She enjoyed the smell of cigarettes. Lilies, candles, and freshly baked pies simply couldn't compare. She would close her eyes and inhale the lit tobacco, breathing it in, allowing it to consume her lungs. Her parents told her it was a disgusting habit. They also told her that marriage was forever.
Faith sat on the floor of her new bedroom of her new house. It was a nice house, she had to admit. But it wasn't her house. It wasn't her family's house that she had grown up in, grown accustomed to, fallen in love with. This new house was strange and unfamiliar. She didn't know which floor boards would creak when she stepped on them. She had to think about which direction the door swung open before reaching for the handle. The locks were difficult to close. The kitchen cabinets smelt weird. And most notable of all, when she looked out the window, she did not recognize a single thing.
In her old bedroom, she had a view of the backyard. They had an in-ground pool and a garden and a trellis with ivory that climbed the side of the house. She would close her eyes at night and listen for the pebbles hitting her window, only to rush out of bed and find Sebastian scaling her house. She'd open the window and let him inside. He'd always bring her something, whether it was dandelions he picked on the way, or freshly baked cookies from his mother's pantry. He'd smell of peppermint and she would bring his face to hers and inhale him all at once, her mouth on his. But when she looked out this window, Sebastian wouldn't be there.
Faith got into the habit of smoking cigarettes when she was fourteen. She had just started secondary school and was trying to discover who she was. As though smoking tobacco would somehow unveil some mystified characteristics she never knew. But the smoking didn't reveal anything. It only made things worse. Well, not necessarily worse. But she easily became addicted. She was always leaving class to go outside and light up a cigarette. She constantly carried packs of gum on her so that her breath wouldn't be tainted of raw staleness. She looked in the mirror daily, examining her teeth, heart pounding through her chest in fear that her gorgeous pearly whites would turn grey and dull.
She was fifteen when she finally decided to quit. Although, her replacement habit wasn't much better. Albeit, the health effects of marijuana have proven non-lethal, and even medicinal. No one had ever died from smoking weed. And the high was psychedelic. It made her feel powerful, as though she could do anything. So she packed her greens and stored her papers and miniature bong in the closet. It was better than cigarettes, she told herself.
Faith moved towards the open boxes that sat on her floor and began pulling things out. She never realized how much stuff she truly owned until she had to pack it all away into boxes. She wondered what her father was doing right now. Was he all settled into his new apartment in the city? Was it a bachelor pad? A high-rise? Did he have a balcony? Was he lonely?
The decision was a difficult one for Faith and Mike. But in all honesty, it wasn't theirs to make. Their parents had already decided for them, conversing in secrecy before the conversation of divorce had even taken place. Meadow would be best for them, William had told his wife. There was a school. And churches! How could anyone forget the churches? And it was a peaceful, quaint town with a zero percent crime rate and a stunning lake that kept the kids busy all summer. The city was no place for teenagers, William said to Claudia. They needed somewhere stable. They needed a home. Claudia agreed. So while they posed the question as if it were up to Faith and Mike to decide, their fates were already sealed.
Faith didn't mind all that much. She despised both of her parents equally at this point and didn't quite care which prison she ended up in. To her, it was a death sentence either way. So she accepted her fate and did so with indifference. She would hurry through the next year of her life until she graduated from high school, turned eighteen, and could move out and be on her own for the first time. Mike was turning eighteen this November and she envied him greatly. He had just finished his final year of high school, but would be taking a 'victory lap', as they called it, to raise his grades. Which meant that come September, both of them would be starting school at Meadow Secondary. He had a head start on her. He'd be eighteen, free to do whatever he pleased. Although, knowing her brother, he would be too lazy to find a job straight after he graduated. He would probably sponge off his parents for as long as he possibly could before saving up enough cash of his own and finally moving out. And with Mike gone, it really would be hell.
The relationship between Faith and her mother was strained. But it wasn't just because of the divorce. It had been that way ever since Faith became a teenager and began to rebel and fight with her mother every chance that she got. It appalled Faith sometimes, the way she found herself behaving, as though she couldn't control it. Hormones, her father had once said, and Faith snapped at him. But perhaps he was right. Perhaps it was just hormones. That notion was better than the alternative. Faith had known for a long time that there was something inherently wrong with her, right down to the DNA that coursed through her veins. She was fucked up, she knew that. But were all teenagers this bad, or was it only her?
She preferred to talk to no one. No one except Sebastian, that is. Because what other option did she have? Most of the girls in her classes were preppy, enthusiastic, and predictable. They wore pink and joined the cheer squad. The loved make-up and talked about boys. They lived for the weekends where they could sneak away from their parent's house and let loose, hiking up their catholic school skirts and kissing boys without discretion. Good girls gone bad, Faith would say. And come Monday morning, they'd be sitting in class, whispered giggles about it all. Faith rolled her eyes and made gagging sounds. The girls hated her, and she hated them right back.
There was some part deep inside of her that wondered if she was making a mistake. If pushing away the only people who she could truly resonate with was the wrong thing to do. After all, they were girls. She was a girl. You were supposed to get along with your fellow girls. Girl power! Right?
Wrong. She tried, once, being friends with them. But as she stood there listening to them talk and go on about their tedious lives, she felt a quiver go through her body and had to leave. Sebastian would later laugh at her and tell her that she was anti-female. Faith couldn't help but agree.
Could her mommy-issues stem from some deep hatred towards women? Was Faith subconsciously a misogynist? She didn't want to be a woman-hater, but that's the way things were turning out. It wasn't necessarily that girls did anything wrong. It was, more likely, that Faith was rejecting their girlhood out of fear. Fear of herself. Fear of never being good enough. Fear of never quite keeping up with the girls and their squads. The gossip and the lipstick and the self-loathing and the confidence. She hated it all. But did she secretly long for it?
She grabbed another box and began tossing things onto the floor. Books, school work, stationary. Glass jars, candles, picture frames. She hadn't even bothered wrapping the glass in bubble-wrap. One of the candle jars had cracked in transit. She threw it in the new garbage bin that sat in the corner of her room. Beside her new wooden desk, and her new mahogany dresser. Fuck new, she thought. She hated new.
Just then there was a knock at her door. It was her mother, of course. Mike didn't knock on doors.
"What," Faith said, not moving from her spot on the floor.
The door opened slightly. Claudia poked her head in, seeking permission. Then, as if suddenly realizing that permission is what she'd never gain, on top of the fact that she didn't need permission from her sixteen-year-old daughter to enter her bedroom, she opened the door fully.
"How are you?" Claudia asked, leaning against the door-frame, observing her daughter.
"Awful. Yourself?"
It had been three weeks since their conversation on June third. Faith and Mike had finished off the school year in Georgetown, and then that very weekend after it was all over and exams had been written, they packed up and left like it was nothing.
What's the rush? Faith had asked. She never got a clear or definitive answer. The next thing she knew, she was being ushered out the front door and into her mother's car, the moving truck looming behind in the distance. She placed the palm of her hand on the window melodramatically, pretending she was in some tragic movie, a dreary soundtrack playing in the background of her mind. She watched her house grow smaller as the car legged on, staring at it, memorizing, imprinting it into her brain. She would come back to visit, she told herself. She would never let her home become just a distant memory.
Perhaps Meadow wouldn't be so bad after all. She could find a part-time job. Keep herself busy with her drawings. Maybe she could even take up dance lessons. Or go to yoga or meditation. And besides, Sebastian promised to drive out and see her as often as he could. He would make it all better. The only talisman she had in her life. The one good thing that kept her life balanced. Because if it wasn't for Sebastian, she didn't even want to think about where she'd be.
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