Page 78 of Secondhand Smoke
“Why don’t you try now?”
“What?” He winced. “Now?”
“I want to be the first to hear it.”
She grinned, and his fingers slipped slightly on his strings, making them sing.
He knew she was sweet because he saw her. He’d watched her for years.
He watched her now.
Butshethoughthewas incredible. Shewatchedhim. She wanted to keep watching him.
She encouraged him with a nod.
He fell.
No fighting it, no lying anymore.
He couldn’t explain it.
He considered himself a musician first, human second, and artist never.
But something about her made him want to pick up a paintbrush for the first time in his life and create a watercolorof the way the world around her felt: a rush of blue air stringing together every color of a sunset.
Falling felt like flying.
At the center of this masterpiece was her.
The urge pulsed in his fingers, and since he knew nothing about painting, he turned the image into notes on his guitar strings, and music that hadn’t existed in the world before came alive.
31 - Nell
Every now and again, for the next month, she caught glimpses of herself.
Sometimes, they were in the reflection of Barrett’s television screen in his living room as he positioned her fingers over the guitar strings. Or even in the slowed spots of time when their eyes met and she could make out her silhouette in his dark irises.
Occasionally, it was in the mirror in Toni’s garage as the band practiced song after song and she curled up on a beanbag they’d brought over for her to sit on.
And every so often, it was through the hazy smoke coming from her mouth, whether it was by the quarry, outside her house, or anywhere else she could find.
She could feel the blood rushing through her again, could smile without it hurting.
Paulie once said she looked like she’d gotten tanner. Barrett would smile, and her heart would pound through her whole body—evidence that she was alive.
Most of the time.
The rest of the time, on those dark weekends when she was sitting in her room alone, she was back to that shell. No better than a corpse.
She wanted to scratch it off of her. Find something beneath it. Something that wasn’t so hollow.
The only thing that filled that shell when there was no one else was that smoke and that booze.
The weekends were deafening. She wanted banging drums and strumming guitars, and Barrett’s jokes and laugh. But it was silent.
It wasmaddening.
And each time hurt worse than the last, taking her higher and higher and dropping her back to earth harder and harder.
