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“I’m really more into airline crashes than anything,” Heather says after releasing an elegant smoke ring into the warm night air. “I think that’s what Greg and I got stuck on. He was sort of a fire dude.” Heather has the deck umbrella spread over their chairs so they can watch the lightning across the freeway, their smoke disappearing into the rain around them.
Rebecca knows better than to philosophize while high, but she has, like, many thoughts she wants to verbalize, like how a difference in macabre interests probably wasn’t the tipping point in her and Greg’s relationship, or how when she was in eighth grade she wrote a term paper on the Tenerife disaster of 1977 that got an A- and a see me on top, or something inane and probably inaccurate like this is some good shit, dude.
But instead, she coughs, passes Heather back the purple bong, and says, “What about the 1996 Air Africa crash?”
Heather looks over, a dopey smile on her face. “Huh?”
Rebecca might not know a lot of things, but she does know disaster death tolls. “A plane accident with an unusually high amount of ground fatalities, dude. Fire erupting through a tiny village.” She flops back on the lawn chair, suddenly tired and a little confused. “Wait, why am I trying to find similarities between you and Greg?”
“Because,” Heather says, scrolling through her phone, “you’re good.”
Rebecca doesn’t really know what to say to that. She wants to say I’m really, really not, but before she can speak, Heather taps her on the arm.
“This is so depressing,” she says, showing Rebecca the Wikipedia page. “But I also sort of want to write a book about it?”
“Same,” Rebecca says, and when Heather nudges in closer to her, their arms touching and sharing warmth, she curls into it rather than flinching away.
“I’m super over Greg,” Heather says softly. “But I could still really use a good friend.”
“I think I can manage that,” Rebecca says, accepting another hit, even though she feels like a toasted marshmallow. “Now, read me the article. Spare nothing.”