"Whoa, I don't feel good," Hannah said in an unsteady tone.
"Yeah, these cigarettes are pretty strong for someone who has never smoked before, you should probably call it, or you might get sick," Sienna cautioned reasonably.
I wondered if that threshold had already been passed, as the typically pale redhead's face had gone pallid. She didn't protest or even respond; she just went to stamp out the cigarette in the ashtray with a shaky hand. Sienna caught her, however, and reached out her right hand to intercept her. This startled Hannah, who almost dropped the cigarette onto the couch in surprise.
"Just don't want to waste it, here, I'll take it," Sienna offered.
Hannah appeared a little bit bewildered as she looked at Sienna and the less than half-smoked cigarette already burning in her left hand.
"But you already have one," she said.
"So? I smoke like two packs a day, Han, I just want the nicotine at this point," she said through a crooked grin.
I knew from my snooping that Sienna had been smoking far more than two packs per day, and wondered if she even realized how torrid her smoking pace had become recently or if she was simply downplaying it, so she didn't appear to be a lunatic to her younger sister.
"Oh," was all Hannah had to say as she allowed Sienna to take the cigarette.
She watched Sienna power through three successive drags with a curious look on her face, Sienna's monstrous pulls and successive lung-filling inhalations illustrating a deep biological addiction that was hard to miss. I wondered what kind of impression this was having on Hannah, who perhaps was coming to realize the implications of her experimentation. The look on her face gave very little away, unfortunately, and I couldn't tell if she was aghast or intrigued.
Sienna didn't seem to notice or care and stubbed out the spent butt unceremoniously while exhaling a thick stream from her pouty lips. The smoke had not even finished trailing out of her lips and nose before she was taking another drag on her remaining cigarette, and I hazarded a guess that it would be followed by several more in succession after witnessing her restraint during the previous half-hour. At this point, with all three women sparking up one after the other, it was smokier than a poolhall from the 80's.
The waning light that filtered through the drawn curtain illuminated a stagnant haze of light blue that clung to the air obstinately, constantly receiving reinforcements from the three women who continued to saturate their nicotine starved lungs. Hannah seemed to break out of her trance of watching Sienna smoke with ravenous hunger and took a long, slow, deep breath.
"Feeling better?" Sienna asked.
"Yeah, I was getting light-headed and queasy. But I must've stopped at the right time because as soon as I stopped it started going away," she explained.
"Good, at least you tried it. Now you can say you used your freedom as an 18-year-old to live a little before you go back to being Ben and Julia's perfect little angel," Sienna said.
Despite the potential harshness of her words, her tone made them sound more lamenting than biting. I got the impression that she was actually trying to guilt Hannah into becoming her partner in rebellion rather than trying to shame her for being prudish. It was a masterful ploy, and her innate manipulative instincts seemed to be as finely tuned as her mother's. I shuddered to think how many times she had turned those powers on me to get her way. A great many if I were to guess, although I wasn't complaining.
"Yeah," Hannah said with a dejected tone.
It seemed Sienna's attempt to create confliction within Hannah was working, as her words had deftly avoided provoking defensiveness in favor of self-questioning contemplation. The influence Sienna had on Hannah was so strong and unmistakable that it was no wonder that she had been able to essentially invalidate any of her reservations on-route to total manipulation.
It was a staggering display of peer pressure that could serve as a cautionary tale for anyone raising an unquestioning, repressed, subservient child. But alas, Ben and Julia had laid the foundation for this naïve young woman with little confidence to be molded by a strong and opinionated individual like Sienna. It just so happened that Sienna was essentially a physical incarnation of every fear a parent would have about a 'bad influence' wrapped up into one person. It almost made me laugh-out-loud that the person potentially most in danger of undoing 18-years of religious programming had been living with them the entire time.
Perhaps it was cruel to revel in the idea that Hannah would devolve into the very antithesis of everything that her parents had instilled within her, but I had long abandoned any notion that I was a 'good' person. No, I seemed to never tire of seeing purity corrupted and Hannah was just as worthy of it as any of my other women. I only hoped Sienna could replicate her past success with this newest conquest.
The rest of the night was dreadfully uneventful, as Hannah settled back into chatting with her sister and Kayla about teenage frivolity while mostly ignoring Amber and me. This suited me fine, as I was still trying to figure this girl out. She seemed mostly impervious to my attempts at humor and didn't seem comfortable talking to me or even looking at me.
For some reason, she made me feel old and out-of-touch despite still being in my mid-30's. I guess 18-year-old girls can do that to you. It was just so totally different than it had been with Sienna and Kayla that I didn't exactly know how to respond. Being ignored as the 'boring old person' was probably the best-case-scenario for the time being while I sorted it out.
After retiring to bed, I had trouble turning off my brain so I could sleep, and Amber seemed to notice how restless I was.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
