Page 73 of Waking Olivia

Why would anyone give up anything forthat?

Iwake up miserable. I know I didn’t run because I don’t think I ever quite fell asleep. I never realized how important Will’s answer would be until it came back last night as a gentle but thorough rejection. Dorothy tries to get me to eat and it comes back up almost immediately. I wouldn’t be surprised if I pass out again today. I don’t want that for the team but at the same time it feels as if nothing matters anymore.

I don’t say a word to him as we get ready to leave. Dorothy wishes me luck and hugs me goodbye. “We’ll see you Tuesday, right?” she asks.

I look at her blankly.

“Thanksgiving weekend?”

I can’t. I can’t spend another weekend around him after what happened last night, watching Jessica take all the things I want and can’t have. It’s time to finally cut the cord. Jessica was right. This family has done nothing but sacrifice for me and they’re in no position to be taking in orphans right now.

“Oh,” I say. “I totally forgot to tell you, but I’m going home with Erin. Sorry about that.”

Dorothy’s face falls, and guilt spins in my stomach alongside every other bad thing brewing in there right now. But in the long run, I’m not going to be a part of this family, so I may as well stop pretending I am right now.

51

Will

Ifucked up.

I know that I fucked up.

I just don’t know what else I could have done.

I wanted to tell her the truth. Yes, I want all the same things, and I want them only with her. I want a thousand boring nights in, sitting on a ratty sofa listening to her malign newscasters and make fun of their guests. That I want to spend my entire life keeping her safe, even if means sleeping on the couch outside her room to do it. That I’ve never wanted anything in my entire life the way I want her, and the idea of giving her up makes giving up climbing pale by contrast.

What good would it have done, though? I’m not going to wait a year and a half just to watch her move on to bigger things. And I’m sure as shit not going to try and convince her to destroy her future and stay here with me, in a small town where none of the things she wants can happen.

But I still fucked up.

With every minute that passes this morning, I can feel her growing more remote. She didn’t speak on the car ride and she barely spoke on the bus.

I see her pacing before the meet, the way she always does, but today she wants nothing from me. She’s the Olivia I first met, closely guarding her secrets, struggling beneath an unbearable weight, and certain that no one can help her carry it.

I have a bad feeling about today. She didn’t eat, she looks exhausted, and there’s just something missing … Possibly somethingItook away.

When the race starts, she goes out like a cannonball at a dead sprint. It’s speed you pull out at the end of the race, not at the beginning.

“What the hell is she doing?” groans Peter.

I’m wondering the same thing. It could be strategy, but Olivia’s strategy is normally the opposite, reining herself in until she knows the end is near. She typically stays neck-and-neck with the top two girls, lets them set the pace, and then pulls from that miraculous well of strength she always seems to have when no one else does. She’s not doing that today, and I already know exactly how this will unfold: when the top runners catch up with her, and they will because she can’t maintain her current pace, she’ll panic, begin the mental self-flagellation she’s so prone to, and then she will give up.

By the third mile, it all begins to unfold as I predicted and I watch, absolutely helpless to stop it. “Damn it,” says Peter. “She just lost us regionals.”

“She didn’t lose it,” I reply testily. “The team lost it. She’s the only one who got us close to it in the first place.”

She comes in 4th, still the first out of the team but several places too low to do us any good. When she comes through, I clap a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Olivia. You did your best.”

She nods but there is defeat etched into the curve of her mouth and shoulders as she walks away. Nicole and Erin both throw an arm around her shoulder as we walk to the bus, but Olivia doesn’t react. It’s not even as if she’s sad, it’s as if she’s empty. She never wanted to care about the team, and I think right now she wishes that were still true.

I say goodbye to her once we reach campus. School gets out Tuesday for break, and it all feels so incomplete. It seems like we should have more time.

She steps off the bus and I watch her until she fades from view, wishing there were anything I could have said to make her stay.

The farm is a pretty depressingplace to be for the next few days. It reminds me of the time after my father died, how we’d sit down for dinner and the sight of his empty chair seemed to diminish us all a little. My mother doesn’t say it, but I suspect she blames me. I see it in her eyes, in the way her mouth tightens a little every time I say Olivia’s name. The only person alive who appears happy about the whole thing is Jessica.

“No offense,” she says as we drive to dinner on Tuesday night, “but it’ll be nice to have a little family time without her there.”

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