And This Is How It Starts

She smoked a lot.

I think it was around freshmen year when she took a drag of it for the first time but I can’t be sure ‘cause it’s just a rumor. I didn’t know her back then. Not like I do now. She used to have choppy hair, uneven, with black lipstick and heavy eyeliner that boys made fun of. Her body was framed by too big band tees, always black, and jeans and converse that seemed about to fall apart. When winter came, she never had a jacket.

She sat beside me in US History, looking outside the window with this far-away look in her eyes. I knew it was longing and I wondered what it was that she wanted. I wished to know if there was someone she desired or something she was working hard for. But she only looked outside, to the sky, where there were only clouds and nothing else. And when it was summer the breeze would let me get a whiff of her—smoke, sweat and her. Herself. And she made it work.

Despite looking outside a window she was good in History. She got the highest grades and never made a comment on anything, or asked a question in class. I never understood how that could be since I was pretty horrid myself in the subject. People said she always studied the night before. Others said she was a genius. Most merely sneered at her.

When Sophomore year began, I knew something had changed. We had most classes together and the faint smell of cigarettes followed her, like always. But her hair was lighter, clearer, with a better haircut than the last one. She didn’t wear black lipstick but red lipstick, and her eyeliner wasn’t as pronounced. Her band tees were now tanks with scribbled names on it. I searched for one of them, and it was a band. Go figures.

She was still the best at History. She wasn’t very good at Math or Science or Spanish. As always, she sat alone, by the window, eyes on the sky. Her nails were green, dark, tapping on her chin or neck. I sat on the back and willed my heart to go slower when summer came and she brought a book to recess and exposed the long line of her neck. People began to talk again. Turns out she had all her friends in the city. Turns out she’s in a band. Turns out she’s got a boyfriend. Turns out she actually talks.

On a Friday I’m handed a History exam and I’m crying because mom will be sad about it. I cry alone in the bathroom and come out only to find her smoking by the entrance on the building, flat of her shoe against the bricked wall and eyes on me. I swallow and she tosses the cigarette to the floor, stepping on it.

“Let me help you,” she said.

And she did.

I stuttered, tripped and was clumsy overall as she was calm, cool and stoic. She didn’t look at the window when she sat on the table at my house but she spoke. She talked and talked and her voice was velvet to my ears and on the next exam I got the highest grade I had ever gotten in History. She still helped me, though, on Thursdays. At school I’d sit beside her on lunch, recess and pretty much every other class. She never said anything, but it was okay because I knew she’d speak to me come next week.

She never talked about herself, but she liked to ask me questions about me. She got along with my chinchilla, the furry animal who growled at everyone but my dad and her. Always her. When she smiled there was a gap between her lower front teeth and I remember thinking how it would feel against my tongue.

I didn’t get her number until Junior year, when we only had Literature together and Thursdays became Wednesdays and Tuesdays too. She just turned to me one day and leaned down to my ear. I remember shivering and gripping the table so hard that my knuckles went white and I feared I would break my hand.

“Gimme your number,” she whispered, and I passed her a piece of paper with shaky handwriting.

After Christmas vacation she cut her hair over the shoulders again and dyed it black. Around that time there was also the rumor that she had a girlfriend. For a moment, I was afraid they thought it was me but this girl came to pick her up one day and she had thick black boots and a black band t-shirt and when they kissed I almost cried.

I did cry after summer, when it went back to Thursdays and she began to frown when she looked at the sky in Literature class.

“I like the rain,” she told me a Saturday night when I opened my front door and she’s there, soaking with red rimmed eyes and makeup everywhere and bleeding wrists.

There are more. God, so many more. On her thighs and hips and even collarbones. I shake when I clean them and she tells me she’s alone. She wasn’t crying anymore but she’s got this empty look in her eyes and again she’s staring at the window, far-away look now in her soft blues. I want to kiss her, to kiss her bloody gashes all over her body and tell her she’s got me. But then I remembered I’m me so I just bandaged her up and asked her what happened.

She repeated that she’s alone. And I asked her about her family, her friends in the city, and that girl who kisses her goodbye and hello every time she comes. She just shakes her head and her eyelids droop slightly, to half mast, and I realize she’s exhausted. She was sixteen and she had the whole world dropped on her shoulders.

“Pink would suit you,” I softly say when she pulls again absently on a black strand of her hair.

“Yeah, sure,” she says and I drop the subject.

The next morning I awoke with her soft, sleeping face next to mine and I have the urge to cry because I know I can never fully understand her so she’ll never belong to me and vice versa. I tuck a strand of dyed hair behind her ear, though, and she wakes with a little tired smile. Her phone blasts a song I heard once last year and she answers until she’s crying and saying ‘Jan’ over and over again. Jan must be the girl boots girl with black band tees and too-long kisses.

She hung up and looked at me and smiled and for once it was okay, because the next thing that comes out of her mouth has my heart racing.

“Do you wanna go to the city with me?”

Turns out she wants me to see her band. Turns out she’s the only girl in her band and she plays base and sings and it’s kind of beautiful in the way she screams words that would otherwise be offensive. People are wild and I don’t belong but it’s okay because at the end of one of their songs her eyes meet mine and she smiles. The music is fast, loud and angry and I guess I understand why she likes it. When she’s away from the stage she’s sweaty and she has a cigarette on her fingers already and her hand is on mine, pulling me away and out of the joint. Some people stop her to either compliment her or small talk but she blows them all off and step outside to light her cigarette and turn to me with her pretty red lips.

I wanted to kiss her and god, I almost did but I’m reminded of my place so I let my knees touch and nodded when she asked me something or told me a story. She uses her hands a lot.

On Saturdays, from then on, we went to little gigs she did with her band. They were boys with maturity and drinking problems but she always grinned when they were around so it was enough for me.

She flunks History before Christmas break that year and I don’t hear from her in all vacation. When school comes back so does she and her hair is blue and she sits so close to the window I feared she would jump. We still went on Saturdays to her gigs and although it could have been me, these shows get darker and her screams louder and there’s a point where she’s vomiting blood all over the pavement outside. I rubbed her back and laughs with blood all over her teeth.

“Look at me, baby girl, ain’t I a beautiful disaster like nobody’s seen?”

And I have to agree with her because it’s the truth and I never lie.

She got the highest grades but she’s also frequently absent. My mom and dad are worried about me when they ask me what I want to study, since I have no idea. She scoffs, smoke swirling out of her nostrils and fading in the sky when I tell her about it. I asked her what she wanted to do and she gives me this affectionate smirk that shakes me all over.

“Don’t you know, dollface?” she chuckles and inhales again. “I wanna be immortal.”

That year her favourite band releases a song named ‘Centuries’ and she sings it all the time. She’s not the best singer but I love her voice as much as I love her so I listen to the lyrics and think it’s too fitting to be done without any care.

Suddenly she’s listening at school and she’s talking. People are surprised, especially me, but most of what she says drowns in sarcasm and the teachers barely stand her. Only the Literature teacher does and she likes her even though she’s bad at Literature this year. Her shows stop being dark and instead she dyes her hair a lighter blue, even brighter, the color of her eyes, and she wears leather jackets and big black boots and most of her shirts are ripped to show pale skin when she thrashes on the stage.

She used to smoke Marlboro and now she uses Camel. She’s saving up, she tells me with this grin. Senior year is confusing because everyone is talking about graduation and I still didn’t know what I wanted to do so she took me in her car to her house for the first time and I’m very surprised to discover that her family is… is pretty nice.

Her two brothers greet her nicely, with a grin, and so does her mother. We’re on the living room playing video games with her siblings when her dad comes and he’s got a uniform on and I realize he’s a police man. She kisses his cheek and introductions are done and her family is so nice that by the end of the day I’m blushing and I really do like her dad because her humor was inherited from him, obviously.

It’s around December when we’re outside one of the joints where she plays with her band, and it’s cold and I’m rubbing my nose and shivering when she stops telling her story and turns to me with the look and she’s suddenly kissing me.

She stops, steps away, I whine and a rich laugh bursts from her throat. Then she was in front of me again and I grasp the flaps of her coat with my small hands to bury my nose in her neck, seeking warmth and approval.

“Baby girl, you’re shakin’,” she chuckles and I whine again. “Wanna go home?”

“But the party—” she cuts me off with another ruby red touch of her mouth against mine, my stomach jumping at the sound that leaves her lips when we separate. It’s the sound of a kiss and I want more, more, more, more.

“You want to go, so we’ll go,” she told me then, hand on my chin, lifting my face so our eyes could connect.

In my house there’s only silence, mom waving at us from the kitchen as she cleans the rest of the dishes and when her and I shut the door of my bedroom her hands are on me and I almost faint.

Her tongue is on the roof of my mouth, softly caressing it. Her teeth scrape against mine and the gap between her bottom front teeth feels amazing against my tongue. I pull her closer to me and she laughs again. I swallow every sound, every whisper, everything because by now I have figured it all out front her and I want her before it all fades.

So that night is engraved in my mind. Everything about it still leaves me sad but happy. Watering smiles, my mom calls them. She took my body in hers and lifted everything in me, gave me everything, took everything, discovered everything, found everything.

Then she sighs and turns to me but I already know.

I already know.

“You’re leaving,” I say, and she nods wordlessly. I sigh.

“I’m sorry,” she says but she doesn’t mean it because there’s nothing to be sorry about, it’s her life and she shouldn’t be tied to me when she’s been watching airplanes half her life through jail windows.

“I know,” I tell her, instead. And we make love again.

The funny thing is that I’ve never forgotten her. Even now, waiting for my roommate to pick me up with her rotten Honda, I remember the smell of smoke that invades my nose, along with sweat and leather and red ruby lipstick and cheap hair dye.

“It’s pink,” I grin, and she grins back, throwing an arm around me.

“Yeah, baby girl,” she throws me a wink—twenties suit her. “It’s pink.”