I looked at the girl in front of me, pulling a cigarette from her Marlboro carton and sticking it in her mouth. I offered her my lighter and she took it, eyeing me suspiciously. She lit up, smoke blowing from her nostrils as she tossed my Zippo back into my lap.
"Why the hell do you have a lighter?" She questioned from her perch in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest and hair falling into her face.
I toyed with the spoken fire maker, opening and closing the lid with my thumb, the clink and the smell of gas filling the air.
"Just something to play with, I guess."
She nodded and took the cigarette from between her lips, blowing out a cloud of smoke and letting out a hollow chuckle. I could tell she was just trying to stall, so I gave her an impatient glare as she flicked the tiniest bit of ash onto the floor.
"So, you really want to know?"
I nodded and sat back to wait, the room with the peeling walls and stale stench falling into an uncomfortable silence. After what seemed like an eternity, she spoke, smoke flowing from her mouth with every syllable.
"There is a hierarchy in every element of life, even in a thing as low as elementary school. It only takes a first impression with the higher beings of this hierarchy to damn you for life."
I watched as she let out another hollow sound, then the flicking of some more ash.
"If you can't already tell, I am one of the damned. I don't know what I did to anger the playschool gods, I stepped on a caterpillar once, perhaps that's it, but somehow I get the feeling I'll never know. I do know, however, that every day was hell. There were the people who acted like you were invisible. These were the few people that I liked, which tells you how shitty the situation was."
There was a pause as she took another long drag, her eyes clenching shut as if her story was beginning to pain her.
"Then, there were the people who acted as though your air wasn't as good as theirs. The ones that hated you for breathing, couldn't look at you without commenting on your ugly appearance, or your slowed thinking process. The banes of my very existence."
She began to pick at a frayed patch on her knee. She stopped talking, a distant look in her eyes as she became trapped in her memories.
When she spoke again, her voice had become emotionless, distant. "There was another group, the worst one, I'd say. They were the ones that would watch the stones being thrown, listen to the taunts being chanted, and then look at you, huddled on the ground and bleeding, with pity in their eyes. The kind that would find you alone later and ask you if you were okay. I don't think they realized that asking about it just tore open the wound, reminded you of everything that hurt."
Another drag and puff of smoke, and she pulled on a thread that she had worked loose from her jeans.
"When you deal with that kind of thing, every day, and cry yourself to sleep every night…damage is done. Your heart breaks in new ways, your soul is ripped into little pieces, you die inside. You can't just decide not to care, you know. No matter what they tell you, every snide comment kills you a little more, sends you closer to the edge."
By now, she had smoked her cigarette to the filter, and she crushed the butt against the wall, leaving behind a patch of burned wallpaper.
"One learns to pretend, because being sent to the counselor for crying in the bathroom gets repetitive and boring. You wake up each morning and smile at your mother, as though she isn't sending you off to hell, you smile at the teachers who glance your way. You act as though the voice that calls you a slut or a bitch, tells you that you're ugly and stupid, doesn't cut you like a knife and ring in your ears like a bell. You hear people talking about you as though you can't hear them. After a few years, you perfect the craft of nonchalance…you get used to it."
She stopped, and at long last, I saw a flicker of emotion, pain, flitter across her face, before the mask came back, and she was ice once again.
"So it stops hurting."
Her voice was like a whip, while still lacking feeling. "No. It never stops hurting. You taste it every second of every day, but you just get used to it. Sad, really. Pain isn't something you should ever get used to."
I acknowledged my scolding and motioned for her to continue. I saw the slightest bit of annoyance.
"Well, now you know why I'm a bitch. When you go to school every day for ten years and hear about how low, stupid, ugly, and foolish you are, and come home just to hear your sisters and brothers tell you that not only is it true, but well deserved, shit happens. Your heart goes cold, you stop trusting people, you hold back in caring for people. If you care, you just hurt, and I've had my share of hurt."
"I understand."
Suddenly, there was anger in her voice, her eyes narrowed and she tensed, her voice dripping with venom.
"No, you don't. Once you've dealt with eleven years of emotional abuse, once you have lain in a defeated heap on the floor, tears streaming down your face as you try and assure yourself that you are loved, just so you won't end it, once you've done that, then you can come and tell me that you understand."
I was stunned as she pulled herself from the floor and stalked from the room, her pack of Marlboro's creating a bulge in her back pocket, and her shoes clapping on the floor.
A minute later, I stood up and dusted myself off, taking a deep breath of the musty air that now had a strong smell of cigarette smoke. I glanced towards the door that she just exited from, the shock of her departure still with me.
"I'm sorry life couldn't be better for you."
Then I grabbed my jacket, shrugged it on, and walked out the door.