asher
age 13
The room smells like sweat, stale beer, and something else I don't recognize.
Smoke hangs in the air like a fog, thick and clinging to everything. It makes my eyes sting and my throat itch, but I don't cough. I can't cough. Not here.
I'm cross-legged on the worn-out carpet in some guy's basement—someone my mom knows I think. Or used to know. I dunno.
She's not here, but her friends are, sprawled out on the couch or slouched against the walls, laughing too loud and too slow.
"Hey, kid," one of them calls, waving a hand lazily at me. He's older—early twenties, maybe—but he looks ancient.
Bloodshot eyes, a crooked smile that makes my skin crawl. "You ever try this?"
In his hand is a joint, the smoke curling from the tip in a lazy spiral. Nope.
My stomach twists. I want to say no. I want to get up and leave, to run out of this basement and never come back. But my legs won't move, and my throat feels like it's closing up.
"Come on," he says, holding it out. "Be a man."
The words land heavy. I'm thirteen—too tall, too skinny, too awkward. Too much of everything I hate about myself.
And I want to be something. Someone.
So I reach out, my fingers trembling as I take it from him.
The laughter around me grows louder, the air buzzing with an energy I don't understand. They're watching me, waiting for me to screw it up, to prove I don't belong here.
I bring the joint to my lips, inhaling like I've seen them do. The burn is immediate, clawing its way down my throat and into my lungs. I cough hard, my chest heaving as smoke billows out of me.
"Easy, rookie," someone says, laughing. "Slower, kid."
I force a smile, joining their laughter even though my chest feels like it's on fire. Jesus fuck help me.
The second hit is easier. The third even more so.
And then it hits me.
Warmth washes over me, blurring the edges of everything. The room tilts, the world becoming sharper and softer all at once. Every sound is too loud, every color too bright.
"Not bad, huh?" the guy says, slapping me on the back.
I nod, not trusting myself to speak. My heart races, my limbs feel heavy, but for the first time in a long time, the constant ache in my chest—that hollow, gnawing pain from all the shouting and slamming doors at home—fades.
For a few hours, I don't care that my mom is passed out upstairs, that the fridge is almost empty, that my dad is just a ghost in stories I don't even believe.
For a few hours, I feel... free.
But when I wake up the next morning, the haze is gone, replaced by a pounding headache and that same heavy weight, pressing even harder now.
But now...how do I feel like that again?
---
guy pov! aaaaaa
tt: leighwritess
YOU ARE READING
before falling
Romance"do you regret it?" i sign. "regret what?" he signs back. "us." "fuck no." he says aloud before kissing me hard. ___ Kiera Cadwell has spent her whole life training to become a professional ballerina. A dance major, a rare spot in a high dance class...
