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to sneak out of the house.
    Jon pulls back the curtain. Two girls are waving at him. One is Emily, who lives down the road from him. He has known her most of his life. They grew up on Blakefield Avenue together; this was their neighbourhood and once (and only once) he thought she had a crush on him. He knew he had a crush on her, also at least once. But that had passed. He doesn’t know the other girl, at all. She has white-blonde hair, almost silver. They giggle as he opens the window.
    “Hey, Jon,” says Emily.
    “Hey, Emily,” says Jon.
    “We were wondering if you have any cigarettes?” asks Emily.
    He does. He has an entire carton that he’s bought with his pocket money that month. He’d gotten an older boy to go into the supermarket to get them for him, in exchange for a box from the carton. Always worked.
    “Who’s we?” says Jon, eyeing the second girl up and down.
    “Shut up, Jon. Do you or don’t you, because we can walk to James’ house too, you know.”
    “Sure, just give me a second,” says Jon.
    Jon is excited but carefully, desperately nonchalant. He can hear the second girl asking Emily if he’s always like that but he ignores it; people always ask that. Of course members of the opposite sex knock on his bedroom window every night. Of course. Or so he tells himself, at least.
    He scrambles back from the window to the pinewood cupboard in the corner of the room and opens the drawer at the bottom, taking out his treasure trove of things he does not want his parents to find, which includes some magazines with breasts in them, an unopened box of condoms, and the cigarettes.
    “Here,” he says as he hands the box of cigarettes through the window.
    “Thanks, Jon,” says Emily, “you’re the best.”
    “I know.”
    “Whatever.”
    Now an awkward silence hangs between the three of them. The silver-haired one breaks it.
    “Do you want to come and smoke with us?” she asks. Emily punches her in the arm.
    “Ow!”
    “What?”
    “Don’t flirt with this dork, he’s my friend.”
    “I wasn’t flirting, they’re his cigarettes, surely he’s allowed to come with us and smoke them.”
    “Whatever.”
    He holds the air in his lungs and then breathes out the words, “Ok, sure.”
    He quickly gets dressed. It isn’t cold enough for shoes so he goes barefoot, in black jeans and a white t-shirt. It’s still summer for a while yet and the nights are hot and humid. He starts to sneak out of the house, a time-honoured practice, stepping slowly and softly on the carpet, opening his bedroom door little by little so it doesn’t squeak, the thin lance of light growing thicker until suddenly, he’s bathed in the glow pouring from the bathroom across the hall. He turns a corner and the light is lost. He makes his way down the passage in the dark, feeling the walls with his hand, the frames of the doors telling him how far along the passage he is until he gets to the lounge and fiddles with the glass door, unlocking it and sliding it back. If he hadn’t done it so many times, it might have made him sweat.
    Finally, he’s outside and they are gone, with his cigarettes.
    He knew this was going to happen.
    Bitches: why the hell did Emily always have to be friends with them?
    He sighs and prepares himself for the trip back into the house in the dark. Then he hears giggling coming from the bushes on the front lawn. He smiles as he walks past the trees and flowers over to the big mulberry bush his mother is so proud of and he finds them hiding behind it. They burst out laughing when they see him.
    It sounds so loud.
    “You guys are comedic geniuses but please stop, you’ll wake my parents up and they’re not famous for their sense of humour,” says Jon.
    “Sowwy,” says Emily but she doesn’t seem to mean it, mainly because she crosses her eyes and says it in a stupid way.
    “Grow up, Emily. Let’s go to the park, it’s just down the road. We can smoke there. We can’t be too long,” says Jon