Danielle's heart was suddenly pounding with an urgency and anticipation that made the cigarette smoke she was trying to inhale into her lungs feel all the more relaxing. As she pursed her full lips and exhaled a thick stream into the night air, she maintained eye contact with her daughter who had left her last words hanging in the room like a proverbial carrot.
"I think that's probably a bad idea," she whispered, mostly to herself.
It wasn't that she was unsure if what she was saying was true; of course it was. Smoking meth was a bad idea. Full stop. Regardless of how recklessly she'd been trampling over the long-preserved values of her previous self, objectively, smoking meth was not the answer to any problem she had. No, it was most definitely the beginning of a lot of other problems, she was sure of that.
And yet.
She was certainly sure she believed what she was saying was true, she just didn't know if that mattered as much as she'd like to believe. Sure, a month ago she'd never smoked a cigarette or cheated on her husband, or gotten wasted at an Applebee's and drove around with her daughter in the car like she was campaigning for the world's shittiest mother award but meth? That was another rung of debasement that she couldn't possibly descend, right?
So, why was she having so much trouble just saying it? Why was the prospect of getting high with her daughter in the safety and solitude of her bedroom at 3am in the morning so enticing? It was irresponsible, reckless, short-sighted, and foolish. All the things she had never allowed herself to be for the last 18 years of her life. And now? The very reason that she had denied herself those conceits of youth was sitting next to her, lighting her cigarettes and offering her a peace pipe full of methamphetamine.
It was almost uncanny how Emily seemed to know how close Danielle was to teetering over the edge to fall through yet another floor of herself to reveal an even lower floor that she didn't even know existed. Pulling the glass pipe from her purse revealed it in more detail. One end a glass straw and the other a bubble with a small hole on top. It was this hole that Emily dropped a small shard of what looked like hazy ice, which she recognized as a slang term for the drug rather aptly. It clinked softly to rest on the floor of the 'bowl' and Danielle was entranced by her daughter as she flicked her torch lighter to life and began swirling it around the base of the bubble.
The solid shard of what she assumed was meth began to melt before her very eyes, and Emily responded to this by bringing the straw side of the pipe her lips. Danielle had anticipated her trying to inhale the vapors but was surprised to see her blow softly instead. Her efforts resulted in vapor being propelled out of the little hole in the bubble as she continued training the flame on the glass and twirling the straw between her thumb and forefinger. The entire shard had now melted into a puddle of clearish liquid that Emily twirled in the flame which seemed to indicate it was ready.
Emily removed her lips from the straw of the pipe and turned her head, emptying her lungs completely of all oxygen before replacing her lips where they were. This began the moment that Danielle had been expecting before, where the vapors of the liquid being turned to gas were devoured hungrily by her daughter's needy lungs and drawn through the straw. Her lung capacity was impressive as seconds ticked by and Emily continued her noxious ritual. It wasn't until she had arched her back to accommodate the fullness of her expanded lungs that she removed the pipe from her mouth and smiled goofily at Danielle.
She wondered what her own expression reflected back at her as she watched in awe as her straight A student daughter--the smartest, sweetest, most responsible teenager she had ever known parted her pouty lips and expelled a milky white cloud so thick and voluminous it totally obscured her from view. When the 'fog' finally did clear after several seconds it was hard not to feel more intrigued by exactly what she had just witnessed.
"My clouds are getting insane," Emily appraised with a smile.
Danielle wasn't quite sure how much time and practice it took for a person to do what she had just seen her daughter do, but the implications of that line of reasoning should have been terrifying for her to consider. Instead, she recognized the echo of her fearful self from the depths of her buried consciousness and suppressed it with another drag off her cigarette.
"I didn't realize it looked like that," she acknowledged with words punctuated by sputtering puffs of smoke.
Emily smiled, clearly pleased with herself.
"Well, for most people it doesn't. But I've been working on my clouds for a while and I'll admit that I kinda wanted to show off," she replied.
It was admittedly a very strange thing to say to your mom, but after everything that had happened that day--it didn't really seem that strange anymore.
"So? You wanna try?"
Again, the opportunity presented itself, her own daughter the unanticipated purveyor of sinful delicacies thrusted into her lap. First nicotine, alcohol, and then boys. Now meth. Danielle knew that her desire to please and connect with her daughter had been perverted and now she was accessing parts of herself that had only the faintest thread connecting itself to those original motivations. Yes, technically accepting her daughter's offer could bring them closer and make them as fatefully intertwined as Bonnie and Clyde, but she was having a very hard time forgetting how that ended up for them. Two bullet-riddled corpses in the front of a Ford instead of just one.
Was she about to jump into the passenger seat of this doomed vacation from reality with the one person she'd dedicated her life to protect?
"What do I do?" Came her meek reply.