Every Little Thing in the World by Nina de Gramont

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 stepinto 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.”
    â€œNo way,” I said. “I want to tackle. And I want to be tackled.”
    â€œSydney,” 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 Ihit 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.
    â€œMe 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.
    â€œHey,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Haven’t you hurt me enough for one night?”
    â€œIt’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.
    â€œAll 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