THE DUGOUT WAS cold and wet, and the rain seemed to be suspended in the morning sky—collecting in the sagging gray clouds. The bench gave off a thick metallic scent. I held a cigarette between two fingers and sat between the red-painted walls. I didn’t inhale all the way. I never did and I wouldn’t until college. Until this point, I had never really smoked without Rachel. But that Wednesday morning, I sat like the shady class cutter that I’d become, holding the smoke inside of my puffed-up cheeks, hiding in the baseball dugout. Smoke streamed off the end of the lit cigarette, creating invisible designs on page ninety-seven of The Bell Jar, a red paper clip was placed gently in the center fold. The smoke twisted and twirled like hair on a finger. 198 I’d read The Bell Jar twice before. Once in ninth grade, to see what all the hype was about, but I didn’t get it. I was unimpressed—don’t even think I finished it. And then again for a women’s lit class in eleventh grade. I remember liking it then, finding the prose quite beautiful actually, but retaining nothing.
What do You think about Last Train To Babylon (2014)?
