I meet Isobel on the train tracks, or sort of meet. Everything shimmers with summer heat and she is hopping over the slats of wood and singing something to herself. I cough, somewhat because I am sick this week and somewhat because I want her to turn around. I never can start conversations with strangers. She squeezes her hands together when she hears and turns her head to see me. It is her way to lock gaze with me, as if no one else is around, as if the cars have all stopped in the streets, as if I have done something horribly wrong by watching her. She has movie star eyes- big and shiny and dark. She breaks the stare and I look down at my feet. She walks along the side rail, her arms out for balance.
When she shows up in my classroom in September, I think it is a mistake. Surely she is at least thirteen if not older. All through math class I watch her from the corner. The back of her neck has three dark freckles on it, a triangle of markings. Her hair, spirals of light brown, is twisted up in barrettes. She scratches her initials into the desk while the teacher is slashing chalk shapes. IP in the lacquer of the particle board.
I walk home from school. In the developments near us, there are large manicured common areas. Usually there are kids playing or some woman laying out and reading. One of the areas has open drainage pipes. It became my habit towards the end of school last year to stop there. My mom thought I was in an after school club. Debate. I would see how far I could walk into the pipes before I became too scared and ran out. The pipes are smaller than me so I have to stoop down while I walk. Water pools at the bottom so I avoid walking down the center. And if it has rained recently, the water level is too high for exploration. Today the pipes seem smaller. I start walking through and get far enough in that the entrance light shrinks into a bright moon. I scan the bottom for any rodents that might be sharp-toothed and ready. A screeching howl echoes through the pipe. It startles me enough that I bang my head and back on the smooth cement ceiling. I brace my hand on the side and hear another howl bouncing. I turn around and start sprinting straight for the circle of light. I keep scraping my spine on the top and splashing my sneakers in the stagnant water. I reach the grass and hear laughing. Isobel is standing outside, squeezing her fingers into her ribs and shaking.
“You look like you were gonna pee your pants. I can’t believe it.” She points at an invisible stain on my jeans.
“It wasn’t funny. You made me bleed.” I turn around and pull up my shirt. “See.”
“Your spine really sticks out. You look like a dinosaur.”
I clench my teeth tight and start walking towards home. A few minutes later, I look behind me, but the grass is flat and empty. I show my mother the wounds. I fell on the playground pavement, I tell her. She stings my skin with iodine and says that I just have a few little scrapes.
Dinner is macaroni and cheese- the yellow elbow kind. My father always mixes a couple drops of Tabasco sauce in mine. It toughens you up, he tells me, it’ll heal any wounds you can find. Nobody says anything for the first half of dinner. I am thinking about all of the things I should have said to Isobel. Yeah, well, your face looks like a horse. Or, at least dinosaurs don’t howl. Or, maybe if you hadn’t followed me like a creepy old man. I can’t really think of any good ones.
My dad clears his throat. “Meryl, I hear you have a new girl in your class. Isobel? Is that it?”
“How did you know that?” I spear my fork through a broccoli stem.
“Oh, I was just at the grocery store with your mom and we met her mother. Nice lady. Charming. And Isobel was there. Sweet kid. She has got a look on her. Beautiful.” My father looks across the table at me expectantly. “I think she could be a model when she grows up, don’t you think, Char?”
My mother nods, says through a bite of macaroni, “Oh, yes, she has the face for it.”
“She’s a dork,” I tell them. “I think she stayed back a grade, too.”
“Actually, Char, wasn’t her mother saying that they just moved from New York?”
“New Jersey. And, Meryl, you can’t call people dorks. How would you like it if someone made fun of you that way?”
“I’m full. May I please be excused?”
“Okay,” my mother says, “but you can’t come down here later expecting more food.”
“Fine.” I walk upstairs to my room and throw myself on the bed.
In school we learn about the cradle of civilization. Mesopotamia. How to hold back flooding waters with earth. I imagine I would like to live then, water driving your life like that. I draw fake cuneiform in the margins of my notebook. A note to my Sumerian past: Watch out for Hammurabi.
Isobel grabs my hand as I am walking out the school gates to go home.
“Leave me alone,” I say. “And don’t follow me again like some creepy old man.”
“Meryl, I just wanted to say sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you yesterday.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“Okay, but I didn’t think you’d get mad about it or anything.”
“Right.”
“Look, you seem cool. Let’s hang out. I have something to show you. Where’s that tunnel or whatever?”
We walk slowly to the development and don’t really talk. She walks with her toes slightly turned in, sneakers too big for her body. “What is this thing anyway?” Isobel asks.
“A drainage pipe.”
“Let’s go in.” Isobel is taller than me and walks with her legs bent. She is in front, walking more slowly than I would like, but I know she is not used to this. She hums a little as we’re moving forward. Something I haven’t heard before.
“What did you have to show me?” I ask.
“Oh. That. I can’t show you in here ‘cause we can’t sit down.”
“Let me go in front.” As I pass her, our bodies press together awkwardly. My elbow in her rib. We can’t see anything now. “Just a little further.” We walk until we see little streams of light sifting down into our darkness. We are at the platform. An intersection of two main pipes. There is a grate above our heads. “I’ve only been here once.” We sit down on the metal platform. It is dry today. Last time it was slightly wet and slimy, but at least I could stand up.
“Have you ever smoked a cigarette before?” she asks, reaching into her coat pocket.
“No.”
“Neither have I. But I got one. I found it in my sister’s purse. You want to try it?”
My stomach twists inside me. “I don’t know.”
“I brought matches too.” She pulls out a black match box and the cigarette.
I realize that I have never seen one up close. “Can I hold it?” I roll it between my fingers, pull out a little of the papery tobacco at the end. It looks small in my hand. Smaller than I thought it would be. “Okay.”
She grins and lights a match, holds it to the cigarette. “You have to suck in while I light it.”
I place the cigarette between my lips and breathe in until it is lit. It glows orange when I drag and lights up Isobel’s face. The back of my throat burns and I hold back a cough, tears glossing over my eyes. I breathe white smoke into Isobel’s face and she fans it away.
“Let me try.” She takes it from me. She coughs when she inhales then taps ash onto the ground in front of her. “Sometimes my sister leans out of the window in her room and smokes. I’ve seen her.”
I take two more drags. “My head feels light. Really good.”
“Yeah. A buzz.”
“You haven’t ever done this before?”
“Well, once I did. When I found my sister leaning out of her window. And she let me take a puff.”
We pass the cigarette back and forth until there is only a burning stub. I drop it below and it hisses, then floats white on the water.
Home feels strange, stifling. I don’t say anything just run up to my room and change. I can smell the smoke on my sweater. I pile the clothes in the back of my closet where my mother won’t look.
I meet Isobel after school the next day. She pulls me aside from the stream of kids. She leans her face close to mine and whispers, “I got a whole pack of cigarettes today.”
“How?”
“My sister.”
“She just gave it to you?”
“I told her I’d tell mom and dad if she didn’t give one to me.” She grins. Her teeth are very white with a small gap between the front two.
Fields are far better for smoking than the pipes. There is a forest with a path leading to a cornfield. We squat at the edge of both. Each of us lights a cigarettes and smokes. I like to wait to ash mine until there is a stack built up. Isobel taps hers every time she takes a drag. I think she is nervous. I am as well. I imagine my parents deciding to change things up and try jogging through the forest. Or my teachers, all together in a band, ready to suspend us. Maybe my parents would think it was Isobel’s fault, corrupting me like she did with her New Jersey ways. I could start smoking a pack a day, never able to quit. I might look back on this day as the turning point. Tell my kids the true story of how it all started.
“Man, you’re pretty spacey,” she says and laughs.
“I know.”
We stub our cigarettes out on the cold packed mud of the trail.
This becomes our habit. Ritual. We savor its possibility while we sit in class. We have other rituals connected. We both have a smoking sweater. They are together in a plastic bag behind the third tree from the right of the trail. Their smells have grown strong in these weeks. My voice has become crackly, like I am slightly sick all the time. I don’t care. We always light each others’ cigarettes, never our own. This developed, unspoken. Isobel still taps hers after every drag. I wait to see how long before it ashes itself. We bury our butts on the left side of the trail. We call it “our club”. For instance, I might say to Isobel, “Do you want to bring crackers to our club today?” I wouldn’t ask that, though. We never eat when we’re smoking. There is never anyone else. Only us. We are looking for a new member though. Someone curious and brave and secretive. I am thinking Penny Parker right now. We have social studies together. Mostly in class she doesn’t talk but draws all over her left arm. She starts with her fingers, drawing different kinds of rings on each one, including her thumb. By the end of class each day, she has usually made it up to the elbow. She doesn’t really have many friends, which is also why she might want to join.
I ask Penny if she can come hang out with us after school. She looks me over for a moment, perhaps for my intentions. “Yes.”
We want to feel her out on the way, before we show her our grounds.
“Have you ever smoked a cigarette,” asks Isobel.
“Yeah, a few times. My mom smokes.” I make eye contact with Isobel over this. She is a good choice.
Penny sits cross-legged on the ground. She is comfortable with us, as if she has always been here. We smoke in silence with her. Her hand has a cat drawn on it today, licking its paw. I wish she was smoking with that hand.
Penny says quickly, “What did the anorexic magician say at the show?”
Isobel and I look at each other. “I don’t know,” I say.
“And now for my next trick, I will make myself disappear.” She waits for us to stop laughing and adds, “My sister’s anorexic.”
I am not sure if I should feel bad for laughing now, but I do. “Sorry,” I say. Isobel nods.
“She’s in recovery right now. At Saint Andrew’s.”
I am not so sure that I want her in our club anymore. I stub out my cigarette. “Let’s go, guys.”
“Wait,” Penny says, “I want to show you something.” She takes a match, lights it and watches it burn for a few moments, turning the stick in her fingers. “My sister showed this to me.” She drops the match at the edge of the field. As soon as the grasses catch fire, she stomps it out with her shoe. “Isn’t that cool?”
“Yeah, cool,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Penny pulls out another match and repeats the process, slamming her foot quickly over the flames.
“Wait, I want to try.” Isobel holds her palm out flat for the matches.
“Isobel,” I pause.
“Meryl, chill out. I’ll be careful.”
Penny gives her the matches, says, “You have to be really quick with your foot. Don’t let it burn too long.”
A flaming field is more mesmerizing than I expect. I am frozen. I watch the grasses curl up and turn black in the fire. Someone shouts, Run, but I can’t break away. I have never been this afraid of death. I understand that humans are pawns to this creature. The fire is angry, vengeful because we toyed with it. I turn around. My feet are a metronome, slamming heavy along the path. Isobel is waiting for me outside the forest. Penny is gone.
“She went home.”
“What should we do?” I think of the houses that border the edge of the field. Surely they have called the fire department. Surely they have evacuated, no? They probably have babies and rabbits and birds in cages. “Let’s call someone.”
“Won’t we get in trouble?”
We hear sirens in the distance. “Let’s go to your house,” Isobel ventures.
We sprint the whole way. Isobel is fast, like me. We can run fast side by side, away from the fire. My house feels safe, walls closing in on my body comfortably. We change in my room. Isobel borrows a blue and white striped shirt. It looks better on her than me so I tell her she can have it. She stays to eat with us.
I can barely taste my dinner. I am glad Isobel is here because I can’t really talk. My parents ask her lots of questions, about New Jersey. My dad says he’s heard the tomatoes are good there. It is the garden state.
It is in the paper the next day, how someone was playing with fire and burned the whole field up. They show pictures, a whole field of black. It didn’t spread to the woods. Luckily someone called the fire department right away. Luckily or else people might have been hurt, burned up by this thing. I bring the article to school with me, clipped and folded in my pocket. I pass it to Isobel in math class and she tucks it in her bag. Penny pretends she doesn’t know me in Social Studies. I guess that is what I wanted.
After classes, Isobel finds me. “I don’t want to do our club anymore.” She doesn’t look me in the eyes now.
“Neither do I.”
“I’m gonna go home. Maybe I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah,” I answer softly.
I walk to the tunnel and go inside ‘til I can barely see. I watch the opening. A silhouette passes by, but when I go outside, no one is there.
Rachel Cassandra Torrance writes fiction in the University of Arizona MFA program. She lives in the desert with her brother and sister-in-law and an old skinny cat. She's been published in Fusion, Adbusters, and Night Train. If she were to choose a way to go, it would be implosion.