Anne and Paula are standing outside the school building after the school day
when they see Danielle coming along. The two 17 year old girls have just lit
their cigarettes.
- There's Danielle. Now you'll hear someone who knows how to spell "cough".
- How do you mean?
- Danielle's so funny, she always cough her lungs up when she smokes. Hi Dan'!
- Hi Anne, hi Paula!
Danielle, tall and slim, with light brown, long hair lights her cigarette and
Anne notices how her friend inhales the smoke. Very shortly after, Danielle
makes a long nose exhale.
- You don't keep the smoke very long, do you?, Anne smiles.
- Never really thought about it, Danielle replies a bit surprised. - But,
I guess I want it out from my poor lungs.
- Come on, that's not what cigarette smoke was made for, Paula laughs.
- And don't tell me you don't pay attention to how you use the smoke,
Anne giggles. - You're the only one I know who almost always nose exhales.
- I know, I know, Danielle replies. - I think it makes me look like an
experienced life-time smoker.
Danielle's smile is gone when she starts to hack. She hacks and hacks,
and finally she turns around, inhaling deeply and violently before
coughing the hardest she can. She produces a prolonged, sharp sound and
turns back to the other girls.
- Oh, did that hurt?, Paula asks a bit worried when she sees that
Danielle is massaging her chest a little, right under her throat.
- No, not at all. My...
A long wheezing start of a new coughing fit which almost forces all
the air out of her lungs, followed by three quick, quiet hacks hardly without
any air left to cough out are heard and Danielle turns around again, inhaling
with effort. Her cough is dry as before, but louder, and she still coughs right
out. One hand is busy holding the cigarette and the other hand is again
massaging her chest. She ends the coughing fit with a whooping sound.
- I always cough when smoking.
- It's OK, it makes you seem older even more than your way of nose
exhaling, Anne teases her friend while Danielle hacks three times.
The hacks are very light and silent so Anne is totally unprepared when Danielle
pays back for the teasing by deliberately inhaling deeply and coughing in her
friend's face with that sharp sound.
- Oh, you smell like a whole tobacco shop, Anne laughs and Paula agrees
and claims that she could smell it too.
- Well, sometimes when I get one of these coughing fits when smoking in
my room, I press my face into my pillow when my cough is in its most
intensive phase, and then I sometimes check if there's a brown spot where I
was coughing, Danielle laughs and crushes her cigarette out.
- My Mom laughs at me because I'm coughing so much when smoking. Not even
her smoker's cough beats my cough, she says. You know, we sit there after
the dinner, smoking a cigarette, well two or three then, together and I
just cough and cough. If I cover my mouth with my arm, Mom sometimes takes a look
afterwards, saying things like "look, a brown spot, now I must wash it AGAIN".
And, if I cough in my hand, Mom sometimes says I could lick myself in the palm
to absorb all the nicotine coughed up in it.
- What about her cough, then, Paula asks. - Does she have a real smoker's cough,
you mean?
- Sure. I mean, she coughs more or less the whole days but it gets a little
bit worse in the evening. But hers is a wet one, while mine is dry.
Danielle starts to hack again and bends her body forward more and more,
deliberately. Anne laughs and patters Danielle on the back with her left hand
while cupping her right hand over Danielle's mouth, with two finger tips on
the tip of the nose. There's almost no end of the sequence of hackings, and
Danielle again almost loses her air. Finally, she manages to tense her diafragma
muscle so the coughing spasm stops and she forces her tickling chest to inhale
with a terrible, wheezing sound. She then coughs so violently so she chokes,
still with Anne's hand over her mouth. The choking is followed by more hacks
before she inhales with her eyes wide open and a scared face expression. Anne
wonders what will happen now, and the answer is some more, even more violent
coughings before it stops. Danielle quickly takes a handkerchief from her pocket
and puts it in Anne's hand.
- Here, use this, she wheezes, your hand must be full of my saliva.
- Don't know, no problem, Anne laughs and returns the handkerchief.
- Just wanted to know what it felt like, shhe says.
- It's my turn next time, Paula says expectantly.
- Sorry, I got to go, Danielle says and leaves after saying good-bye.
Anne glances a bit surprised at Paula, who's usually a bit shy, actually.
- Seriously, would you like to do what I did? I mean, you hardly know
each other, do you?
- What? Paula looks like she has been waken up from a good night's sleep,
full of happy dreams.
- Oh, well... (Paula blushes) ... I mean ...
- Come on, I just did it for fun, Anne interrupts.
- I would too... I mean... for fun... of course, Paula tries, still blushing
but without smiling, she looks a bit sad and disappointed almost. She so much
wants to tell that she felt like in another heaven when she heard and saw Danielle
almost cough her chest into pieces, and that she felt a much stronger sexual
stimulation than she ever had felt before when Anne had let Danielle cough that
way in her own palm. Her heart was still beating heavily and she had discovered
a new world, a new universe that was physically so close to her so that she
understood she would meet it here and there almost every day in other girls
around her with a little luck.
- Does Danielle... does Danielle always cough like that when
smoking, Paula asks and she has to fight with herself to calm down.
- Every cigarette makes her cough like that, yeah. You can
imagine, Anne laughs, I would guess she smokes around 15 or 20
cigarettes during a normay day, so she must be coughing like
that between 15 and 20 times per day. Poor her, she has seen
a doctor but she didn't have any real lung problem or so. They
just told her to quit smoking, and she got so angry so increased
it instead. She had less than 10 per day before she saw that doctor.
- You mean... she chokes, she loses her air, can't walk upright
and all that ... all that... 20 times per day... , Paula asks
with a heavily beating heart.
- More or less, yeah.
- And her Mom sits her, watching her every evening,
Paula sighs.
- Calm down, what's the matter with you? Danielle is OK,
I mean I don't think she's really ill at all or so. Don't
be afraid, she'll manage.
Paula thought about Danielle the whole evening, and after getting into bed, she satisfied herself time after time after time, without understanding why and without caring why. The only thing she understood was that she wanted to learn to know Danielle closer, really closer.