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He didn't want this lighter back.

She sucked in another breath of cigarette smoke, choked through it again, and then tamped down the warning signals flaring in her mind. This is too much, they said. He's not going to Australia, they said. He's not going anywhere that you can reach him.

She pushed them all down, and flipped him off. "What do I look like, your mother? Get it yourself. I'm trying to be cool here."

It was the little victories that she clung to now, because there were no great achievements left to reach for.

She shuffled until her back was pressed against a wall, and returned to her painful attempts at smoking, with intermittent success. Sometimes she coughed, and sometimes she didn't inhale enough for it to do anything. Then, she inhaled, and the burn did not seize her up, the way it usually did. She smiled, and blew smoke up into the air.

"I will." She promised him. "When I go."

She did not seem to be going anywhere.