Elizabeth was never supposed to be born. Like all babies, she learned to cry first. Everything else came so quickly. She learned to smoke cigarettes when she was twelve. She stood outside against the brick wall of a church, tapping the toes of her white patent leather mary janes. Ricky was sitting on the swing opposite her and watching her pray. Elizabeth called God “the sweetness” and that made Ricky laugh inside. He had stolen the pack of cigarettes from a gas station along with two rolls of bubble tape. He handed her one.
“I’m thinking the sweetness will put more freckles on me for this,” she said, folding a piece of gum into her mouth. “And I’ll be so spotted you won’t be able to see my cheeks anymore.”
Ricky examined the dimples on her knees. “It’s cool,” he said. Ricky’s first cigarette had been two years earlier, in a basement with his father who was fighting dogs. The crowd was sweaty and shrieking like a collapsing balloon. His father saw him smoking and laughed. “The lord knows you deserve it just like the rest of us,” he said. Then he turned his son around and grabbed the cigarette from his hand, pressing it firmly into his left shoulder blade.
They smoked four cigarettes in a row and it made Elizabeth have to run behind the perpendicular wall and vomit. “I’m fine!” she yelled to him, but he came anyway. When she picked her head up, he ran his thumb across her lips. “Sweet,” he said. She quickly walked past him and grabbed the matchbox from the woodchips, lighting another one.
“I’m not sweet,” she said.
“Fine,” he said, grabbing the pack out of her hand. He walked away like a dog pulling hard on a leash.
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