Breath of the Juicy Dragon

Nearly a week of dreary grey and cold rain had finally let up. For four days straight Danny went to community college in the miserable sunlessness of the California winter. Danny took in a long drag from her vape pen and tasted vanilla and cinnamon. She exhaled a couple of rings and smirked as a passerby glared at her, plugging their nose as they waddled around her small clouds. She felt like a rebel again, vaping now taboo due to health concerns and loved the way people avoided her so she could get her nicotine in peace.

Finally, her bus arrived and she tucked her pen into her breast pocket for the trip down to the shop to get refills and see if they were selling any new flavors. She was getting tired of what she'd been using the last few weeks and wanted a change. She sat down in the middle by the cracked-open window. The smell coming from somewhere behind her made Danny want to gag or maybe blow a giant cloud into the back of the bus. She knew she'd get kicked off and she really needed the bus to get around her semi-suburban town, so she resigned to placing herself as close to fresh air as possible.

Fifteen long stinky minutes went by until Danny was finally at her stop. Avoiding their eye-contact, she hopped off the bus and walked the rest of the way to her smoke shop- or she would have, if it wasn't suddenly shut down and being cleared of its stock into a truck! Damn it!

Danny jogged up to see if Ted, the cute guy who worked here was around, but the only people around were the moving crew. She sulked and drew another long drag and blew it out her nose before noticing a small display of vape juice sitting off to the side on top of a cardboard box full of what looked like trash. Danny looked around and at the oblivious moving crew and snatched the small cases of what the smiling, bright blue and purple cartoon dragon on the display called "The Juicy Dragon".

Tucked under her arm in her thrift store letterman jacket, Danny carried the haul back to her friend's house a few blocks up the road. "Chris" and Danny had been friends since before grade school and were more like sisters now that they were both about to finally move out of their parent's houses. They knew everything about each other and planned on living together just as soon as Danny got a job. She sat down on Chris' porch and ejected the nearly emptied cartridge from her pen and spent a few minutes fiddling with the new one.

"Damn thing doesn't fit my pen. Maybe Chris has an adaptor or something..."

Chris was inside playing Animal Crossing when Danny barged in through the open side door like usual and flopped down onto the couch next to her best friend.

"Are you winning?" Danny asked, amused. It seemed as though Chris hadn't moved since before she left for class and her character was doing pretty much the same thing too. Planting flowers, digging, sling-shotting presents... a goofy little game her friend was totally addicted to.

"It's not really about winning, Danny. My island is like a temple- oh, you're joking." Chris stuffed a handful of pretzel sticks in her mouth and slowly nibbled them as Danny let the warm space-heater thaw her numb toes and fingers, watching her friend mindlessly wander her island.

"Yeah, and you haven't moved a muscle."

"Nope."

"The Smokestop closed."

Chris paused. "Shit. You run into that guy you like? Uh... Nick?"

Danny corrected her, sighing at the loss of a small crush, "Neal, and nobody but some movers were there taking everything- except this."

Danny pulled open her jacket and revealed her spoils. Chris got right to work checking them out and turned over each little cartridge in her hands intently.

"Hm, weirdly designed contacts. Your pen doesn't work, does it."

"No, I was hoping you'd have a solution."