Every Little Thing in the World

by Nina de Gramont

  “Have you ever even been camping before?” I asked, though I knew perfectly well she hadn’t.

  “Don’t you remember Kendra Hirsch’s birthday?”

  That had been in fourth grade. Five of us pitched a big tent for a slumber party in Kendra’s backyard. Her mother had brought us hot chocolate and mint Milanos on a tray, and her father had sat awake all night in a lawn chair, standing guard with an industrial flashlight to keep kidnappers and pedophiles away.

  “This will be a little more hard-core,” I said.

  “That’s all right,” said Natalia, in that same slightly husky voice. “I’m ready.” She stretched out her arms and cracked her knuckles, something I’d never seen her do before. Her words spilled out in a weird staccato, like she couldn’t stop herself. “This was a really ingenious plan of your father’s,” she said. “As soon as I told my parents, I could see all sorts of lightbulbs going off above their heads. There’s no way Steve could track me down on a Canadian lake, so they’d finally know for certain that we were apart. I’m thinking, when I get back, I’ll tell them I met some nice Jewish boy. They’ll think I’m IMing him and talking to him on the phone, and they’ll never know the difference.”

  “But what about this summer?” I said. “Isn’t it your last chance to be with Steve before Switzerland?”

  “Be with Steve? I haven’t laid eyes on Steve since that night we tried to tell Tommy. They’ve got me under house arrest. No computer, no cell phone. I had to send him a letter to tell him about this trip, and then I got in trouble for sneaking out to the mailbox. But I’m thinking, maybe having me away this month will make them miss me. And if they think there’s no more Steve, then why bother sending me all the way to Switzerland?”

  “But there’s still a Steve, right? You two haven’t broken up.”

  “There’s no way to contact him,” Natalia said, “so I couldn’t break up with him if I wanted to. Which I don’t. We’re still totally in love.” She took a deep breath, and sitting so close, I could see that concealer masked tiny purple half moons beneath her eyes.

  “But I haven’t even told you the biggest thing,” Natalia said. “I have news. Huge news. Monumental.”

  The seat belt sign went off with a little electric ding. Natalia unbuckled and said, “Just a second; I’m going to the bathroom. Get me a Coke if the drinks come by.”

  I watched her sashay unsteadily around the annoyed flight attendant. As she passed the little kitchen, she reached into the unattended drink cart and pulled out two of those miniature liquor bottles. I couldn’t imagine where she would hide them—her jeans were painted on—but she disappeared so quickly into the lavatory, nobody but me could have noticed.

  “We’ll each have a Coke,” I told the flight attendant when she came by with the cart. Natalia still hadn’t returned. When she did climb in next to me, it took her a few minutes to dig the bottles out of her pocket.

  “Unless,” she said, her hand hovering over my Coke, “you don’t think you should be drinking.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said, my tone unusually harsh. Her expression darkened for a second, from sadness to annoyance. I watched the emotional progression of her face, remembering my state and forgiving me. Then she poured the rum into my Coke and disposed of the bottle—stashing it in the flap pocket of the seat in front of her in one fluid, secretive motion.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But you don’t drink so as not to hurt the baby. And there’s not going to be any baby.”

  “That’s a little bit related to my news,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I said. I wondered if she was pregnant too, and felt surprised by how the notion cheered me. Wouldn’t it be wonderful not to have to go through all this alone?

  Natalia picked up her drink but didn’t take a sip. She just held it up in the air and furrowed her brow into a serious, faraway look. “Those days before I talked to you on the phone,” she said, “all I could think about was how to work out your abortion. And it just got me thinking about teenage pregnancy, and the different possibilities, and our whole theory about Margit being my mother. So the day after you called me, I confronted my parents at dinner. I told them what we thought, that they were really my grandparents. And guess what? It’s true.”

  “What’s true?” I said.

  “Margit is my mother.”

  “Oh my God,” I said, feeling a strange combination of disbelief and envy. I imagined Margit at sixteen: a pale, blond version of Natalia. I imagined her on her parents’ silk mauve sofa, a gilt-embroidered throw pillow in her lap, tears streaming down her face. I imagined the Miksas, all cheery and solicitous, offering to take care of everything.

  Natalia took a sip of her Coke, then crinkled her nose, something I didn’t need to see to know the drink was strong. Just the smell of the rum wafting off the popping soda bubbles made me want to grab the air sickness bag and retch.

  “I should have known,” Natalia said, the shakiness returning to her voice. “I mean, I guess I did know. My mom is sixty-two years old. We had just sat down to eat, this horrible-looking chopped beef. And I told them about that show on the Biography channel, and that movie star, and I said that ever since I’d found myself wondering whether they were actually my grandparents. As soon as I said it, my mother burst out crying. The jig was totally up. I’m not supposed to tell Margit that I know until I get back. They’re going to tell her while I’m gone so she has a chance to prepare herself.”

  “Wow.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I know,” said Natalia. “So don’t you think it would just be too weird for them to send me to Switzerland now? Maybe I can go live with Margit and Victor instead, in the city.”

  “Are you just completely freaked out?”

  She took a sip of her drink, then lowered the cup to her knee. “Of course,” she said. “But what’s so weird is, nothing’s changed. My mom still feels like my mom. I haven’t spoken to Margit, but in my head she’s still my sister. I can’t think that will change. But then I look back at my life, and everything seems different from what I always thought it was. I feel so … tricked. You know?”

  I just stared at her. Of course I didn’t know. How could I? I didn’t even know what to say.

  “I’m going to write out a list of questions for her while I’m gone,” she said. “I really want to know who the father was. My parents wouldn’t tell me. And I want to know why she decided to go ahead with it. Having me, I mean. And then I think about your situation. It’s not like abortion was illegal when Margit had me.”

  I felt another lurch in my stomach. Natalia put her finger into her Coke and stirred the ice and rum. “You know,” she said, in her new, faraway voice, “I think I’d be a lot angrier at Margit if it weren’t for your situation. I keep thinking about your plans, and then I feel sort of grateful. If Margit had had an abortion, I wouldn’t even be here.”

  We had reached our cruising altitude by now, and as suddenly as it had started, my nausea vanished. I did feel intensely thirsty and wished I hadn’t let Natalia spike my drink. The last thing I wanted at this moment was a cocktail.

  “You wouldn’t be here if Margit had stayed a virgin till she was twenty-two,” I said. My voice sounded flat and strangely serious. I’d heard my mother make this kind of argument when the subject of abortion came up, and it felt weirdly natural to be parroting her. “You wouldn’t be here if your parents, your grandparents, had never met, or if they’d stayed in Hungary. There are a million things that could have ended up in you not being here.”

  “I know,” Natalia said. “But would it be different? Would I just not exist? Or would I be dead?”

  I sat there beside my best friend, feeling cold and clammy and longing for a glass of water. “You can’t go all pro-life on me now,” I said. “Please. Think about if it were you.”

  “If it were me, the father would be Steve,” she said. “Maybe I’d get to marry him.”

  “Is that what you want
?” I said. “To be sixteen years old and married to Steve? Living in some ratty house in Overpeck with aluminum siding and a screaming baby?”

  Natalia put her hand on my arm. “Of course not,” she said. And then, too loud, “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an abortion.”

  I was sure the people in the seats behind us could hear every word. “Shhh,” I pleaded. Then I said, “You were certainly all gung ho about the idea when we spoke on the phone.”

  “I still am,” she whispered, not sounding completely convinced. “It’s just I’ve been thinking since then. Everything feels different. But you know I think you should have an abortion if you want. I totally do. It’s just weird. It’s just very weird and complicated. Don’t you think?”

  I reached up and pressed the flight attendant button so I could ask for a bottle of water. My throat felt dry as the Sahara desert. My head felt terribly light, like I couldn’t keep my eyes open another second.

  “I think I just need to sleep,” I whispered. In my whole life, I had never been able to sleep on an airplane. But almost immediately a heavy fog settled around me, and I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. I didn’t wake up until the wheels hit the tarmac on Canadian soil.

  chapter five

  “o canada”

  It took forever, the trip from Toronto to Camp Bell, and finally I was glad to have Natalia beside me. While I remained in a groggy stupor from my daytime sleep, she navigated our way to the chartered plane that would take us to North Bay. From there it was easy; we just had to follow the stream of teenagers wearing hiking boots and backpacks. My dad’s ancient external-frame pack made me look sadly out of place in the middle of all the shiny new gear, and I was glad again to have Natalia so that I could absorb some of the glow from her brand-new, ultra-expensive equipment.

  We reached Camp Bell’s base camp on Lake Keewaytinook in the same dusky summer light I’d left behind at my dad’s. The air felt crisper, more northern. Rustic as Dad’s farmland might be, here the scent of pine was so much thicker. The daylong travels that rolled out behind us might have delivered us to another place in history, where houses existed in deeper thickets of forest, and nature had yet to be tamed.

  Natalia and I stood in line, uncharacteristically docile, and gave our names to a counselor who checked them off on a clipboard—the only thing that marked him as an authority figure. Otherwise he looked as spindly and teenage as the campers surrounding him. There didn’t seem to be any adults around, certainly not the fabled Mr. Bell, only teenagers like Clipboard Guy, whose red T-shirts bore the word STAFF in big white letters on the front and back. After Clipboard Guy had checked off the names of all the new arrivals, he told us that we would spend two nights here at base camp learning the rules of the water and how to pitch a tent—all the basics of living outdoors. We found out that we would be separated into groups of ten—four girls, four guys, and two counselors. Then we would shove off in our canoes to paddle for two weeks toward a supply drop point where we would stay two nights, then spend the next two weeks making our way back to the base camp. Clipboard Guy pointed us toward a bulletin board where the groups would be listed, then disappeared into the night as if all his responsibilities were complete.

  “Crazy,” Natalia said, trying to decipher the map that was posted next to the list of groups. When Natalia’s parents signed her up, they made sure that she and I would be traveling together, so it was only out of a vague sense of curiosity that we had walked over to the bulletin board. We looked at the other names in our group, which of course meant nothing to us. On the charter plane from Toronto and the bus from North Bay, we had barely spoken to each other, let alone the other campers.

  “I hope they’re nice,” said Natalia, running her finger down the list of names.

  I shrugged. So far, the other two hundred or so campers seemed like the usual assortment of teenagers. Some looked barely out of diapers, some looked like they should already be trading bonds on Wall Street. Now that we’d arrived at base camp, though, I kept spotting guys who looked distinctly out of place. In the middle of the usual stream of Patagonia and Lucky Brand there would suddenly be a shaved head, or a pair of Carhartt’s, or those weird gangsta turbans. About half of them were white, but they all looked like they would make my mother punch the automatic locks on her car. “They must have some sort of Youth at Risk thing going on,” Natalia whispered, as other curious campers jostled us out of the way of the bulletin board.

  We went to find beds in one of the girls’ bunkhouses. It was first come, first serve, and ours was the last group to arrive. Finally we found two beds in the last bunkhouse, on opposite sides of the cabin.

  “Totally unacceptable,” Natalia said.

  “It’s only for two days,” I said. “Let’s go to dinner and deal with it later.”

  The dining hall—like everything else at Camp Bell except the great outdoors—was unimpressive, nothing but a wide wooden building. The small, dingy kitchen was empty of staff, and the dining area was filled with picnic tables. In the morning the cracks between the wall’s slats would let in flies and daylight. Now, at night, mosquitoes and a chilly breeze slipped their way through the echoing room. Maybe tomorrow we would have actual hot meals, but for now we served ourselves cold-cut sandwiches from a long buffet table. Kerry’s book had said pregnant women should not eat cold cuts, but I reminded myself I was only temporarily pregnant and helped myself to a pile of shaved turkey. The spread before us was my father’s worst nightmare: a collection of processed meat, canned olives, and white bread. I bypassed all the iceberg lettuce and yellowed onions in favor of head-sized brownies.

  Natalia and I sat at the end of an unoccupied picnic table. Before long, guys started drifting over, introducing themselves to her. Soon the table was full—me, Natalia, and about ten guys. Natalia never did anything intentional to attract this kind of attention; guys just gravitated toward her no matter what. She could wear baggy jeans and a T-shirt, her hair shoved under a baseball cap, and still they’d come flocking. Once at school, she and Ashlyn and I had been sitting in the bleachers watching a baseball game on an overcast autumn day. When a cloud blew over, opening up the sun’s heat, Natalia had peeled off her sweater, revealing a Yankees T-shirt. Seconds later I could hear guys behind us whispering, and then a girl’s voice, intentionally loud: “Who does she think she is?”

  Natalia couldn’t help it. She just oozed sex whether she wanted to or not. The rest of us could take off our sweaters when it got hot, but Natalia couldn’t take off her sweater without being hot. So it surprised me when the guy to my right introduced himself to me first. “Hey,” he said. “I’m Cody.”

  “Sydney,” I told him, hiding my mouthful of turkey behind one hand.

  “Sydney,” he said, jutting his chin toward my tray. “You got the last brownie.”

  “There were more when I took it, I swear.” When he didn’t answer, I picked up the brownie, ripped it in half, and handed over the bigger piece. I expected him to protest—or at least offer to take the smaller half—but he didn’t say a word, just balanced it on the edge of his plate beside his own heaps of food. I snuck one more look at him before going back to my meal. He was a medium-sized guy, with brown hair and nice hazel eyes. Despite, or maybe because of, his stealing my brownie, he seemed like the sort of person who’d be easy to spend time with. I tried to remember if the name “Cody” had been on the list for our group.

  “So what’s with all the thugs?” Natalia asked, when the guys told us this was their second summer at Camp Bell. She didn’t have to worry about being overheard. The room had segregated itself into normal campers and boys from the hood. The latter took up a single table in the far corner of the room, while the rest of us spread out around the dining hall.

  The guy sitting next to Natalia told her that Mr. Campbell gave scholarships to East Coast boys from the Youth at Risk program. “Campbell’s from New Jersey,” he said. I could tell he was about to put down our home state with the usual t
urnpike jokes, but Natalia quickly said, “We are too.” So he just told us that every group would include one of these Youth at Risk guys.

  “We each get our very own juvenile delinquent,” he said.

  Natalia laughed. “This information was definitely not relayed to my mother when she signed me up,” she said.

  “But it’s not just juvies,” Cody said. “Did you girls know there’s a movie star at the camp?”

  “No,” said Natalia. “Who?”

  “This guy Brendan Taylor. He had a recurring part on The New Mill River. And he’s in that Alltel commercial for their family plan. The one with the lady in the sandwich suit?”

  The New Mill River was a prime-time soap opera about teenagers that we all made fun of but watched religiously. “Oh my God,” Natalia said. “Sydney, I think he’s in our group. I’m positive that name was on our list!”

  “Who was he on The New Mill River?” I asked.

  “The English guy who got Carol Ann pregnant.”

  “No way. Is he really English?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I turned around in my seat and scanned the milling teenagers. I remembered that character, a ridiculously handsome guest star with a very believable accent. I didn’t see any sign of him in the dining hall. Apart from the Youth at Risk kids, who were immediately recognizable, nobody looked remarkable. I turned back to our table, where we exchanged the usual introductions—where we were from, where we went to school. It turned out that every one of us went to private school, and I imagined how I’d feel at moments like this if I ended up going to Bulgar County High, the school that pooled students from Linden Hill, Wallingston, and Halltown.

  After dinner, our whole table walked back out to the bulletin board to check the group rosters. None of the guys were in Natalia’s and my group, but sure enough, there was the name Brendan Taylor. “Oh my God,” Natalia squealed, elbowing the cutest guy in the stomach. It irked me a little bit that she would already be flirting, as if the grand romance we’d sacrificed so much for didn’t mean a thing.