As I sat at the table on the edge of the smoking section waiting for a good
sighting, I gazed out of the corner of my eye at a table on the other side…
in the non-smoking section.
There were five girls who I had known from high school; they had been
freshmen when I was a senior so I didn’t really get to know any of them
really well, although my high school was small enough that I knew their
names. There was Claire, the pretty girl-next-door type with light blonde
hair and blue-green eyes whose parents had a lot of money. There was Sara who
looked like Snow White with black hair and big blue eyes; if she wasn’t the
fairest of them all- I don’t know who was. Kayla was the tall girl with long
blond hair – she was a walking Barbie doll. Tonya was the cute Latina- or
maybe she was Italian, but whatever she was, she was very fine.
Last, but certainly not least was Rachel, the preacher’s daughter, and
arguably the hottest girl to ever walk the halls of my alma mater. With her
red hair and icy blue eyes, she would surely make some guy very lucky
someday. I had actually asked Rachel out my senior year…
“Hey,” I said to her as I walked up to her locker, “Let’s go out on a date.”
“Umm, no,” she told me without batting an eye.
“Why not?” I asked her.
“Hmm,” she said as if she was thinking of a reason why she shouldn’t, “you
are kinda cute, but your lifestyle and mine clash.”
“How’s that?” I asked her.
“Well,” she said, “for example, you smoke and I think smoking is really
gross. Maybe if you quit smoking, I would go out with you.”
I was cocky when I was in high school and definitely not one who liked being
rejected by a high school freshman girl, no matter how hot she was.
“Why don’t you try smoking before you make a judgment about someone who
smokes,” was my reply.
She started to say something, but then seemed like she really didn’t feel
like arguing. She simply said, “I tell you what – if I ever start smoking; I
*will* go out with you. But that doesn’t seem very likely to *ever* happen,”
she said as she walked away…
I finished my after dinner cigarette as I thought about that memory from a
few years back and left, disappointed that there hadn’t been any good smoking
sightings that night. I looked back towards the non-smoking section as I got
up to leave and thought about how it was a shame those five girls weren’t
smokers. They would be the sexiest smokers ever, I thought to myself. The
chances of any of them becoming smokers, though, were about as likely as hell
freezing over…
***
“Amen,” said the five girls almost in unison as they all lifted their bowed
heads, opened their eyes, and picked up their forks as they started to eat
the meal before them. It would be their last Friday night Bible study at the
usual sit-down restaurant before they all went their separate ways for the
summer. The topic of conversation, as usual, was a mix of spiritual talk
along with topics which one would expect from high school girls who were
about to enter their senior year…
“I can’t believe my family is going to the Bahamas this summer,” said a very
excited Claire. “Maybe I can bring some Bible tracts along and hand them out
at the beach.” Claire had just turned seventeen a couple of weeks earlier and
had been the first one of the five girls with a brand new set of wheels. Not
just any set of wheels, her parents had bought her a brand new Mustang
convertible. She was excited about life.
“Praise God,” said Sara as she took another bite out of her lasagna, “it’s
great that you’re using the trip as an opportunity to witness for Him.”
“Hopefully,” said Kayla, “God can use me to bring my backsliding sister back
to Him. Since she left for college last year, she’s started drinking and
smoking, and probably fooling around. She was always a good example to me in
high school. I hope I can return the favor this summer and be a light to
her.”
“It’s a shame,” said Tonya, “Your sister was such a good Christian and was
always on fire for God.”
“Yeah,” said Rachel, “It just goes to show that Satan is always looking to
make us stumble in our walk with Jesus and if we aren’t diligent and
prayerful, we can slip up, but God is always ready to pick us back up again
when we fall.”
The girls all nodded their heads in agreement and they continued talking as
they finished their meals. Afterwards, the girls took turns reading their
Bibles and prayed again before getting into Claire’s Mustang…
***
Claire dropped off her best friend Sara last and decided to get a soda at the
local convenience store before heading home. She got back to her car with a
Pepsi in hand and somehow dropped her keys onto the floor of the car. After
groping around for a few seconds she found the keys had somehow managed to
end up under the driver’s seat. There was something else under there too, but
she ignored it as she started the car up. She took a few sips of soda and
then wondered what that other thing was that she had felt under the car seat.
Claire reached under the seat and retrieved it. It was a full pack of
cigarettes. How did that get down there, Claire asked herself. She had only
had the car for a couple of weeks and it had been brand new. Perhaps someone
at the dealership had left them there. Claire had given a ride home to a girl
she knew from school (as a way to witness to an unbeliever) who she knew was
a smoker; maybe it was hers. Claire’s parents had both ridden in the
passenger’s seat and were smokers, but it wasn’t either of their brands. The
only other people who had been in the passenger’s seat of her Mustang were
her four best friends from church and Claire knew it hadn’t been any of them.
Claire studied the pack for a minute as she turned the pack over repeatedly
with her fingers…
Claire gazed at the pack in her hands. It was a blue-green pack with
“Newport” at the top and “Menthol Box 100’s” at the bottom. She hadn’t held a
full pack of cigarettes since she was a little kid – her parents used to ask
her to get them a pack out of their cartons. As she got older and
increasingly anti-smoking, she started preaching to them about smoking
whenever she would get their cigarettes, so they stopped asking her to
retrieve them. The pack seemed lighter than her recollection of its weight,
and her curiosity seemed to be aroused. She decided to open the pack…
Claire started to reach for the string which would open up the wrap at the
top, but then decided to pack the cigarettes. At that moment, she still had
no intentions of smoking, but she had seen her parents open a pack of
cigarettes enough times to know that packing them first was part of the
ritual of opening a pack.
After thirty seconds of packing the cigarettes, she grabbed the string and
opened the pack. She looked inside and saw the glimmering foil which said
“pull” and she obligingly pulled it out. She was somewhat surprised to see
that the cigarettes were cork filtered. Her father smoked Marlboro Reds and
her mother smoked Marlboro Light 100’s Menthol. Claire had never really given
it much thought, but had always assumed that the ones with the cork filters
were non-menthol and the ones which were white filtered must be menthol.
Claire sniffed the open pack of cigarettes and noticed they smelled of fresh
mint. Carefully, she pulled one out. For a few seconds she held it in her
hand posing with it before her curiosity took her one step further. She put
the Newport 100 into her mouth.
For a few minutes, she pretended to smoke the unlit Newport marveling at how
sucking on it tasted sort of like spearmint gum and how it made her mouth
tingle when she left it dangling in her mouth.
Perhaps it had been the devil that made her take it to its logical
conclusion, but it was more likely Claire’s curiosity which caused her to
push in the Mustang’s car lighter. She waited for what seemed like an
eternity for it to pop back out as she dangled the Newport in her mouth.
Finally, it did and she took it out and slowly moved the glowing cylinder
towards the cigarette in her mouth and lit up her first cigarette…
Claire woke up and realized her breathe smelled of cigarettes. Last night
hadn’t been a bad dream – she had really done it. She got up and brushed her
teeth before going into the living room to watch TV. She watched her favorite
televangelist but really wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying as she
thought about her first (and perhaps last) smoking experience.
Claire had somehow managed to learn how to correctly inhale rather quickly,
about midway through her first cigarette. Maybe it had been all those of
years of watching her parents smoke. She had sat in the convenience store
parking lot for a good ten minutes before the dizziness disappeared enough
for her to leave for home.
One cigarette was bad enough but for some reason Claire had smoked a few more
on the way home. Her nicotine buzz was so strong that she had had to stop a
few times to reorient herself. When she got home she somehow managed to make
her way to her bedroom and stumbled into bed feeling like she was going to
throw up. Even though she had quickly mastered the mechanics of smoking, she
knew she was suffering from nicotine poisoning. Her body was reacting to the
three cigarettes she had smoked like a pro. Claire vowed she would never do
that again.
After an hour or so she got bored and she picked up a pen on the coffee table
and started fidgeting with it. She eventually put it in her mouth and without
thought, started “smoking” it. A few minutes later she and got an idea when
she spotted the lighter her parents had left on the table.
“Maybe just one more,” Claire said to herself as she headed for her car.
Claire returned to the living room with her purse in her hand. She had
forgotten it in her car the night before. She quickly pulled out her pack of
Newport 100’s.
“Just one last cigarette,” she said as she dangled the unlit Newport, “and
then I’ll throw the rest of the pack away.”
Claire fumbled with the lighter for a few seconds before she finally lit up.
She took a big drag off of her Newport and exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.
She started getting the nicotine rush she had enjoyed so much the night
before. Since she had decided this would be her last cigarette ever, she
planned on power smoking it. She made her way to her bathroom to watch
herself smoke. She experimented with different ways of smoking. She took
huge drags and took small ones before she settled on a style which seemed to
work for her. Finally, she reached the filter and threw the cigarette in the
toilet as she exhaled the last bit of smoke. She made her way back to the
couch as she combated her dizziness, but she felt pleasant enough. After her
nicotine rush had subsided she picked up the pack of Newport’s to throw it
away. After some hesitation, she put the pack in her purse. She picked up the
lighter and put it in her purse as well.
“Maybe I’ll smoke a few more today, and then I’ll throw it out,” she said to
herself as if she was trying to convince herself of the right thing to do.
Deep down, Claire knew she wanted to finish the pack. But what would her
friends think if they knew she was experimenting with smoking? What would her
best friend Sara say?
*** Sara got a ride home from her boss, who felt bad that he had scheduled
too many people to work that day and had to send her home early. Sara worked
at a clothing store in the mall and as the newest employee, she knew she
would be the first one sent home when business was slow. As she sat in her
boss’s car on the way home, she thought about her plans for the summer.
Unlike her best friend Claire, her parents weren’t wealthy and she would have
to work this summer to have any spending money. Working at the clothing
store way was a good way to witness about Jesus she thought to herself as she
looked over at her boss, who she knew liked to party a lot.
There was a lot of turmoil at Sara’s house. Her father had been having an
affair with his secretary and her mother had found out about it a month ago.
Her mother had kicked him out and she knew the stress on her mother was huge
right now since it seemed likely that her parents would be getting a divorce.
How could her father do this to her mother, she thought. Maybe it was good
that she was going home from work real early, it would give her a chance to
spend some time with her mother.
Sara thanked her boss for the ride home and went inside her house. She looked
around for her mother and after a few minutes of not finding her mom, she
wondered if maybe she wasn’t home. Her mother’s car was there, so maybe she
had gone out with a friend. Sara decided to go hang out by her pool and went
into her room to put on her bikini. Usually when she would go to a public
beach or someone else’s pool she would wear a modest one piece bathing suit,
but she had no problem with wearing a bikini alone in the privacy of her back
yard. It would give her a chance to work on her tan, maybe people would stop
calling her Snow White if she got a little more color. She admired her body
in the mirror and knew the guys in school would all die if they could see her
in her sexy little bikini.
Sara opened the sliding glass door leading out to the pool patio area and
froze in her tracks as she saw an unfamiliar sight – her mother was lighting
up a cigarette.
***
Claire opened up her pack of Newport 100’s and pulled the last cigarette out
of the pack. Now seemed like a good time to stop with her smoking experiment,
she thought as she lit up the Newport. Halfway through the cigarette, she
thought about the twenty cigarettes that she had smoked over the past three
days. Claire was starting to enjoy the taste of the smoke as she let it
linger in her mouth a little longer. She enjoyed the mentholated smoke from
her Newport’s and she began to think of how to go about buying another pack.
Too bad that Indian convenience store across town which sold to minors had
recently been busted and had gone out of business. Perhaps she could ask
someone to buy them for her, but everyone she knew over eighteen would be
shocked and probably refuse. She continued smoking the last cigarette in the
pack as she brainstormed about how to acquire another pack. Maybe she could
sneak cigarettes out of her parent’s packs, but that seemed too risky.
“James!” she said aloud as she took thelast hit from her Newport. Why hadn’t
she thought of that before? James worked at that c-store on the north side of
town; she had seen him there about a week ago. James was a guy who had had a
major crush on her sophomore year. Claire thought he was kind of cute, but he
hung out with the wrong crowd. He had been a senior then, and Claire had at
first been a little interested until she saw him smoking in the school
parking lot one day. Claire chuckled as she remembered how quickly she had
lost interest in him when she caught him smoking and wondered what his
reaction would be when he found out she was smoking. She got her purse and
headed for her car.