She lives for this.

Angelina reaches for her pack of cigarettes and pulls the lighter plug. She likes that red glow, the feel of the smoke filling her lungs, the feel of her strength as she blows all that smoke out through her nose, blows out all that shit from the day and guns the car a bit more.

SPEED OF LIGHT BY HELEN SILVERSTEIN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 08

Angelina rides through the night in her beat-up brown Buick, imagining she’s on her way to somewhere different, instead of driving around the same old back roads of Alabama she’s been on her whole life. She’s got the radio on loud and the windows rolled down. The wind rushes through the car, drying the rivulets of sweat running down her neck from another hot day. She takes one hand off the steering wheel and lifts up her blouse and her bra, turns the air vent panels in toward her and lets the night air dry off her breasts. She hates heat, hates bras, hates sweat, hates everything, except maybe this moment, under the cover of night, when she could …