“I can make it work,” she says, and even though everything around us shines in the moonlight, covered in condensation, I believe that she can.
She balls the lint and throws it under the log tower, where it will catch when the flames start to travel. She’s strategic with the gum wrappers, using one after another to keep a flame focused at one small spot.
“Ha ha!” she says, with the first crackle of wood, grinning, like she knew all along it would work. She’s different here. Her makeup doesn’t shape her face in these shadows. In the moonlight, she’s young and strong, and nothing strange. She watches her tower.
“Ha ha!” she says again, when the flames break the surface of another log.
Once the fire is safely raging, we throw damp twigs at it to hear the pop and sizzle. When it gets too warm, we hang our jackets over a tree branch instead of moving further away.
“What was your mom like?” Carly asks.
I think about that wedding dress woman and the tickle of her copper hair on my cheek. “I don’t remember enough,” I say, because memories of my mom don’t always come when I call them. “But she was really pretty and people liked her, and she hated waiting for me.”
“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.