Читать книгу Tiny - Mairead Case - Страница 15

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T I N Y

Izzy looks out her window, which faces the side of Tiny’s house. On the ground in-between is glowing green lawn and cracked cement, dotted with periwinkles. There is no gate. When Tiny was little she could stand on this path with her arms out like wings and not touch either place.

Izzy can’t really see Tiny, but she knows she’s there because the roof looks like it has a hole. Everything is shiny from rain except the place where Tiny sits, mute in her black sweatshirt with the bandaged hands printed on it. Izzy remembers the summer Hank, Tiny’s boyfriend, kept asking them to smoke with him. Yes, Tiny wanted to hold orange light in her mouth, a little fire in her hand. Quick treats make you easy to find.

Izzy found pictures of lungs like burnt marshmallows. She showed them to Tiny, but that rhetoric didn’t work. Tiny already knew smoking was bad. She also knew death was inevitable. It was already her ghost. Later that summer, Tiny read an article about how smoking companies market to people in weak or vulnerable moments, and that’s when she asked Hank to cut it out. Tiny would be fine just smelling the smoke in his hair. Izzy was mostly fine with that decision too. She knows her sister is not a fire to tend.

Tiny and Izzy are not sisters by blood, but they are sisters by everything else. Their mothers shared dress-up clothes, recipes, affordable travel tips, and escape plans. Their