Every Little Thing in the World

by Nina de Gramont

  When we got to the bathroom I lingered inside my stall much longer than I needed. I listened to Natalia pee, wash her hands, and wait for a few minutes before walking back outside. I heard her sigh as her feet touched down outside, a heavy and preoccupied sound.

  I felt bad that I wasn’t paying more attention to her crisis. The truth was, I didn’t want to think about any crisis at all. I just wanted to sit and focus on the coming weeks. I wanted to appreciate the luxury of a porcelain seat and flushing toilet. Not to mention running water. Finally I stood up and went to the sink. Washing my hands, I stared in the mirror, aware that over the next month I would not be seeing my own face. I studied it closely, making a mental map of my flaws and strong points, not wanting either to grow in my imagination. I looked, too, for changes. I didn’t see any. It was only me, staring back, a little more thoughtful than usual, a little more serious.

  Remember, I told myself, looking into my own eyes. It would be important to know, when I got back, if anything was different.

  chapter six

  a motley crew

  We had a rocky departure. Of the eight kids in our group, only Charlie and I had ever been in a canoe. Nobody else knew how to steer, and nobody understood how to load the boats so they wouldn’t tip over.

  Natalia, scrubbed of her makeup, was determined to transform into Wilderness Girl. She waded right into the water with me. “I refuse to be one of those chicks who squeals over spiders and worries about chipping her nails,” she told me. We piled our gear plus a share of the communal equipment into the surprisingly sturdy canoe. Natalia strapped a solar-powered lantern on top of our things. All day the lantern would soak up the sun while we rowed, then at camp we could use it to read in our tents. Of course the lamp belonged to Natalia: She and her mother had bought it at Riverside Square with her other new equipment. Camp Bell didn’t have anything so modern or snazzy.

  I held the boat steady while Natalia climbed into the bow. Then we just sat there, floating, while the rest of the group tried to organize itself. The two other girls barely knew how to step into their canoes. Lori threw one leg over the side too aggressively, sending the bulk of her and Meredith’s gear—including sleeping bags—into the lake. I winced when I saw the splash. There was nothing in the world worse than trying to sleep in a wet sleeping bag.

  Cody belonged to the group that shared our departure time. Most of them were return campers like Cody, and their expertise made our lameness even more obvious. The male leader from that group slapped Silas on the back and said, “Bummer, dude,” not trying to lower his voice or disguise in any way that “bummer” had become another word for us.

  In the time it took us to load six canoes and topple one, Cody’s group had set off in pairs, athletic and efficient. As his boat floated away, he turned around and waved at me. I waved back, ignoring the chaos around me.

  Last night, Cody still hadn’t kissed me. But Natalia and I had had the best time, playing football with him and his friends. “Touch football is too wimpy for us,” one of his friends had said when we started the game. “But if you two want, touch can count for you.”

  “No way,” I said. “I want to tackle. And I want to be tackled.”

  “Sydney,” said Natalia, her voice full of warning.

  I ignored her, not that it made a huge difference. The only guy willing to tackle me was Cody. Because I sucked at football, he got me about a million times, several when I didn’t even have the ball. He would run up next to me, put both arms around my waist, and pull me down to the grass. Every time I hit the ground, I would laugh hysterically. But I longed for a more jolting thrash. Cody held me gingerly, mindfully, using his body to break every one of my falls. When the bell rang for bedtime, he held my hand and walked me back to the girls’ cabin. “I wish you were in my group,” he said.

  “Me too.” We stood there in the twilight. A mosquito landed on my arm, but I didn’t want to swat it away for fear of breaking the mood. When Cody noticed it, he smacked my arm. The mosquito died with a splat.

  “Hey,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Haven’t you hurt me enough for one night?”

  “It’s all for your own good,” he said. Instead of kissing me, he reached out and ruffled my hair, then trotted across the lawn to his cabin.

  Now, watching him paddle away, I felt the same sort of delicious, forlorn ache. I wondered if this was how Natalia had felt when she first knew Steve, this combination of comfort and excitement.

  “All right,” Jane, our leader, finally yelled. “Enough of this bullshit. We’re going to assign you partners. Boys in the back of the canoe, girls in the front.”

  I saw Meredith and Lori exchange terrified looks. Neither of them wanted to end up in a canoe with Mick, who sat at the edge of the dock, running his bare feet back and forth in the water.

  Natalia’s hand shot up into the air. Jane ignored her, continuing about her business. So Natalia swung her long limbs out of the canoe, splashed through the water, and tapped Jane on the shoulder. Jane turned around and looked up. Natalia towered over her by a good eight inches.

  “Your plan doesn’t make any sense,” Natalia said. “Sydney knows how to steer. So why can’t I go in the front of her canoe?”

  Silas stood on the dock, unrolling Meredith and Lori’s sleeping bags to let them dry out. “She’s right,” he said to Jane. “There are four people who can do a J stroke. You, me, her”—he pointed to me—“and him”—he pointed to Charlie. Unlike Jane, Silas didn’t seem to care if we got off any time today, even though the eleven o’clock groups were starting to gather behind us on the hill. He picked up a bird book and interrupted his reasoning to leaf through it. “I think that’s a warbler,” he said, pointing in the sort-of direction of a nearby tree. I didn’t know who he was talking to, and I didn’t see any bird.

  “Silas,” Jane pleaded, wanting some help.

  “Okay,” said Silas, snapping out of it. “You.” He pointed to Brendan. “She’ll teach you how to do a J stroke.” At first I thought he meant Jane, but then I saw his finger pointed directly at me. His attention wandered off again, this time to the placement of his guitar in his own canoe, and Jane took over. Brendan waded out toward me, and I paddled to him. We met halfway, in water that hit him just above the knees. I climbed out of the canoe and stood next to him.

  “It’s pretty easy,” I said, willing myself not to be starstruck, or even attracted. Already I felt loyal to Cody. “Just think of a J,” I told him, “and think of using the water as leverage for the direction you want to go. The person in the bow keeps paddling in straight strokes, and then you use the J stroke to pull the stern around.”

  Brendan stood close enough that I could feel his breath on my neck. He smelled good, a musky jasmine scent that would draw every mosquito and black fly in Ontario. By now, everyone else had finally teetered into a canoe. Meredith and Lori, looking relieved, sat in the bows of Silas and Jane’s canoes. Charlie had Sam, and of course I had Natalia, which left Mick—still sitting on the edge of the dock like he wanted nothing to do with our entire operation.

  All of our canoes were painted bright blue. Brendan walked back to the dock, and Natalia splashed her way back to ours. Brendan didn’t get into his canoe but pulled it through the water and over to the dock. Like Silas, Brendan had brought along an acoustic guitar—the only oversize item Camp Bell allowed. He had wrapped the case in plastic and tied it carefully to the bar in front of the stern seat, which we now knew—thanks to Jane—was called the aft thwart.

  “I guess you’re with me,” he said to Mick, and then climbed into the stern seat.

  Mick shrugged and dropped his pack into the middle of the canoe. His bag looked half-full, and so light that I couldn’t imagine it contained a sleeping bag. Which I guess it didn’t, because a minute later he threw in another bulky bundle that looked like it was made of cloth, like the old zippered Snoopy blanket I used to bring to slumber parties. It hit Brendan’s guitar, striking a muffled chord. I thought ab
out telling Natalia we didn’t have to worry about Mick, because he was going to freeze to death during these frigid Canadian nights. But I would have had to speak in a normal voice for her to hear me, and I remembered how sound carried across water.

  Mick hopped into the bow of the canoe and took up his paddle. The two boys pushed away from shore. For a second Brendan, the professional actor, looked like he knew what he was doing. He was dressed so exactly right, wearing a khaki Aussie hat with a feather peeking out of the band, Patagonia shorts, and a maroon Harvard Crew T-shirt. But they made it just past the dock before the canoe’s bow started drifting back toward shore.

  By now our group was already far down the lake. If we didn’t hurry, we’d lose them around the first bend. Despite Jane’s brief flurry of authority, I didn’t quite trust her and Silas to wait for us, or even remember we belonged to their group.

  I paddled back to Brendan and Mick. “Maybe for now you guys should just switch sides,” I said. “When you want to go left, both of you paddle on the left side. When you want to go right, paddle on the right side. Straight, just paddle on opposite sides.”

  When Mick looked up, the fury in his eyes startled me. I couldn’t tell whether it came from the frustration of trying to canoe, or from being bossed around by me, a girl. But in a few seconds his face rearranged itself, and he followed my directions as if he didn’t care—about anything.

  A few minutes later, the four of us paddled side by side—the boys with their awkward, semifrantic shifting, and Natalia and me at an even and elegant pace.

  We spent the morning in sight of the rest of our group but a good clip behind. It was hard not to feel leisurely on such a bright summer day. A family of mallards floated upstream, the father in the lead and the mother taking up the rear, four ducklings in a fluffy, proud line between them.

  “So sweet,” Natalia said. Brendan smiled but Mick just kept staring straight ahead, squinting. He was the only person on the water not wearing sunglasses.

  “You need shades, man,” Brendan said, though he couldn’t have seen the squint.

  Mick shrugged, then after a minute said, “They’re in my pack.”

  “Want to stop so you can get them?”

  “No, it’s straight.”

  We paddled a little farther. And then Mick said—as if that small exchange about sunglasses had spurred his ability to speak, “Shit. Whoa. Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”

  We were far behind the group, and sun slanted sharply in front of our eyes. But I saw what Mick meant. From where we floated, it looked like Jane had peeled off her shirt. It also looked like she wore nothing underneath.

  “Is she just floating down the lake topless?” Mick said.

  “No,” said Natalia. “She must be wearing a halter, or something like that.”

  We saw Jane’s canoe come to a stop. She stood up in what looked like full, unashamed nakedness and plopped into the water.

  “I’m getting closer,” Mick said. He started paddling like mad toward the gaggle of canoes up ahead. Brendan struggled to keep up, switching his paddle from one side to the other. Natalia and I laughed, watching them go.

  “Ah, nudity,” Natalia said, “bringing together all men, everywhere.”

  “We had Brendan to ourselves for a minute there,” I said. “Wait till we tell Kendra and Ashlyn and everybody.”

  “Maybe you can date him,” said Natalia. “After all, here we are, out on this lake. Those two other girls are certainly no competition for you. And I can’t, because of Steve.”

  “Maybe,” I said, without much enthusiasm, still thinking of Cody. And then I recognized a hint of condescension in her comment, like being stranded on a remote lake, with no other girls as possibilities, was the only way I could ever hook up with someone like Brendan.

  “You can go back home with a movie star boyfriend,” Natalia said.

  “Sure,” I said, but my voice sounded stony. Natalia and I had been friends since kindergarten, and best friends since the seventh grade. In all that time, I couldn’t remember feeling so much as annoyance toward her. It was upsetting, now, that every few hours a surge of something like fury welled up toward her.

  “We’d better get going,” Natalia said, “or they’ll leave us behind.”

  We stepped up our paddling. The others seemed to be waiting for us now, a little blue flotilla up ahead in the sunlight. I dug my paddle deep into the water, curious to see whether Jane actually swam topless, or simply wore the world’s most invisible bikini top.

  Topless, as it turned out. Our canoe banged lightly into Brendan and Mick’s, and as Jane hauled herself back into the canoe we got a perfect view of her breasts, which looked surprisingly heavy for such a small girl, with a complicated network of blue veins. She rested her paddle across the stern and soaked up the sun—like floating half naked among nine strangers was the most normal thing in the world. Everybody looked away from her. In the bow of her canoe, Meredith’s plump cheeks glowed bright red. I’d expected Mick to stare frankly, but he kept his eyes glued to the bottom of the boat. Charlie had taken off his sunglasses and squinted straight ahead into the sun, like some sort of stoic cowboy, and Sam looked so panicked and shuffly I felt sure he was trying to hide a giant boner.

  “Okay,” said Silas. “Onward.”

  “Hey,” Natalia objected. “We just got here. I need to rest my arms.”

  “That’s the penalty for lagging,” Jane said, a stern and military stripper. “No rest.” She pulled her T-shirt back on, and in a few minutes the other three boats had paddled far ahead of us. Mick splashed his paddle and whooped. “Awesome,” he said. “I didn’t know this was going to be a topless canoe trip.”

  “It is not going to be a topless canoe trip,” Natalia said. She had pulled her black hair into a high ponytail that sprouted directly from the top of her head. In shorts and a white tank top, I thought she looked much sexier than any topless girl.

  “Come on,” said Mick. “Our fearless leader took off her shirt. Now you girls have to do the same.”

  While this should have been threatening coming from someone who looked as thuggish and unfamiliar as Mick, it had exactly the reverse effect. His behavior so exactly mirrored all the guys we knew from home that we couldn’t help laughing. Natalia scooped up water with her paddle and splashed it at him.

  “Hey,” Brendan said, hunching over to protect his gear from the wet invasion. “I’m just an innocent bystander.”

  Mick peeled off his own shirt. He had the whitest skin I’d ever seen. It looked very wrong amidst the bright blue river and lush green banks, a sudden shock of colorlessness.

  “Come on,” Mick said. His eyes traveled back and forth between me and Natalia. In a funny way, I appreciated that he included both of us instead of singling out Natalia as the object of his flirtation. “I took off my shirt,” he said, “now you take off yours.”

  “Forget it, thug,” Natalia said. I tensed for a minute. But she had said the word with throaty fondness, making it a term of endearment. We all laughed, then paddled to catch up with the rest of the group: suddenly best friends, the new in-crowd, the final four.

  We had so much fun talking and splashing water at each other that we held up the entire group. In addition to our laziness, I found myself having to pee at almost hourly intervals. Every time, Natalia and I would paddle over to shore and squat behind trees (she always joined me, as a sign of solidarity). Mick and Brendan would stand guard, promising not to peek and making sure our canoe didn’t float away. At the first sign of late afternoon, a slight chill skimming off the water, we paddled up to where our group had already started setting up camp.

  “This is way far down from where we were planning to stop,” Jane scolded, when we had landed our canoes and walked over for instruction. She had put on a T-shirt, plus a fleece pullover, so we were able to look her straight in the eye. “You four will have hurry tomorrow,” she told us.

  “Aye, aye, cap’n,” Mick said, and gave he
r a little salute. She gave in, smiling. Silas called us over to show us how to set up the tents.

  There were three. One was for Jane and Silas, which of course made us assume they were a couple, even though we hadn’t seen anything like affection pass between them. One tent was for the four girls and another for the four guys. “You’ll be responsible for setting up your own tent whenever we reach camp,” Silas told us. We knelt beside him, watching him plant the stakes and pull the tarp. His fisherman’s sweater seemed looser than it had the day before, as if one day of canoeing had cost him significant body fat.

  Brendan, Mick, Natalia, and I all labored setting up the same tent. I wondered if that meant we—and not the girls—would be sharing it. Somehow I couldn’t imagine topless Jane and distracted Silas insisting on segregating the sexes. I threw my pack inside the tent, then climbed in. After I spread out my sleeping bag in the far corner, I dug through the jumble of clothes for a fleece jacket. Natalia knelt beside me, doing the same. She pulled out a bright white pullover, made of soft fleece that looked like fox fur.

  “Natalia,” I said, “you can’t wear that jacket out here. The mosquitoes will eat you alive.”

  “No, they won’t,” she said. “The guy at EMS said bright colors repel mosquitoes.”

  In the tent’s muted evening light, I imagined Natalia and Mrs. Miksa, breezing into EMS and purchasing top-of-the line everything. Under the most ordinary circumstances, the Miksas hardly ever refused Natalia a thing. Her knowing about Margit probably made them even more eager to please her. They probably dropped thousands in a single shopping trip.

  At this very moment, back at the mall in Hackensack, a clerk at EMS was smiling through his retail drudgery, picturing all the mosquitoes that were feasting on Natalia in her four-hundred-dollar Marmot pullover. At least he hadn’t talked her out of bug spray. She pulled out a little bottle of Bullfrog, also—unfortunately—deet free. “We’ll use lots of this,” she said.