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CHAPTER TWO LET IT LINGER
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Alaska and Ellie used to be best friends.
Honestly, it feels like a fever dream. Everything came and went so quickly— Alaska wonders if she just imagined it all. Did the moments they share ever mean anything? Or is it just a figment of her imagination?
She can list every little detail in Ellie's room. It's the only thing convincing Alaska that she isn't making this up. The photos of them throughout the years. The other polaroid pictures with Jesse, Dina, and Cat. Ellie's random sketches that littered the walls. The books about Outer Space and the comics stacked into the wooden shelves. The warm yellow lights that dangled across the ceiling. The guitar that Ellie taught Alaska how to play.
She wonders if the room still looks the same or if Ellie really changed.
Alaska remembers when they'd blast music to piss of their neighbors, as if a need for adventure or excitement introduced itself whenever Alaska was with Ellie. Adrenaline pumped through their veins and coursed through their blood and bones when they were together. It was unexplainable and ultimately terrifying, yet addicting. Alaska had never felt that way with anyone else in her entire life.
She remembers when they would find mixtapes and give them dumb titles that only made sense to them. She still owns every single one that Ellie had ever given her. She would never admit that she still listens to them from time to time. Alaska remembers the stupid jokes that Ellie would read from that pun book she carried around, and Alaska was the only one that would ever laugh.
She remembers sitting in the infirmary once she arrived at Jackson. She'd been there for weeks and it felt like forever. But each day, as she sat on that bed and waited for the day she'd be all healed up, Ellie would visit her. Through all the itchy bandages and sore limbs, she and Ellie had gotten to know each other. And they became inseparable.
Alaska would give anything to go back to that time. It sounds morbid. Alaska knows that. It was a time when Alaska had been hurt in more ways than one. A time when she didn't trust so easily. But, somehow, things got better quickly. Maybe she had been blinded by this childlike feeling— the feeling of being able to breathe.
