You Are Here(49)
Author: Jennifer E. Smith

“Well,” she said.

“Well.”

Peter helped gather her things from the trunk, and when they finished, she slung her backpack over her shoulder. “What about the dog?”

They both stared at the mound of white fur sprawled out across the backseat.

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Peter said, rubbing at his jaw. “You should probably get to take him. I mean, you found him. And after all you did this morning …”

Emma shook her head. “You take him.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be staying, or how I’m getting home,” she said. “You two can keep each other company.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We can figure the rest when we get home, but I think he’s gotten pretty fond of that car.”

Peter thumped a fist against the hood and smiled ruefully. “Me too.”

“And me,” Emma said softly, and then they both stood there like that, working up to some kind of good-bye.

“So, good luck,” Peter said eventually, shoving his hands in his pockets and backing up until he ran into the car with a jolt. His cheeks reddened, and he gave a little shrug. “Let me know how things turned out when you’re back home, okay?”

Emma couldn’t bring herself to answer. A small and somewhat ridiculous part of her wished that he might try to kiss her again, because this time would be different. But a second chance seemed too much to hope for now, and so she managed a small nod before turning to hurry up the stone path, where she stood before the front door for a moment, trying to collect herself. Behind her she could hear the familiar rattle of the engine as Peter revved up the car, and then the bleating sound of the tires as it disappeared up the drive.

She kept her back to the street until the noise had given way to a sort of pulsing silence, until Peter was gone, and she was alone, and there was nothing more to be done except kick herself for always choosing the wrong times to be silent and the wrong times to make a fuss, for always managing to get it all so perfectly wrong.

Chapter twenty-four

Though it would continue to happen often over the years, the first time Peter set off to follow Emma without an invitation was in fifth grade. Up to that point he’d spent most afternoons on his own, conducting elaborate battles across his bedroom floor, shifting a shoelace back and forth across the carpet to mark the progress of one side or the other.

But one day after school he noticed Emma heading off toward the college where her parents taught, the lofty grouping of stone buildings that had for some time been the object of intense interest for him. Hoping she might be on her way to see her parents at their offices—places he imagined as grand libraries with antique globes and row upon row of dusty, important-looking tomes—he followed, feeling quite proud of himself as he trailed along carefully behind her.

Emma wove purposefully through the throngs of college students, who all looked on with amusement at the ten-year-old girl with scabby knees and tangled hair who swung her arms with such determination. He was surprised when she walked right past the English building, then Anthropology, and then on toward the dorms, eventually going past the president’s house and beyond, where the path opened up to a long field that was shaped like a comma and overgrown with weeds.

Peter hung back as she started out across it, and when he thought she was a safe distance ahead, he kicked his way through the high grass, his shoelaces undone, his backpack heavy with books, his glasses slipping down his nose. He rarely ventured up to the college, which had its own campus security force and didn’t often require his dad’s services. To Peter it seemed almost like a monument, untouchable and sacred and very far away from his own sagging house down the street.

At the edge of the field a wall of trees rose from the untidy lawn, and Emma disappeared into their midst, pulling back branches and picking her away along a leaf-covered path. She paused at one point, and Peter froze and held his breath, sure he’d been caught. But after a moment she kept moving, and he couldn’t help following, pulled along behind her as if by some magnetic force. When she finally reached a small clearing, Peter was still a good ten yards back, but he could hear Emma—her back turned toward him—sing out, “We’re here.”

He stepped forward, blushing.

“Sorry,” he muttered as he joined her. “I wasn’t …”

“Yeah, you were,” she said, frowning at him. “You were following me.”

Not having anything to say to this, Peter poked at the leaves with the scuffed toe of his sneaker, examining his too-short corduroys. Emma sat down beneath a tree and unpacked a thermos and an apple from her backpack.

“I only have enough for me,” she said unapologetically. “I didn’t know I’d be having company.”

“That’s okay,” Peter said, sitting down cross-legged a few feet away.

The crows were circling overhead, their calls harsh and distant-sounding in the empty sky. He watched her bite into the apple, thinking how she—like him—didn’t seem to have any friends at school, but though he couldn’t have explained why, he knew the situation was different somehow.

“What do you do up here, anyway?”

She shrugged.

“Do you come up here every day?”

She shrugged again, and Peter stood up to circle the faded gravestones, which were covered in sap and bird droppings and stained with juice from the berries growing thickly in the surrounding bushes. There were a few dried flower petals beside one of them, but most looked largely abandoned.

“Who are these people?” he asked, stooping to read the names. “Did you know any of them?”

She shook her head.

“Then why do you come up here?”

“It’s quiet,” she said simply. Peter glanced over at her, thinking that her house must be fairly quiet too. He knew her older brothers and sister had all moved away, and her parents spent most of their time up at the college, or at least in their home offices, writing poems and researching speeches and lectures. He wondered what could possibly be quieter than a house that ran itself like a library, thinking of his own home, his dad half asleep on the couch with only the sound of the beer settling in its can, the soft swish as he scratched at one socked foot with the other.

“I like it here,” he said, tripping along from tombstone to tombstone, studying each with interest. He could feel Emma’s eyes on him with an intensity that he was unaccustomed to, and he felt a sudden tightness in his throat, like he might cough or cry without warning, like something that had been caught there for ages might now decide to come tumbling out.