Carbon County

Chapter One

               Most days I feel like I am being cradled in a universe where there is no place for me. I spend the hours when I am not in a fitful rest trying to find a purpose. My nights are mostly spent in cars, in empty parking lots, hoping the cure for cancer will be hidden somewhere underneath all the asphalt.

               In the late summer, I always find myself in the gravel lot of a small state park near my house. I sit in my car against a line of trees facing the road. In the darkness of midnight, I am swallowed up by vines and become nearly invisible to the outside eye.

               One night, in the last days of August, I sat there lost in my own thoughts. Next to me was my friend, Aaron, staring idly. I absentmindedly lit a cigarette and began puffing clouds of smoke at the cool windshield of my car.

               "I thought you were trying to give them up," muttered Aaron, seizing the cigarette from between my fingers. All it had taken was a few seconds and he was already doing more good than me. Then when he slid the cigarette between his own lips, I realized it was just a hypocrite's errand.

               "Smoking will kill you," I retorted, part of me still making an effort to change him.

               "I know," he murmured; there was nothing I could really say to that. The air became dense and stifling, so I rolled the driver's side window down. The cold night breeze seeped into the car. The wind whistled through the pines and carried away the smell of tobacco.

               When I could finally breathe again, I glanced back at Aaron. He was leaning back in the seat with the cigarette slowly smoldering between his lips. His eyes were closed as if he was sleeping, but the contorted frustration showed that it was his thinking face. The moonlight caused shadows to pool deep in the contours of his face. They fell beneath his cheekbones and under his eyes in the hollows of sleepless nights.

               I remember the days I thought I loved him, but that was the old Aaron. It was the Aaron who still did charcoal drawings of me, who didn't smoke, who plucked out chords on his guitar as he laughed at the puns in TV commercials.

               All I could see now was a decrepit automaton, slowly weakening, fueled purely by caffeine, tar, and thoughts of death. I couldn't keep my mind from wandering to the thought that it was my fault; I shouldn't have forced that first cigarette. Now I was left here wondering how I could possibly love this monster of my own design. I had long since put all his drawings away; it's better to forget.

               "Sh! Did you hear that?" Aaron's voice drew me from my painstakingly secluded thoughts. I closed my eyes and strained my ears. I could hear a faint voice in the distance. I began to panic. The police had caught us in the park after sunset before and I couldn't afford another ticket.

               Aaron and I crept out of the car, taking care to close the doors as silently as possible. We hid among the tree line and stared out at the dark road for any signs of life. The only thing we saw was a woman standing across the street under a lamppost.

               The woman was wearing a red coat, but the yellow sodium light made all the colors seemed washed out and faded, like a watercolor picture left out in a rainstorm. Her outline was a pencil sketch against the dark background of the night. She appeared to be talking to herself, laughing occasionally and responding to some unseen partner. Her gaze was directed at a tree whose leaves somewhat resembled the profile of a man's face. The wind made the leaves twitch in a way that almost made it seem like the tree was talking too.

               "Poor, crazy woman," Aaron muttered, taking a long drag from the cigarette in relief. He walked back toward the car, but I stayed and watched the woman for a little bit longer. I couldn't decide if she was actually crazy or not. True, she was talking to a tree at one in the morning, but was there really a problem in that? People talk daily to some unseen God they can only hope is there. Why was this woman any different? She seemed just as confident in what she was doing.

               I quietly retreated back to the car where Aaron was waiting for me. He flicked the cigarette butt out of the window and let himself relax in the seat. He pulled a plastic water bottle from his sweatshirt pocket and took a swig from it. A contented smile crept onto his face almost immediately.

               "What's in that bottle?" I asked him warily, already almost certain of what the answer would be.

               "Nothing you can drink if you're driving." Aaron looked at me pointedly, but couldn't help from letting the smile return as he took another large gulp from the bottle.

               "I'm really tired, are we going to leave soon?" Aaron sighed, seeming finally at peace.

               "Yeah, we're going home," I replied quietly. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I caught a glimpse of the old Aaron swimming from deep in the abyss of his mind to the surface. I hated that he had to drink to get like this.

              I knew how the rest of the night would go. I would drive and Aaron would drink. The alcohol would make him laugh more and more and he would start cracking jokes again and I would pretend like it was okay; it was just another night with the old Aaron. I would let silent tears slide down my cheeks and of course he wouldn't notice. What did he care if I was sad anymore? He was just numb.

               I would pull into his driveway and walk him to his front door so that his mom wouldn't catch him. He would kiss me on the cheek and smile at me and ignore my crying eyes. I would forget why I stopped loving him.

               Then, when I thought the night was over, I would go home and pull the charcoal drawings out from under my bed and sit on the fire escape to smoke. I would consider burning them with the smoldering end of a cigarette, but I wouldn't do it; I always thought I looked the prettiest in his drawings.

               Who knows if I'd fallasleep after that?