Daddy's Little Girl

I am smoking only because I am upset and no other reason.

At least that is what I tell myself, how true it really is I am still unsure. I would like to think if it were any other day and I had just gotten any other news I wouldn’t have run back to my worst habit. And I would really like to believe that after everything I am okay, that I am not a cliché. And I would like to think, really like to think, that after all this time I do not care.

But I do, I care so fucking much it hurts, physically hurts and that is terrifying because I have been living my life as if I am okay, as if he can no longer hurt me but god was I wrong. So wrong it is almost laughable, I don’t laugh though, I just choke on the strong toxins running in and out of my lungs from this wonderful cigarette.

I know with each breath it brings death but I don’t care, at least not right now. I know tonight in bed I will make myself feel terrible for falling back into such a toxic habit but right now it is the only thing that can calm me, reassure me that despite everything it will all be okay. It is like a father’s hug, something I have sorely missed, something I haven’t experienced in such a long time.

And I miss the comfort it brought, and I am craving a fathers hug like I was craving this cigarette not five minutes ago. So I will puff away on this cancer stick until I feel calm enough to face the world. And like a hundred times before I will put on my bravest face and pretend like the news I just received isn’t slowly killing me, that the news I received via text message from my aunt is not killing me slowly. But it is and I hate that, hate that after all this time he still has this effect on me, like rendering me speechless, I just want to be over it.

I groan and frown down at the ground, I slip off my ballet flat and dig my bare foot into the grass beneath me, staring at the tendrils that brush against my ticklish feet, scratching at them. I dig my toes into the ground, into the dirt and for a single moment I feel grounded, it is for that one moment I feel wonderful.

I blow out a steady stream of cigarette smoke, clutching the cigarette between my fingers. I tap the ash from my cigarette and it lands amongst the grass tickling my feet. I am reminded of science class yesterday when the teacher taught us that mass cannot never really be destroyed and I wonder about the cigarette ash I leave behind. I don’t think it is really the same thing but it makes me feel better to know a small part of me, the ash from my cigarette, will be forever.

“You know those will kill you,” A voice tells me, I look up startled I had thought for sure I was alone, just me and the grass but I had thought wrong. I stare into the eyes of a tall boy who stares at me from behind his brown eyes. I want to say something but he has scared me and all I can manage is a little ‘eep’ in terror.

I had thought for sure I was safe to smoke here, on the other side of the school building facing the fencing and the dense tress that separate into someone’s privately owned paddock. My school is thinking of buying the land and adding to the school, but I hope they won’t because then my secret space will forever be theirs, and I won’t have anything good left at this ramshackle school.

“What?” I ask even though I have heard him perfectly clearly,

“Those things, cigarettes, they will kill you,” He tells me with a shrug, I stare at him, really stare at him. I don’t recognise him from around and deduce he must be a new student. He is a little bit taller than my five foot eight, and a little bit thinner than I am. He is almost too good locking with chiselled features and I know he knows this about himself. It is obvious from the way he walks and talks, carrying himself with an air of confidence I could never pull off.

“Right,” I tell him slowly because of course I know this, it is common knowledge these days that cigarettes are dangerous, but I don’t care.

He stares at me for a moment too long and I lower my eyes to staring back at the grass, feeling…odd and out of place, even though this is my sanctuary where I come to smoke and feel connected to something finally. I hate him on impact for making me feel so awkward in the one place I finally feel free.

He says nothing more just nods his head in my direction and keeps walking as if nothing had transpired between us, as if he didn’t just make me feel so weird. Maybe he just didn’t realise, but from the way he smiles at me I know he did, and I know he enjoyed it. It annoys me feverishly.

I want to go back to my place of calm and happiness but the spell is broken. I slip on my discarded shoe and drop my cigarette on the grass stubbing it out with the tip of my shoe clad foot. I pick it up and walk around the school building, covering the cigarette in my palm, to the school entryway and drop it in the bin as I head inside. I shake off the awkwardness that clings to my body and soul and hunch my backpack higher up on my shoulder as I make my way into school.

I pretend that I am okay, better than okay that I am happy, that I hadn’t just found out that my father, the man I loved more than anything on earth, is having a baby to a woman other than my mother. That he hadn’t broken my heart by deserting me only to turn around and have another child, when he didn’t even want the first one. It breaks my heart but I pretend for now that I do not care.

I will save the tears for later because I don’t like being vulnerable unless I am alone, one thing my father stuck around long enough to teach me was never let them see you cry. And I have lived that advice to this day. I will never let anyone see me cry or be vulnerable because that is when you get hurt, when I get hurt and I am so sick of getting hurt.

I make my way to my first class not bothering to stop at my locker, I know I will get a warning for bringing my bag to class but I cannot be bothered stopping at my locker and pretending for a minute longer than I have to that I am okay, because I am not I am so not okay.

I take a seat in the empty back row of the classroom by myself and being pulling out of my bag my utensils for the class, my A4 book and a pen to take notes. I plan on making a name for myself out of my small town, in the city where nobody knows me and I can be anyone I want to be. Someone other than myself, the girl whose dad broke her fragile heart and left her to clean up the mess by herself.

No one bother to talk to me as they join me in the classroom and I prefer it that way. I am kind of a lone wold, I don’t really do friendships or relationships because I was taught from a really young age that people leave and watching them go hurts more than anything else in the entire world. I may be lonely but as least my heart isn’t breaking with each person who walks out on me.

The teacher walks into the room but I don’t look up. I am too intently staring out the window at the grass wishing I were back five minutes earlier and my heart isn’t hurting to badly. But it is, and I can’t go back no matter how much I wish I could. I feel lonely and tired all at once, and nothing short of my father will ever cure this loneliness and that irks me to my very core. I wish I were stronger, a better bigger person but I am not. So I will sit here and feel everything at once because I am heartbroken once more.

“Morning class,” A familiar voice booms greeting the classroom full of students. I cannot place the voice, cannot remember where I have heard it before. It is decidedly not Mrs Floresca, my normal English teacher, it is a male’s voice. I look up and into the familiar brown eyes of the boy from outside, man I guess I should say.

The one who told me my only piece of sanity will surely kill me, he didn’t seem like a teacher in that moment, not busting me for smoking, a new student desperate for some sort of attention yes, but an authority figure, hell no.

He smiles directly at me and it shakes me to my very core, like he knows what I am thinking, how confused and uncertain I really am. “I am Mr Morales, and I will be your new English teacher. Mrs Floresca broke her hip last night and will be out for the unforeseeable future,” I sigh looking back out the window again. I had liked Mrs Flroesca, she was not a bull shitter, she was a straight shooter and I admired that about the seemingly one-hundred-year old woman.

I know instant that I do not like Mr Morales, mostly, well mostly because he reminds me of someone I lost a long time ago, my father and terrifies and thrills me all at the same time. I want to desperately for my father to come back into my life that I almost consider making friends with my new teacher, just to have a male influence back in my life but I know that is desperate and needy and I would like to think I am neither of those things.

I look up and at Mr Morales once more, he is distracted telling the class all about the new syllabus he spent all night and morning working on. I barely listen because my heart hurts and I miss my dad. I miss the life we could have shared and I miss being his only baby, his favourite, the twinkle in his eyes.

I need a cigarette.