His morning class was a bit late in getting out, and Carson texted Elke to make sure she knew he was still fully intent on meeting her for lunch - just ten minutes later than they’d planned upon. He hurried - his therapist had finally cleared him to take his knee brace off, and it made him feel like he could move faster - and made up some of the time, but he was still certain he’d made Elke wait. Maybe she’d already gone inside?

No, he saw her standing outside the restaurant, wearing the same oversized pink sweater she’d been dressed in when he gave her a ride to campus this morning. He slowed to a walk and approached. “Hey,” he called.

He smelled tobacco smoke.

Elke was smoking.

Carson frowned. “I didn’t know, you, uh,” he said awkwardly. “Since when?”

Shibrogane
It wasn’t a good idea. It wasn’t even an okay idea. Smoking was an awful idea and she knew it, just, it… made things easier. So, since she was nineteen and a legal adult, she’d made the purchase and coughed her way through the first two cigarettes over two days. Today, day three, it was easier, and she felt… better. Less hollow. “Monday,” she said. She dropped the cigarette back into the pack and pushed herself off the wall, hiding her face behind her long bangs. He wouldn’t approve. Of course he wouldn’t approve. “It, um. Some girls in group do it.”

She needed a subject change, stat. “How’s your leg? I--the brace is off, right?”


Carson frowned. To him, it sounded like the girls in Elke’s therapy group were a bad influence, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up. He thought that smoking was an absolutely terrible idea - but this felt very much like it had the potential to be a fight. He’d ease into it and see how it went over.

“Yeah, I got the all-clear yesterday,” he said. “It feels weird to have it off, but I’ll get used to it. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long - are you hungry?”

There, he thought. If she said anything about the cigarettes harming her appetite, he’d have a reason to express his concern.

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“That’s great,” she said, smiling up at him. It had irritated him to have his mobility impacted by the brace. Having it off meant they could do more active things together--running, maybe? She ached to start running again, now that she was strong enough. It felt terrible to be eating so much and not doing anything about it.

He asked about their lunch plans. To be honest, she wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to meet up for a lunch date--it wasn’t like she really wanted a lot of food. She shook her head. “Um, not really. I could eat, but I don’t really want to eat anything big.”


“Yeah, I just can’t start doing things like playing tackle football,” joked Carson, “So there goes my burgeoning career as an NFL starting linesman. I hope you can find other things to like about me.”

Which sort of brought them back to the topic of cigarettes and lunch. “Okay,” said Carson, but then their relationship had never been about him forcing her to eat. “You know, those things can mess with your appetite?”

He’d dabbled in smoking as a teenager, before he’d set his sights on joining the army and getting out of the patriarch’s house. It had been a dark time. He wasn’t sure it was even worth telling her about.

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"A shame," said Elke, but the joke she was going to make died on her lips as he continued. How dare he condescend to her like that? She knew. Elke had gone through the American health education system--she had seen the advertisements, the video of the screaming girl covered in tar--and she knew the risks of what she was stepping into. But it seemed a fair trade, to her. Years of her life in the future to make her life in the present less awful.

She tucked the pack of cigarettes away. "Yes," she said. "It feels good, though. Like I'm not so empty, after. And what's the point of getting better if I don't feel better? I'm so tired of feeling gross and bloated..."


Carson frowned. He wasn’t certain how to respond to that. After all, he was Elke’s boyfriend, and only one she’d been seeing for a few months at that, not her doctor or her therapist or a member of her family. “I tried them for a couple of weeks,” he said, and he hoped that he didn’t sound condescending about it. “When I was a teenager. Before I decided to go into the army. They helped my nerves, they took my mind off my situation at home? But after a few weeks, I just felt tired and dirty all the time.”

Maybe she’d reach that conclusion in a few weeks, too. At the very least, he thought she needed to be in a different therapy group, away from girls who wanted to continue with their bad habits.

But who was he to say something like that.

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“I’m tired of being hungry all the time,” she said. “I’m strong enough, aren’t I? My body isn’t collapsing on itself anymore. I’m better. I’m fine.”

In some kind of indie movie about her life, the episode she’d had a few weeks ago with Castor would have been a turning point. She would have found her inspiration, her will to get better, that night in Carson’s arms. But life wasn’t an indie movie and she wasn’t anyone’s manic pixie dream girl and she wanted to be left alone. “I don’t need you to save me from my bad decisions, Carson,” she snapped. “I’m perfectly capable of making informed choices on my own.”


Carson tried very, very, very hard not to roll his eyes, and then he rolled them anyway, because this was absolutely stupid. “Elke,” he said, “You can’t just hit pause on your recovery. If you start making self-destructive choices, you’re gonna wind right back up in the hospital. Strong enough? Sure. But if you stop taking care of yourself, you’re not gonna stay that way.”

It wasn’t Elke talking, he thought. It was her compulsions. Her disease. “Your informed choices ******** suck,” said Carson, shoving his hands into his pockets. “So there’s that. I’m gonna go get lunch.”

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“Oh, I can’t?” Elke clenched her hands into fists at her sides, standing rigid and still by the wall where she’d been leaning just a few minutes ago, perfectly at peace. “Watch me!” She didn’t give him an opportunity to watch her; she turned on her heel, the set of her shoulders sending a clear message. That message was go ******** yourself.


Carson gritted his teeth and watched her go. That was stupid, he thought. This is stupid. And he hoped she would get her head out of her a** and soon, but he was certainly not going to be the first one to apologize.