Lily: Part I

The first time I did it, I had just turned 18. Literally, hours before, the clock had struck midnight and it became the date of my 18th birthday.

I stayed up nearly all night. I had been grounded for the 10 preceding days after getting an alcohol citation at a party with a bunch of kids who were younger than me. Now, I would be free.

But like many nights, regardless of my freedom, I waited until my parents fell asleep and snuck out. I’d stay up on the phone or texting Wade and then after 11 or 12, when I knew they were out cold, I’d just walk down the Berber-carpeted stairs, through the mudroom and out the back door. It was too easy.

He’d always be there to pick me up at the end of the driveway in his red Chevy Cavalier, wisps of cigarette smoke streaming out the driver side window. I loved that car.

But my birthday was different. It was only sort of about him. It was mostly about me. I just wanted a ride to the Wawa so I could buy my Marlboro Milds legally, take pride in being carded, and smoke them. If it were only about me, I probably would have just driven myself, I was 18 now. But I made him do it. I wanted him with me.

I was silent when I got in the passenger seat of the Chevy. I glanced at him and he sped off down the dark road. I looked at my white farm house as we passed, set off from the two-lane highway. Everything was dark. They were still sound asleep, as usual.

“Happy birthday,” he said coolly. He was always so cool. I’ll never forget the first time he caught my attention. He’d said “What’s poppin?” Who the hell says that. I’d taken to writing down all the strange, silly things he said. I was smitten. I said I was going to write a book about him.

But on that night, I didn’t care what he said.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, sinking down lower into my seat. I cracked the window. He was smoking a Newport and even the secondhand was too harsh.

“So what you just want to get a pack of smokes and go home?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“No time to shoot the breeze?” he asked with a sideways smile. That was another one of those things he said. But we used it as code for something else.

“No.”

He had the softest lips and the best kisses of anyone I’d ever been with. I did want to shoot the breeze, but it would be too selfish.

Later, when he slowed his car gingerly to a halt at the end of my gravel driveway, he caught my arm as I clicked off my seatbelt and pulled me toward his face. He pressed his smooth lips to mine.

Smooth. That was him.

And it was too good for me to pull away. A loud sigh escaped my lips when he stopped.

“Thanks,” I said, and I got out of the car.

Back in my room, I listened to my clock tick in the silence. My clock was a black and white square, the numbers were drawn in a falling pattern, away from their otherwise steadfast positions. In the middle, it said “whatever.” I’d bought it a few months earlier and declared it to be truly me.

So this is my fucking birthday, I thought. My fucking 18th birthday. I have no right to celebrate. None. I shouldn’t have even gone to get smokes. The guilt was a crushing, suffocating weight. All I could think about was her.

That’s when I pulled out my Lily knife.