Waking Olivia (11 page)

W
hen Will wakes
me up the next morning, he can’t quite seem to meet my eye. It’s almost as if he’s scared of me. “Fuck,” I sigh. “Something bad must have happened last night. What did I do?”

“Nothing,” he replies. “I caught you before you even made it to the door.” Even as he says it, though, there’s something muted, reserved in his tone.

“And that’s all?” I ask.

“That’s all.”

I still don’t believe him.

T
he second meet
is in many ways a repeat of the first, but my fears are different. This is a more difficult course than last week’s. I’m positive I haven’t trained for it properly. Once again, Will is there, talking me through it, convincing me to ignore my fears and just run.

“All of this you’re feeling,” he says, “it’s like a person running beside you, shouting shit in your ear to tear you down. But it can only change the way you run if you choose to believe it.”

I’m not sure why but, this time, I listen. Maybe it’s because he was right last time, or maybe it’s something that goes deeper than that. If Will told me I could jump off a skyscraper and survive, I might even believe that too.

The gun goes off, and I let his words drown out my own. I outrun her, the nasty person who tells me I will fail, who is convinced that disaster lies around every corner. And when the finish line approaches, I realize that in outrunning her, I’ve managed to outrun the competition too.

Peter reaches me first, swooping me up in a hug. “You’re gonna put our track program back on the map, young lady,” he crows.

Will comes up a moment behind him, smiling with quiet pleasure, but there is worry on his face too. I suspect that whatever occurred last night (the event he claims never happened at all) is what’s making him keep his distance.

Everyone on the bus is jubilant. Erin asks me to go to lunch, but I tell her I have other plans and head straight to Will’s office. He’s gathering his stuff when I arrive and looks surprised—and not entirely pleased—to see me.

“I want to know what happened last night,” I tell him. “You’re being super weird about it, so please just tell me the truth. Did I hit on you or something?”

He laughs. “
That’s
what you’re worried about?”

“Part of it.”

“You didn’t hit on me.”

“So what did I do?”

His shoulders sag. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

Oh, Jesus.
Now I know it’s bad. “Then just tell me.”

He exhales and runs a hand over his head. If he’s trying to distract me with his biceps, this is a good way to do it. “You … cried.”

Bullshit. Of everything he could have told me, this is the hardest to believe. “I don’t
cry
,” I retort. I can’t remember crying once, not in my entire life. I’m
unable
to cry. There have been plenty of times when I’ve wanted to and I just couldn’t do it.

“You cried so hard I could barely understand you.”

I sink into the chair behind me, gripping its handles with a force that could splinter lesser materials. In a way, I want to leave this room and forget the conversation ever occurred, but I can’t stand having him know something about me that I don’t.

“What did I say?”

He hesitates. “It was kind of like last time. You repeated ‘I shouldn’t have left’ again and again.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I whisper.

“Olivia, whenever I catch you, you’re terrified. You’re running from someone. But you also seem to feel guilty about it. And I’ve heard you telling people your parents are traveling for the last two months, but your grandmother is the only contact we have on file for you. Did something happen? Did you run away from home?”

My heart begins to hammer in my throat and it feels as if it’s constricting me, making it impossible to take deep breaths. Somehow he knows too much, as if all the parts of me are escaping and I’m helpless to stop them.

I’m torn between a desire to flee from this conversation and a desire to fight.

Naturally, I choose option two.

“I’m allowed to keep some shit to myself,” I snarl. “That’s why I tell everyone they’re traveling. I have no idea why people think it’s okay to go around asking other people about their parents all the time anyway. And I didn’t fucking run away from anything.”

“Then where are your parents?” he demands, refusing to back down.

“They ditched me when I was six, and I never saw them again.” I hate them for it, and hate myself for it too. If I’d been a different kid, if I’d been sweet, like Erin, maybe it would have been different.

"No siblings?"

Of all the things in the world I don’t want to discuss, my brother is first. "You're no better as a therapist than that chick at the health center was if that's where you're going with this."

"You didn't answer the question."

"I had an older brother. He ran away when he was eight.”

"You mean he ran away
permanently
? For good? They never found him?"

"I gotta go," I reply, jumping to my feet.

"Olivia, wait.” He stands. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," I say through clenched teeth. "They were shitty parents and they did me a favor, so save your sad face for something serious."

"You don't think any of that has to do with your nightmares?" he asks.

The idea makes me feel helpless, and feeling helpless enrages me. I roll my eyes as I turn to walk out. "Does it matter if it does?"

I
barely remember my parents
.

My father is a dark shadow on the periphery of my early childhood, a thing that hung in the background as a threat more than a real person. He took me fishing once, but mostly he had a bad temper, and I stayed out of his way, relieved when he left town. At some point, he was gone, and there was a boyfriend around, a bad-tempered boyfriend. I guess my mom had a
type
.

And then, one day, there was no one.

I don’t remember being left with my neighbors. I don’t remember anything, really. Small snapshots of early childhood, that transition without explanation into another life, the one under my grandmother’s roof.

My grandmother didn’t want me. I guess I can’t blame her. Who’d want some kid who wakes screaming and flailing in the middle of the night, who bolts out of the house without warning?

Her mind was already slipping, even then. She couldn't remember the name for ice cream. She'd call me Alicia, my mother's name. If I corrected her she’d usually get angry, but sometimes she would cry instead—a heartbroken sound I was desperate to avoid so I eventually stopped correcting her. She got worse, of course, and I couldn't help but wonder if it was me—the running, the nightmares, the fights at school—that had made it so. I couldn’t really remember the times before her, with my parents, but it didn’t seem like a mere coincidence that all the people in my life decided to leave in one way or another.

I storm out of Will’s office, all my earlier goodwill toward him gone. These thoughts are always in my head but he’s brought them front and center today and God, I wish he hadn’t. I go to campus for dinner, feeling edgy and looking for distraction. Landon is there. He slams his tray down beside mine.

"Party tonight, future girlfriend. You in?"

I am. I'll do anything right now to be numb.

T
hree hours later
, the world is a much easier place to exist. With enough liquor in my system, everyone seems entertaining, and right now, everyone seems entertaining as hell. If Landon and his buddy Jason would stop fucking following me, I’d say tonight was almost perfect.

“Stop talking to him,” says Landon the moment Jason leaves my side.

“Why exactly should I do that?” I ask. I don’t actually
want
to talk to Jason, but I’ll be damned if Landon is going to tell me not to.

“Because I’m the one who brought you here.”

“This isn’t a date, Landon,” I sigh. “I can talk to anyone I want.”

“I’m gonna beat his ass if he keeps hitting on you,” he replies. I laugh. Men are so stupid, fighting over me like there’s a chance in hell I’m going home with either one of them.

Time passes quickly, a blur of faces I don’t know but am now best friends with. Being that social is a sure sign it’s time to stop drinking, but I bravely plow on. My talk with Will is still in there, a poisonous thing in my chest and I will continue to drink until it’s forgotten entirely.

Jason appears out of nowhere. “Let’s dance,” he says. Somewhere in the back of my head, a voice tells me that Landon will be pissed, but it’s silenced by a louder voice saying that’s not my problem.

He takes my cup and puts it on the counter before he grabs both of my hands and pulls me onto the dance floor. For such a big guy he's a surprisingly good dancer, and for such a drunk girl I’m staying surprisingly upright. I don't really object to the way our dance turns into more of a grind within a song or two. It's not like everyone else on the dance floor—which is actually just someone's living room—isn't doing the same thing.

And then I’m knocked backward, falling into other dancers, and Landon is on top of Jason. I regain my balance and stand there, surprised and mildly amused, watching Landon and the other idiot beat the shit out of each other.

"Do you always start this much trouble?" says the guy behind me. He’s hot. Way hotter than either Landon or Justin.

I grin at him over my shoulder. “Always."

"C'mon," he says, pressing his hand to the small of my back. He leads me into the yard, grabbing us more beer on the way.

His name is Evan, and I find something about him specifically appealing. He's tall and well-built—too muscular to run track but too lean to play football. Sort of like Will.

One minute we’re in the backyard talking and the next we’re in someone’s room. I guess I’ve had more to drink than I thought, but that’s okay. There's a very specific memory I need to rid myself of, a specific memory that won't go away no matter what I do to excise it, so my aim now is to replace. Evan kisses me and I feel nothing. His hand slides under my shirt, into my bra, and I wait for it to end, like sitting through a movie you really aren't enjoying. My satisfaction only comes from how much progress we've made, how close it is to being over. And then his hand moves to my jeans and I fly off the bed, panicked.

"I'm sorry," he says, his eyes wide with surprise. "I thought it was okay."

"I can't," I gasp. "I'm sorry. I thought I could, but I can't."

H
e was nice about it
. Far nicer than Mark Bell would have been under the same circumstances. But then Mark didn't ask.

And he didn't stop until I made him.

I
can’t shake
what Olivia told me after the meet. How could her parents have done that to a six-year-old? I’m furious at people I’ve never met because they created the mess she’s in now.
It’s their fault
she’s having these nightmares, that she’s putting her life at risk when she has one.
It’s their fault
she’s forced to survive off stipends and loans, hoping to God she can hold on to her scholarship.

Jessica and I go out to dinner then watch TV after. “You’re distracted,” she says. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “Just a long day.”

But that’s not really it. I’m pissed off on Olivia’s behalf, but it’s more than that. I feel oddly unsatisfied tonight. Jessica and I ate at a restaurant I chose and are now watching a movie I’ve been wanting to see, but it feels empty, like a meal that can’t satisfy me no matter how much I consume.

And it wasn’t like that last night.

I bickered with Olivia while we watched a TV show I didn’t want to watch in the first place, and when it was time to go to sleep, I wished it wasn’t. But right now, with my girlfriend, I just want the night to be over.

L
ater we're
in bed and Jessica's beneath me. I'm trying to focus on her but every time I close my eyes all I see is Olivia, asleep face down in my bed, the sheet twisted around her waist, her hair spread over my pillow, her back bare.

The moment she sat up and the sheet slid away.

That last image appears unbidden and I finish with a hoarse cry of surprise, ashamed of myself even as it happens.

Jessica curls up against my side, but it’s Olivia in my head once more as I remember last night, the way it felt to have her tucked in my arms. I stayed with her until her tears stopped, and it seemed like the right thing to do even though, at the very same moment, it seemed as wrong as anything I’d ever done in my life.

Because I liked it.

Because I wanted to stay.

And right now, with Jessica, I’m counting the seconds until I can leave. The same way I always do.

A
fter practice on Monday
, I get a text from Jeff Jordan, one of the assistant football coaches. He needs to “chat”.
Fuck
. A meeting with one of the football coaches is never good. They never want to give you anything, and they’re often looking to take something away. And the sad truth is that at this school—at almost any school—football trumps track every time.

"We had a fight this weekend," he tells me instead. "Two players. Our defensive end is out the rest of the season with a broken hand."

"Yeah?" I'm still not seeing what this could possibly have to do with me, which of our meager resources he’s going to ask us to give up to fix this.

"Apparently it was over one of your girls."

Before he’s said another word, I know
exactly
which girl he’s talking about.

He tells me the version he’s heard from members of the team: Olivia, bouncing back and forth between a running back and a defensive end, laughing when they got mad at each other, dirty dancing with the one who
wasn’t
her date. Sure, the story is one-sided. Sure, I should hear Olivia’s version. Except it’s so goddamn easy to imagine her laughing about it, to imagine her knowing good and well she was causing a problem and giving them both that insouciant little smirk she gives when she wants you to understand you’re not the boss of her.

And none of it is nearly as infuriating as the story’s conclusion, in which Olivia takes off with some other guy at the end. For some reason, it's
this
that truly has me seeing red. She
left
with one of them? What the hell is she thinking? Did she even know the guy?

"Now I've got one guy out, and half the team taking sides. It's a complete clusterfuck."

As is everything involving Olivia Finnegan.
Everything.

“I’m sorry, Jeff,” I say through gritted teeth, “but there’s not much I can do about it at this point.”

“Just keep her away from my team, okay? I have no idea who this girl is or what’s so magical about her, but I don’t need any more of my guys on the bench this season.”

If this were about any other girl on the team I’d be pissed at him for pinning the blame on her. I’d point out that maybe he should be discussing this with the drunk assholes who did the fighting. But instead I’m fucking enraged at Olivia myself, and I’m pretty sure it’s not for the right reasons.