Page 90 of Waking Olivia

I’m so out of my depth at this point it feels like I’ll never surface. I’m pretty sure I could have an MD and a Ph.D. and this whole thing would still be beyond me.

“Is there anyone else I can speak to? I assume Olivia must have lived with someone else, at least in high school, if her grandmother’s been sick for a while.”

There is defensiveness in her silence. “You understand I couldn’t take her in,” she finally says. “I’m too old to be raising someone, ‘specially someone troubled like that.”

“Yes,” I say impatiently. “So who did she live with?”

“She just stayed in the house by herself. She was fine. Anya had been sick for a long time and Olivia was used to taking care of both of them. She was better off on her own anyway.”

I slam the phone down and sit at my desk after we hang up, staring out the window without seeing anything. It’s so much worse than anything I could have imagined. There have been times in my life when I wasn’t sure how to fix something. But now? I’m not sure Ican.

From the very start, I had this urge to protect her, and that urge should have warned me away. I wanted to be the one to save her, and instead, I’ve opened up this well that might just destroy her.

It’s time to come clean before I do more damage.

It would beimpossible for Peter’s face to be more wary than it is when he opens his door. “Didn’t expect to see you on a Saturday morning,” he says, stepping aside for me to walk in.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “But I’m pretty sure this can’t wait.”

I tell him about Olivia’s night running and the nightmare she had last night. I tell him what I learned from the police and how I’ve been keeping her from running, which leads to the somewhat obvious fact that Olivia and I have been sleeping under the same roof.

“Will,” he groans, rubbing his eyes. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that, okay?”

“Look, I had to tell you. Her problems are bigger than my job. I can’t just abandon her right now.”

“I know that,” he says. “Which is why you can’t say what you just did. Because if you tell me you’re sleeping under the same roof, I have to tell you to stop, and we both know you’re not gonna. So I’m going to pretend you never said it.”

He says he’ll ask around for the name of a professional. Not the idiot at the health center, but someone actually equipped to deal with this situation. “And in the meantime, just stay the course. She’s got the Cooper Invitational next weekend. Let’s just get her through that.”

“This doesn’t seem like the kind of thing we should be keeping from her,” I say.

Peter shakes his head. “That girl’s had nothing but bad breaks in her life. She isn’t asking anyone for the truth, but she is asking for a chance to make a name for herself. And if she wins next week we can make that happen. I say we do whatever we need to do so she gets her shot.”

62

Olivia

They are all bizarrelycareful with me, as if I’m made of paper. It’s sweet but irritating, a constant reminder of what happened, of what they know about me and what I now know about myself.

I helped bury my brother, and I’m not sure how culpable I am. If I’ve forgotten this, what else have I forgotten? My head feels like the creepy basement of a haunted house—best left unexplored, evil lurking in all the dark corners. Will, especially, is distant and guarded. Solicitous and yet wary of me at the same time. Probably because he’s thinking exactly what I am: what else have I done? Who else have I hurt? No wonder he won’t ask me to wait until graduation.

When Brendan leaves for school on Sunday, I insist on going home too. Will made his decision. I’d rather rip the Band-Aid off now than spend the next week or month fearing it.

Over the next week, the whole team still practices together, but only three of us even have a reason to train until after winter break is over and it’s obvious. Most of the team is phoning it in and just barely. Will doesn’t look at me once without guilt on his face, and I don’t look at him once without seeing what I will never have. That same ambivalence I felt the morning of the last meet, as if nothing matters and nothing ever will, still weighs me down. Running was once everything because I’d never had anything better. And I still don’t have anything better, regardless of what I might have hoped, so I really need to pull it together by Sunday.

Erin showsup at my apartment on Friday to send me off.

“Here,” she says, handing me a bag. “These are good luck cookies.”

“What makes them good luck?”

“Nothing, but it was either that or my good luck underwear, and I figured you didn’t want that.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that good luck underwear is non-transferable.”

She gives me a hug. “We love you whether you win or not, Finn. Keep it in mind this time, okay?”

There arenine of us flying to Wyoming for the Cooper. Peter with Dan Brofton, Marcus Phipps, and a kid they call Rooster. He probably has a real name but I’m not sure what it is. On the women’s side is Will, me, Nicole, Betsy, and Dorothy. I’d feel guilty about the expense except there’s actually a regulation thatrequiresa female chaperone, so all of Dorothy’s costs are covered by the program.

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