Page 23 of Waking Olivia

It’s that last part that worries me.

Iwatch her apartment. I see her shadow moving back and forth behind the window, and when her lights finally go off, I sit on her steps. I'd rather stay in the car, but I'm drowsy enough at this point that I'd pass out and never even notice her racing past.

It's almost 2:30 when I'm startled awake by a noise inside. My heart is beating hard, as if I'm about to cross a line, but then again, I'm sitting outside a student's apartment in the middle of the night.

I guess that line is already crossed.

19

Olivia

There's a storm coming. Something bad. The sun is out, but my mom is like a tornado, running from room to room.

"Mommy?" I ask. "Are we okay?" The possibility of disaster always exists in this house.

She spins on her heel to look at me, running her hands through her dark hair like she's fixing to yank it all out. I shouldn't have stopped her.

"No!" she screams. It's her angry-sad scream, the one that brims over with the tears she's holding back. Her sadness makes her want to lash out, and when she does the guilt will make her sad all over again. "Just give me five minutes in peace, Olivia, please!"

I nod and back away. She drops to her knees and begins crying hard, holding out her arms for me. "I'm sorry, baby," she whispers into my hair. "Mommy is just a little stressed.”

She tells me we’re going on a trip, but we have to leave really fast. She asks me to run to the basement and grab a few toys, and then to go to my room and get the white dress I wore on my last day of school.

I run to the basement and pick a doll I don't even play with, don't even like really, so when I look at her, it won't make me feel sad for what I've left behind. I go back upstairs but haven't reached my room yet when I hear a car door slam outside. My mother comes to a dead stop, a violent shudder running over her skin.

There's a storm coming. A storm that is outside but rushing at us fast.

She squats in front of me. "Run out the back door. Run as hard as you can and don't stop until you get to the woods. And whatever you do, don't come back."

"I want to stay with you," I beg.

That’s when we hear the front door open, the heavy tread on the first step, and I know the storm has caught us. And when a storm is inside your house, it's too late to run.

She shoves me into the closet. She tells me to stay and hide and not to make a sound until she comes for me, not a sound. Her words are threatening but her face is so, so sad. “Don’t watch,” she says. “And if he finds you, run."

Then she shuts the door.

I peer through the crack. Darkness fills the house, clouds rumble overhead, and his shadow stretches long and thin across the room, reaching from doorway to bed, where she sits with her hands in her lap. I can feel her fear. It diffuses like the spread after a nuclear blast. She will not fight him because there are things in this world too large, too terrible to fight, and he is one of them.

Suddenly I’m running, hard like she told me to do.

Down toward the high corn where I am small and he is big and only I can hide. But then he has me, grabbing me from behind, his arms wrapped around me like a straightjacket, immovable. I fight but it's useless. I wait for the pain to come, the pain I know is coming again, the sharp heat in my back and the wet feel of my shirt sticking and the blood on his hands. I know all this will come.

But there is nothing.

He tells me to calm down, begs me to calm down, but it's not the monster's voice. It's a soothing one, one that rolls over me and through me like a drug. A voice that tells me I'm safe, which can't be true but he says it again.

I give way.

I believe him.

I stop fighting and let the world grow black.

"Liv. It's time to get up."

I open my eyes slowly. I'm not in my room, and it's daylight. In a flash, my grogginess gives way to panic. If I’m not in my own room, I’ve done something very wrong. I’ve run or I've passed out again and I'm in a hospital or somewhere worse.

The time trial. I've missed it or I'm about to.

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