"Why is your name Carl?" She never could understand why Taiwanese would pick a phony English name. It just didn't make sense. Americans should learn to call us by who we really are, she thought indigently.
"My first love, her name's Carol. It's close to that, and I wanna be a part of her." He let out a stream of smoke.
"That's sic." She hated the thought of someone being a part of her, forever. Some girls might have thought that was sweet, she thought it was sweet too, cloyingly sweet, like when men tattooed heart Anny on their arm or something.
"Then don't call me that. Your English name's Jenny, isn't it?" He looked at her through the corner of his eye. Through the smoke. Through the yellowish night lamp that the school would light up after ten.
"Don't call me that. It's not for you to call. And I won't call you Carl."
"Fine, whatever." His conversations always had a few whatevers and I don't cares stitched into them.
She didn't like them, those whatevers and I don't cares. They were always like blotches that stained their conversations. They were like a nailed up door, abruptly stopping her.
They were sitting on the steps beside the track. It was late and it had just started to get chilly in Taiwan. The wind blew his cigarette smoke away by sections. The closest part would cling and swirl around him, making him look like some mafia gangster in his territory. The farthest would blow towards her, giving the air just a hint of second hand smoke.
"You wanna try?" He raised his brow and tilted the cigarette.
She held the cigarette between her fingers, seeing how it gave off a coal red glow and how the ashes would stay on the end if you didn't tap if off.
She looked at the cigarette, thinking how years of education told her how horrible it would be for her and how she would die with cancer eaten lungs.
It wasn't peer pressure. If there had been she probably would have crushed it under her heal and walked away scornfully.
But there wasn't, and she was curious.
She brought it up and sniffed it. She was surprised that it didn't give off the slightly nauseating smell that smoke in the air gave off. The cigarette held close gave off an entirely different scent. It was fuller and denser, somehow.
She held it up and inhaled. She could feel the smoke go down and fill her lungs. The smoke seemed to announce it's way down her esophagus. It's presence was hot with a peppery hint in it and charred a bit when going down.
She was surprised. It was the kind of sensation that she thought she could like if she had the chance.
Too bad she wasn't a smoking kind of person and addiction was too heavy a price to pay for her.
She hated being addicted to anything. She hated relying. Or maybe it was just that the years of education had brainwashed her successfully.
She handed him back the cigarette, noticing how the tobacco lingered on her fingers. It was the kind of scent that mixed itself naturally with the scent of tea and warm porcelain and wood.
He started talking, about how his first love is now with his best friend, about how his summer in the states, about how he had accidentally almost fell in love.
"I told her I was leaving, and that we probably wouldn't meet again. I was hoping for her to come, that night. I waited off half the night. I had given up a bit. I was tired and wanted to go to bed."
"No, you were just waiting for her weren't you? You know she would come."
"Maybe. She came in the end. We were making out and she suddenly slide onto me. "
"So you think you were raped."
"Probably, it was all very sudden."
"Liar"
He had finished the cigarette and had taken out another to play with.
"I cried in the airport. My plane kept on delaying and I didn't want to leave.
I wanted to stay."
"You didn't fall in love with her, you fell in love with your life abroad." She was looking at the stars. It was one of the good things about her school, the stars. The didn't shine bright or anything, the gave off a dime glow, the kind that made her wonder whether they were really there. She had started tracing them into geometric shapes, triangles and stuff. The Greeks must have been bored to hell to have been able to see so much from such a mess.
"But she was a part of that."
He changed the subject. He started joking about how she should meet a friend of his. He was tall and gorgeous, the kind that girls would just stop and ask for his number, the kind that worked at Starbucks and had a fan base.
She was only half interested. She had adopted a star. It was in every one of the geometric shapes she traced out.
He started talking about how he saw him sitting alone on the bleachers that day, crying. He had walked over and asked him if his dog had died or something. He had told him that it wasn't his dog.
It was his dad.
They couldn't find him.
He told him not to worry, that hadn't this happened before?
He told him that he had a bad feeling this time.
The day afterwards, outside the research building, he got a call.
"They've found him!" he told them, laughing.
His laughter started to mingle with hot tears.
They hauled him aside and they mourned together, like a pack of wolves howling into the gleaming night moon.
"People die.
That's the only thing all of us will do right, sooner or latter in life." she said lightly, still gazing at the caotic heavens.
"Not in that way."
His dad had hanged himself.
His dad had been gorgeous too.
Her star had blended in with the trillions of billions of other stars in the sky. She couldn't tell which was her's anymore.
