Page 348 of As the Rain Falls
“Do you know how to smoke, Cassie-girl?”
“I don’t think so!” I yell loudly, trying to speak over the music. “Do you?”
“Of course! Let me teach you!”
We spend the next ten minutes wiggling our way through the crowd. Our hands are tied together, and it feels really good to have her by my side. A couple of months ago, my thoughts would’ve been very different than they are now.
Angelina Cardoso is my friend. I think she evenlikesme.
“No spit at the tip. This isn’t a dick,” she warns me, pressing the cigarettes against my lip. “So it’s not the kind of thing you need spit for!”
“You’re so gross!” I roll my eyes at the blow job joke.
I try to inhale the right way, but it’s harder than it looks. She laughs loudly, sounding almost a little manic, and I chuckle a few times too. I feel so awkward wearing this dress that makes me look twenty and not seventeen and smoking a cigarette that I am not allowed to buy unless I’m older.
“Try again! Try again!”
The bathroom door gets unlocked, and Angelina and I turn to find Mateo standing there, holding a massive bag of chips in one hand and a Nerf gun in the other.
He takes one hard look at the both of us and sighs.
“You don’t look too good, Rivera.”
“I’m—” I wheeze, coughing up smoke. “Fine!”
Angelina laughs. “Girl, you can’t hold it in for that long!”
“Let me try again.” I ask, unwilling to accept defeat. “I know I can do this.”
I’ve really never smoked before. It’s always been more of my father’s thing or Nathaniel’s.
The smell of cigarettes is a scent that vaguely reminds me of long drives through the city in my father’s car when I was a little girl. We used to be closer than we are now; I was his favorite and only daughter. If I close my eyes shut, I can picture him pointing at the shops that hadn’t been there before I was born.
It’s a memory of a life that already happened.
Traces of a reality that can never be mine again.
I think it hurts me more when he doesn’t defend me. He seemed so angry that night when I walked into the kitchen—
“Here we go.” Angelina helps me up, placing the cigarette back between my lips. “Just don’t hold it in again, or you’re going to choke.”
For a girl who looks so intimidating, Angelina can be surprisingly gentle with me. It’s contradictory, but I like that about her. I like how she can be both gentle and harsh, strong and vulnerable, whereas I’m more of a flat note. Together, we become two sides of the same coin.
“Are you teaching her your bad ways, Cardoso?”
Mateo lets the Nerf gun fall to the floor and slips into the tub, resting his head against my thighs. This time, I exhale correctly, and Angelina does a happy dance.
“Yes!” The brunette grins, clasping her hands together. Her long dark hair frames the sides of her face, layers poking each way. I think she might’ve gotten a haircut before we came here. Her strands look more rebellious now. “Cassandra Rivera, you’ve been officially, properly, badly influenced!”
“I have!” I grin too, feeling my cheeks aching.
My rosacea has been flaring up like crazy these days. It’s probably stress. Nathaniel is coming home soon, something I don’t like to think about. Beckett keeps trying to talk about it, but I’m not into doing that—
Mateo rolls his eyes at me.
“What’s up, pretty boy?” I ask curiously.
His eyes are bruised from a fight at school. The look somehow suits him. He rolls them at me, which I find half-condescending and half-amusing.
