Chain Smokers

A meeting at night, in a dark park where neither of us were supposed to be.

I lift my chin and blow the toxins out of my lungs, suppressing the sigh that gnaws at my diaphragm. My truck quickly fills with smoke and I look at him through the haze. We’re parked at “our place”, a park in the ghetto part of town. We don’t really have the words. I look around and memories fill my head like the smoke fills my lungs. The carpeted bed of my truck. The drive-in B-movie playing in the background. Pink bra. Age sixteen. The feeling of carpet-burns on my shoulder blades. That unforgettable scent of sex that has taken me two years of Febreeze and airing out to get rid of.

            We threw the condom in the little creek just down the way, his fluids mixing with the dirty water that the really poor kids play in. They can’t afford to go to a pool in the summer. I look at the train that has been abandoned there for years. It has been tagged so many times that you can’t tell one lost kid’s affiliation from another.

            What he doesn’t know is that I haven’t let a man touch me since him. I haven’t had a kiss or a romantic caress in two years. He has a girlfriend… fiancée, I mean. She doesn’t know he’s here. We look at each other through the smoky darkness, and I light another cancer stick. If only cancer scared me. If only anything but the boy sitting beside me scared me.

            I had long, blonde hair. We had an argument about something. He grabbed that long, blonde hair and pulled me back to him and his skin left a red mark on my cheek. “I’m just flushed because it’s cold outside, sir,” I said to my history teacher, his sweet tempered blue eyes gazing at me made me feel sick. “I won’t be late again.” I was late again two more times before I dropped his class. My hair is cropped to exactly three inches and colored ginger red.

            “How’s….?”

            “She’s good,” he says.

            “Have you set a date yet?”

            “No, not yet, but we will.”

He’s confident in his answer. Menthol burns against my throat, embers illuminating my face for a split second.

 

“Jace! Stop!” I squeal between giggles and squirms, his fingers tickling my skin. He just smiles and continued on. I’m fourteen. It’s our first date and I’m in a destroyed denim skirt and a flannel shirt. I was going for a female Kurt Cobain look.

“I will if you promise to marry me someday,” he says, giving a grin. It’s impish, as all sixteen year old boy smiles are.

“Whatever, just stop!” And he stops.

 

“Wanna go for a walk?” I ask.

“Sure.”

We step out of the car. I hear his boot instantly hit the ground. And then the other. I have to let myself drop onto the gravel from a height of a little less than a foot. It’s a bitter cold night, the January air slapping me in the face. We both go towards the isolated trail that we could navigate blindfolded. I traipse ahead of him. We used to walk side by side on the narrow pathway, using each other for balance in case a rock jutted out in front of us unexpectedly.

 

“You walk like a white girl.” I know that this is meant as an insult, but at least he is paying attention.

“I am a white girl.”

“I know, but you never walked like it before.” Suddenly our skin color is added to the list of things that separate us from each other.

I grit my teeth together in the frigid cold, but I shiver in spite of me. I imagine him putting his jacket around my shoulders. He doesn’t; I knew he wouldn’t.

We give each other a parting nod in the other’s direction, and that’s that. I leave the bad part of town; he heads towards a different town entirely. I can’t remember who called whom, or the s****y superficial reason. I guess it was just something that needed to happen.

Reviews

[I Am Svetlana]

This was an interesting piece :) It's scary how one simple place can bring back so many memories. And certain situations, if given enough tension, can cause a person to chain smoke. I know cause I am also a smoker, been for alittle over a year now. I usually smoke alot when I'm irritated or stressed out, sometimes depressed. But I really liked what you wrote and how this story came together. Great job!