The Road To Alabama

Chapter 16

Ada

I shuffle through the sand and hoist myself onto a giant rock. If I continue up these boulders, I should be able to reach the cliff overlooking the ocean where no one will see me because I'll be so high up that I'll probably look like a still fragment of the earth. I want that. I want to disappear, just for a second. I need to escape from the drama that's arisen at dinner.

When I reach the top of the cliff, my breathe catches in my throat. The scent of a cigarette enters my nose, and I cough and brush it away. A redhead sits there, cross-legged, with her back to me, one elbow poised on her knee as she observes the sea. Her other fingers grip a cigarette tightly.

"Maddie?" I croak, but it barely comes out as anything. I don't know what to think, what to feel. What do I say to this girl who I've known so long?

For a split second she looks terrified at the sight of me. Like I've discovered one of her deepest secrets. I sit a little ways away from her until she starts to talk.

"I didn't think you'd find out this way..." Her empty voice trails off into the rising wind. She takes a drag and blows the smoke away from us. "I was going to tell you. Today, actually. I just needed a little time alone to process some thoughts. And anger. You know..."

"I know. That's why I came up here, too. I didn't know you'd be here. We certainly couldn't be able to see you from down there. But Maddie, why? Are you smoking now? Is this a permanent thing? Because knowing you, you'd probably just try a cigarette for the hell of it."

She snorts. "That's what it started out as. I was offered one by a liquor store clerk a couple weeks back. And then I brought a pack with me."

"This isn't healthy for you," I say, placing my hand on her foreman. She looks at me and nods slowly. "Then why are you doing it?"

"Because," she sighs. "Because cigarettes make me feel some kind of way. A way that you or Mackenzie or even Zach can't. They take me to this place that has no stress and all calmness. It's a different type of euphoria, and I want to keep feeling it again, and again."

I take her words in, trying to inhale the salty spritz of ocean. "I'm sorry, Mads. I don't know what for, but I am. I know you know that smoking is bad. And I wish you hadn't started," I tell her. "What does Zach think? Does he know?"

"Yes. I don't know," she answers immediately. "I don't think he likes it. But ultimately I think he knows it's my decision. Even though now it feels like there will always be this side of my brain craving to enter that paradise again, even if I was just in it."

"Maddie, look around," I gesture towards the beach. "We are in paradise. I mean, think about it. A month ago, would you have imagined us to be lounging on a beach in Texas with a guy named Sam? We're halfway there. I know these cigarettes might give you temporary bliss, but it's not worth it in the long run."

She looks at me and then takes another long look at the ocean, the silence filling the space between us. "Okay."

"Some food for thought," I say, standing and hopping back down the rocks. I pause and turn around while I can see her. "Hey Maddie?"

She turns. "Think of the future. Think of Alabama. There's hope for all of us, even when we thought there was none." I linger there and eventually mutter a goodbye, heading back down past the tide pools.