Selene/Diane

My new friend Selene smokes. She doesn’t offer me a cigarette, but how can I blame her when I nearly threw up last time? She doesn’t care about the smell, she reeks all the time, and I can see that the slit of her curtains is yellowing, the thin, see-through lace tinged and even burned as she puffs her smoke out of her window.

Not that anyone in her entire family cares. Her brother greeted us on the porch, ashing into an ash tray full of the cremated remains of at least twenty cigarettes, scattered like stubborn molars that wouldn’t pop in the heat. Her mother was on the couch, itching herself.

“Your brother’s smoking?” she asked, and Selene just nodded. Her mother patted me on the shoulder, then left out the front, and I watched her join him. Her father was in the backyard, mowing the lawn with his shirt off, the blades of grass flying about sticking to his sweaty shoulders. The long cigarette rested in his mouth, and he waved to us through the window.

Selene smokes.

~

My new friend Diane doesn’t smoke. She watches me instead, stays quiet ‘cause I’m quiet, and she keeps her coat on while she stares at the smoke.

Diane is cold. She gets cold easy, always wearing sweaters and having a scarf wrapped around her even in lectures. She’s from California, and she tells me this fall is as foreign as curry or Russian to her.

She’s got nowhere to stay. We became friends a month ago, and I offered to let her stay at my place instead of the empty university for Thanksgiving break. She agreed.

She doesn’t talk much with me, though I’ve seen her chattering with other girls at the cafe or the library. All of them went home for the break. Shifting in the beanbag set in the corner of my room, she brings her thick calves up, curling them into her long, squeaky coat.

I don’t offer her a hit, because she almost threw up behind the library the last time I gave her one. Her eyes teared up, and she watched me out of the corner of her eye with a sad tilt to her mouth, all nervous or something. I didn’t laugh or nothing, so we stayed friends.

“Need a blanket?” I ask, and she nods quickly. Slipping off the bed, cigarette stuck to my lips, I open up a trunk at the foot of my bed, tossing her a quilt my grandma made. She hides under it for a second, and when she emerges, her hood slips off to show her flattened hair.

Diane doesn’t smoke.