Willow

1

Logan cleared her throat as she stepped out of the apartment block onto the sidewalk. She looked up at the clouds that had formed as they day progressed. It had gotten colder, a cold breeze blowing her red locks of hair back under her black beanie, and looked like it might rain. She sighed, zipping up her faux leather jacket that was four sizes too big for her, she had to roll the sleeve back three times just to be able to see her hands. The jacket used to belong to her father and had never fit her properly but she wore it because she loved it. The jacket, though it no longer smelled of her father, reminded her of him, allowing her to hold on to the few memories she had of him.

Logan reached into the left pocket of her jacket and pulled out her new twenty pack of cigarettes and a red lighter. She opened the packet and put one between her teeth. Closing the pack, she slipped it back into her pocket and lifted the lighter, giving it a small shake. She flicked the spark wheel a few times to illuminate the flame then held it to the end of the cigarette, lighting it before slipping the lighter back into her pocket. She inhaled the smoke, held it for a moment then pulled the cigarette from her lips between her index and middle fingers on her left hand, holding it by her side before blowing the smoke out of her lungs. She coughed, trying to make it subtle as someone passed her on the street with a frown, clearly judging her. She slipped the lighter into her pocket again.

The redheaded girl looked down, scuffing her the toe of her old worn black converse on a crack in the sidewalk as she leaned against the wall of her apartment building. Smoking wasn't something she particularly enjoyed doing. In fact, it hurt her chest when she did it, making her feel sick. But it made her feel closer to her father. He used to smoke, it was one of the few things she remembered about him. She remembered him always coming home from work smelling like cigarettes even though her mother used to yell at him and say it wasn't 'good for the children'. She could hear her mother screaming this at him in the kitchen while she thought none of their children were around but Logan was always there. She seemed to go unnoticed most of the time.

Logan hadn't been smoking for very long. As soon as she'd turned twenty-one, she drove to the nearest gas station and purchased her first full pack. Before then, from the time she was sixteen, maybe slightly older, she dared to steal the odd cigarette from her older brother Max's pack that he had hidden under his mattress in his bedroom to hide from their mother. He'd discover one was missing and accuse their sister Rosie of stealing them and she'd yell back that she'd 'never be caught dead smoking, it's bad for you, and that he was probably too drunk to notice he'd smoked it', which probably would have been true if Logan didn't know the truth, if she wasn't the one to blame.

Logan only smoked when she was feeling particularly sad and today was that day. In a good month, a pack of twenty cigarettes could last her the entire month. But in a bad month, like this one, she could blow through three or four packs by the time the month was over. This month in particular always reminded her of her father, this month was the month he died.

Logan had been just nine years old when her father, Richard Pierce, had died. It was a car accident, Logan has been in the car with him. She couldn't remember much about what had caused the accident. She just knew he had been picking her up from soccer practice at her elementary school when the accident had happened. Logan had been distraught by his death. Her father had been her favourite person in the whole entire world, he understood her in ways her mother and siblings never could. Logan had lost her best friend that day and she'd never fully recovered from it, her whole family had never really recovered from it.

Sometimes, Logan would catch herself tracing the scar that had been left from the accident just behind her left ear with her middle and index fingers. She wanted to know how it had happened, how this scar had come to be but no one could tell her and she found this rather frustrating. She'd struggled to adjust after losing her father. She quit soccer as soon as she was able to return to school and distanced herself from her friends and even her family. She kept to herself and moved out of Tennessee as soon as she was old enough. She'd applied to colleges all across the country and been accepted into NYU. She hadn't been home since she started college.