On my 18th birthday, I blew out the candles and immediately left the house to go to the convenience store right across the street. It was 12 am and I had just freshly entered adulthood quite literally.
A pocket of change on my left pant and a lighter in my right— the same lighter I used for my candles —I walked into the store and stood in front of the register. My eyes set on the shelf behind the cashier.
The clerk looked up and with her gentle eyes, she asked me what I wanted, and I pointed at the pack of cigarettes set behind her.
Her gentle expression was met with my fragile eyes, and I watched it falter as she handed me the pack and took my change.
I didn’t look back and left as quickly as I came, not even thanking the cashier as I did.
The wind blew past me softly as I sat on the edge of the concrete railing by the staircase, my view overlooking the rest of the city, and my legs dangling haphazardly below me.
You do this often?’ I hear myself saying. The lighter that was once on my hand had suddenly vanished, and I heard it flick repeatedly beside me.
The flicking stopped, and a puff of smoke blew past me, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ A girlish voice beside me said, ‘you want one?’
A box of cigarettes poked the side of my arm, ‘um…’ I pushed it away, ‘no, thank you. I don’t smoke.’
There was a beat, then a puff of smoke blew past me, and then a loud barking laugh, ‘I know that! I’m not asking if you do,’ the voice pulls out a cigarette from the pack and offers it to me, as if the tiny, singled out cigarette made it any less intimidating to me, ‘I’m asking if you want to try.’
I stare at the cigarette between her fingers, my index lightly picking on the corner of my thumb, trembling ever so slightly as I hesitate to reach for it.
From the corner of my vision, I can almost see the girl beside me tilt her head slightly, her expression pulling into something unreadable– or maybe something I completely forgot.
Then, I feel her hand almost interlock into mine, prying my fingers from picking itself wounded, a cigarette now in between the place where my thumb would be feeling at, ‘Here,’ she says softly, as if I’d break if she didn’t, ‘If you don’t like it, then you don’t need to try it again, okay?’
There was a beat.
‘okay.’
