After

I don’t know how to tell Ally my prom date wasn’t real and it seems like I made him up (that the picture I took of the two of us only has me in it and he’s like another imaginary friend, like Big Sister or the fairy girls).  I tell Ally instead that G.D. wasn’t there and how I still search for him even in the gray fabric in the lining above my head inside our car and how I run my fingertips along the material there and pretend he’s puffing his cheeks out in the old fabric and getting comfortable watching over Grizzly and me.  “Cause ghosts can do all kinds of stuff like that.”
 
“I’m sorry,” Ally says.  The sound of her voice scares me.  I scan her face for a reaction.  I examine each laugh line and crease in her forehead.  Does she narrow her eyes or is she just thinking hard?  Did I say too much?  Are we going back to another Steeple Hands?

“I’m sorry about the mess in here.”  I point to the broken dolphin and Thom’s shattered Kindergarten keepsake, the gouges in the wall.   

She massages her temples with her hands.  “I wish you’d tell me what happened last night and why you called Don to give you a ride back home.”

“Nothing happened.  I just took a break for a while, from all of this.” 

I pick up the Jessica dress off the floor and hand her pretty shoes back.  “I tried really hard to fit in,” I say.  “But it didn’t work out.” 

I stare through her then, as if there is someone behind her that has the answers I want and maybe she feels this.  She starts saying things about my dad without me asking.  This is the part I understand.

He disappeared.  Your mom thought her story would be easier.