Kids These Days

Chapter 37: Ronan

It's a windy, restless night in the desert, and I have to cup my hands around the burning match to light my cigarette. "Come on," I mutter, trying to encourage the paper to catch. (I don't know where I put my lighter. It's been a hell of a week -- I feel like I've been losing a lot of things lately, my mind included.)

The porch door opens, and I glance over just in time for the flame to leap up and scorch my fingertips. "Damn it!" I snap, dropping both the match and the cigarette on the ground. "Son of a --"

"Need a light?"

Floyd steps out into the dusky glow of the sunset, bearing such an uncanny resemblance to his nephew that I do a double-take. He frowns at me, his stubbly face creasing with worried lines, and I hear him repeat in that gravelly cowboy voice of his, "I said, do you need a light?"

"Sure." I sneak another cigarette from the carton in my waistband and hold it out. "Uh, thanks. I didn't realize you smoked--"

Floyd pinches the cigarette neatly between his thumb and pointer finger, then flicks it just as neatly over the balcony railing. "I don't."

"Hey!" I exclaim, a little too late. "What was that for?"

"I don't like people smoking in my house."

"You could've just said so."

"Sure, but if I did, would you have listened?"

I don't dignify this with a response. Instead, I fold my arms and slouch against the railing, sulking and glaring at the rough hills rolling away from the driveway.

"Don't take it personally," Floyd advises. "I would've done the same thing to Finn."

"Too bad he doesn't smoke."

"Well, now you know why."

"He doesn't smoke because he's too concerned about his varsity student athlete lungs," I say, keeping my eyes fixed on the desert. "He cares about school and sports and all that shit. I don't. So if you're here to lecture me, don't bother. I promise I've heard the same spiel a thousand times before."

"I'm not here to lecture you," he tells me, which, ironically, is what most adults say before giving me a lecture. "You're a young adult. You can make your own decisions. If you want to smoke, go ahead, just don't do it in my house."

"Fine."

For some reason, this makes Floyd smile. "Fine. You know, as crazy as it seems, I didn't come out here to teach you a lesson. You got a letter in the mail today."

He holds out an envelope. I still don't budge from the railing.

"Nobody opened it, if that's what you're wondering," he says. "It has your name on it. Sent from some fancy address in Manhattan."

I dig my fingernails into the soft varnish of the railing. "Throw it away."

"Don't you want to know what it says?"

"No," I tell him, because I already do. I'm not wearing sunglasses, and it's too dark for Floyd to see what happened to my eyes, but I still make sure to face the desert, not him. Call it an abundance of caution. "I don't."

"I'm not going to throw away your mail, kid. If you want to get rid of it, that's your business." Floyd studies me for a moment, as if trying to predict the number of stitches I'll require if this conversation goes downhill. "Do you want to... talk about it?"

"No! I don't give a shit about what he has to say!" The words explode out of my mouth before I can stop them, startling away some of the birds roosting in the juniper tree. "I'm just..." I let my hands fall clumsily to my sides, not bothering to hide how badly they're shaking. "I'm so tired."