Life above!

By Danielle Garcia

This story you are about to read is a story I made up. I made up this story because a lot of young teens smoke and they don't know what will happen to them. I'm hoping this story will change anyone's mind about smoking.

It was November 6, 2009, and I was cleaning my room when I kept hearing noises outside of my window. I went to go look at what it was. I thought it was a bird or something, but when I opened my window something came in and jumped on my bed. It was three inches tall. It was purple and fluffy. I started screaming, but it said, "My name is Isaiah." I said, "What are you doing here? And what do you want?" Isaiah said he wanted to be my friend.

I said OK. So we sat on my bed and he was talking about where he came from and his parents. Then out of nowhere he was saying his leader saw some kids who had white sticks in their mouths and they wanted to know what they were. They didn't have those sticks on his planet.

I told him that they were not white sticks; those are cigarettes. Isaiah asked, "What are cigarettes? Can I try one?" I told him, "NO, don't ever try those!" Isaiah asked why. "That stuff is not good for you," I replied.

Isaiah asked, "Then why do they do that?" I said they do it to look cool, to fit in, or some people do them because of the way they are feeling. Or for no reason at all. Then he said, "You told me that they can kill you. How can they kill you?"

I told him that there are things like lead, nicotine, cresol, and much more that stuff in them that can kill you. Or they can hurt your body. He asked if that would have happened to him, and I said yes.

Then he asked, "Wait, what else can happen?" I told him the results that are not that bad are yellow fingers, bad breath, and yellow teeth. Then he looked at his hands and said, "I don't want that. What's the worst that could happen?"

I told him that you can get cancer. You can get lung cancer, heart cancer, and throat cancer. You can even die. When I told him that, Isaiah's face went blank. He asked, "Do people even know that this can happen to them? I told him yes, most people do. He asked, "Well, can we do something to help?" I told him that there is not much we could do. I told him people have already hurt themselves. He told me that he does not want that to happen to him, so I told him that he would be OK if he didn't smoke.

Now you know some things that will happen to you if you smoke. I hope none of you reading this smoke or think about smoking.