She never wakes up to the same person and she inhales a pack of Marlboros a day just so the cool kids will like her, when really she chokes up on the inside every time the lighter starts a flame. And she does it good and she does it right because it's true, they like her because she's so flamboyant and she's so mysterious. But she doesn't feel that way. She feels ugly. And when she lights up, she feels sexy, but not pretty. And so she lights up everywhere and when she talks, there's always a cigarette hanging off her little fingers.

But J.C. doesn't mind. He likes it when she does her little strut for everyone to see and he likes it when she walks around like she owns the place. He admires her because she always talks with an ease and she's never nervous. Her eyes are a steel grey and she smells of something from the pages of a magazine, and though she smokes, she never smells of tar and tobacco. And that's why he likes her. She's a cool kind of girl.

Girl. Not woman. She's not quite one. She doesn't say nice things and her eyes don't light up when someone mentions charities and fundraising balls. She doesn't redecorate and she doesn't use manners. She only murmurs 'thank you's' if she feels sorry for you. She doesn't idolize her momma, she hates her because she kicked her out when she was only 15. And it's true, she was so young, but she didn't care. She didn't care about the bars that she went to and she didn't care about the men that she saw. She didn't care that she was only 19 now and she didn't care that she could inhale twelve Marlboros in only two hours.

J.C. didn't care either. He liked it that she smoked and he liked it that she didn't care about 'thank you's' and 'goodbye's'. Sometimes late at night, he can almost imagine her, giving weak smiles, filing through dirty bars, letting a 'Eric' or a 'Jason' take her home into his little bed with white sheets. And sometimes he cries for her, but he never tells her. He just lets her live her little dirty life and she lets him live his. She calls him 'Josh' because she thinks it makes him sound like a little boy, and that's what she thinks he is. And sometimes, he thinks that too. But Josh doesn't feel so little when he downs a bottle of asprin and Chianti. He remembers being at the hospital, and she was there. He remembers people in white coats pumping out all the liquids from his stomach and he remembers her faintly standing in the corner of his room. And that was the night he called her 'Bella', she didn't like being called her full name, 'Isabella.' That was why she told everyone her name was 'Rose' and that's what everyone called her; only Josh had known her real name and it was only by pure accident.

J.C. had been buying his pills at the local drugstore and there she was, sneaking things into her little black bag, and she had accidently dropped her wallet. And inside was her license, she didn't even know why she carried her license. She never drove. But Josh had found it. And when he handed it back to her, he said, 'Isabella, you've misplaced this.' And she hated it. She hated her name. She hated it all. And so when she told him not to call her Isabella, but to call her 'Rose' instead, he only smiled a little. That was why when he told her his name she had called him Josh instead, he was a little boy. And Josh never argued back, just smiled a little.

And so when she smoked outside on the balcony of another 'Eric or Jason', she thought about her nickname, and she thought about Bella, and Rose, and Isabella. And she thought about three different girls, each and every one of them, not the same and not her. She thinks about herself and the girls and she doesn't recognize anyone, so she just lets the ash fall off the tip of her cigarette, letting the whole thing burn. The oranges and the reds are a pretty thing and she watches them burn for a long time, just sitting outside, cross-legged, burning and inhaling her sticks of wonder.

So J.C. dreams about her and reaches his bedside for another bottle of happiness.

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