And then he walked up toward the fire, his bare shoulders looking less red, less freckled. Natalia must be putting sunscreen on him in the morning, I thought. Brendan and I stood for a second, still holding hands, watching him go. And I would have bet that Brendan also replayed that vision in his head, Mick killing the guy in the tunnel to save his brother. His brother the fag.
“Did you ever notice,” Brendan said, “that whenever Mick talks about home it’s always his family? My brother, my sister, my mother, my aunt. It’s cute. Sweet. It all sounds so cozy.”
“Yes,” I said. And then, “He surprises me.”
“You and me both, honey,” Brendan said. “You and me both.”
At the fire pit, Jane dug through our food bag and empty cooler. All we had left were canned pineapple, a bag of flour, some severely dented cans of tuna, and a sack of brown rice. Natalia suggested using the flour to make tortillas. She held up the little Camp Bell cookbook, a battered and stapled pamphlet stuffed in with the food supplies.
“It will make such a terrible mess.” Jane sighed. “Maybe we can do it later in the week, if it comes to that.” She sent us down to the water to search for freshwater clams. “We can just boil them,” Jane said, “and then dump out the water.” I’d seen the clams all along the trip, clinging to rocks and roots, but never imagined they were edible.
“Do you think these are safe?” Natalia asked. We stood thigh-deep in water, collecting the clams in our T-shirts. They were small and smooth, about half the size of the steamers my mother sometimes ordered at seafood restaurants. They made a musical noise, clanging together like muffled bells as I plopped them in, one after another.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I’m not eating these. I can’t eat anything. I feel like hell.”
Natalia knelt to pick up another clam. She looked cool and perfect, not shaky at all, and I wondered if she’d had anything to drink last night. Without looking at me, she dropped a clam into her T-shirt and said, “Morning sickness?”
“No,” I said sharply. “Not morning sickness. Hungover. I have a hangover.”
“Oh,” said Natalia. She faced me now, her eyes flatly sarcastic. “Right. It couldn’t be morning sickness. You’re not pregnant, right?”
I felt a surge of fury, along with a desperate need to change the subject. “What about you, Natalia? Has Mick inseminated you yet?” I almost added something crueler, about Margit becoming a grandmother, or her parents inheriting a new child. But the meanness of that one remark already made my head hurt. And anyway, Natalia looked completely steeled to anything I might have to say.
“A lot you’d care,” she said. “You haven’t asked once about me and Mick.”
“That’s because I really don’t want to hear about it,” I said. “If you must know, it makes me sick how fast you turned on Steve.”
“I’d think you’d be overjoyed,” Natalia said. “We’ll be home soon enough, and then Steve will be all yours.”
My already shaky insides went pale: that she would see something so faint within me when I hadn’t admitted even in my own mind that it was true. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I whispered.
“Don’t I?” she said. She shook one hand dry, and I noticed for the first time that she’d stopped wearing the tinny Irish wedding ring Steve had given her. She walked out of the water, cradling the clams in her shirt. As she brushed by me she whispered, “Little slut.”
I stood there in the bright sun, the water all around me, watching her walk up to the fire pit. Steam rose from the pot of boiling water, and Natalia dumped the clams straight in from her T-shirt. I followed after her and did the same. She refused to return my glance, which—she might have been surprised to know—was more wounded than angry.
Is that really what you think? I wanted to say. Little slut. Little slut.
I pictured Cody rowing along, not far away, on this hot and sparkling lake. And I prayed that whatever he was thinking, it did not include that pair of words, their rhythm (little slut, little slut) guiding his oar through his own foggy, hungover mind.
* * *
I managed to choke down a single clam. Afterward I escaped under the shadow of the cliffs for a nap. I’d been asleep maybe ten minutes when Mick’s voice woke me, goading Sam to jump off into the hopefully deep water below.
“If it’s so easy,” Sam’s shaky voice said, “why don’t you do it?”
Good boy, I thought to myself. This might have been the first time I’d heard Sam talk to Mick at all, let alone stand up to him.
“Okay, you little pussy,” said Mick. “I’ll do it.”
The next thing I knew, a fine spray of water hit my face. Mick had catapulted from fifty feet above. “Hi,” he said, treading water. I scrambled to my feet.
“Hi,” I said. “How was that?”
“Fucking awesome.”
I followed him as he climbed back up to the top of the cliff. My hands still shook as I grabbed rocks and roots, shakily pulling myself to the jagged top. Sam stood there, looking miserable. Now he would have to jump, and he obviously didn’t want to.
I stepped forward and grabbed Sam’s hand. “Come on,” I said. “I’ll go with you.”
We walked together to the very edge. The water looked a long way down. The view was wonderful—what seemed like the entire pristine lake, the pine trees and the white cedars’ leaves camouflaging every campsite and building. The only house I could see had to be Backwater Jack’s—floating farther away than I would have guessed, a glint of what might be sunlight from our empty beer bottles twinkling like a star from another galaxy. From up here, the illusion of the lake as uninhabited disappeared. We could see fishing boats and Windsurfers, and groups of canoes that might have been from Camp Bell, making their slow way back to base camp.
“Are you ready?” I whispered to Sam. He made an uncertain grunting noise, and I reached out and grabbed his hand. It felt chubby, childlike, and it struck me that if I ran into him five years from now I might not recognize him.
“I’m going to count,” I said. We took another small step closer to the edge. One more move and we’d be heading toward the water. “One … two … three!”
We jumped.
A long, long way down. The wind took our hair straight up. A single moment when it felt like our stomachs stayed behind us, up on the rock, and then that intense sensation as they rushed to catch up to us. Our heels smashed through the water with a sharp slice, and we let go of each other’s hands as our faces plunged beneath the water, bubbles rising all around us.
We surfaced to cheers. Meredith, Silas, Natalia, Brendan, and Jane stood at the bottom. Natalia was the only one not smiling. When I emerged from the water and walked past her, dripping wet, she turned away to avoid catching my eye.
I climbed back up to the top, everyone else following. One by one, they each took the plunge. Even Meredith jumped, her braids flying straight up into the air like Pippi Longstocking. Sam went again, this time on his own. Bucket Head, beside himself, ran from the bottom of the cliffs to the top about three hundred times, barking in a panicked way that sounded like he meant, Stop, stop, stop it right now!
When everyone else had gathered on the beach below, I walked to the very edge. My toes gripped the rocks. I raised my arms over my head, wove my fingers together, and pointed them outward in the prayerful position that was second nature to me only when diving. I had never prayed for anything in my life. I rocked once, twice, off the balls of my feet.
“Bullshit.” At first I thought it was Mick’s voice, but then I realized Silas had spoken. I stifled a smile over what he was about to see.
“Sydney, don’t!” Natalia screamed.
I didn’t listen. Instead I rocked right onto my toes and threw my body into its practiced arc. I felt myself flying. My insides stayed behind me, on the cliff, watching me go, and I wished they would stay there forever. I realized at just the right moment that if I flattened my body—let myself fall belly fir
st—it might solve all my problems, the mess of my life expressing itself into the cool, clear water.
My mind wanted to do it, but my body would not listen. It ignored my orders and turned downward into a swan dive. My hands were no longer a prayer but an arrow. They led my body in a swift rush, wind whipping up from the water, and suddenly I was plunging, deep and then deeper. The tips of my fingers touched the lake’s silty bottom, and then I turned and rushed up to the surface.
Nobody cheered this time. Even the dog quieted. Everyone just stood, staring in disbelief. I treaded water, staring back at them, my hair for once flattened like an otter’s around my face.
I walked out of the water, my skin cold and dripping, every hair on my body standing up, electric. My hand did not tremble as I reached for the towel Meredith handed me. My head felt clear. My stomach felt empty but settled.
My hangover was gone.
Our group rowed close to one another that afternoon, all four canoes in a tandem cluster on the water. After a long, quiet while, Natalia announced that it was Meredith’s birthday. Meredith, in the front of Sam’s canoe, jerked her head around in surprise.
“I know I said I wouldn’t tell,” Natalia said. This singsong may have sounded believable to the rest of them, but I knew her well enough to know that not only was it nowhere near Meredith’s birthday, but this was the first Meredith had heard of it. “You know how shy and humble she is,” Natalia said, “but I feel that a birthday absolutely deserves a cake. Don’t you think so, Jane? There’s a recipe in the reflector oven cookbook for a blueberry cake. I’m going to make it tonight, for Meredith’s sweet sixteen.”
The muscles in Jane’s neck looked stiff, but even she had to agree to washing a dish or two in honor of Meredith’s birthday. When we got to camp, we all set out with our tin camping cups to collect wild blueberries. I’d just found a bush and begun plunking them into my cup when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up. Natalia stood over me, her face serious and remorseful.
“Can we talk?” she said.
“Sure.” I stood and followed her up a mossy embankment. When we got to the woods, we faced each other. Natalia put her hands on her hips.
“I have a couple things,” she said. “First off, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you a slut. You know I don’t think that.”
I didn’t say anything, didn’t nod or give her any indication that I accepted the apology. She went on, not noticing or caring. “No matter how you feel about me,” she said, “I have one thing to say to you, Sydney. No matter if we’re friends or not.” Her eyes looked wide and round and glassy, and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. For some reason, when I looked at Natalia I filled up with sympathy instead of anger. At the same time, I did not want to hear what she had to say.
“I’m not interested, Natalia. You’re treating me like I’m Margit, but I’m not. This baby, this thing that’s not going to be a baby. It’s not you. It’s not anybody, because I can’t have it.”
“Then why didn’t you get an abortion right away?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell your mom and be done with it?”
“It’s not because I’m confused,” I said. “I know what I want.”
“Listen to me, Sydney,” Natalia said. Her voice trembled, and I could see that the finger she held up in front of me also shook. “You can hook up with a million more guys like Cody. You can spend the next twenty years looking for the love of your life. But the real, true love of your life, it’s this. Right here.”
She stepped forward and put her hands flat on my bare stomach. The warmth of her palms pulsed through my skin. I had started this trip thin, and the weeks of exercise and Jane’s stingy meals had made me thinner still. The distance between my spine to the skin of my belly felt very slight. Nothing going on in there but an insistent cry for food; I’d eaten nothing but one puny clam since breakfast.
I pushed Natalia’s hands away. “Stop it,” I hissed. “This isn’t about love. And it isn’t about you. You were supposed to help me.”
“You better know right now I’m not going to.”
Panic swirled around me. I knew she and I had been growing further and further apart, but I couldn’t believe that when it came down to it, Natalia wouldn’t step up to the plate and rescue me. I did a quick mental inventory of friends who might take her place: Kendra, or Ashlyn, or even Greg. I would have to contact them the second I got home. I couldn’t fool around much longer.
I looked at Natalia, prepared to face an enemy. But she didn’t look like an enemy. She looked like my best friend in the world, her face drawn into the deepest kind of concern. She pressed her hand back against my belly. The love of my life.
My gut lurched with a new nausea. I wanted that lemonade. I knew I was pregnant, and I knew—strangely, unwillingly—that if I had the baby I would love it more than I’d ever loved anything in my entire life.
It was terrifying.
“Sydney,” Natalia whispered. “Just promise me you’ll have it, and I promise you I’ll find a way to make everything okay.”
“All right,” I whispered.
Her eyes widened, like she couldn’t trust herself to believe it. “All right what?” she said.
“I’ll have the baby,” I said.
Natalia stepped forward and drew me into a tight, body-clasping hug. I stared over her shoulder, into the darkening woods, not believing in the promise I’d just made.
We had no milk and no eggs. Natalia baked Meredith’s fake birthday cake with flour, sugar, and vegetable oil. It came out dusty and charred. We set a twig on fire, stuck it in the middle of the cake, and sang “Happy Birthday” while Silas and Brendan smashed out chords on their guitars. Meredith blew on the twig mightily, not extinguishing the flame at all, then plucked it out and tossed it in the fire. The cake tasted like wild blueberry Play-Doh, but we were starved enough for sugar to choke down every last piece. We ate with our hands, of course—Jane not willing to dirty forks. Afterward we lay around the fire, staring stupefied into the flames while Silas sang us his own original songs. My favorite was called “Evelina,” about a girl he used to love but didn’t anymore. Silas had a scratchy, lonesome voice, and I wondered what it would feel like to lose someone like him. I watched Jane listen to him play and imagined that Silas would be the most distant and unknowable boyfriend. Losing him would probably feel a lot like having him. Listening to his songs made me feel sad in the best, sleepiest way. I could almost forget my promise to Natalia—the decision I’d made, and everything it meant for my future.
On the way back to camp Natalia had formulated a plan. We would come home from Keewaytinook and act as if everything were normal. I would go on pretending not to be pregnant and hide it from my mother as long as possible. When I got past the point where abortion would be an option, and I couldn’t fit into regular clothes anymore, I’d tell the guidance counselor at school—whichever school I went to—and the guidance counselor would help me tell my parents. If neither one of them wanted to support my decision, I would go live with Natalia—or Margit, if Natalia’s parents refused.
“I mean, how can Margit say no, right?” Natalia said. “Who’s going to understand better than her?”
I listened like a robot, or an obedient child. Everything was finally out of my hands. The decision had been made. The embryo would become a baby. All I had to do was absolutely nothing.
When Silas put aside his guitar, Jane piled the dirty dishes in the lake. “Maybe the fish will eat them clean,” she said. Then she and Silas headed to their tent. They walked at that same confusing distance from each other, three feet between them. I tried to imagine what happened when they zipped the tent closed—whether they fell on each other hungrily or maintained the distance, sleeping back to platonic back.
Natalia couldn’t bear to part with me, either because it elated her to have my friendship again or because she worried I would change my mind if she left me alone. So she, Mick, Brendan, and I all piled into the same tent. I lay down,
staring at the ceiling. On one side of me, Brendan snored gently. On the other, I could hear Natalia and Mick, kissing and snuggling. Occasionally Mick would make a noise that sounded almost like a giggle, and I had to stifle my own laugh at the tough guy making such a sweet and girlish noise. After a while Natalia whispered a very pointed good night. Mick groaned, but I could tell that it was less a complaint than a nightly ritual. I felt sure that what I’d overheard was exactly what had been happening night after night: kisses, cuddles, and then a frustrated shutting down.
I waited until everyone was asleep. Then I did what I’d been dying to do almost every night for the last two weeks. I crawled over my sleeping tent mates and out into the night. Bucket Head lay curled up in a tight ball by the fire, and he thumped his tail sleepily as I rooted through the cooler. He sat up at attention when I settled by the fire with the small plastic bottle of ranch dressing. I spent an hour dribbling the dressing onto my fingers and licking them off. Every once in a while I would dribble on my left hand and share with the dog.
Somehow I thought that giving in to this bizarre urge would make me cross a line in my head. It would make me face my current state, and what it meant for my future. But the only thing I faced was a relieved kind of gladness at being Natalia’s friend again. When I tried to look at the future I couldn’t get past the fall, and whether I’d be at Linden Hill or Bulgar County High. I couldn’t get past me, the girl sitting in the pine and wood-smoke forest, the one protected by distance and an endless firmament of stars. The one who’d be lost forever if I kept my promise to Natalia.
chapter fourteen
the rescue
Jane’s fish-as-dishwasher plan didn’t work, and it ruined everyone’s day. We spent nearly an hour scouring plates and cake pans with Dr. Brauners. Far into the afternoon, Jane complained about the chore and the time we’d lost. When we reached our campsite that night, she quickly sifted through our food supply, and I hoped she wouldn’t notice the missing ranch dressing. She didn’t seem to, and finally decided on the industrial-sized tin of tuna fish and a squeeze or two of the remaining mustard.
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