The Chickadee Girl

It Came Through the Trees

She awoke. Her clock claimed it was five thirty in the morning. She glimpsed the first light of the blue-grey dawn through the curtain, where the wooly afghan had slipped a little. Crawling out from her grotto under the desk, she listened intently, then stole into the closet like a rodent to gnaw at her stash of junk. Presently she slunk out again, and briefly debated further sleep. What else was there to do? The dream was still very much with her, and she turned to stare at the curtains again. The dawn's light must have seeped into her dream - and yet, the light under the laundry room door continued to bother her. 

For it had been a dream, no question. There was no one else here - and yet the thought of sleeping again before she had made sure didn't sit well. Quietly, she pushed the desk away from the door, poked her head around to check for threats, and then edged out into the hall. She kept her back up against the wall, and paused in each doorway, every sense alive for the smallest sound, the smallest adjustment in light. Cautiously she rounded the corner, and stared down the hall to the laundry room, where, of course, no light emanated from under the door. It had been a dream, then. She slid down on the wall and sat against it, feeling at once relieved and thoroughly disappointed. And, inconveniently, in need of a cigarette.

The cigarettes had begun at ten, with one or two snuck from Malcolm's stash in the toilet tank of his ensuite. She'd been found out, and the light beating that her brother had subsequently received from their father had been administered to punish both of them. According to her father, girls bruised more easily, and their tears were louder and more inconvenient. 

In defiance, for her twelfth birthday, Malcolm had procured her an entire carton of Benson and Hedges Gold, and she'd smoked her way into a month of grounding, and foul-smelling stained fingers. She'd largely lost her taste for nicotine after that, but every now and then the urge would present itself without warning, a bolt out of a blue sky. She berated herself for thinking of cigarettes at a time like this, but then stopped. For what exactly was a time like this, and what should she be thinking about? 

Mrs Alcott smoked. Her brain provided her this information unasked, and she had a hazy memory of Mrs Alcott out on the front stoop of the staff residence, late at night. Yes, Lucy Alcott smoked. Was she really going back inside their house again? Now, and to steal cigarettes like some pathetic mooch?

Yes, it appeared that she was, for she immediately began moving in the direction of Alcott's office. As she passed the laundry room, she kicked the door lightly with the edge of her toe, just to be sure that it was still locked. She was suddenly reminded of the door to the academic building, and she halted mid-kick, nicotine quest momentarily interrupted. What was she going to do about that? Was it even remotely possible that those heavy doors might have blown open during the night? It seemed unlikely. 

She'd deal with those next, she resolved - once she'd had a cigarette. She hadn't had a craving like this in over a year. She found herself in the Alcott's living room again, and then on their stairs, the curtains beginning to glow white with the approaching dawn. Pushing into the upstairs office (though she couldn't remember having seen any cigarettes on her last trip), she briefly tore Lucy's desk apart, and then turned her attention to the bedroom. If not in the office, than surely in the bedroom.

There was a lighter in the far bedside table, tucked away in the back of the drawer. Heartened, Isa tested the object with a flick of her index finger. A tiny flame popped up, but there were no cigarettes in sight. Eventually she located a packet buried in Lucy's underwear drawer, which was the place she really should have looked first, she though. She lit the damn thing up.  although she only knew Mrs Alcott a little, the more Isa thought about it, the more she seemed like exactly the sort of woman who hid things in her underwear drawer.