Once the cigarettes come out, they don't leave.

It starts on our free time. Checking in to the dorms, mid-afternoon. Hanging out on the white painted ce-ment steps. Killing time. A few kiddies milling around, bonding over "gotta light?"

Yeah, not for you though.

Eventually the rest emerge from the dorms and congregate in the area out front of where I'm perched. Something in the air makes me think thirteenth grade. Then, no, this is the real deal. And I'm never goin' back, so its upward or. Well.

It's establishing dominance. The alpha girls and their fashionable clothes with a cigarette in one hand and little purse clutched loosely in the other, letting you know with a cool flip of the hair that I don't take any of this shit seriously. I'm here to party.

I watch them, conscious that I've got a way in waiting in my purse. But that isn't what I want in to. What I want is a cup of coffee and an early summer morning in the Quartier Latin, pondering existential mysteries with close friends, and a dark, accented lover.

But thats just fantasy. Reality is this: there's no way in and there's no way out. So its time to just settle and get used to it as it is. Or its going to be a long year.