(An 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?' story that focuses on character development instead of trying to spew out a poorly constructed ghost story in two Word document pages? What was I thinking? Oh, my. Well, besides being ashamed, among other things, I suppose I could apologize in advance... But I don't think I will.)
Smoking
by BadMoonlight
It was an unusually warm night for autumn. They were sitting on the Marcello family's porch steps in silence, not really talking. His parents had Phantom tickets for the umpteenth time; hers were gone for the entire weekend, visiting a sick aunt in Vancouver.
It wasn't too unusual - they were next-door neighbors, after all - but it still felt a little wrong to Josh to be spending so much time alone lately with his best friend's little sister.
It's only wrong if you're feeling guilty about something, cried a traitorous voice in the back of his head.
Great. To top things off, he was going psycho, as well. Being trapped in a haunted funhouse at twelve would do that to a person, he supposed. With an insane, cigar-smoking clown, no less, even if it had happened nearly five years ago.
Wait -- smoke --
He glanced up in surprise as Kathy lit a cigarette with careful concentration. After taking a long drag and closing her eyes in satisfaction, she slowly opened them, noticing his shocked expression.
"What?" she asked, puzzled.
Once upon a time, he would have laughed at her, or threatened to tell Weegee, or worse yet, her mother. But this wasn't middle school. They weren't running around anymore, tickling and screaming and daring the other to explore haunted funhouses alone.
"Smoke..." he murmured hoarsely, swallowed the growing lump in his throat, then had to start over again. "Smoking's..."
"...bad for your health," she finished with a coolly amused smile.
She remembered.
She held out the box to him, her bangle bracelets glistening in the porch light.
With one shaky hand, his fingers finally caught and grasped a cigarette. One word came to mind as he silently studied it. Perfect. It was just... perfect. He thought of nothing else as she leaned close, struck a match, and let the flickering fire illuminate the shadows and contours of her face for a moment.
" Would you like a light?"
(Um. Well, if you've seen this episode recently, you can't really say that this concept is out of nowhere. They were middle-schoolers, for God's sake -- kids that age aren't supposed to run around tickling each other like morons, unless they're trying to hide something. Or unless Josh was really a bigger idiot than they portrayed him as. Also: I like weird, rare pairings... haha, as if you hadn't figured that out by now.
Seriously, though. Review or something, flame, I don't care. Feedback is always nice.)
