Don't Sleep With the Drummer

♤ 3. Kayla ♤

Kayla picked up cigarette smoking after her father, and only after she quit marijuana. You could tell, with the way she struggled to hold a filter, that she was a novice. She wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn, classic and beautiful, when holding the cancer stick, but she failed to appear palatable to the eyes.

Her mascara was running, her hair a fuzzy mess, and the left hand kept hitting the box of smokes in her pocket like some tweak. She, to her own belief, looked like a drug addict slumped behind the dumpsters.

Her father was inside the building she was avoiding entering. She was scheduled to see him. Scheduled, she laughed.

It was a travesty the condition he had put her mental health through. Both her mother and father manipulated when they disclosed that the individuals she thought were her parents weren't her parents at all. 

"You're adopted," her mother said after picking her up from Exodus. "You father is your uncle, and I'm actually your aunt."

Kayla was back to square one—wanting to kill every living thing in her vicinity.

Starting with her lungs.

She puffed from her cigarette one final time before tossing it into a ditch, watching it catch on to a stream coming out from under the dumpsters. The crush filter sailed for a short moment before stopping at the edge of the street, slouching on its side and then finally dipping into the sewage pipelines Kayla was sure went straight to the oceans.

One point for being a terrible citizen, she chimed. Two points for damaging my lungs.

Kayla found humor in the little game she had made for herself. A street cleaning truck hissed past her, whooshing her hair in her face. She could smell the lavender shampoo she had used this morning waft in her nostrils. It was a nice break from the harsh stench of the tobacco smoke.

The receptionist greeted Kayla, but she didn't pay her much mind besides lulling her head and waving three fingers in her direction. Her head was dizzy from the cigarettes. This was something that drew her to the drug, wanting it more than the last time. She didn't get cotton mouth like she did with weed, it didn't smell as intense, and the scent faded faster.

Kayla's phone buzzed, and from her sister, she got a text message that plainly stated their relationship.

"You're cancelled bitch," it had said, "be ready to pack up your shit and live with that creepy ass dude you call a father. I can't wait for you to fucking leave."

Kayla's parents had not separated, or well, now they were her aunt and uncle. Her biological dad was the one her sister was referring to, being a bachelor of some sort that was well known in the city of Los Angeles. He left her mother high and dry at after the third trimester, leaving the child with her sister once she had given birth. The whereabouts of her mother was a mystery.

It was sad, really, that Kayla had a famous father, perhaps more famous than anyone else in the zip code they lived miles outside of Los Angeles, and she had never had the chance to see a glimpse of him until today.

Hitting the base of her hand to her left, again, out of habit. She inhaled slowly and opened the door that would lead her into her father's office.

That school, she sang to herself like a lullaby that needed no melody, if I can get into that school...then I don't care where I have to live.