the hill

A Story by autumnrayne

just a short prose of the loop I believe a lot of us have experienced.

I look at myself in the mirror as I slightly raise my lips, a film of light airy smoke playing out slowly, forming waves and infecting the air around me. Leaving my healthy lungs strong and proud, it has tainted me. I am marked with my first cigarette. Bought my first pack and here I am in my bathroom, the shower thundering loud as the steam around me swallows the chemicals. My fingers tremble as I smooth my hair and take another drag. I thought this would be relaxing and a release but I am just more tense because I am scared of getting caught. The tobacco burns and I cough loudly. I am not good at this.

Frustrated, I stub out the cigarette in the sink and rise it down the drain. With the steam circling around me I grip the sides of the sink and stare at myself in the mirror. Who was I anymore? I promised myself when I was younger I would never try anything, that I would never drink and never swear and I sure as hell would never be doing what I was now. It was not an unrealistic aspiration for my age. I was always a good child. I did my homework right after school, I folded my hands nice and neat and sat up straight as I rode the bus to grade school, I was close with my mom and I stuck to myself. I was literally the role model for all of my friends. Quite contrary to the basic middle school principle, people actually looked up to me. They envied my good grades and innocence. Everything was going good for a while. Until it wasn't. Now, I smoked everyday, drank every weekend, and have learned to contract cancer in my bathroom. Disgusted, I shoved off from the sink and shut off the shower. The silence was eerie. For the past five minutes the loud thunder of the water and my thoughts had me warped in my own bubble of self-pity. Then, tentatively, a knock at the bathroom door broke the silence and when I opened the door, I found my sister standing there with a worried look on her face in her workout outfit. D****t. I forgot she was home. Ten months apart, me and my sister are identical. Our personality, our looks, our attitude, we are practically twins. There doesn't come a day when someone doesn't mistake us. But despite us practically being the same person, me and my sister are the best of friends. She is the closest person to my, my ally in everything. She has always been there for me and like my middle school friends, I am sort of her role-model. And now she was standing here, witnessing my act of greed.

"I was working out downst-- Have you been smoking??" The scent of cigarette smoke was unmistakable. The steam of the shower did nothing to mask the wall of fumes that crept their way out of the open door along with the shower steam. Her expression was one of surprise, and then her jaw tightened and her whole stance turned ridged. Anxiety and panic seeped through me body and I became frozen. I was so stupid. I was so, so, so stupid. I looked down and with a natural response, said,

"No. Cigarettes are disgusting why would you ever think I would try them?" My voice was shaky and I couldn't stop biting my lip. She flicked her eyes from me to the sink, where the pack laid casually. Wow. Nice one. With a turn she went back downstairs, slipping in her headphones. I rolled my eyes and was about to chase her when I realized it was pointless. It wasn't like she was going to tell on me anyway. Grabbing my pack, I slid it back under my dresser in my room and began to open every window in the house to air out the smell. It was the middle of winter and only twenty-seven degrees outside, but my parents would be home soon and I had done probably the most idiotic and selfish thing in my whole entire life. Like really, who smokes inside their house and expects to get away with it?

I couldn't help but feel that I had someway failed my sister. She looked up to me and had high expectations for me that were greatly misplaced. I could barely hold my life together anymore; the stress was turning me worn and apathetic. I leaned on the windowsill, feeling the cool, stiff breeze that swept into the room and breathed deeply. The sky was clear and the stars sparkled brightly, as if to rub their beauty in my face and show me how much better they were then me. The moon was just a small crescent and I looked longingly at it, hoping for some form of redemption and salvation to raise me from my own mistakes. Instead, it just glimmered back at me like the stars, mocking me. I hung my head, drowning in my self-hatred. No one recognized me anymore. I didn't even recognize myself anymore.