-1Alex felt like everyone on the bus knew what she had done. She felt like all of their eyes were on her. She'd look back and they'd look away, but in her head, she felt like they knew. The drunk college girls on their way home. Young men with brief cases laughing. That creepy old guy who had to be homeless with the sideways grin in the last row. It was foolish, it was impossible that they knew, there was no way. Her over-hair-sprayed curls were tied back in a ponytail now. Most of the excess make up had been cried off while she threw up in the bathroom. Mel had patiently stood by and silently handed her tissues and make up remover until all of the eyeliner was gone. Bless Mel and her understanding.
Mel's sincerity didn't shake the terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. The wad of tens and twenties in the back pocket of her jeans only made her more uneasy. More obvious. It didn't comfort her the way it should.
Alex stepped off at her stop with a polite nod to the driver. He smiled at her. Shed been riding this route for years and she knew that was what his smile was all about. He was being polite and friendly. He always smiled at her. Since freshman year he smiled at her. Tonight, however, she couldn't help but wonder if the old man driving the bus knew too.
"Stop being so stupid," she sighed to herself. Instead of heading straight home, she found that her feet were pushing her towards the twenty-four hour drug store up the street. She hadn't planned on it, didn't intend for it to happen, but before she knew it, she was getting her ID back and flipping through the stack of bills for a ten to pay for the pack of cigarettes on the counter. The clerk's eyes widened at the sight of the pile of cash in Alex's hand, tucked so neatly between long fingers with long red nails.
Oh yeah. He definitely knew.
"Thanks," she rolled her eyes and pushed the glass door open and was back on the street.
She hadn't smoked in months. It was unavoidable hanging out with Jay back in the old days. More so when she was dating him. All those kids from the ravine, the guys from Montreal, everybody smoked. It was just something to do. Drink. Smoke. Fool around. She used to smoke a hell of a lot worse than cigarettes. Once she ditched Jay she'd tossed all of that aside and cut back gradually on smoking, but it still ate away at her. She was back in the habit real bad after the break up with Paige.
Fucking Paige. What the hell was the matter with that girl?
Paige didn't know she smoked. At least Alex didn't think she did. Maybe she assumed. Alex felt dead inside already after what she had done that night that a few cigarettes before she crawled back into her apartment seemed perfectly acceptable.
And necessary.
She let her backpack fall to the concrete and slowly eased herself onto the step beside it outside of her building. She took a deep drag and exhaled slowly, glancing up at the sky. She knew there would be no stars. The city was too bright. It was worth a try, though.
Alex flicked the ash off her cigarette before inhaling again. She shook her head slightly as she brought her cigarette to her lips. It still felt surreal. It was so hard to believe. A few minutes of "dancing" put half a month's rent into her Levi's and her mother's full time job was barely keeping them fed. How easily she had-
Wait a minute, easy? It was awful.
But not so awful that it wasn't worth it. Maybe.
She rested her elbows on her knees, her forehead in one hand, her half smoked butt in the other. She rubbed her eyes, pinched the bridge of her nose. She was exhausted and had to be up for school in a few short hours. She squished the cigarette out on the concrete and hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder. She slowly climbed the stairs to her apartment, praying she wouldn't run into anyone else.
"You're home awfully late," her mother said. Emily was sprawled out on the couch with a few empty beer cans on the coffee table. The TV was on, but the volume was low. She'd probably been passed out there for a while.
"Yeah. I had a table full of snotty exec types that wouldn't leave," Alex lied as she breezed through the living room. Emily didn't say anything else. Alex was actually still impressed she was getting away with the lie. Her mother had never even asked where the bistro was. Didn't want to know the name of the restaurant. "Schmancy Bistro" had been enough of an explanation so far and there had been no questions asked about the stacks of fives that wreaked of liquor. Either Emily didn't want to know or was too naive to ask. Neither would have surprised Alex.
It was nearing two o'clock and she still had hours of studying to do for her exam tomorrow. She'd been doing so well. Alex would never admit to anyone that she was actually concerned about the upcoming tests, but she didn't want to tarnish her, so far, straight A semester.
Alex slid to the floor, her back against her bed and dug through her backpack for her notebooks. Crammed between her organic chem text and her calculus binder was a black and pink lacy number she didn't need anyone at school to know she had. She stuffed it under the bed and tried to focus on the review sheets before her. It wasn't long before she'd nodded off. Not even the beeping of her cell phone telling her she had missed calls kept her up.
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Across town, Paige was wide awake. It felt like she hadn't slept at all since she'd been back in Toronto. Between several hour power lectures from her mother, the revolving door of dates, her father barely looking at her... She used to be his baby girl. Now she was his big fat failure. Dylan was gone, her friends were all a mess and she had sufficiently ruined the best relationship she had by being typically self absorbed.
She felt terrible for what she'd said to Alex. What she'd done. She knew Alex had it rough, but just how rough she could never tell, because Alex wouldn't open the hell up and tell her. She'd known things were bad back when they were just friends, casual friends even, the lowest social rung of all, work pals. When they were inseparable, dating, girlfriends, whatever they were, she knew it was worse than she could have imagined, but now this? Alex was yelling, flipping out, showing emotions for Christ's sake. Rock solid Nunez had been crying every time she and Paige had a conversation. That was probably because they almost always ended in wretchedly hurtful fights, but still.
Paige rolled over and looked at the unpacked boxes in her bedroom. Dylan's moving to Zurich had been an extremely lucky break. Another night at home alone might have done her in. Her father wasn't speaking to her, her mother couldn't STOP speaking to her, she couldn't speak without bursting into tears. She just wanted to apologize to everyone. To her family. To her friends. The entire city of Toronto, the whole great nation of Canada, in fact, the whole fucking world, tell them all she was freaking sorry already. She just couldn't do it. She couldn't be what everyone wanted.
And it sucked.
The apology that seemed most important was on hold because some pretty brunette was not answering her cell. Paige wanted to be worried about her, worried that maybe something happened and that's why she wasn't picking up, but she knew she deserved to be ignored. She was a jackass. She'd said all the wrong things, as usual. She'd done all the wrong things and made a complete moron of herself.
She dragged herself off her unmade bed and peaked into some of the opened cardboard boxes. She'd done a haphazard moving job, using the age old "grab and stuff" method. She had no idea where anything was and the box she was looking down into had shoes, some clothes, some books, her old teddy bear, a few knick knacks and what appeared to be her lap top cables. Hm. She'd been looking for those. She pulled a sweater out of a nearby box and shrugged into it, pulling open her nightstand drawer in the process. There was a pink lighter nestled perfectly by a pack of butts she'd been saving for weeks.
Banting sucked. Marketing sucked. Dorm life sucked. The only thing she enjoyed at Banting was the smoking. Everyone at Banting smoked. Most of them were ripping potheads just to keep themselves calm enough to function. Paige hated that she'd succumbed to the peer pressure of a cigarette on the steps the first weekend of class when she came storming up the stairs looking like hell. A few girls from her floor that she kind of knew and had a polite wave and smile relationship with offered one to her. She was tall and thin with long dark hair and looked annoyingly like someone Paige knew too well and taking the cigarette from her seemed like a great idea at the time, but really it was just the beginning of thousands more she'd suck down when she thought no one was looking.
Marco was going to know in no time. Ellie was going to have a field day. Right now she didn't really fucking care and quietly opened the front door. She had her cell in her pocket just incase.
