Model Bones.

The first time I met her, she was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk by our school, the one to the far left, where only people who really didn't want to be where they were in that moment went. I told her cigarettes give you cancer. She told me she didn't care. She offered me one and I shook my head back and forth, as if to say, no. She smirked and shrugged. Figures, she said, and ashed it. I had no idea what that meant until she told me. She didn't tell me until a long time after this, though.

She taught me everything I know, but that's another story. For another time.

She smoked and ashed and smoked and ashed, waves of smoke surrounding her like a dragon's breath. She had this pensive look on her face, like she was thinking, really thinking. Thinking hard, possibly even contemplating. But her eyes, her eyes were cloudy. Cloudy, meaning I couldn't read them. I couldn't. Her thoughts were like a different language. That's just how she was, and although it would bother me so badly, I learned to appreciate it.

There's arsenic in apple seeds too, she said, after a long pause. She continued, I'm sure you swallowed lots of those as a little kid, as a mistake, or maybe as a little experiment. Possibly an act of childish defiance, because Mommy said not to. Afraid they'd grow in your stomach, maybe, to become a tree. But really, you were swallowing tiny little bits of poison.

My eyes grew wide and I thought about all the apple seeds I swallowed as a kid. I was a clumsy, forgetful little kid. My mom would always warn me not to swallow apple seeds, and try not to eat down to the core... I always did it anyway. But not because of defiance, because I was hungry and liked apples and forgot a lot of things. I'm pretty sure most little kids wouldn't purposely consume appleseeds as an act of defiance. Maybe she would, though, so I kept my mouth shut.

She chuckled slightly when she saw my expression and said, relax, you've probably just developed a poison immunity. Which is pretty useful if someone one day tries to kill you by inserting some form of arsenic into your food, she continued. She said, You'll be immune to whatever assassin is trained to kill you!

I chuckled and she smirked at her joke, dropping the cigarette butt on the ground, crushing it between her shoe's sole and the pavement. And I said, half-jokingly, but half matter-of-factly, hey, you're littering, and that's bad for the environment and a crime. She gave me a look that said, really? Are you serious? And I must have turned really red and chuckled nervously like I do because she took another cigarette out of her pack and stuck it between her lips.

Silence filled the air again. Awkward, ominous silence. The kind of silence that fills the room when your hardcore Christian aunt and your Atheist brother are at the same table for Thanksgiving. Your aunt forces the entire family, all "practicing" Catholic-Christians to say grace or whatever that prayer is, and your brother starts eating anyway. Everyone kind of gives him that dirty look, and your mom stares him down with the "fires of hell in her eyes" (an expression your dad uses to describe her angry stares). And you kind of chuckle to yourself at how ironic that expression is considering the circumstances, and then your mother looks at you, thinking you're laughing at your brother to seem "cooler" to him. And even though this is sort of funny, you're not, but you look down at your plate, feeling guilty, anyway. The family finishes their prayer and your brother is halfway done with his turkey, and no one says anything until your great uncle Fred mentions the Oakland Raiders and how they lost, and your dad and grandpa and uncles and cousins all join into that tension breaking discussion.

You know, that kind of silence.

She lit up the smoke and she ashed it, looking off into the distance like there's some sort of answer to every question she's ever had about life far yonder. I wished that I could see what she saw, whatever it was. I'll wish that a lot throughout the time that we spend together.

What brought you out here anyway?, she asked. She continued, I mean, this isn't exactly a place where people like you go to hang out, really. She stopped, and looked at my puzzled expression, which really wasn't that puzzled. It was just hurt, but I didn't really want her to know that.

Sorry, she said. I guess she already knew.

I kept quiet, wracking my brain for an answer to a question I couldn't answer incredibly articulately, like the way she did about the poison in my favorite fruit. And as I wracked my brain, her impatient voice broke my concentration with a, well? It sounded like the vocal equivalent to her tapping her foot at me, like an annoyed teacher would.

Oh, sorry, I said, still thinking, biding for time. You sound spaced, she asked, are you high? And I told her I didn't do that. She chuckled and said figures, sounding sort of condescending but in a way that almost didn't bother me. And it usually really bothered me when people acted like that, like they were better than another person for the number of life experiences they had over someone else. I usually hated people like that. And if she were anybody else, I would have stopped talking to her. But I didn't.

I sighed and then I spoke, shaking off the tone in her voice. I guess I'm just out here because I don't want to be here.

And I guess she was satisfied with that answer because she said, me fuckin' either.