You’ve always liked cigarettes.
You don’t like your mother, who puffs away at a cancer stick as she sits slumped before the television on a sofa that’s lacquered with duct tape, and you don’t like your father, who’s glued to the porch with a beer that’s slick from condensation in one hand and a roll of tobacco in the other.
He preaches subjugation to the gangly teenage boys in the trailer park who worship war like they worship God, but your father was only a private who was discharged after a slab of debris brained him. He was sent back home with a hand that couldn’t write and a brain that couldn’t read to a high school sweetheart who lost her sweetness.
So you like cigarettes, but you like Ms. Wright more. She catches you behind the school, puffing away at the pack you stole from your parents. She plucks the cancer stick from between your fingers to fling it to the ground and crushes it with the heel of her shoe, extinguishing the baby glow from the tip.
You raise a brow. You’re pretty sure that isn’t allowed. To grab things from a student, but you let it pass because you like Ms. Wright and she likes you too.
“Hey, teach,” you greet. You flick the pack open with your thumb and extend it to her. Your chapped lips curve into a smile. “Want one?”
Ms. Wright’s cheeks burst into vermillion: a word you learned recently. You’ve slacked throughout your entire academic career until now, sophomore year, because you want to get into the class with all the smart kids since that’s what Ms. Wright wants.
You have potential, she said as if she were one of the many teachers you have and have had. But Ms. Wright spoke those words as she shared half of her Subway sandwich. Whole wheat bread, cucumber, mayonnaise, lettuce, onion, and a sprinkling of pepper. That’s what a school counselor in the bad part of town deems a decent meal and it’s what a trailer trash girl like you deems a fantastic meal.
“Sherry,” Ms. Wright says with a voice thinner than paint. She narrows her eyes and you want to trace her monolids with your tongue. There’s a lot you want to explore.
“Teach,” you tease. You gesture for her to take a cigarette. “Loosen up. School’s out.”
Ms. Wright tries to protest, but you see her pupils dilate at the sight of the pack and can smell the cloud of strawberry vape smoke wrapped around her like a boa constrictor.
So you lay it thick.
“C’mon, it’s the least I can do,” you say as you pluck a cigarette from the carton. You pocket the pack and then pull out a cheap lighter from the gas station. The fuel is almost gone, so it takes a couple of clicks for a flame to burst. You ignite the tip of the cigarette and hand it to Ms. Wright. “You share your food. I share my tobacco.”
Ms. Wright scoffs but accepts the cigarette. “I feed you and you fuel my addiction?”
“Vaping is lame,” you say, watching her take a long, deep drag. Her eyelids flutter shut and you wish there was more sunlight so you could see the blue spiderwebs of capillaries burrowed beneath her thin skin. “If you really wanted to quit, you’d be chewing gum and using patches.”
Ms. Wright always claims she’s quitting. Vapes are apparently part of the process, but you suspect she just wants to keep what she has confiscated.
Ms. Wright sighs at your words but doesn’t reply. That’s fine with you because you like a quiet Ms. Wright as much as you like a talkative Ms. Wright. A talkative Ms. Wright is rare, but she’ll come out once you manage to convince her to drink the booze stored in your ragged backpack.
A drunk Ms. Wright would be nice, you think to yourself. Flushed cheeks, hazy eyes, and a lopsided smile curving her glossy lips. Maybe she’ll sob all over your t-shirt and leave a trail of snot. Or maybe she’ll rage and claw at your face, leaving red scratches for you to prod and examine in the mirror. Or maybe —
Or maybe she’ll tuck a cigarette between your lips, just like she did right now.
“I can’t finish it,” Ms. Wright explains, staring up at you with those dark eyes of hers. Her bun is disheveled, the stick holding it up askew, so you raise your hand to tuck a strand of black hair before the elegant curve of her ear.
But at the last minute, you redirect your hand to the cigarette between your lips. You hold it between your index and middle finger and take a long, deep drag. Sucking and sucking until your lungs are about to burst like a balloon. Then you exhale, sending a giant plume of smoke into Ms. Wright’s face.
She lurches back as if struck. She breaks into a series of rancorous coughs before glaring at you with watery eyes.
“Detention!” she barks.
You nod since you deserve it, but you don’t apologize. Ms. Wright, judging by her grimace, is likely to give you another detention if you speak.
She storms to her car and zips away, becoming a dot on the yawning horizon.
Despite being alone, you don’t feel the bitter tang of abandonment. Ms. Wright will return. She works here, after all, in a shitty school in shitty Wisconsin with pizza-faced teenagers whose bodies are out of sync with their brains.
You don’t feel abandoned because where your lips rest is the sticky imprint of Ms. Wright’s strawberry lip gloss. Despite your aching lungs, you finish what Ms. Wright didn’t and tuck the nub into the carton for safekeeping.
It’s one trinket of many.