Waking Olivia(23)

       
           


///
       

"You realize you could probably find him just by going online," I tell her.

She shakes her head, a motion so small it's as if it wasn't meant for me. "He could've found me if he'd wanted to."

"So why do you need the money?" I ask.

"I just want to make sure he has what he needs," she says quietly.

The look on her face when she speaks hurts my chest. "Do you really believe he's still alive, Olivia?" I ask.

She looks away from me, her voice growing hard and intent. "My brother  is crazy smart. And he was fast. He could outrun anyone. That's how I  know he got away."

"Got away from what?"

"Anything that tried to stop him."

"Like the thing you have nightmares about? Is that the thing?" I ask.

"He got away," she says with finality, jumping to her feet, and she leaves the room.

After she leaves, I struggle to fall asleep. The look on her face and  her insistence that her brother is okay haunt me. The way she clings to  the idea feels desperate, perhaps even childlike. If I were to guess,  I'd say that the reason she hasn't looked for him has nothing to do with  the fact that he doesn't want her.

I'm still awake hours later, thinking about it. I've had my share of  hard knocks. Everyone has. But nothing compared to what she's suffered. I  wish I could fix it. I wish I could fix every single wrong that's been  done to her. Get her out of that God-awful neighborhood, make the  nightmares end, protect her from all the bad things that might lie in  wait for her.

I wander into the room she shares with my mother and sit quietly at the  desk. She looks so innocent when she's asleep with her long lashes  fanning her cheeks, her mouth slightly open.

"Why are you still up?" my mother asks.

"Worried," I reply.

"She's a sweet girl," my mother sighs. "And she's the only one who doesn't realize it."

My mother is right. Olivia seems to see only the worst things in  herself. She believes she deserves nothing from anyone, yet something  about her makes me want to give her everything.

"I wish I could fix things for her," I tell my mother.

"You're doing your best," she replies. "But for now you really need to get some sleep."

"I can't. I'm too worried I won't catch her in time if I'm in the other room."

My mother hesitates, and then climbs to her feet. "Take my bed," she says. "And I'll go sleep in your room."

"I don't know," I answer. "I realize I'm already breaking rules, but that seems so  … "

"You have her best interests at heart," she says. "I wouldn't suggest it if I thought for a moment it was truly wrong."

I'm just dozing off when Olivia begins to talk. Unintelligible words  that sound young and distraught. The minute she flings the covers off  I'm out of bed and beside her, my arm anchoring her while I do my best  to convince her she's okay. I shush her again and again, promising her  she's safe.

"It's just a dream. You're okay."

And something miraculous happens. She doesn't fight me. She jolts for a  moment as if she's been shocked, and then she curls into me, her head  pressed to my chest, her hands fisted tightly in my shirt as she cries,  still sound asleep.

I hold her until her tears slow and then cease, and then something slightly less miraculous but still surprising happens.

I fall asleep too.





34





Olivia



Holy shit.

Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.

Will Langstrom is standing in front of me, shirtless.

I'm gawking, and that probably needs to stop. It's not like I didn't  assume he'd look fan-freaking-tastic without a shirt, but he exceeds  anything I was previously capable of imagining. Yeah, fine, I admit it, I  occasionally imagine things with him, and they're usually R-rated.  Except when I imagine him there isn't an alarm going off in the  background and he doesn't have a pillow clutched to his stomach or a  panicked look on his face like he has right now.

"Why are you in my room?" I ask.

His expression grows surly. "Waking your ass up," he growls.

"Good morning to you too," I snap, rolling over and putting the pillow  over my head. "And I've seen you in shorts before, dummy. What's with  the sudden modesty?"

He makes a testy noise that I ignore and heads toward his room.

"Did she run?" asks Dorothy, passing Will as she comes in.

"She never left the bed," he replies, hurrying away with that pillow  still clutched against him. There's something about his phrasing that I  find suspect, but I let it go. I didn't run. Before a big meet. Before a  meet I was sick with nerves over.                       
       
           


///
       

"Wait. Why were you just coming in from Will's room?" I ask Dorothy. "Did you sleep in there?"

Her eyes widen. "He was worried about you, so he took my bed and I took his."

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remember the feel of his arms  around me, of curling into a warm chest in the middle of the night.

Maybe another dream  …

Or maybe not.



When we arrive on the course, Will walks with me through the back field  and gives me his standard pep talk, which, being tailored to me, is less  "pep" and more "stop being insane." He does this despite the fact that  at this very moment he has a thousand other things to do and people to  deal with, despite the fact that a young male coach wandering off with  one particular female student is bound to draw suspicion.

I know it looks bad that he spends so much time with me. I know he's put  his job on the line again and again when I've done nothing but give him  grief in return.

Today I want to give him the only thing I'm capable of giving. I'm going to win.

I take off too fast at the sound of the gun, feel that itching in my  chest far too early, yet I keep going. I will win for him if it kills  me. That voice in the back of my head tells me I'm going to lose if I  keep going like this, that I'll never make it, but I silently tell her  to shut the fuck up.

I cross the finish line going so fast that I run an extra 20 feet trying  to stop, like a car with bad brakes. This time it's him, not Peter, who  catches me, holding me by the shoulders so I don't collapse. "Another  record, Liv," he whispers, just as Peter runs over.

I'm happy, but this time my happiness is entirely for him.



A team takes first by weighting the scores of its runners. Today we  manage to place, coming in second for the first time in a decade.  Everyone is ecstatic. Brofton picks me up on his shoulder and spins me  around and I actually laugh without threatening to hit him. He sets me  down as we line up to climb on the bus, and I'm so dizzy I stumble into  Erin.

"Watch it," she says to Brofton. "She's our ticket to regionals. I want you treating her like a delicate flower from now on."

"Yeah," I laugh, "that's me. A fragile little flower."

Betsy pushes forward, looking oddly annoyed given that we just placed.  "If someone hadn't come in sixteenth," she sneers at Erin, "we might  have taken first today."

I hate the way her words have leached all the joy from Erin's face. "We'd have won if you'd placed better too," I snap.

What happens next occurs so quickly that I have little memory of it. One  minute I am speaking, and the next she's pushed me so hard that when my  face hits the side of the bus, I'm blinded momentarily by the pain. And  then I'm on the ground, with Betsy pinned beneath me. There's blood  pouring from her nose and someone's arms tight around me from behind, a  straitjacket.

"Liv!" shouts Will. "Stop!"

It's only then that I realize what I've done.

Somehow I've lost the moments that occurred between me standing beside  the bus and now, but I've done something bad. Will's arms are around me,  holding me back as he pulls me off of Betsy. She gets off the ground  while all of my teammates, and Peter, look at us in shock.

"What the hell just happened? We took second and you," Will says turning  to me in amazement, "you won. So why the hell are you fighting?"

"She assaulted me!" screams Betsy. "You said she got one chance and she just blew it!"

"It was self-defense," Brofton interrupts. "I saw the whole thing. Betsy slammed Finn's head into the side of the bus."

"Finn was just defending me," Erin tells Will rapidly, "but she  shouldn't have bothered. Everyone knows you're just jealous, Betsy."

I can see the fear in all of their faces. I had my one shot, and now  I've blown it. Hannah, Nicole, Erin  –  they look at me with some mixture  of desperation and resignation, wanting to fix it and knowing it's too  late.

"You promised she wouldn't hurt anybody," Betsy argues, holding her shirt to her nose.