4. Peter
4
Peter
I t was strange, to watch the lights flicker on in Everett’s grandma’s house for the first time in years. Finally, the place was something other than a dark, empty nothing, a void surrounded by the full lives of everyone around it.
For the first time in years, it wasn’t my place. It fit in with their world again, not mine.
All along the street, houses had been draped in twinkling lights. The holidays were coming. Sometimes, people would sing in the streets.
Seeing people do something different, something silly, just for the sake of it, always made me feel a little lighter. I was looking forward to that—caroling or whatever. I’d never done it, but I watched most years, hiding in the trees.
It was just Everett in the house—not his parents or a dog or a friend. Not a...well, Everett looked like the right age to have a person he loved, to start a family, to have all that. But he’d come back alone, and a sharp, brittle shard deep in my heart wanted to laugh aloud. He’d left me, but he was still alone too! See? I wasn’t the only one. Nothing was wrong with me.
And then there was the other part that was sad, that felt lonely and forgotten. That part was afraid Everett had gotten lost too. That...hurt. Everett’s smile was the brightest thing in the world, even on a clear summer day. I didn’t want him to have lost it.
I wanted?—
I wanted to snatch him off the sidewalk, fly high into the sky, and let him go so he’d know what it was like to feel like he was falling, doomed, helpless. And I wanted to pin up a blanket and crawl under it with flashlights and cheese crackers and apple slices and him , and never come out.
Mostly, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew what I had to do.
I had to sit right there in that old swing, the rubber dry and cracked with age, and watch him move around his grandmother’s kitchen. Watch him pace with his phone pressed to his ear, a furrow on his brow. Watch him argue with someone on the other end.
I had to watch him drink tea alone at his kitchen table and sit in front of a folding lit screen on the table for a long, long time and run his fingers through his hair in frustration.
I had to wait and hope that he saw me and pray that he never did. I had to know that he’d left me, that I wasn’t anyone to him, and that I should go back to the woods.
I had to sit there anyway, stuck.
“Whatcha doin’?” Jessie asked from behind me, wrapping their arms around my neck and dropping their sharp little chin on my shoulder to look where I was looking.
When I pushed the balls of my feet into the ground and swung back and forth, they picked their feet off the ground and squeezed harder, their little arms almost choking me. Almost. If I could be choked.
“Don’t hurt him,” Aurora chided, sitting in the seat beside me, her skirts billowing out as the swing swayed.
Jessie puffed out a breath and put their feet back down. “I’m sorry,” they whispered in my ear.
I shook my head. “It’s okay. It didn’t hurt.”
No, it was just the tight, choking feeling that I was already used to. Just seeing Everett made me feel like that. I couldn’t even say it was Jessie’s fault.
Jessie held onto the bar of the swing set and let themself fall, twisting around it with a put-upon sigh. Aurora looked at me with her brow cocked.
“They missed you,” she said quietly.
“Sorry,” I whispered back, no feeling behind it.
She shrugged, glancing toward the house. “You’ve been spending a lot of time here since he came back. Is that the same one as before?”
My turn to shrug. “I guess so.”
No, I knew, but she didn’t need to realize how far gone I was. We didn’t have to talk about it.
Aurora sighed through her nose as Jessie spun around and around the bar, their arms outstretched, leaning back to look at the purple sky.
“It’s okay, you know,” Aurora said after a while. I felt her gaze on the side of my face and swallowed.
“What’s okay?”
“If it’s time.”
A pile of rocks dropped in my stomach. “Time for what?”
Another sigh, this one even quieter. “We can’t all play forever,” she mumbled, almost like she didn’t want Jessie to hear, or Will, wherever he was. This was just for her and me. “Maybe”—she shifted her swing to the side and bumped against me gently—“maybe I’ll even grow up one day, and it’ll be a new adventure.”
At that, I couldn’t avoid looking at her anymore. What she said was impossible, sick, even. I threw out my hand to feel her forehead, and she giggled.
“I’m fine, Peter, really. I’m just saying that it’s okay?—”
“It isn’t. I’m not going anywhere, Rora. I’d never leave you and the kids. Never ever, so don’t even say—just don’t say that, okay? Don’t ever say it again.”
Her smile softened and softened until it disappeared completely. “I won’t say it, but it’s still okay, no matter what.”
“Yup!” I sounded too bright, too chipper, as I got out of the swing and held out my hand for Jessie. “Everything’s fine. But we’re going home, which is extra fine. More than okay. Home is great, right, Jessie?”
They beamed up at me, squeezing my hand hard. “Can we play pirates?”
“Yes. Absolutely. We are definitely playing pirates.”
And we weren’t ever going to think about what was okay and what wasn’t ever again.