1Again || Noah Cyrus
COLE
This is how we met.
She had an unlit cigarette clenched between her lips. Her hands were shaking, and she couldn’t get the lighter to work. I watched her from a few feet down the sidewalk, leaning against the wall of the Montreal bus station as I took a drag from my own cigarette. I’d been promising to quit since the day I turned nineteen, but there I was—halfway to twenty-one, and I still almost always had a pack stashed somewhere.
Damien’s bus had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, but he wasn’t on it. I had to phone him three times before he sent a text saying he couldn’t make it. That wasn’t the first time my brother hadn’t shown up, but it was the last time I waited for him at the station.
I watched as the girl tried to flick the switch of her lighter again. The trembling in her hands travelled up the length of her arms, and her face was pinched with frustration. I couldn’t tell if she was about to scream or cry.
She was wearing those puffy skateboarding shoes I remember everyone thought were cool about five years earlier and this giant black hoodie that was so big it made it hard to tell if she actually had shorts on underneath. Her legs were like matchsticks. I was almost scared they’d snap under her weight. She could have been eighteen, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if she was fourteen.
People glanced at her before quickly looking away. Some of them even swerved around her as they passed by on the sidewalk, and I knew why. She looked like she belonged on the streets, like they had claimed her, like the cigarette in her hands and the stained backpack by her feet marked her as a lost cause it was easier to ignore.
She was too frightened to be a street kid, though. If you watched her for long enough, it was obvious how terrified she was. The shaking and the way she jumped whenever anyone’s foot landed near her meant she wasn’t used to crouching on sidewalks like this. She didn’t have that hardness I’d seen in some of the homeless people I passed in Montreal, the ‘So what?’ attitude that invited the world to judge.
She wasn’t my problem. I knew that, but I’d made up my mind to do something for her the second I realized she had a violin case propped beside her bag. The backpack was so small she couldn’t have had more than a few sweaters in it, but she was hauling this instrument around like it was more important than carrying food or clothes.
Someone was probably going to mug her before the day was over. The least I could do was give her a light.
She didn’t even notice me until I clicked my lighter on and bent to lower it in front of her hands. When she jolted back in alarm, she almost hit her head against the wall. I waited for her to go still before I spoke.
“You should quit.”
She looked up at me for the first time. Her dark hair was greasy, and she had way too much black shit lining her eyes. The makeup made her look older, but those eyes—those eyes were so fucking young.
And scared. Too scared. Scared of me.
Months later, she told me it was the first time she’d seen a black guy in real life. She’d just arrived at the station from some tiny ass town up north where everyone she ever met was white. I watched the fight or flight instinct war with itself inside her as she stared up into my face. I realized how pretty she was at the same time I realized how dangerous being pretty probably was for her.
I don’t know how long we were frozen in place. I forgot the lighter was still on until she suddenly dipped her head forward and inhaled. The tip of the cigarette flared orange. She kept her eyes on it as she held the smoke down and then slowly let it out.
When she looked back up, she spoke. Her Québécois accent was thick, and she pronounced the English words like they were heavy on her tongue, but I could still make out the sentence that convinced me I wasn’t leaving the bus station without her.
“Youshould quit.”
* * *
I flickthe lighter on and off a few times, staring down at the cigarette pinched between my fingers. Seven years later, and I still can’t light up without hearing her voice.
You should quit.
It became one of our rituals, saying those words to each other whenever we were caught with a cigarette. She’d walk out onto the balcony to find me smoking and tell me off like she wasn’t heading out to do exactly the same thing. We made promise after promise to give it up together, but we’d always find packs hidden in each other’s pockets. I’d light one for her, and she’d light one for me. We’d laugh as we blew smoke rings and said the same thing we always said:
“Youshould quit.”
That’s how Roxanne Nadeau and I work. I try to walk away when she asks me to go, try to give up the half-hearted fights and all the slamming doors late at night, but I still find her in my pockets. I spot her on windowsills and nestled between cracked CD cases on my shelves. I catch a whiff of her in the air when I walk past the metro in the morning or along the strips of bars at dusk. She’s always there, at the tip of my fingers, and all I have to do is flick the lighter and inhale.
