“Yeah,” Lena said. “But we’ve got time to light another one.”
Confiscate This
“Sit down,” Lena said, not as an order, but as a plea. PervMom.21.05.16.Bianka.Blue.Confiscate.This.XX...
They sat on the top step of the staircase, the candle between them. Rain lashed the windows.
The grandfather clock in the hallway struck midnight, its chime swallowed by the thick silence of the suburban house. Bianka Blue, eighteen and terminally bored, leaned against her bedroom doorframe, arms crossed. In her right hand, she held a sleek, black vape pen—the size of a finger, the guilt of a felony. “Yeah,” Lena said
“Hand it over,” Lena said, her voice low, calm, and sharp as a scalpel.
“Why do you do it?” Lena asked, turning the vape over in her fingers. “The sneaking. The attitude. The constant… war.” Rain lashed the windows
“No. You didn’t. Because I didn’t want you to. I wanted to be the mean one. The one you hate. Because hate is easier than grief.” Lena set the vape pen between them on the step. “So go ahead. Take it back. Tell me to confiscate this. And I will. But I’ll also sit here until dawn, because I’m not losing you to a cloud of smoke.”
Lena nodded slowly. “Fair. But I confiscate this stuff because I found my own mother dead of an overdose when I was sixteen. It was a different drug, but the same stupid, shiny little object in her hand.” She held up the vape. “So when I see you with this, I don’t see a rebellious teen. I see a body on a bathroom floor.”