“We’ll find a way out, Becky.”

Tom had said those words with confidence, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d explored every side passage and they kept ending up back here, by this cold pool in the heart of the cavern.

At least their lantern still worked.

They sat, glum and tired, staring out over the dark water into the murky oblivion beyond the reach of their light.

Tom had to admit, he was right proud of Becky. She’d been all a-scared at first, it seemed, when they realized they were lost in the cave, but she hadn’t gone all blubbery and hysterical, and now she seemed calm and collected, as if she were turning over in her mind how they were going to get out of this.

Tom pulled his pipe out of his back pocket. He had a powerful hankering for a smoke now and just enough tobacco left to indulge it. Plus, maybe the surprise might distract both of them from their troubles. He used a bit of thread from his shirt to make a wick and poked it into the lantern flame, then lit the tobacco and drew the sweet smoke into his mouth.

If he expected Becky to be shocked, he was wrong. Fact is, she was about to shock him.

“Let me have a puff, Tom.”

“Becky? T’aint right for a girl to smoke. You can’t mean it.”

“Tom Sawyer, sometimes you can be the sweetest boy and sometimes you can be a horse’s, a horse’s ass,” the girl said indignantly.

Tom almost dropped his pipe. “What?”

He had never heard a girl talk like that before – and certainly not Becky, the blue-eyed, blonde heart-throb of the town, the judge’s daughter.

She took the pipe from his fingers and raised it to her lips while he sat stunned.

She drew the smoke into her mouth and savored its taste, then softly exhaled. The fragrant fumes, almost glowing in the gloom of the cave, swirled around her delicate face and then drifted Tom’s direction.

He inhaled, surprised at how rich and pleasant they were even secondhand.

“I’ve been smoking for a long time,” Becky said, answering his unspoken question.

“You cain’t smoke, Becky, you’re, you’re a girl,” Tom said.

“I reckon I know I’m a girl,” said Becky. “Tom Sawyer, there’s a thing or two you need to learn iffen we’re going to be friends. Whole lotta women in this country are right sick of you men sayin’ we cain’t do this, we cain’t do that. Cain’t be a lawyer, cain’t be a doctor, cain’t vote, cain’t … cain’t even smoke.”

“Ain’t gonna be that way forever, Tom, ain’t gonna be that way. And I’ll tell you something, you ain’t never gonna tell me what to do, no way, no how.”

Tom shifted uncomfortably. This was not the kind of thing he’d ever expected to hear from the prim little judge’s daughter.

While he squirmed, Becky reached into her petticoat and withdrew a small, cloth-wrapped package.

“You ever seen a cigarette, Tom?” she asked.

Tom hadn’t.

“It’s like a cigar – and much more ladylike than a pipe, I reckon,” she said.

She withdrew a pretty white cylinder of paper from the package, put it to her lips and held its tip in the lantern flame while caving in her cheeks with a sharp inhale.

Then she sighed out the smoke in a long, creamy plume. Tom was like near to pass out, so unexpected and so beautiful was the sight of it, as if he had stumbled upon some lovely, fiery cave nymph down here.

“Cigarettes are the fashion in Europe ,” said Becky, tapping off the ash that had formed on its tip. “Some of the ladies there already smoke.”

“But you, how did you …” Tom asked.

“My father imports them – all the way from France ,” Becky said. “Some of the ladies that call on him enjoy smoking and he likes to favor the ladies. He doesn’t know that I borrow a cigarette right often from his collection, though. I was ‘bout twelve the first time I tried one.”

She raised the cigarette to her lips again and drew the smoke deeply into her lungs. Even in the garish light of the lantern, accented by the cigarette glow, she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen – and she was shaking up all his notions about girls today, for sure.

She locked her blue eyes on him and exhaled in his face – sweet clouds of warm, fragrant smoke, stronger than his pipe tobacco, definitely. He coughed. She laughed, a soft, sweet laugh.

He felt utterly mesmerized – couldn’t believe how powerfully attractive the sight of her was with this cigarette-thing burning in her fingers and this ambrosial smoke spilling from her lips.

“You know the kick you get from a pipe? It’s way better with a cigarette,” she said. “Makes you tingle all over, head to toe.”

And with that, naughtily, she reached out her foot and teasingly kicked him. He grabbed playfully at her shoe and suddenly they were wrestling, with her burning cigarette dancing dangerously close to his face as they tussled and he felt himself in the grip of something intense and powerful, a desire waking up inside of him like he’d never felt before.

He felt the sudden softness of her breasts warm beneath her thin dress and wanted to crush his face into them, to --

With surprising strength, she pushed him away. “No, Tom, I ain’t that kind of girl.”

He knew. She might be all about new ideas for women, suffrage and all that sort of thing and cigarettes and such, but she was still Becky, a good girl – and that was all right, he reckoned. For he knew, deep in his heart, that this was the girl he was gonna wed someday, maybe sooner than later.

She took another deep drag of the cigarette – it trembled in her hand. Was she afraid of what had almost happened? No – the reality hit him like a lightning bolt, she wasn’t afraid at all. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She had powerful feelings, too, that she was holding back. Somehow, he had never imagined that a girl could feel that way.

Her exhale swirled around him and he appreciatively drank it in, even though it made him cough.

“You’ll get used to it,” she said. “Want to try a puff?”

He took the cigarette from her with shaking hands and clumsily inhaled, still unsure about this new way of smoking tobacco. The cigarette was warm and moist from her mouth, where her lips had clasped it. It brought to his mind that day long ago when they had shared a piece of gum – years ago and far away, it seemed.

She held out her fingers, wanting her cigarette back. He watched as she lifted it to her lips again and pulled another drag of smoke into her mouth. For a moment, she opened her mouth and he glimpsed a ball of cottony smoke there, swirling around her tongue, before she sucked it down her throat into her lungs. He knew the pleasures of nicotine, first from his silly schoolboy pipe, and it was something indeed to imagine her feeling that same pleasure, much more powerful, it seemed, coming from a cigarette.

She pursed her lips and shaped a cottony ring of smoke, then a second and a third. They wiggled and twisted and vanished into the darkness.

“Becky Thatcher, you are something special,” Tom said, his voice cracking for some odd reason.

She smiled. “I like you, too, Tom. If you can behave yourself.”

She took another drag from the cigarette and tossed it away. They leaned together and their lips met and Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher had their very first kiss – a gentle kiss, but one that they would always remember, and as she pulled away, she parted her lips and all the smoke from her final puff of the cigarette, held in her lungs the duration of the kiss, she exhaled into Tom’s face and he knew, absolutely knew, he loved Becky Thatcher and she loved him.