The Belsons are coming to our house for a barbecue, and I’m making a pie with Peggy, our stepmother since last year. Outside the kitchen window Bradley pushes my stepsisters, Sheila and Meg, on the tire swing. Peggy keeps looking out there like she’s nervous. Dad’s beside her, chopping onions for burgers.

“He’s pushing them awfully hard,” Peggy says.

Dad looks out and so do I. Sheila and Meg are six and seven years old, Peggy’s daughters from her first marriage. Dad smiles. “Brad’s good with kids,” he says, kneading the chopped meat.

“That’s not what I said.”

Dad is quiet. I stare at my blob of crust. “What do you want me to do?” he says.

Peggy laughs. “Nothing, I guess.” She dumps her flour and sugar mix over a pile of apple slices. “If I have to tell you, then nothing.”

Then Bradley looks up. Maybe he felt me watching him. He doesn’t say a thing, we just look at each other a long time, neither one of us moving. Fire lights his face and makes his eyes look hollow. The only sound is wood cracking in the fire.

I rise halfway to my feet and jump. I stay calm until the second my shoes leave the branch and I see the bonfire coming at me like a giant orange mouth. People are screaming. I hear the crash I make, and there’s wild, rippling heat in my hair and clothes. Then I’m on the beach, rolled and pounded by a weight that is Bradley, pushing me into the cool sand, smothering flames with his body.