shirt shone through the darkness.
BREWSTER FLATS
, it read, in big, bold letters.

“I love the way guys dress,” I said. The blueberry wine and surprisingly cold beer had gone to my head. “All the T-shirts. You can't tell much about a girl from her clothes, about her history anyway. But with guys, it's like a record of everywhere they've been and everything they like.”