Page 3 of Secondhand Smoke
There was nothing there.
She took a deep breath.
She needed those cigarettes. Desperately.
The driver stayed long enough to make sure she could get off the ground before they, too, left her.
Nell couldn’t get back on the bike, so instead, she picked it up and walked—with some difficulty because of her raw knees—the rest of the way on the sidewalk to the convenience store.
Nell’s eyes remained on the ground right in front of her feet as she willed herself to take each wobbling step forward.
Everything else came in bits and pieces.
There was the store. There was the machine where she vended three packs of cigarettes. There was the cashier, raising a brow at her bloodied knees.
There was her bike, on the ground outside of the store.
There she was, slumping on the curb next to her bike and tearing open the cigarette pack.
There was the cigarette, glowing to life at the lighter’s flame.
The bits and pieces started to strand together as she inhaled the thin smoke into her lungs. Her chest expanded, taking it in like oxygen.
Daytime. Road. Trees. Store. Cars. Bike. Park.
She listed them off in her head and took several long drags as she did.
Somehow, this smoke felt easier to breathe than the mid-summer air. She closed her eyes and inhaled, then exhaled a stream through her nose.
Wind. Grass. Gasoline. Dirt. Alcohol. Sweat. Rain.
Her eyes shot open.
Rain.
The musty scent had snuck up on her before she felt the first drop hit her forehead, then another her arm. She hadn’t heard of any chance of rain.
Somewhere in the minutes she’d stopped to collect her wits, clouds had gathered right above her and brought with them a downpour.
A wall of rain approached from across Main.
Nell jumped to her feet and dropped the cigarette to the ground. The water would take care of it. She grabbed her bike and pulled it with her as she sprinted to the next-door strip mall’s canopied sidewalk before the water dropped on the ground around her.
Great. Just the thing she needed.
Nell sighed and looked at the sky. It’d become dark, giving her the feeling it would be longer than a momentary downpour.
She might have to break her promise to her mother about being home in time for dinner.
She would never ride in this.
Ready to give up and settle onto the sidewalk for as long as it took, Nell paused when she heard music. Faint and minglingwith the shrill of raindrops, but certainly music. A soft, acoustic song being plucked from a guitar.
She tilted her head to the side and listened for its source. The sound got louder when a shop’s door opened just down the street.
It’d been a while since Nell had heard a guitar played like that. It ignited a nostalgia so strong that her feet moved toward the store without a second thought.
Using the canopies as cover, she stopped to peer into the window.
