The Nicotine Chronicles by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2020-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Summer You Lit Up

by Lauren Sanders

Gray clouds hang over the half-empty parking lot outside the A&P. It’s cold for July but you’re wearing shorts and buffalo sandals, toes painted sparkly Spirit-of-’76 red. Little bumps stitch up your arms and legs.

“That’s gonna stunt your growth,” Vye tsk-tsks, then asks for a drag of the cigarette you just started smoking. She’s being kinda funny, so you hand it to her. She tries pathetically to blow smoke rings, and you both crack up. So hard you almost miss the station wagon turning into the entrance from the side street. It’s your family’s vomit-green car with wood paneling, Michael alone in the front seat wearing the shiny sunglasses the army gave him. He’s flying down to Florida after the Fourth to start training. He doesn’t care that the war is over, the draft as fossilized as the Boston Tea Party. He says we’re still fighting the same war over and over again.

“We gotta go,” you say to Vye, flicking the end of your Marlboro Light and leaning down low.

“Where?”

“Your house.”

“Okay,” Vye shrugs.

“Come on,” you grab her by the arm. “Now.”

She lifts her guitar from the curb and copies your hunched-over walk until you get to the alley between the drugstore and pizza place and run like hell the whole two blocks.

* * *

Top forty songs float out of the kitchen, where Vye’s mom stands over pots of boiling water and sauce for spaghetti. You sneak cigarettes on the porch and pretend to study triangles for tomorrow’s quiz, before everyone clears out for the holiday. Vye and her mom are taking the train to the city on Sunday to see the big ships coming into New York from all over the world.

Whenever you look past the couch and color TV inside, you catch the back of her mom in faded jeans and gauzy pink shirt-dress melting into the music, her long brown hair sweetly ruffled. She turns and drags from an ultralong cigarette like in a magazine ad.

You scrunch your knees in, tugging the sweatshirt Vye lent you over them to keep warm. The air is dark and damp and smells like lavender.

“Vye, honey, you girls ready?” her mother calls, and Vye blows a final mouthful of smoke toward the street before adjusting the guitar on her back.

“You ever take that thing off?”

She shakes her head hard, like she’s flinging bugs out of her scalp, then brushes past you in a way that says you’re a moron for asking. Makes you want to bolt but you follow her inside. The house smells a little bit greasy, a little bit cinnamon-powder donut. You have never been so aware of scents. Candles of different shapes and sizes flicker in front of a picture window. You sit beneath them on a cushioned bench staring into the half-lit kitchen. Normal tiles and white cabinets, shelves bulging with appliances, plates, and bowls. The refrigerator is plastered with political stickers, flyers for rallies—women’s lib and save the planet and Jimmy Carter for President—hours of the local health food store and public library.

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