CHAPTER ONE:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was addicted to tobacco, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time lighting up, never cleaned out my ashtray, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about the smoking cigarettes.

Whenever you read a smoking support group booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of quitting. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of quitting tobacco. Depression is a side effect of literally dying to death from not smoking cigarettes. (Death is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my gym coach who agreed that I was swimming in a debilitating state of clinical asthma, and that therefore my cigarette intake should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Stop Smoking Support Group.

This Stop Smoking Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of nicotine-driven addiction. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of not wanting to come.

The Stop Smoking Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a pair of lungs. We all sat in an oval, the exact shape of a cigar, where the two organs would have met, where the lungs of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Pattywhack, the Stop Smoking Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen who could buy cigarettes, talked about the lungs of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young tobacco survivors, were sitting right in Christ's very sacred chest cavity and whatever.

So here's how it went in God's lungs: The six or seven or ten of us wheezed/hacked/sputtered in, turned in our cartons, and sat down in the Circle of Misery, and listened to Pattywhack recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he got cancer so bad his balls fell off and his wife left him, taking the car, the dog, and his cigarettes with her.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO UNLUCKY!

Then we introduced ourselves. Name. Age. Brand. And how we're doing today. I'm Hazy, I'd say when they'd get to me. Sixteen. Marlboro Red 100s in the box Special Blend. And I'm just swell.

Once we got around the circle, Pattywhack always asked if anyone wanted to share.

To my disappointment, he didn't mean cigarettes.

The only redeeming facet of the Stop Smoking Support Group was this blind kid named Eyesquit who remained permanently unable to see thanks to the cloud of smoke that constantly surrounded his face. Oh, and he was blind.

Eyesquit and I communicated almost exclusively through inhales and exhales. Each time someone talked about anti smoking diets or nicotine patches or whatever, he'd glance over at me and make a noise as though he was inhaling a cigarette. I'd tap my pack of cigarettes in my pocket and exhale in response.

So the Stop Smoking Support Group blew by like a cigarette getting put out by the wind, and after a few weeks, I grew rather sick of withdraws. In fact, on the Wednesday I made the acquaintance of Puffgustus, I tried my level best to get out of the Stop Smoking Support Group while sitting on a couch with my mom on my third cigarette of a twelve hour marathon of the previous season's 19 Cigarettes and Counting, which admittedly I had already seen, but still.

Me: "I refuse to attend the Stop Smoking Support Group. Can you just let me watch 19 Cigarettes and Counting? I've only smoked two packs today."

Mom: "I'll give you ten bucks."

Me: "Can I use the money to buy cigarettes?"

Mom: "Hazel you deserve a life."

I thought of the possibility of not getting cigarettes so I would look super sad. Then I puffed out my bottom lip so she'd feel sorry for me.

Mom: "No."

Me: "What about Vapes?"

Mom: "Fine. I'll let you vape, but no more cancer sticks."

Me: ERMAGHEERRRDD MUUUUMMMM. Don't call them cancer sticks! Someone might get offended!

Mom: Snowflakes gonna snowflake.

After we'd gotten my new Vapes, I was a changed smoker. No more smoking for me, I vowed. It was all smoke under the bridge. I went to the Stop Smoking Support Group with a spring in my step. Mom pulled into the lung shaped driveway behind the church at 4:20. I smoked my new Cotton Candy vapor to kill time.

I didn't want to take the elevator because taking the elevator smelled like smoke and I was a changed addict so I took the stairs. I grabbed a suspicious looking cookie and poured some "punch" into a Red Solo Cup and then turned around.

A boy was staring at me.

I was quite sure I'd never seen him before. Thin haired with barely any muscles, his body folded into the plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in like a cigarette that had been scrunched up on the sidewalk. Bristled hair, straight and short. He looked ten years older than he actually was and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, biting his nail, palms weak, arms heavy, mom's spaghetti.

Was someone paying Eminem?

I looked away, suddenly conscious of the Vapes in my pocket. I was wearing some old jeans I had wrestled off a homeless man, a yellow T-shirt advertising a vintage grunge band I didn't listen to, a smirk of obscure satisfaction, and a beanie, even though it was well over 100 degrees outside but it made me look cool so idk whateva. Furthermore, I had ridiculously sunken cheeks, a side effect of smoking. I looked like a Syrian refugee. And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.

It occurred to me that the session was starting. I walked into the circle and sat down next to Eyesquit, two seats away from the boy. I glanced again. He was still watching me.

I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:20. My phone was broke so it always displayed the same time. But I figured if I kept checking it, it'd have to be right eventually.

The circle filled in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Pattywhack started us out with the smoke addict's prayer: God, grant me the willpower to stop smoking, the courage to avoid peer pressure, and the wisdom to know was generally a bad idea to start this disgusting habit in the first place.

The guy was still staring at me.

I drumed my hands on Eyesquit's head.

I needed a cigarette.

Pattywhack talked some more and then finally it was time for the introductions.

"Eyesquit, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time."

"Yeah," Eyesquit said, putting out his cigarette and fanning the haze out in front of him. "I'm Eyesquit. I'm seventeen. I smoke menthols and it looks like I'm still blind. But a lot of people have it worse. I mean, some people can't even afford cigarettes. My girlfriend helps, though. Like when I'm driving she'll scream, "Dear God, dear God, you're going to kill us!" so we don't end up crashing. And my friend Puffgustus doesn't trip me down the stairs as much."

"We're here for you," Pattywhack said gently placing him into a sleeping hold, as he wrestled his carton of cigarettes from him.

When it was Puffgustus' turn, he smiled a little. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. As though he were a cigarette himself. "My name is Puffgustus," he said. "And I'm a chain smoker."

"And how are your lungs?" asked Pattywhack.

"Oh, they're grand." Puffgustus said sarcastically. "I'm on a unhealthy spiral of deterioration that only goes down my friend."

When it was my turn, I said, "My name is Hazy. I'm sixteen. I used to smoke Marlboro and I've been sober for 52 minutes."

The hour proceeded slowly, like the drag of a cool, pepperment menthol. We talked about withdraws, cravings, and anger; it was agreed friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; more cigarettes were confiscated, but luckily my Vapes remained safe in my wool hat. Though it had begun to stick to my head with the rising humidity.

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the Stop Smoking Support

Neither Puffgustus nor I spoke again until Pattywhack said, "Puffgustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?"

"Yes."

"I fear a world without cigarettes," he said without a moment's pause.

"Would you care to expand on that?" Pattywhack pressed.

"It would be a drag."

Eyesquit snickered.

Pattywhack seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"

I hadn't had a proper cigarette in fifty two million eons so my right eye was twitching a little more than it should, but just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Pattywhack nodded at me to go ahead.

I looked over at Puffgustus, who looked back at me. You could almost picture smoke through his eyes they were so gray. "There will come a time," I said, "when all the cigarettes are gone. All of them. There will come a time when there are no smoke breaks, no tobacco plants, no lighters. There will be no one left to sell carcinogens to Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen, let alone you. Everything we smoked and inhaled and exhaled will be forgotten and all of this"—I fanned the remaining cloud of Eyesquit's smoke into my nose—"will have been for naught. Maybe the time where cigarettes are gone is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of the tobacco industry, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced nicotine, and there will be a time after. And if the inevitability of withdraws worries you, I encourage you to start vaping. God knows that's what everyone else does."

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the Stop Smoking Support Group. At the end, we all had to hold hands, although I could feel Eyesquit's arm roaming in my pockets for stray cigarettes, and Pattywhack led us in a prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ," we are gathered here in Your lungs, literally in Your lungs, as nicotine survivors. Guide us to life and Light, but never lighters. May your lungs be with us through times of relapse and strife..."

When Pattywhack was finished and turned his back, we all went back to —DYING FROM WITHDRAWS— and it was over. Puffgustus pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to me. I didn't want to make contact, lest I see the withdraw evident in his eyes. It was too hard, coming face to face with what I might've been if I hadn't been saved by the burning coil of water vapor in my pocket.

"Hey," the boy said, pointing to his shirt pocket. "My cigarettes are up here."

I met his eyes, unable to avoid it.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Hazy."

"What's your middle name?"

"Vapes."

"You're just blowin' smoke," he said. "Get out, is that really your name?"

"My parents went to Woodstock."

"I see," Puffgustus said. "Hazy Vapes. I like it. "

"What are you doing?" I asked, watching him take a hidden pack of cigarettes from his sock and a lighter.

"I'm smoking. Because smoking is fun. I enjoy doing fun things, and I decided like five seconds ago not to deny myself the simple pleasures of doing what I want."

"Then why are you trying to stop smoking?"

"My parents want me to quit. They don't want me to grow up to be chainsmokers like them. Too late," he said, flicking his lighter against the end. He flipped his brittle hair. "I'm a lost cause."

"No," I said. "I refuse to believe that."

"It's true. I smoke like a chimney. I can't go five seconds without lighting up."

"Well what if I help you quit?"

"You would do that?"

"Sure. We've known each other at least five minutes. Why wouldn't I?"

He nodded. "True enough Hazy Vapes."

"The it's settled," I said. "From now on, I vow to keep these away from you," I said. "Now, for our first order of business: dispose of these lung darts in the trash can."

Puffgustus walked down the stairs reluctantly, throwing his cigarette in a nearby garbage can which set off the smoke alarms in the lobby.

"What did you do?" I said to him, trying to fan the flames with my jacket. Puffgustus was standing there, inhaling the brushfire like a lifeline. It was that moment that Pattywhack walked through the door. Pattywhack screamed.

"THE LUNGS OF JESUS ARE ON FIRE! THE LUNGS OF JESUS ARE ON FIYAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! SOMEONE HELP!"

I grabbed Puffgustus's hand and told him to run. We made a break for it, as Pattywhack reached for the fire extinguisher, and as I looked back at the literal lungs of Jesus, for one small moment, they almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

Me and Puff made our way out to the parking lot. Mom wasn't there yet, which wasn't unusual because she was probably still looking for my hidden stash of cigarettes. I glanced around and saw Eyesquit and a girl making out against the church wall, which he usually did on account of the fact she sang so horribly. That's how he had started up, he hated the sound of her voice he literally convinced her to take up smoking so she wouldn't. "See I'm doing it too," he had said to her one day. On hit was all it took.

Puffgustus reached for the cigarettes in his pocket and I slapped his hand away. "No," I told him. "From now on we're going cold turkey. Hand them over."

Without looking at me Puffgustus said, "You're killing my vibe here, Hazy Vapes. It's literally been one whole minute since I had one."

"Oh my God. You think it makes you look cool."

Puffgustus turned up the collar of his leather jacket, spurring his lighter to life. He even puffed out his bottom lip for good measure. "I don't know what you mean," he scoffed, ruffling his hair as he did so.

I slapped the cigarette out of his hand before he could light them. "NO," I said. "I promised you I would help you quit and I will not break that vow."

I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger welling up inside of me, rising and rising like the exhaust of a cigarette. I didn't even know what the feeling was, really, just that there was a lot of it smoldering inside of me, and I wanted to pick up Puffgustus' cigarettes and smoke them for myself. But I couldn't. I had to be strong for Puffgustus. We would stay sober together.

I felt a hand grab mine.

"They don't kill you unless you smoke them but somehow, even if it's not good for you, you somehow convince yourself you're doing the right thing. It's denial, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, light it, and keep telling yourself it's not going to kill you one day. But it will, Hazy. It will kill me. Please. I can't do this without you."

"Very well," I said. "Let me just tell my mom where I'll be." I tapped my mom's car window. "Mom, I'm running off with a boy I just met. Be back later. Kay. Bye!"