I jumped up quickly and was just about to run back out onto the porch when I saw his cigarettes on the table behind him. I grabbed them and ran out onto the porch and then down to the sidewalk. I waited thirty seconds or so which seemed like an eternity to me, and then I started walking back into the house. As soon as I got through the door, I saw Aaron stretching on the sofa.
"Where have you been? What's the matter with you?" I asked.
"Oh," a big yawn, "I didn't feel like going to school this afternoon so I skipped out. There was nothing going on." He reached up for his cigarettes without looking, but soon realized they weren't there. He jumped up and looked around on the floor.
"What's the matter?" I asked innocently?
"My cigarettes - they're gone. I left them right here. I know I did."
"They didn't fall on the floor?"
"No, they didn't fall on the floor. I just looked there. Shit, I have to find them."
"Maybe you dropped them outside?"
"No. I know I had them in here earlier."
"Maybe Dad was home and took them while you were sleeping."
"You think so?"
"Could be. He'd try to stop you if he knew you smoked."
"That bastard. Have you got a cigarette I can borrow? I'll pay you back.
"Sure."
"Thanks. He smiled at me. "What a friend!" He grabbed his lighter from his pocket and lit up, sucking in the smoke like he hadn't had a cigarette in days. "Look, I gotta go to the store and get me some more smokes. Wanna come?"
"Sure. Where do you get all your money for cigarettes, anyway?"
Aaron stuck the cigarette in his mouth, closed the door behind us and locked it. "I've just about used up all my birthday money from Aunt Mary. Then I don't know what I'll do. Where do you get yours? "
"Just my allowance. I ration out the couple of packs to last the week."
"Oh, I don't think I could do that," he said. "I don't think I could do that at all."
***
That afternoon and evening got pretty bizarre. After we had gone to the store to pick up some smokes for Aaron, we went over to the park and just hung out. Aaron chain-smoked about 10 cigarettes over the next couple of hours, but we had a real good time together. That was different. I almost began to like him. He talked to me about things he had never talked about before, like how hard he had to work to get his grades and how pressured he felt to keep his marks up because of mom, mostly. He told me how sick to his stomach he would get when Mom and Dad fought as they seemed to more and more often since Gary died. He told me that he sometimes felt like a volcano ready to explode and I told him that I understood that because I was like that most of the time, too. We started talking about taste in music and clothes and about how he wasn't into a lot of the things that most of his friends thought important. Then he told me about how he'd like to grow his hair real long but that he thought Dad would have a fit if he did.
As he talked about Dad he just seemed to get angrier and angrier - about how Dad always kept him from doing things even though he was never home and how he made Mom so sad all the time. And to top it all, now he had taken his cigarettes and he was almost eighteen and he had no right!
By the time we got home sometime after five Aaron was pretty riled up. Dad was already home - we saw the car in the driveway.
Aaron said to me, "Why don't you go up to your room for a minute. I have to talk to Dad."
He had a funny look on his face so I pretended to go up to my room but actually went into the kitchen where there was a vent that went right into the kitchen from the days when there had been only one stove downstairs to heat the whole house. I had often listened into conversations in the kitchen when I was a kid and had found out many interesting things that I otherwise would never have known about because they'd have never told a little kid like me. Family secrets, gossip about neighbours - that sort of thing.
The amazing thing today was that Aaron went right into action in the kitchen and challenged Dad.
"Did you take my cigarettes when I was lying down?"
My Dad didn't say anything for a minute, stunned perhaps. Then he said "What are you talking about? When did you start to smoke?"
Aaron repeated: "I asked you if you took my cigarettes because if you did, you had no right to do that and I want them back."
I couldn't believe I was hearing this.
"Wait a minute," my Dad said. "Let me get this straight. You think I took cigarettes from you. When?"
"You know when. This afternoon when I was lying down."
"I wasn't home this afternoon. Why were you?"
"Don't change the subject. I want to know what you did with my cigarettes."
And so it started. They argued for about twenty minutes with Dad getting angrier and angrier. He was angry that Aaron smoked, that he wasn't in school, that he was screaming at him, but at the same time I think he was amazed because I'm sure he had never seen Aaron like this.
By the time they finished Aaron had screamed at him: "I'll smoke if I want and you're not going to stop me. I'm old enough to do what I want. And you shouldn't be lecturing me on habits!" and Dad shouted back something about: "If that's the case then you should start contributing to the house." Dad slammed out the front door and took off in the car. When Aaron came upstairs he slammed the door in his bedroom.
Of course, I left the bathroom and went straight to his room, knocked on the door, and pretended to be quite upset. Aaron had already lit a cigarette and was sitting on his bed. He was quite red - he gets that way whenever he gets angry or shy.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Yeah. That prick! I'll show him." He took a deep drag on the cigarette as he looked out the window at Dad leaving.
"Well at least you can smoke around the house now without hiding," I said.
"I still bet he took them. I don't know what else could have happened to 'em. Look, do you want to go out tonight. I don't want to be home to hear the scene he'll have with Mom later. Let's go to a show or something. Have you got any money?"
I had, but only because I didn't have to buy a second pack of cigarettes now. I didn't tell him that, though.
"I've only got about ten bucks left from Aunt Mary. Why don't you go downstairs and grab something to eat - I'm not hungry - and we'll take off as soon as I get changed and get calmed down a little.