Broken Memories

Chapter 16

Chrissy

After two hours worth of arguing and planning, we'd finally gotten somewhere and we were bored out of our minds.

"Wanna go bowling?" Miles questions.

"Hell yeah!" Alisha smiles, "What? I like bowling." She informs us after we all stared at her quizzically. She agreed to that quickly

That is how we ended up at a bowling alley all losing to Alisha. Miles goes up to take his go. And ends up hitting his bumpers so many times he only manages to knock down two pins.

"I don't know how you do this, Alisha," Miles sulks.

"Cheer up, I'm just competitive," she tells him.

"Yeah, we all noticed that," Eric smiles. For once he's actually having a good time. Even though he's still mad at us for our horribly planned out plan.

"Your turn, Chrissy!" Alisha ignores him, instead deciding to make me go up for my last turn.

I'm terrible at this. Sadly, I thought I'd be good so I didn't ask for the bumpers. So now I'm stuck with the total score being 43 pins throughout the whole game. They keep laughing at me.

I breathe and prepare myself. I fling my hand forward trying to copy what Alisha does.

I fail.

Instead, it goes straight to the gutter and I stare at it miserably. I suck at this game.

I hear a bunch of snickers behind me but as I turn around they all stop laughing and turn their faces stoic instead.

I roll my eyes at all of them simultaneously before sitting back down and drinking the rest of my Pepsi max.

***

After our third game, someone other than Alisha had finally one. That person is the surprisingly competitive Miles.

He cheers and shouts out, "Yes, I won!"

He seems very pleased with himself. Alisha is just laughing at him, seemingly unfazed by her loss.

Then as we're leaving I see my mum bowling.

She gets a strike. I smile as she lifts her arms in the air and laughs. Then she walks back to a woman. They talk before leaning in to kiss each other.

My smile drops. Instead, I look at the scene before me in horror. My mum is cheating on my dad.

Eric looks over to what I'm fixated on, "Shit." Leaves his mouth.

Does he already know?

Eric

"Chrissy let's leave," I tell her so she doesn't do anything she'll regret. I pull her out of the building while Miles and Alisha are still talking.

"How did you know?" She whispers toward me.

"I saw them kiss at the supermarket," I admit.

"And you didn't think you should tell me?" She argues.

"I didn't think it was any of my business," I try to reason.

"You have to be kidding me, wouldn't you want to know if you're mum was cheating on your dad?" She shouts.

"Not from a guy I didn't even like," I tell her seriously.

She frowns, "I like you now."

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you" I admit.

"Ugh," she cries into her palm, "I'm not mad at you, I just don't know how to respond to that."

***

School on Monday consisted of Chrissy being a mute and frowning into space the whole day, in turn, I frowned at her whenever I saw her hoping she'd confront her mum about it and hopefully get some answers instead of fixating over every outcome in her head.

At lunch I sit next to her as Ella cracks some jokes and Daniel laughs along. They're trying to get Chrissy's mind off of it, even though they don't actually know what happened.

Her lip wobbles at one point and without thinking my hand slips onto her thigh and I trace patterns the whole of lunch once I realize it was helping.

Chrissy stays fixated throughout the week.

Whilst Chrissy struggles with family I struggle with football and picking up my slack from the past couple of months. I'm constantly doing drills and sore.

Nathan is constantly glaring at me.

Alisha sits at our table on Wednesday, she seems different. Still same old Alisha, always a snide remark at the go, but she doesn't purposefully go at us and she isn't constantly hitting on me anymore.

Her voice doesn't make me grimace anymore