Page 91 of Waking Olivia

We arrive in Cheyenne late Saturday afternoon and are given our room assignments. I’m with Dorothy, of course.

“Still need a babysitter I see,” mocks Betsy. “Right up until the last minute.”

“It seems to work for her, though,” says Dorothy pointedly, “since she came in first the last time I roomed with her. Maybe I should chaperoneeveryone.”

Damn, I laugh to myself.Dorothy has claws. No wonder we get along so well.

We all eat together. Peter and Dorothy sit at one end of the table. They talk easily, eat off each other’s plates without asking. They seem like they’ve been together forever.

“Who out of this handsome bunch are your kids?” the waitress asks them.

Peter grins. “All of ‘em.”

A question, confusion, crosses Will’s face then. A moment of insight he blinks away. For someone who’s normally pretty perceptive, he’s shockingly slow to pick up on this. That or he just refuses to.

After Dorothy lies down, I go to the other bed in his room and stretch out. He seems to be doing his level best to pretend I’m not even here and it pisses me off.

“It’s the last meet,” I say, rolling to face him. “You gonna miss me?” My tone is playful, but my meaning is not.

He glances at me, his eyes darting over my body before they return to my face. “Your shirt is riding up,” he says hoarsely.

I glance down and shrug. “I’m sure two inches of skin won’t kill you. Answer the question.” I run my finger over my lip and thrill at how avidly he watches the motion. The way his eyes turn feral before he looks away.

He swallows and sits back. “It’s not like I won’t still see you. I mean, you’ll stay with us over break, right?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You have to. You know you’re important to my family.”

“And that’s all?”

“Liv,” he groans. “It’s all you’re allowed to be.”

In the morning, I’m my standard nervous-with-a-side-order-of-nervous.

“Try to eat, sugar,” says Dorothy.

“I can’t,” I sigh. “You know that.”

She somehow gets half a banana in me before we leave for the meet. I felt okay when I woke up, but once we’re on the field something spins in my stomach. The air is cold, but it can’t account for the chill that seems to climb under my skin.

“Something’s wrong,” I tell Will. “Something’s off.”

“Nothing’s off,” he soothes. He reaches out to touch me and stops himself, letting his hand fall. “It’s just nerves.”

“No, this is different. I feel sick,” I tell him. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“You’re not sick,” he says firmly. “Don’t do this to yourself. Or go ahead and do it to yourself. But you know once you’re running it’ll pass.”

I nod, but this time, I’m not convinced. Maybe it’s just my failure at the last meet, but I don’t think it is. My lucky streak is over. I had a small winning streak at UT too, and then it ended and it never came back.

Today is not going to work out.

I taste metal in my mouth as we wait at the starting line, and then it’s in my stomach, climbing through me, making my gut churn and my blood go cold. When the gun sounds, I take off too fast, trying to escape the chill that’s climbing up my spine, the certainty that I will fail. I think of Will on the sidelines right now, how he’ll feel when I lose, and what it must have been like two weeks ago watching me blow our shot at regionals. I force myself to pull back. I let the other girls set the pace, but because I’m anxious it feels painfully slow.

And then the distance increases and I feel better, stronger, more certain. I even out, going head-to-head with some girl from California everyone expects to win. But I can hear the violence of her exhale, the rasp in her inhale. We aren’t even two miles in and she’s struggling, whereas I feel like I could run this pace all day long.

I break ahead of the others. It’s early, for me. A risk. Maybe I don’t have another two fast miles in me, but today I want this. I want this for Will and Peter and Dorothy as much as I do myself, and I think it’s possible I have it.

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