She’s smoking. A thin, hand rolled cigarette held between her elegant, bruised fingers. She’s leaning back against the grim, graffiti-scrawled grey concrete wall, her back arched slightly, her hair falling to her waist. She’s pulled on a grey denim jacket that’s at least four sizes too big for her, and a grey woolly hat perched on top of her glossy dark curls. She flicks away the ash casually, letting it fall, still glowing, onto the wet tarmac. She looks oddly out of place, as though she’d be more at home lounging in a black swimsuit on a Mediterranean beach or posing, wearing neon trainers and red lipstick, in an alley at midnight in downtown New York. Just not outside a school in a particularly grim corner of the north-east, wearing a school uniform and bruises on her skin. She doesn’t look up at me as I approach slowly, my bag hanging from my shoulder, dragging the toes of my Converses along the ground as I walk.
“D’you want a cigarette?” Her offer is almost painfully casual, her voice offhand. She still doesn’t make eye contact.
“Do I look like the kinda girl who smokes?” I ask, trying very hard not to stare at her. Because if I do, she might take my breath away. But she doesn’t care, she finally looks up and she allows her dark eyes to carefully sweep over my body before replying.
“You don’t look like the kinda lass who wags off class either” she replies gently, the corners of her lips turning up slightly. She almost smiles. A ghost of her dimples carve into her cheeks. I smile. She holds her cigarette between her lips, and breathes out a thin trail of smoke. And she turns away, her hair flying out behind her.
“Where are we going?” I ask quietly as she begins to stride away through the iron school gates that are flung wide, almost having to jog to keep up with her. She pulls off her school tie and loosens the first three buttons of her shirt, revealing another few inches of bruised skin, before she replies.
“I don’t know yet. I just wanted to be out of that goddamn classroom. We could go for a coffee or something in town if you want?” Her voice is offhand, her manner almost painfully casual. She couldn’t make it any clearer that she doesn’t care. She sighs, blowing smoke through her lips and watching it curl through the bitterly cold air.
“Yeah, okay-” I agree, and watch as she stuffs her cigarette-free hand into her pocket and shakes her dark hair over her shoulders. I just watch her and the red-brick, terraced houses, stained to a filthy grey by years of coal smoke and thick fog, suddenly become meaningless blurs around us. I felt droplets of rain begin to fall from the lead-grey sky, hurling themselves against our skin. I pull up my hood. Cheryl sighs.
“Oh sh*t. Typical. Fcuking rain.” She mumbles to herself, pulling her hat further down over her dark eyes. We pass tower blocks twisting out of the concrete, and our trainers jump over the thick cracks in the pavement. The lights from the brightly lit shops with broken panes of glass and boarded up windows spills out over the rapidly forming puddles, making them glow golden. Teenage boys leaning against the shop doorways, smoking alternately hand-rolled cigarettes and passing a thick blunt, whistle at us softly as we pass. Their eyes follow Cheryl, taking in the stretching and contracting of her thighs, the soft curve of her neck as she holds her head high. One wolf-whistles. Another punches him softly.
“That’s Ashley’s lass, don’t mess with her” I hear him murmur, not raising his eyes to look at either of us, as though we would burn him. Cheryl flicks her cigarette ash nonchalantly. I follow her, stuffing my own hands into my pockets and tilting my chin downwards so all I can see is the grubby pavement, littered with emerald green broken glass and discarded cigarette ends. The road curves downwards towards the river and the wind funnels up the street, blowing our hair away from our faces. The air feels fresher now, and there’s a definite salty tang on the breeze. I can feel the salt stinging my eyes like tears, grating at my skin. I turn up my collar and cross my arms across my chest.
