Excerpt from Smoke by Nicola Winstanley — Hamilton Review of Books

Excerpt from Smoke by Nicola Winstanley. Copyright © 2024 Nicola Winstanley.

Published by Wolsak & Wynn. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Nicola Winstanley. *Smoke.* Wolsak & Wynn. $22.00, 208 pp., ISBN: 978-1-989496-89-3

By half past twelve, Amanda and Clare have eaten most of the fudge and gathered two sand buckets full of the tiny apples, but that’s right when Mrs. Price calls from the other side of the hedge, “Come home for lunch, Clare. It’s no use hiding. I can see your sandals.” Amanda stays put because when Clare appears from beneath the hedge, dress and face smeared with fudge and dirt, her mother scolds her. “What were you doing? I know Amanda’s father wasn’t there, young lady. Was Judy? Go home now.” Then Mrs. Price crouches so she can see Amanda between the leaves. “Your father came home late last night. Past your bedtime,” she says, as though it was Amanda’s fault. “And he’s out again today.”

“No,” Amanda lies. “He came home early then went out again, then came back. He has to work today.”

Kenneth rides past and yells through the hedge, “Bullrush!” and Amanda turns from Mrs. Price and runs barefoot after him as fast as she can.

Amanda spends all day in the park with the other kids. They play bullrush and statues and soccer until four o’clock when the teenagers arrive. The teenage girls have low-cut T-shirts and cleavage, and they wear skin-tight jeans and feather earrings. The boys have long hair, and one of them carries a bright-red disco boom box on his shoulder. The other little kids scatter, but Amanda stays behind to watch the teenagers flirt and smoke. Fiona’s sister Mimi pretends she doesn’t know who Amanda is and doesn’t look her way. Then a boy pushes her up against the pole of the swing set, and Mimi and the boy smush against each other and kiss like they do in the movies. Then the boy leans around Mimi and winks at Amanda.

“Hey, you want one?” He waves his cigarette in her direction.

“Don’t,” Mimi says, but he shakes a cigarette from a golden box of Benson & Hedges, lights it on the end of his own and offers it to Amanda. Amanda’s mother smoked the same kind, two packs a day. Amanda takes the cigarette, puts it between the knuckles of her first and middle finger, then up to her lips. She drags and doesn’t cough, blows the smoke out her mouth in an O. Amanda knows how to do it from sneaking puffs when her mother wasn’t watching.

“Check it out!” The boy laughs and slaps his thigh.

The boy’s friends come and watch her.

Amanda’s head spins. She is hit by a wave of nausea and wants to spit on the ground. She has never felt more special in her whole life.

“Isn’t it about time you went home?” Mimi says.

“Why? There’s no one there.” Amanda takes another drag and exhales. She stares at the smoke as it spirals in the cooling air, dissolves and disappears.

When it’s nearly dark, the teenagers leave. “Go home, Amanda!” Mimi yells from the top of the driveway. The others laugh, as though it’s funny. As their laughter fades, Amanda stands alone in the shadow of Mr. Grayson’s fence and listens. Faint music. Cars far away. A door slammed shut. Her own breath. Then nothing. Her fingertips and lips tingle.

In the half-light, barely visible and all alone, she realizes she is boundless now, like smoke.

Nicola Winstanley is a writer for adults and children. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and is the recipient of the Alvin A. Lee Award for Published Creative Non-Fiction. Nicola’s fiction, poetry and comix have been published in the Windsor Review, Geist, the Dalhousie Review, Grain magazine, untethered magazine and Hamilton Arts and Letters, among others. She holds an MA from the University of Auckland, NZ, and an MFA from UBC. Nicola works at Humber College in Toronto and lives in Hamilton, Ontario.