The People We Keep(57)

“What do you mean?” Carly pokes at the fire with a stick, pushing embers toward the center.

“Like she’d take me to the playground, but if there was no one interesting for her to talk to, she’d want to turn around and go home.”

“And she just left?”

“Yeah,” I say. I’m not sure if Carly meant for good, or from the playground, but it’s true both ways. I remember the shock in my shins from jumping off the swings when I was worried I wouldn’t be able to catch up with her.

“If it makes you feel any better, it’s not great having a mom who stays when she doesn’t want to,” Carly says. “It’s hard to watch how bad she wants her whole life to be different. How she settles for keeping the peace.”

Carly throws another bomb of wet leaves on the fire, and we watch the fury it makes.

“What do you want?” I ask, because I don’t know how a person is supposed to piece a life together. I don’t want to be my dad or my mom or even Margo. I don’t want to be my math teacher, or Matty’s mom, or Irene. I know my life can’t ever look like the people on TV, but I don’t know what there is to want that’s available to me.

“Like really want? Like in all of it?” She takes the last drag, tosses her cigarette butt into the fire.

I nod.

“I don’t know,” Carly says. “I think maybe it’s not a thing I want to be or stuff I want to have. It’s like—I just don’t want to feel wrong, you know?”

“Yeah,” I say, and I think I do.

“Rosemary always made me feel…” Carly pulls a loose cigarette from her jacket pocket, holds it between her fingers as if she’s already been smoking it. “I don’t know. She made me feel like she would love me completely if I were just a little bit better than I am.” She holds the cigarette with the tips of her fingers and sweeps it at the flames, pulling it back to her mouth fast, puffing furiously to get the light to take. “News flash! This is the best I’ve got.” She looks sad. Disappointed in herself, the way I was every single time I thought I could win my dad back from Irene by memorizing Dylan songs or sewing the loose buttons on his work shirts.

“I like you this way,” I say, and the words make me nervous, because they are the most I have and maybe she won’t want them. I like her more than anyone I’ve ever met.

“I don’t feel wrong right now,” Carly says. “I don’t feel wrong with you or Adam.” She pokes at the fire again. “Maybe we’ll be friends for a really long time.” She smiles at me, looks away. “I don’t even feel wrong with Bodie.” She laughs. “I just feel… bossy.”

“He needs it,” I say.

“He does.”

We’re sitting too close to the fire. My face feels chapped and hot. “Maybe we can come back and have campfires here,” I say. “Like even years and years and years from now.” And I try to picture it. This little bit of future that could be mine. A friend and a fire and no one feels wrong. It’s the first time I’ve ever thought of getting older in a real way, where I can picture myself as someone different, not just me right now in a different situation. There’s a new person waiting for me to catch up, and maybe she’s happy. Maybe she belongs right where she is.

“You know what I want?” Carly says. “I want to jump in that lake.”

I look around like someone might be watching.

“It’s fine,” Carly says. “I swear.”

And it’s what I want too.

We strip to our underwear. The tentacles on Carly’s neck belong to a giant octopus that stretches to the small of her back. In the flicker of firelight, with the movement of her body, he’s alive. One of his wavy tentacles is wrapped around her ribcage, under the band of her bra, curling up over her heart.

“It’s to remind me,” Carly says when she catches me staring. “Don’t let it pull you under, you know?”

“Yeah.” I study the lines, the way it makes her body into something otherworldly. And maybe I don’t know what it really is, but I feel like I do.

“Ready?” she asks, and I nod.

We make a mad dash for the lake. When the water hits my ankles it is so cold I want to scream, but I run harder, faster. Carly’s wake crashes into mine. We dive in at the same time, plunging into the blackness. I kick my legs and fight to stay under, to feel the cold seep in. To feel every inch of my body. I will be warm again, by the fire, in Carly’s car, in Adam’s bed. Cold isn’t my enemy anymore. I open my eyes and look to the surface. The moon is split to pieces by the water. I hold my breath until I feel like I’ll burst.

Carly comes up sputtering moments after I do. We laugh and shout and it echoes across the surface. It doesn’t matter if anyone hears us. We are part of this wild.

We dive and surface and dive again, until our teeth chatter, and then we walk from the water like creatures of the deep. Carly has a string of pondweed wrapped around her ankle, a tattoo come to life.

“It likes me,” she says, unwinding the weed from her leg. She has rings under her eyes from her makeup and I’m sure I do too. We are becoming raccoons.

We keep the fire going so we can dry off, jumping around in a crazy dance to get our blood flowing. Carly twists the pondweed into a crown and drops it on my head. It smells like mud in early spring. I howl at the moon.