Marlboro Reds & Duck Shit

So this is a story I wrote for Dr. Hess's class. I really like it but I want to know what other's think about it. *sorry I haven't posted anything new. I'm trying to make time to write*

As usual Adam was smoking a cigarette – a Marlboro Red – and silently blowing the smoke out in tiny circles that reminded me of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. We weren’t old enough yet to buy cigarettes so he would ask the Mexicans that would sit in front of 7-11 to go in and buy them for him. I was always embarrassed while we stood behind the convenient store, near the dumpsters, waiting for whoever was getting them. It would make me feel homeless and dirty. I never got used to that feeling. Adam never cared. He thought it was all anarchy-esque, like he was beating the system by having some unsuspecting Mexican buy him smokes for six dollars a pack. I went along with it though because this was the boy had I lost my virginity to and was certain I loved. It’s funny what you think love is at fourteen years old.

We were bored teenagers looking for something, anything to do. It was too hot for the beach but too nice to be inside. I called it an In Between Day because there’s nowhere you can be that’s comfortable. We had been walking around for almost an hour when Adam and I decided to stop at the park so we could cool off. We spotted a willow tree, the kind with those long, flowing branches that look like tired fingers, and sat underneath it. The shade was a welcomed transition from the scorching heat. When the wind blew it felt more like an April morning rather than an August afternoon.

            “You know what we should do?” Adam exhaled a steady stream of smoke and turned to look at me.

“What?” I looked back at him. We were sitting on the ground trying not to move around too much because landmines of duck shit were scattered recklessly around us. We had some how found unmarked territory.

            “Burn ourselves with this cigarette to have matching scars. Right on our wrists or something,” he looked at me intently and I could tell by the way his eyes were focusing on me that he had been thinking about this.

            I hesitated, but only slightly,

            “Yeah, it’d be like ‘our thing’,” I replied and immediately wondered why I was agreeing to this. I didn’t want to tell him that it was a dumb idea; I wanted to impress him with my ability to go along with anything. Like the burning hot tip of a cigarette was no match for my coolness.

            He took two more drags and then held it out to me.

            “You wanna go first?” Same intense look that made his eyes squint together. Like he was concocting some kind of master plan or maybe it was the sun that was now streaking through the branches.

            “Sure,” I gently took the cig that he had almost completely smoked down to the filter. I switched it over to my right hand and turn my left wrist up towards me. Adam could tell I was nervous. He leaned in closer to me and whispered,

            “I love you. This is just one more thing that will keep us together. These matching scars. We’ll always have them.”

He always had these one-liners that seemed out-of-place coming from a fourteen year old. It’s not that I didn’t like them but I felt like I wasn’t quite ready to understand what he really meant. Now, they make me think of cheesy romance novels; the kind that are on display at the counter of a Shop-Rite or something.

            I looked back at him but didn’t say anything. For a second I actually thought about chickening out and not doing it. But the next second I was pushing the burning tip of the last Marlboro Red in his pack against the desolate white skin of my teenage wrist. It instantly burned me and I wasn’t ready for that. I thought, on some level, that it would take a minute for me to actually feel it. Instinctively, I pulled my hand away. In my head I was hoping that I hadn’t held it down long enough for a scar to actually form, maybe just a tiny red mark that would go away before the summer ended.

            Adam grabbed the cigarette out of my hand and held it to his right wrist for a solid minute. I stared at him in complete shock. I couldn’t understand how he could hold it against his skin for so long and not be crying. With the cigarette still pushed against his wrist he turned to me,

            “See, this is how much I love you.”