Trick.
Jina's heart thumped to a dubstep beat as she scaled the backside of the old gas station. The cracks in the cinder blocks fit her small hands and feet, and she was on the roof before gravity could drag her back into submission.
There were three mattress
(more)es piled on the west side of the abandoned building. The goal was to jump and land on them. She'd missed the purpose.
Her friends on the ground passed a bottle of MD between themselves. They needed the courage to climb up, and the sloppy padding when they fell.
With the hills that ringed their little town watching, Jina shrugged off gravity and jumped, long hair streaming.
Falling. Flying. Falling. Soaring.
Treat.
Wearing a set of floaty chiffon pajamas and smoking a cigarette in her bedroom, Jina sketched the things she'd been dreaming of. Mysterious men in fur hats. Disembodied eyes, spiral galaxies swirling out from their tear ducts. Darkened doors ajar. She smoked and drew, skin growing chilled from the early autumn air gusting through the cracked window. When her charcoal paused in it's shuffle across the paper, she heard bass bumping next door. She switched off the dim lamp beside her bed and went to the window, laying her head sideways to listen. Two boys stood smoking on the back porch, just visible from behind her filmy, incense-stained curtains.
"What a trick. Wouldn't even look at me after I shared my last pack of cigarettes with her. Next time, I got her number."
"She jumped first. That was pretty badass."
"Just a showoff bitch."
"Yeah, well, next time."
They laughed and Jina heard a screen door open and close like parentheses. She grabbed her sketchbook and another cigarette from her nightstand, and drew the mysterious man's hands - empty, waiting, open. (less)
