Everything Beautiful (16 page)

41
Aces

The prospect of the salt lake expedition enhanced my otherness. I was not like them—the other campers, the colored balls. I was strong. I had purpose. I could make things happen. At dinner I shuffled down the table until I was next to Dylan.

“I have something cool to tell you.”

He held his hand up to calm me down. “Fleur already told me about the petition.”

“You talked to Fleur? When?”

Dylan smiled. “When you were playing volleyball.”

I winced. “You saw that?”

The knowledge that Dylan had seen me being “physically active” sent me into High Cringe. That meant he’d seen all my flesh sliding around and my face going blueberry. He might have even seen me laughing with the twins—over a ball!

“You were getting into it.” Dylan smiled again, but it wasn’t a sly smile. “It was nice to see you having fun. Different.”

“Shaddup.” I waved him away. “I was playing along. I was trying to infiltrate so that I could get”—I uncurled my hand and showed him the key to the dune buggy—“this.”

Dylan looked confused for a moment, then the wrinkles on his brow straightened out. “Does that thing work?” he asked idly, as if he didn’t care about the answer.

I nodded. “So, tomorrow we’re going to the salt lake.”

Dylan said nothing. He poked at his dinner. He dragged his fork through the gravy, making little swirling patterns with it.

“The salt lake,” I reminded him. “In the desert. The one with the
healing powers
.”

Dylan put his fork down. “I might have a conflict of interest.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I can believe in the salt lake and still believe in God.”

“Fuck off,” I said. “If you can suspend your disbelief for arks, or people getting turned into pillars of salt, or bloody great kippers falling from the sky, then I don’t see why you can’t do it for me.”

“Oh, I’m doing it for
you
now, am I?” Dylan smiled. He drummed his fists on his thighs. I put my hands over his and drummed with him, but I was too excited. I really thumped him. “Shit,” I said. “Can you feel that?”

He laughed. “No.”

I kept drumming a complicated beat.

That night’s movie was a Good Word documentary about cults. It went on for three hours and covered all the good ones: the orange people, David Koresh and Waco, Reverend Jim Jones and The People’s Temple. Dylan and I started laughing during the segment on the Manson family. He was so psycho—“
My eyes light fires in your homes!”
—and his girls looked so skanky with their lank hair and acne, their miniskirts, love beads, and swastikas. They kept showing the same still of the Spahn Ranch where the Manson family had lived. It was dusty and spooky. Every time the voiceover said the word “Spahn” Dylan would counter with “Spirit.” In the reenactments showing the family’s chill-time, i.e., singing around a campfire, Charles Manson had a guitar, and whenever they showed a close-up of him, Dylan would whisper, “Craig.” We chuckled into our sleeves and suffered terse looks from Anton. The video ended with a big plea for God-ness and that old chestnut about not worshiping false idols—oh, irony!—but I was in too good a mood to dispute it.

That night I lay awake in bed listening to the Boobook owl. I was thinking about the salt lake. I had no idea what it looked like. What I imagined was not unlike the illustrations in
Utopia
. I pictured a mirage: after miles of sand an oasis would spring up, complete with palm trees and parrots and big-personality flowers. The salt lake would be pale green—opalescent—and the salt crystals would sparkle in the sunlight. The water would feel cool, maybe even carbonated. Once Dylan and I were immersed we wouldn’t be able to feel our bodies. We’d surrender to the lake’s drift, its pulsing currents and tingle-essence. Dylan’s crutches would float away like driftwood. And we’d laugh. We’d sink our heads under the water and hold our breath till one hundred. And when we came back out we’d be different. Dylan would be able to walk and I’d be able to cry.

When I finally fell asleep I had weird, foggy, fumbling dreams. In one, Counselor Neville had wet his pants. He kept saying, “It’s okay, everybody, it’s just water,” and smiling like a child. In another Dylan was dancing and he moved like a . . . well, like a dream.

On the Fifth Day

42
Wonderfully Made

On the morning of day five, cabin three awoke to heavy banging on the door. Fleur slipped out of bed to open it and there stood Roslyn in a pair of spectacularly bedazzled bib overalls. “I’m bringing the breakfast bugle to each of you . . . personally!” She drew the bugle to her lips and smiled around the mouthpiece. I braced for the squall. Fleur gawped at me. I shook my head. Sarita huddled up against the wall with her hands over her ears. Roslyn blew and blew. Finally, she lowered the bugle and smiled like an axe murderer. “The thought for the morning is:
I am fearfully and wonderfully made!”
Roslyn took a bow. On her way back up she noticed the lip-sticky shroud tacked to the mirror. She reached for it and rasped, “Which one of you found this?”

Sarita was shaking her head and mouthing
don’t
, but I wanted to see what would happen. I put my hand up. “I did.”

“And you didn’t think to hand it in?” Roslyn’s voice climbed the walls. “You thought instead that it would be fun to soil it with your . . .” Her mouth was pursed in disgust as she searched for the right word. “
Whore paint
!”

“Ew!” Fleur reeled back.

“I only kissed it,” I said innocently. “I love Jesus.”

Roslyn scrunched the shroud in her fist and stormed out. After the door had stopped quaking, Fleur smiled. “She
hates
you.” Then: “When are you going to do my hair?”

I could feel Roslyn eyeballing me all through breakfast. I told Dylan about her visit. “Did she bugle at
Casa Mutard
?” I asked.

He nodded. “She told me she was fearfully and wonderfully made.”

“We all are,” I drawled.

“Oh,
sure
.” Dylan looked down at his legs and then up at me. “You shouldn’t have taken her shroud. People have to have things to believe in.”

“It was just lipstick.” Dylan looked at me and I felt ashamed. It was a shitty thing to do. Unfeeling. It was like turning someone’s lucky horseshoe upside down, or ripping the last page out of a library book. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go and apologize.”

Roslyn didn’t make it easy for me. She was so wounded. Her brow was ripple-marked—like sand at low tide. Call me the wrinkle-bringer; I knew that expression too well. She could have been Norma, the time she figured out that I’d stolen her credit card. Or Dad, the time he’d found me puking in Mr. Ping’s poinsettias. Or—and I didn’t like remembering this because it wasn’t a good memory—she could have been Mom.

I was eight and Freya, Queen of Grade Three, was coming over to play. I was supposed to tidy my room, but I elected to trash it instead. I had a frenzied half hour of pulling things from drawers, imagining Freya’s look of awe as she stepped over Power Rangers and Dr. Seuss. My grade-three logic said that this would make me memorable. Mom was so angry she almost hit me. She brought her fist to my face and then opened it at the last minute. Poof! It was scary, knowing I could make her that mad. Later, Mom told me it takes forty-three muscles to frown. She jabbed a finger at a deep line in the middle of her forehead. “You see that?” she said. “That one’s got your name on it.” Dad never got angry like Mom did. Norma says Dad has a blue aura. Mine is red. Mom’s would have been red, too.

“I’m sorry I ruined your shroud,” I told Roslyn. “If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you . . .” It was just a line, but Roslyn caught it and hung on.

“As a matter of fact, there is. I want you to think really hard, Riley. Think about what you believe in. Think about what God means to you. And then I want you to express the results of your ruminations at the talent show. It can be in song form, or a dance, or a dramatic oration.”

I gave her a scarecrow’s smile—eyes: unsettled, mouth: half-open,
just
stopped short of saying something rash. I heard myself say, “Sure, that sounds neat.”
Sure
?
Neat
? I staggered back to the Honeyeaters’ table, reached for Dylan’s toast, and decimated it.

He was smiling. “That bad?”

All I could do was shake my head. “Jay-sus. You
so
owe me.”

43
Past Life

Nothing could get to me that morning. Not Roslyn’s miffed-ness, not Richard and Ethan’s creation theory breakdown, not Fleur alternating between nagging me about her hair and bitching at me for taking the last muffin. Even Anton’s order that I help out in the kitchen didn’t faze me. I rolled up my sleeves and stood next to Olive at the sink. She washed and I dried. I must have been radiating happiness, because now and then she’d steal a look. Then it was as if my happiness was contagious, because Olive would seem to rise inside her apron and a second later she’d burst out with some nutty insight.

“I saw a comet last night. I counted over twenty deep sky objects. A nebula, a star cluster, a quasar—”

“Olive, how did you and Bird get to be . . . you and Bird?” I asked her.

“Mom designs satellites and Dad teaches theology.” Olive brought a plate up for closer inspection. “Bird says it’s the best of both worlds. Lots of hypotheticals in our house.”

I wanted Bird and Olive on my team. Absolutely.

“This is confidential,” I whispered. “Dylan and I are going into the desert today. We’re going to try and find Fraser’s salt lake.”

Olive clapped a rubber-gloved hand over her mouth. She squeaked through her fingers, “That is so exciting.”

“It’s all thanks to Bird. We’re taking the dune buggy.”

Olive took her hand away and spat out suds. She looked around and lowered her voice. “You’ll need supplies. Food and water.”

“Can you sort something out?”

“It would be an honor.”

“Tell Bird to meet us at the garage in an hour—I don’t want to raise suspicion among the Honeyeaters.”

“Don’t tell them—or they’ll all want to go.”

Olive seemed much wiser than her years. Norma would have called her an “old soul.” She who once told me that in a past life I was the town prostitute—they put me in stocks and pelted me with old fruit. Ah, Norma!

44
Cultural Anthropology

Neville came with us to open up Fraser’s house. I watched the big bunch of keys crash against his hip and smiled. I knew why their clank and jangle sounded different. I kept my hand in my pocket on the key to the dune buggy and wondered what kind of music it would make on its own.

Someone had collected the thrift shop boxes in the night, but Fraser’s journals were safe in the garage for Bird. The mysterious cleaner-upper had also opened the curtains and swept the porch, and now Fraser’s house had all the hallmarks of a “cottage charmer.” The second room, his bedroom, was
almost
presentable. It was dusty and there were still book colonies all over the floor, but it lacked the “local dump” décor of the first room.

“Shouldn’t take you long,” Neville said. He passed me his watch. “Get back by noon so you’ve got enough time to clean up before the falls.”

Dylan spoke up. “I don’t want to go to the falls. There’s no point. I’ll just be sitting there.”

I jumped in. “I don’t want to go, either. I practically drowned when we did the canoeing.”

Neville smiled. “What are you proposing?”

My mind raced. I needed a plausible, admirable lie so that Neville could let us off and still feel like he was doing his job.

“We could spend the time reflecting,” I offered. “We could work on something for the talent show. I know I said it as a joke, but now I’ve made this promise to Roslyn . . .”

Neville looked bemused. He didn’t
quite
believe me. But he wanted to. Need is not quite belief, but sometimes it’ll do.

“I guess there’s no reason why you can’t stay back,” Neville reasoned. “It is beautiful country, though.”

“I’m not that into nature,” I said, smiling slyly at Dylan. “I’m a city girl.”

“Gotcha.” Neville kicked a leg toward the door. I got the feeling that he was lingering, as if he wanted to dispatch his counselor duties and hang with the bad kids. He was okay, Neville, for a glass-eyed, super-gay, good-intentioned Godbotherer. He slapped the door frame. “Have
fu
-un . . .” His final advice swept the floor like a lyrebird’s tail. “Safe fun.”

Dylan and I locked eyes and singsonged back, “
We will
.”

For the next hour we emptied drawers and filled trash bags. I no longer felt weird about poking around Fraser’s personal stuff. We weren’t campers doing shit-work. We were cultural anthropologists searching for artifacts.

On the bedside table I found an old photograph under glass. On the back it said
Nicholas and Rose, wedding day, 1964
. The couple were standing in front of the house. Neither of them was smiling. Fraser looked wiry. He was wearing a suit and hat and a neat bow tie. His wife wore a white dress and carried a sheaf of wildflowers, long grass, and peacock feathers. I stared at the photo. Rose Fraser. She had my name, and she was fat like me. Plump. Big-boned. Comfy.

“When did Fraser die?” I asked.

Dylan didn’t answer. He was fiddling with an old cassette player. Suddenly the room was full of horns. The singer had a mighty timbre. Dylan pulled a swift 360. He was singing along, using everything—his voice, his face, his hands.

“What is this old people’s music?” I shouted above the din.

Dylan managed to shout back, “Neville Special” without missing a beat. “It’s Tom Jones—
Delilah.
”

Tom Jones wailed, and Dylan wailed with him. “
Why, why, whyyyyyy, Delilah?”
There was a hiss and a pop. Some smoke rose up. The amplifier was dead, but Dylan kept singing. Later, when we were playing
Name the Dune Buggy
he started again. We had wanted a name to suit the mission, something sexy . . . and dangerous. Why, why, why
not
Delilah? The name suited her so much it was perfect.