How to Fall Apart

Chapter Eleven

"What's your deal?" Alissa asked me later on that week. We had been planning to hang out that night but I was hesitant to get into her car.

"I just hate smelling like smoke every time we hang out," I whined. "Your car stinks." Alissa wrinkled up her nose at me as though I was the one who stunk.

"You're being a bitch today." She slid into the driver's seat and didn't seem to care whether or not I got in. I opened the passenger's side door and reluctantly got in.

"I'm not being a bitch, it's true. Your car stinks," I insisted. It was cold and had been snowing off and on all day but I cracked the window anyway to prove my point.

"Okay fine. I won't smoke in my car anymore," she promised. The car would still smell like stale cigarettes for a long time but I was pleased with the tiny victory. I was happy to be the one influencing her for once. "Roll up the window, it's too damn cold!" She shivered.

"Well maybe if you wore a coat..." I suggested. She actually looked really pretty that day, she'd been straying from her usual school attire of oversized hippie clothing since she'd helped me change up my wardrobe. She had on a thin light blue sweater with her hair in a side braid and just a little makeup. I'd told her she looked like Elsa from the movie Frozen earlier in between classes and she'd started singing "Let it Go" off key at the top of her lungs. I was definitely being desensitized because instead of turning red I had just laughed.

"I think there's an air freshener in there somewhere." She leaned across me and opened up the glove compartment. Napkins, papers, and pictures erupted out of it, spilling all over the floor. I picked up as much as I could and started sifting through it, in search of the air freshener. There were old homework assignments, a registration for her blazer from a couple years ago, and a few pictures. I was shoving it all back into the glove compartment when one of the pictures caught my attention. It was a picture of Alissa from when she was younger, maybe seven or eight. Her hair was light brown in the picture but I knew it was her. She was laughing, eyes crinkled up, head thrown back and mouth open wide like in the picture I drew of her at my house. She was sitting on a woman's lap. The woman had long blond hair and the same wide mouth as Alissa. She was staring lovingly at the laughing girl in her lap.

"Is this your mom?" I inquired, holding up the picture. She glanced over at it.

"Uh, yeah." She pulled out of the school parking lot and snatched the picture from my hand. She reached across me and shoved it back into the glove compartment. "No air freshener?"

"What happened to her?" I ignored her question and pulled the picture back out.

"Nothing happened to her." She answered when she realized that I was not going to let it go.

"So then where is she?" I knew I was in dangerous territory by the edge in Alissa's voice. She had never once mentioned her mother before and when I'd tried to bring her up she had refused to answer. I knew that her dad had married Avery when she was in seventh grade, and only because of the evidence provided by an awkward wedding photo in the hallway outside of her parents' bedroom. It was of a thirteen year old Alissa wearing a pretty bridesmaid dress and black lipstick on her wide scowling mouth next to the happy couple. But that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge about Alissa's childhood. The girl would go into entirely too much detail about her most recent trip to the bathroom but when it came to anything about her life before high school her lips were sealed.

"I don't know," Alissa sighed sadly. I'd told her a little about my dad before and I really wished that she could open up to me because I could totally relate. I hadn't heard from him in months and wasn't even sure where he was. The last time our mom had tried to contact him the most recent number we'd had was disconnected. That wasn't the first time that had happened and I didn't think it would be the last. I tried telling Alissa about this but she interrupted me.