Smoke C1

Chapter One: Cancer

Cancer

It’s easy to say where all this started – easy as one, two, three. It started with Dad, when I was sixteen and getting my GCSE results from school.

I got a handful of Cs and Ds, not too bad as far as I was concerned. (I spent half my time skiving off anyway, so anything higher than a U was pretty good by my standards.) It was an average day apart from that; me and Kels got our results, then went to the pub and got ourselves thoroughly wrecked.

After staggering home drunk, I had to lean against the doorbell until Dad answered. He glared at me and sank his meaty hands into his waist. “What time do you call this, Melissa?” he snapped, pushing his face right into mine. The world dipped and spun, as if it had been made of fragile shadows sewn together, and I grinned serenely at him.

He slapped me across the face. I didn’t react – I was too hammered to feel the pain, and it was too much hassle to start shouting over a little slap. He stepped aside, and I hobbled in, trying not to bump into too many things. I couldn’t show him just how wrecked I was; he didn’t like it when I was almost paralytic from alcohol – but it was my life, not his. He couldn’t tell me what to do forever, and he had to start getting used to that, but I wasn’t bloody stupid.

“Melissa, answer me. Now, what time do you call this?”

I peered at the clock on the wall. “Nearly three.” The clock became blurry and indistinct, and I frowned at it. “No, five… Four?”

“It’s quarter to five in the morning. I had news for you. I waited up all night to tell you, to make sure you got home safe, you selfish bitch.”

“Not my fault the clock’s all wobbly,” I muttered. “And I lost my watch, but uh…” I glanced at him; his face was turning bright red, and his eyes were tiny slits against huge, rounded apple-cheeks. “But never mind that! What’s your news, Dad?”

He seemed to deflate, like he was a balloon I’d just popped. He slowly walked past me and sank onto the sofa, and indicated for me to sit down next to him. I did.

“Melissa… Honey… I don’t know how to say this, really.” All the anger had slithered out of him, leaving him behind like skin that a snake had shed. “I – you know those tests I had?”

“Uh, yeah? I think so, yeah.”

“Well… Hospital called back today. I’ve got cancer.”

Something twisted inside of me; my heart, my gut, I don’t know. I leaned toward him, staring intently, then rocked back and laughed. He was joking. He had to be joking. “That’s a crap joke, Dad. Don’t be a cock.” I stood up and he reached out for me; I skirted his hand and hurried upstairs.

“It’s not a joke!” he shouted after me.

“Shut up! It’s not fucking funny!” I screamed back, then slammed shut my bedroom door, locked it, and hurried to my CD player. I shoved on the first CD that came to my scrabbling hands, cranked up the volume to dull the sound of him yelling as he hurried up the stairs, and hurtled to my window. I shoved it open and swung one leg over and out, then the other.

I paused for a moment, swaying, and he began to pound at the door. He roared words that the music muffled, that I couldn’t understand, but I got the general idea: “Melissa, open the goddamn door now!”

I stared at the door for a long moment as it shuddered and buckled under the rain of fury, and then I turned my back on it and slipped silently out of the window.

*

It didn’t take me long to get to Kelsey’s. I went through the back gate, into their yard, and shut the gate behind me. There was a pile of loose dirt next to the gate, which we’d made once when we’d been bored. Some of the lumps had pebbles in them, but her windows would live. I hoped.

I picked one up, and flung it at her window. It didn’t even go near, just veered away on a completely different path, and landed about a metre away from me. The second, third and fourth attempts were the same; and then, finally, the fifth hit the window with a soft clunk before bouncing away. The next few hit too, and her window finally slid open. I was leaning against the wall, out of breath, when she leaned her upper body out of the window –

“Smokey?” she called softly.

“Kels, let me in. Please.”

She sighed. “I’m beat, Smokey. Can’t it wait, whatever’s up?”

“No, ‘less you want me to sleep in your yard. Can’t go home. Look, I’ll tell you everything, honest – just let me in.”

She withdrew her head from the window, and I waited. It took maybe five minutes before I heard the jingle of keys; I sprang up the stone steps and waited for her to fiddle with the lock—“Stupid keys,” she muttered, jiggling them furiously—before the door finally creaked open.

“Thanks.” I walked in, feeling weirdly awake – my buzz had long since faded now, and I was well on the road to sobering up. Kels was the opposite; she tiredly rubbed at her eyes with the back of one of her hands, and smudged her eyeliner. Glitter fell from her skin – and I could see a love-bite on her neck. “Who had a nibble?” I muttered, indicating her throat.

She felt at her neck, and winced. “Matty… Christopher? Might’ve been Luke. Or Danny-Boy. I dunno.” She shrugged, slung an arm around my waist, and fiddled with the lock. I waited patiently until she’d locked the door, then directed us both to the living room. We slumped onto one of two sofas in the room and I dragged a blanket around us. “Tell me about it all tomorrow,” she mumbled, closing her eyes and snuggling against me.

I shrugged. “Sure,” I said softly, but she was already asleep.