It took Peter a few seemingly endless moments to catch on, his eyes fluttering open in confusion. When it finally registered what had happened, he leaned back stiffly and focused his attention on his shoes. Emma swallowed hard, frozen in place on the other end of the log. She couldn’t look up, because that would mean seeing the hurt on Peter’s face, and so she stared at the fire until her eyes began to water, anxious for one of them to say something, to begin the conversation that would inevitably follow. But she couldn’t for the life of her imagine how to begin.
The fire made the surrounding trees bend and loom like reflections in a fun-house mirror, and the dog curled up with a yawn, his bad leg pulled tight to his chest and his ears swiveling back and forth. But still they just sat there. It seemed to Emma that this was the world’s longest silence, a yawning gap between them that would never end. Even the air seemed to have changed, clotted and spoiled by what had happened, and she understood that something had been tipped by her reaction. And that no matter who had been the one to lean in, no matter who had closed their eyes and reached for the other, it was still somehow her fault, and always would be.
Peter was the first to clear his throat, looking desperate to strike up a conversation, any conversation, and Emma was almost disproportionately grateful to him for being the one to do it.
“My dad would’ve loved this kind of thing,” he said, and his voice seemed to strain with the effort. “He goes camping with his buddies all the time.”
“Upstate?” Emma croaked, pleased to find that her voice still worked.
“Yeah.”
“Does he ever take you?”
Peter shook his head but said nothing.
“Well, it’s nice he goes out and does stuff,” she said, jerking her chin toward the fire pit. “My dad has this one poem about fire, and—”
“I know it,” Peter said, cutting her off. “It’s one of his best.”
Emma snorted. “Yeah, well. He just writes about stuff like this. He turns it into stanzas and couplets. And my mom, she analyzes things until they stop meaning anything. ‘The fire represents life and the ashes represent death.’ It’s all just words.” There was a kind of momentum to the conversation now, and Emma felt herself being swept up by it, happy to focus on something other than what had just happened. “Sometimes, I feel like they don’t actually experience anything. Like they’re not living so much as studying life.”
“Yeah, but that’s how you experience things,” Peter said, sitting forward, his eyes now bright behind his glasses, the wounded look replaced by a kind of determination. “By digging deeper, not just accepting them for what they are. Your parents are brilliant. Look at my dad. He just sort of plods through life, drinking with his friends, going to work every morning, always the same thing. That’s no way to live.”
Emma stared at him. “Your dad’s a policeman. He saves lives. He protects people. How can you think that’s less important than the way my parents hole themselves away with their books?”
Peter stood abruptly and grabbed the bag of marshmallows from among their things. She could tell he was angry, though she wasn’t sure if it was because of the failed kiss or the discussion at hand. He jabbed one onto a stick so hard it skidded halfway down, then considered it a moment before adding two more. It looked like a great sticky shish kebab, and he thrust the whole thing over the fire with a frown, all the while shaking his head.
“What happened to dinner?” Emma asked, watching as the marshmallows caught fire, the soft shells turning a gritty black in the flame.
Peter spun the stick in slow circles, letting it burn. “Don’t you know how lucky you are?” he asked, still not looking at her, still shaking his head. “You were born lucky. You grew up lucky.”
“ Lucky?”
“Yes,” he said, swiveling to face her. One of the half-melted marshmallows dripped off the stick and into the fire. “You’re surrounded by some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, and you’re completely ungrateful for it. You have no idea how good you’ve got it.”
“It’s because I’m not like them,” Emma said, nearly spitting the words. “What am I supposed to do? Pretend to be good at math? Pretend to care about the stupid Civil War?”
Peter slashed at the fire with his stick, the smoke twisting up into the dark. “So, what? You act all mysterious to seem more interesting?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re always wandering off or running away,” he said. “But you’re a lot more interesting when you’re just being yourself, you know. When you’re actually here.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Emma said coldly. “Where else would I be?”
“You know what I mean,” he said, a rough edge to his voice. “It’s like you’re so busy trying not to act like your family that you’ve never even stopped to consider that it might not be such a bad thing.”
“Well, what about you?” she shot back, aware of the bitterness in her words. “You complain about your dad not wanting you around, and then you complain when he wants you to stay home for school. You can’t have it both ways.”
Peter dropped the stick, his lips parted just slightly. “Well, neither can you,” he said. “You can’t keep everyone at arm’s length and then expect them to be there for you when you need them.”
“I don’t,” Emma said.
“You do.”
“Don’t act like you know me just because you want to be like my parents,” she said, suddenly furious. “And just because you’d rather hang out with them doesn’t mean everyone would. Not everyone finds them so damn fascinating. Not everyone’s as weird as you are.”
Emma realized they were rapidly entering the territory of things that could not be taken back, and she knew she should feel guilty. But all she could muster was a small pit of anger. Because what good did it do to feel horrible about this, when she already felt horrible about so many other things? She’d never yelled at her parents, never railed against her siblings; she’d just retreated further into herself, and now it felt good to finally take it out on somebody. Suddenly, all she wanted to do was scream at the top of her lungs and pound her fists on the ground and yell because it hurt—because it had always hurt, and she was only just now realizing how much.