Waking Olivia(3)

Even in a group of abnormal people, I'm the freak.

There's a water stop at the halfway point, which is when I first take a  good look at my teammates, covered in dust from the dry road kicking up,  sweat streaking down their arms, creating tiny pathways through the  dirt. I have a bad feeling about Betsy, the one who led. There's  something arrogant, aggressive in the set of her shoulders, though I  suppose the same could be said of me.

Will says nothing the entire time, and I have a begrudging respect for  the fact that he can keep up with us at all. Every extra pound you  carry, whether it's muscle or something else, is like carrying a few  bricks along for the run. He probably outweighs me by 80 pounds. That's a  lot of bricks.

It's a relief when I finally see campus looming in the distance. I kept  up. I didn't embarrass myself on the first day. Given that I've got that  swimmy, unstable feeling I get before I pass out, it could have gone  much worse. We reach the track and Will tells us he'll have notes for us  at tomorrow's practice and sends us on in.

Well, almost all of us.

"Olivia," he says with an edge to his voice, "we need to talk." It's  clear that this won't be a feel-good pep talk welcoming me to the team,  and prompts a little smirk from Betsy.                       
       
           


///
       

"I go by Finn," I growl.

He acts as if I haven't spoken. "What the hell was that?" he demands. "I  don't know what they did at your old school, but when I ask for 10  miles, I want a little effort."

"This is complete bullshit," I argue. "I kept up."

"You think we brought you on the team because we hoped you could keep  up?" he asks. "We need a leader out there. You ambled down the road like  a new mom trying to take off the baby weight."

God, what a dick. "I was tired."

"You've done the exact same workout that everyone else here has, so  you've got no reason to be tired," he says, "unless you've already  violated Peter's rule about drinking the night before a practice."

He has me by the throat. The story I used at UT is not going to fly  here, so I make the very questionable decision to go with the truth  instead, something I've never found pays off.

"I ran a little this morning before I came out," I tell him quietly.

His mouth grows tighter. "And why exactly would you do that?"

For just a moment, a millisecond, I meet his eyes, though I don't want  to. There's a part of me that wants to beg him not to ask, not to  question, not to try to take my secrets away from me. I look away  because I refuse to beg him or anyone. "I ... I couldn't sleep."

He's silent for a moment, his jaw tense but his eyes uncertain. "You're  on my watch now," he finally says. "You run when I tell you to run and  that's it. Don't do it again." He turns and walks away.



I ignore everyone in the locker room. These people aren't my friends  now, and they won't be my friends in two years. I've done all this  before, and I know exactly where it got me.

"I'm Erin," says the girl changing beside me.

"Hey," I say tersely.

"So you're here from Austin?"

"Yeah."

"Is it true that you got kicked off the track team for beating up Mark  Bell?" She doesn't even try to disguise her delight about this juicy  morsel of gossip. Funny how everyone looks down on me for what I did,  but they don't look down on themselves for being so fucking delighted to  hear about it.

"Yeah," I say, packing my bag. "So I've heard."

"So is it true?" she whispers as if this is some special "just us girls"  moment of intimacy with half the team standing there with their ears  cocked.

"Yes."

"So why did you do it? He must have done something to you, right?" she asks.

"Yes," I say, fixing a look on her along with the other little  listeners, who no longer feign disinterest and are watching us avidly.  "He asked me too many fucking questions."





4





Will



"So how did it go?" asks Peter, but he can tell the answer by taking one  look at my face. He chuckles. "You're just like your father, Will.  Incapable of hiding your thoughts."

It's taken the better part of two years for the mention of my father to  stop hurting, and it will be a good two decades before I can appreciate  the comparison. I did what he wanted. I gave up my career as a climber  to take over the farm, but he wasn't alive to see it happen and it  wouldn't have made a difference anyway. My father still would have found  fault.

"It could have gone better," I sigh.

"How are the new freshmen?"

"They hung in there. Evans was solid. The other one I'm not sure about."

He nods slowly. "What about Finnegan?"

There are a million things I could tell him. That hostility came off her  in waves, that she looked at the rest of the team like she wanted to  shank them, and that her running was disappointing if not flat-out  infuriating. I should tell him that she's troubled. What could possibly  compel a girl to run before track practice? I need to tell him this  because if it continues it will spell disaster. She'll either go into  shock or have a fucking heart attack right in the middle of a race. But  for some reason, I think of how lost she looked when I asked her about  it, young and lost and destroyed.

"She's going to be a lot of work," I reply.

I've only told him half the truth, and it wasn't the important half.





5





Olivia



In the dining hall, I get a salad with grilled chicken, no cheese, no  dressing, no bread. The world's leading female long distance runners  only have about 15% body fat. Nothing matters so much as weight in  distance running. Every pound you run with adds two seconds per mile. It  might not sound like much, but an extra 10 pounds over a six-mile  course equals two full minutes, the difference between a win and a loss.

I watch the football players with envy as they load their trays with  cheese fries and burgers and baked potatoes and pie. Just once in my  freaking life I want to eat like a football player. I spend my life in a  state of continuous hunger. It's been that way for so long that the  depth of my hunger scares me. Sometimes I think that if I took off the  leash, I'd eat until I exploded and that I would never stop.                       
       
           


///
       

Erin finds me and sits down uninvited. She's extraordinarily wholesome  looking with milky skin, scattered freckles and big cornflower-blue  eyes. The kind of girl you'd see in an ad for America's farmers. You can  take one look at her and know she's never suffered. I shouldn't hate  her for it, but I do.

"I'm really sorry," she says. "I feel awful. You were right, I was prying, and it was none of my business."

"Whatever." In truth, I'm too busy being fascinated by her tray to say  anything else. Meat swimming in gravy, potatoes, bread, pie on the side  and milk. She has at least 2000 calories on that tray. Just the sight of  it alternately disgusts me and makes me ravenous in the same moment. I  open my newspaper and pray she goes away.

"You aren't very friendly," she says, "you know that?"

"Yes." Hint, fucking hint.

"Why?"

"I don't need friends."

"Everyone needs friends."

"I don't." I continue to read my newspaper.

"You're not going to scare me off, you know."

"Are you going to continue to babble while I try to read?"

"Yes," she chirps, digging into that disgusting pile of wet meat on her  tray. I flinch, and yet I watch. "I've dealt with worse than you. You  should see my brother. He's been in and out of rehab so many times it's  like his second home. Maybe it's even his first home. And when he's  using or coming down or detoxing, he's the biggest asshole you've ever  met."

"Fascinating," I mumble.

"He's great, thanks for asking," she replies dryly. As annoying as it  is, my mouth twitches, and I would smile if I knew it wouldn't encourage  her. "He's in LA at the moment, exploring his ‘craft.'" She rolls her  eyes and does air quotes. "You're probably thinking LA isn't the  greatest place for someone just out of rehab. Which is precisely what I  told my parents, but they're so excited he's into something that they're  trying to overlook it. Is that all you're going to eat?"

Jesus fucking Christ. This girl never stops talking.

"The leading female runners only have 15% body fat," I reply pointedly,  looking at her tray. Erin isn't fat, but she could be thinner. Her extra  pounds will drag the team down, and I already resent her for it. I  resent that I will work my ass off and starve, and we still won't place  because of the girls who had to eat their platters of meat swimming in  gravy every day.