Waking Olivia(10)

I slam his door and run across campus, back to the shitty apartment I'm  only in so I can attend a school I never wanted to be at in the first  place. I really wish I could cry. I'd like to right now.

I just ruined everything.





16





Will



The door slams shut and I sit in shock.

Her story sounded so far-fetched. It never occurred to me for a minute  it could be real. Not until she jumped to her feet, her eyes wide and  hurt.

It can't possibly be true, though. People don't sleep run.

This is just one of Olivia's many talents-the ability to tell a  ridiculous lie and make you want to believe it. The minute those big  green eyes of hers go even the slightest bit vulnerable I want to hand  her my keys and sign over my paycheck. God help the man she ends up  with.

It's for the best that she's gone. She's been nothing but trouble since  day one, and she's no longer my problem. But I have a curiously empty  feeling as I drive out to the farm.

"How'd the meet go?" my mom asks.

"Bad question," I grumble. "I'm gonna go check the horses."

"The horses are fine," she clucks. "Sit down and I'll make you some lunch."

"I don't have time for lunch, Mom. I have a shitload of work to get done and Jessica expects me by seven."

"One quick sandwich and I'll leave you alone," she promises.

Over lunch, I tell her about the meet, about Olivia and my frustration that we lost because of her.

"It sounds," she says gently, "like you'd have lost with or without her?"                       
       
           


///
       

"But we could have placed if she just didn't go running this morning!  That's the whole point! And then she tells me the most preposterous lie  to get out of it."

"Are you sure it's a lie?"

"Of course it's a lie, Mom. You don't know this girl. She's made of lies. People do not run in their sleep."

"And you're sure of that."

"Yes," I reply, even as I admit to myself that I'm not actually sure at  all. But no, this is just Olivia's influence again, and God knows I'm  lucky to be separating myself from it. "She's been trouble since the  start, so she can go be trouble for someone else."

"But, Will, why would she lie?"

"Who knows why she does anything?"

Exasperated, I push away from the table. Olivia is like this small,  insistent wound in my side. Always there, making itself known every time  I bend one direction or the other. Even now, when she's no longer my  problem, I'm still seeing that lost look on her face and feeling as if I  just kicked something small and defenseless. That look stays with me. I  see it as I turn on the tractor. I see it when I should be inspecting  fields. I see it when I'm fixing the water. I see it as I drive away,  and find myself heading not toward Jessica's at all but back to my  office.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," I grumble as I go online. Sleep  running does not exist. I'm angry at myself for even checking. I'm angry  at her for having the pull over me that she does.

And when I find that it exists, I feel something much worse. It's the  moment I realize how badly I wanted to find nothing. That I want her out  of my line of sight. I want to continue believing she is willfully  destroying her running career rather than having it destroyed by  something she can't control.

I don't want to feel sorry for her.

I don't want to feel anything for her.

Maybe the problem is that I already do. I already care about her outcome, and it feels dangerous for no reason I can pinpoint.

There is website after website devoted to sleep running and forums for  people who do it. It explains so much. Her exhaustion, the fact that her  college career has been a long series of disappointments. I pull up her  file from UT. They must have known, but how could they have just let it  go on the way they did? I find nothing. The notes discuss only her  performance and that she seems to implode under stress. The underlying  implication is that drugs or alcohol are the culprit, but it's unclear  to me how they really could have believed that. She often shows up  exhausted, but I've never once seen her show up hung-over.

I go through her academic file and it is similarly unrevealing. She gets  good grades and she keeps to herself. But then I find three notes  written shortly after she'd arrived at UT.

The first: 3:42 am. Student was running through lobby, attempting to  leave dormitory. Student was informed that she could not leave premises,  but was hysterical and broke free of officer in charge. Student was  later identified by security officer and informed that disciplinary  action would be taken in event of further incidents. Student claimed to  have no knowledge of incident.

The second came only two weeks later: 2:19 am. Student ran through lobby  and did not respond to commands to stop. Campus security was alerted  and found student running barefoot toward southern end of campus.  Several officers were required to restrain student, who resisted and did  not appear oriented to time or place. Medical personnel called to  scene. Student taken to UMC by paramedics. Patient's next-of-kin could  not be reached.

The only other note comes a week later: Due to psychological distress  caused by close living environment, student has requested and been  granted a stipend in lieu of remaining in the residence halls.

With a sinking stomach, I realize that there is far more than meets the  eye with Olivia. She's been keeping a lot of secrets for a long time,  and today, when she finally opened up to someone-to me, I laughed in her  face.



She lives in the worst possible section of town. Her apartment complex  looks like it was built in the 70s, and probably last maintained then  too. Once we sort out what's going on with her running, I need to get  her back into the dorms. Even I don't feel safe on this end of town.

I knock and she opens the door without unchaining the lock. "Yes?" she asks, her face blank.

"Can I come in?"

She bites her lip. "I'll come out," she finally says.

She unchains the door and opens it as little as possible in order to get  out. I get the distinct impression she doesn't want me to see what or  who is in her apartment.

"Am I interrupting something?" I ask, nodding at her door.                       
       
           


///
       

"Yeah. Me, packing my shit."

She isn't going to make this easy. No surprises there, I guess. "I'm  sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have implied you were lying."

She blinks in surprise. "Why the sudden change of heart?" she asks  sourly. "You realized I'm your only chance of winning in two weeks?"

"You really think as piss-poor as your performance has been so far that  I'm putting my hopes on you?" I demand. It's harsh but true, and I know  she's the kind of person who responds more to candor than flattery. I  could tell her that I think it's possible she could win it for us, that I  see in her the kind of untapped potential that makes almost anything  possible, but I don't. She wouldn't believe me anyway.

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm here because it appears possible that I was wrong."

"That's big of you," she snarls. "The way you're conceding it's possible  that I'm not lying." She turns toward the door. "Thanks for stopping  by. Come back if you'd like to tell me you think it's also possible that  I don't deal drugs or poison children, and in the meantime, go fuck  yourself."

"Sit," I bark, pointing at the curb. "And stop being a pain in the ass."  She pauses, arms across her chest, scowling but not going inside  either.

"How long have you been doing it?"

Her jaw shifts. It's a conversation she's dying to avoid. "Since I was little," she says flatly.

"Why?"

"How should I know?" she scowls. But finally she approaches, lowering herself beside me to the steps.

Her legs are crisscrossed with small scratches. The paramedics had  mentioned it earlier, but at the time I was too pissed about her early  morning run to care.

"What happened to your legs?"

Her jaw grinds. "I assume I ran through some brush," she says quietly. "It happens."

"It doesn't wake you up?"

"If it hurts enough."

I sigh heavily. I don't know what to do with this girl. That she hasn't  been badly injured is a miracle. "Have you seen anyone? A specialist?"

She shrugs. "When I was a kid."

"It didn't help?"

She shakes her head. "It made things worse."

"How?"

She shakes her head again.

"You can't keep doing this, Olivia. You've got to stop."

"You think I don't want to?" she hisses. "Do you know how humiliating it  is to be hitchhiking barefoot at five a.m.? To walk up to a stranger's  door and tell them you have no idea where you are or how you got there?"