Thirteen Plus One (11 page)

“No.”

Cinnamon cocked her head at the computer. “Wow, look at the position that girl’s in.”

“They list it as a sport,” I commented.

“No!”
Dinah cried. “Done! Move on!”

Cinnamon and I fought over the mouse.

“Are you interested in sea-kayaking?” I tried.

“No,” said Dinah.

“Herding cows?” Cinnamon said.

“I don’t think they’re cows,” I said, cocking my head at the computer. “I think they’re water buffalo. And stop clicking back to the Costa Rica one. She already said—”

“No,”
Dinah said.

“Well, personally, I think you’re being a little picky,” Cinnamon said. “I think cows are cute.”

“Water buffalo,” I said, as Dinah bellowed,
“NO!”

Cinnamon clicked on a new link, and its home page blossomed on the screen.

“Omigod,” she said.

My eyes bugged.
“Oh.
Omi
god.”

“What?” Dinah said. Then, “No, don’t tell me. Whatever you’re
omigod-
ing, I’m vetoing it
right now.
”

“But,
Dinah,
” Cinnamon said. Her voice was reverent. “You have got to do this, please please
please
. It’s”—she put her hand to her chest—“a
teen nudist camp.
”

“Cinnamon,” Dinah warned.

“The site has pictures,” I mentioned.

Dinah hesitated, still in corpse pose. Then, reluctantly, she got up. She leaned between us, digging an elbow into each of our backs.

Her inhalation cleared the room of all oxygen.

“See?” Cinnamon said.

“That is so wrong,
” Dinah whispered.

The site was hi-tech, with photos scrolling across the top. Photos of, well, teen nudists. The pictures were waist-up only, but still. The girl campers had breasts! I could
see
their breasts! Breasts and breasts and breasts!

“Check out the nipples on that one,” Cinnamon marveled. “They’re the size of pepperonis.”

“Ew,” Dinah said.

A new photo came into resolution. We screamed.

‘Ahhhh!”
I squealed. ”Nekkid boy bottoms!”

“It burns! It burns!” Cinnamon said, covering her eyes. She madeaVwith her fingers and peeked through. “Use some Clearasil, dude!”

“I bet he
hates
that picture,” I murmured. “Can he not call the camp directors and ask them to take it down?”

“It says you can do a multitude of activities, dry, wet, and tanned,” Cinnamon said.

“Not going to happen,” Dinah said. But like me and Cinnamon, she was riveted.

“‘Naked step aerobics’?” I read. “Why???”

“The same reason they’d have naked badminton, I guess,” Cinnamon said. “Which is to say: because they’re ker
-ray-
zee.”

There was a link called “Testimonials.” I clicked on it. A picture of a (topless) girl appeared, and we learned that her name was Hannah. The caption beneath said she was a Nude Youth Ambassador.

Silently, I read Hannah’s testimonial, which was typed in a font meant to look like cursive. I could tell Cinnamon and Dinah were reading it, too. Dinah, because her lips moved, and Cinnamon because of her repeated utterances of horrified delight.

At Camp
Buff, I learned to
embrace
my body,
warts
and all!
wrote Hannah. Being nude is
very comfortable, and life in
the nude is
more fun
than life with clothing. Plus,
at
Camp Buff
there are hot dogs for sale at the nude volleyball tournament and soft drinks, too.

Now that I’m back home, I go nude in my room almost always. But I can’t wait till next summer when I can return to Camp Buff! After all, if you’re going to make a lanyard, why not do it in the nude?

Cinnamon guffawed. “Why not, indeed?” she said. “You, guys, this has
got
to be a joke.”

“Only, look,” I said. “There’s a telephone number and an address. They even have T-shirts for sale.” I clicked to get to the T-shirt page. “Now call me dumb, but why would a nudist camp have T-shirts?”

“‘Nude’ JUST MEANS BAREFOOT ALL OVER,” Dinah said weakly, reading one of the slogans.

Cinnamon nudged Dinah. “What do you say, toots?
You
like going barefoot.”

“No I don’t.”

“Talk about Camp Crusty Butt,” Cinnamon continued, giggling.

“Gross,”
I said.

Dinah leaned in between us and jabbed the power button on the computer monitor.

Are you sure you want to shut down your computer?
a message asked.

Dinah punched the “you bet your nekkid boy bottoms” button so fiercely that her laptop jumped. “I am
not
going to camp. End. Of. Story.”

 

That night, Lars and I babysat Maggie so that Mom and Dad could go grab a bite with just each other.

“You can’t neglect your husband after the birth of a baby,” Mom told me as she handed me the squirming cuteness of my sister. Lars had yet to arrive, which was fortunate, because I felt a Mom-inappropriateness coming on.

“And that goes for ...
romance
, too,” she elaborated.

“‘Kay, Mom. Great. Bye, now!”

“Even if you aren’t”—she lowered her voice, but not nearly enough—“
in the mood,
if you know what I’m saying. And believe me, you won’t be. Not with a new baby.”

Oh good Lord.

“Ellen!” Dad called from the back door. He jangled his keys.

“Bye, sweetie,” Mom said, giving Maggie a peck. She tousled my hair. “Bye, Winnie. You only need to change her if she poops, all right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’ll
know
if she poops.”

“Yes, Mother. Good-bye, Mother.”

“And you know the rule: no boys in your room.”

“We will stay in the den. We will watch our movie.”

“But you’ll—”

“Pay
more
attention to baby Mags than to each other, yes yes yes.” I paused. “Unless Lars is feeling neglected and needs some”—I lowered my voice—
“romance.”

First her eyes widened, and then they narrowed.
“Winnie.”

“Kidding! Love you! Have fun!”

I lifted Maggie’s arm and made her wave.
“Bye, Mommy!
I said in a teensy baby voice.

After one last kiss for baby Maggie, and then kisses from Dad for both his girls, Mom and Dad finally left. Twenty minutes later, Lars arrived, and—
ah, bliss.
It was just me, him, and Mags. Sandra was off with Bo, and Ty was being brave and spending the night at his friend Lexi’s house. It was kind of like Lars and me were the mom and dad ... not that I would ever say that to Lars out loud. But practicing being older was one of the items on my list of things to do, and here I was doing it.
Yay!

I smiled to cover my thoughts and gave him the most recent Dinah update.

“If she has to go, she might as well make the most of it, right?” I said. “But the problem is, Dinah has
no
desire to see the world.”

“Seeing the world can be overrated,” Lars said.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“I just think she should see it as an opportunity.” I snuggled closer to him on the sofa and pressed my jean-clad thigh against his. “Don’t you?”

I was being a little sneaky, I admit. Lars’s family was big on traveling, and last year they’d spent the whole summer in Prague while his mom did some fellowship thing. It sucked, as I had no secret portal that led from my closet to the Czech Republic.

What that meant in the context of our conversation was that yes, in theory I was in favor of embracing travel and adventure. But I was feeling happy at the thought of him saying, “Yes, Dinah should see it as an opportunity. But
my
opportunity is right here. My opportunity is
you.”

“I can understand why Dinah wouldn’t want to go out of town,” he said. “That’s all.”

“Oh yeah?” I said coyly. What he was expressing was nice, if I read between the lines. But I wanted more.

He put his arm around me. “Yeah. What’s wrong with Atlanta?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“What’s wrong with wanting to hang with people you already know?”

I liked this game. “Not a thing.”

“Go somewhere new, and you’ll experience things you otherwise wouldn’t. I’m not saying you won’t. But do you have to travel the world to be happy? No. You can be happy anywhere ... as long as you’re with the right person.”

A thrill tickled my spine, because what he was saying was that I, Winnie,
was
the right person.
His
right person. As if to prove it, he pulled me closer and kissed the top of my head.

I melted into him like warm butter. Baby Mags was warm and buttery, too. We were a big warm buttery family, and I thought I might dissolve from happiness.

“I wouldn’t leave, if I had the choice,” he murmured. “I’d stay right here with you, all summer long.”

My body stayed where it was. But my muscles contracted. “I’m sorry, what?”

He exhaled.

I pulled away. “Lars?!”

He couldn’t meet my gaze. “My mom got offered another fellowship. In Germany this time.”

I felt sick. I wanted to say,
So? Just because she got offered another stupid fellowship, that doesn’t mean she has to take it, does she? And anyway, what’s sogreat about Germany?

“Tell her you don’t want to go,” I said.
Show some spine. Stick up for yourself!

“Winnie ...”

I scooted to the far end of the couch with baby Maggie in my arms. She whimpered, perhaps because I was separating her from her cuddly boy-shaped stuffed animal. Well, I was being separated from my cuddly boy-shaped stuffed animal, too.

“You could stay with Bryce,” I said.

“My parents would never let me.”

I pressed my lips together. I could feel sullenness coming on, and although I didn’t like myself when I was sullen, there was nothing I could do to stave it off. Or maybe there was. Maybe I just didn’t want to.

“Have you asked?” I said.

He stretched his legs out in front of him and let his head drop onto the sofa cushion. “I thought you didn’t like Bryce.”

Maybe not, but I liked him better than I liked Germany. My face by this point had hardened into a petulant mask. Especially my jaw. I would probably get TMJ, or whatever that disease was where you had to have your jaw wired shut and live on a liquid diet and use a computer activated voice synthesizer in order to talk, and it would be all Lars’s fault. Except actually it would be mine for being so tightly wound that I was unable to say, normally and without accusation,
But I’ll miss you.
And
I’m so bummed.
And
Do you really have to go?

Baby Maggie squirmed and reached for Lars. I looped my arms over hers and straitjacketed them to her pudgy body.

“Winnie, I don’t
want
to go to Germany,” Lars said. “This isn’t something I’m choosing to do.”

“But you’re not choosing
not
to,” I said.

“We don’t leave until June fifteenth. We’ll have two full weeks of summer, two full weeks to spend with each other after school lets out.”

“Two whole weeks! Wh-hoo!”

He massaged his temples. I was making him feel bad, and that made
me
feel bad. Only it also made me feel better, in a bitter pill sort of way.

“Come back and sit by me,” he said. “I miss you.”

“You can’t ’miss’ me,” I said. “I’m on the other end of the sofa, not in a whole different country.”

He reached for me. I resisted at first, then relented, because I missed him, too, despite his upcoming trip to stupid Germany.

He pulled on my arm, and I let my body slump like a felled tree until my cheekbone met Lars’s lap. I shuffled baby Maggie so that she lay sideways, too, spooned against me with her head tucked beneath my chin. I was careful of her soft spot.

Lars finger-combed my hair. It felt like heaven, not that I was about to tell him.

I am the mommy and you are the daddy and this is our baby,
I thought despondently. The words hovered at the edge of consciousness.

Then Maggie pooped. It was a long, spluttering,
ptttpttt-pttt
of a poop.

Lars’s hand stilled. “I think ... um ...”

I pushed myself up with a groan. “Yeah.” I held Maggie a few inches away from my body, because Maggie’s diapers sometimes leaked.

“Come on, Stinky,” I said to her. “Let’s get you changed.”

“Hey now,” Lars said, pretending to be offended. “Who are you calling Stinky?”

I looked at him—the first full-on look since Germany invaded—and said, “Ha ha.”

He was visibly relieved at our eye contact. “I’ll e-mail you. Every day.”

“Great,” I said flatly.

And now he was less relieved. I could tell by the way his Adam’s apple jerked up and down. But instead of feeling bad for worrying him, or sad that this was happening, I felt the urge to pull away from him.

“We’re good, right?” he said, and if I were in the right mood, I would be touched by his concern. He
didn’t
want to go with his family to Germany. I believed him. He would miss me. I believed that, too. But while I could see all that sweet-Lars angst, it didn’t exactly ... make its way to my heart.

“Of course we’re good,” I said, as if the topic was rather boring. “Things don’t always go according to plan. That’s just the way it goes.” I gave a wry smile and lifted Maggie’s smelly bottom for emphasis. “Poop happens.”

He laughed too hard. I mean, I was funny, but not
that
funny.

“Maybe I’ll go to leadership camp with Dinah after all,” I threw out. “I mean, as long as you’re going to Germany.”

“Really?” Lars said, obviously startled. He smoothed his expression to hide it. “I mean, sure. Why not?”