by E. J. Noyes
I’m reclining on the couch, leaned against the armrest with my handwritten logs on my lap, trying to think of what to say without sounding like a stalker. I’m so overwhelmed that everything I’ve written about her makes me sound obsessed. Then she’s behind me, a hand resting on the cushion beside my shoulder. Not quite touching. The seconds lengthen. Ever since she arrived, my time is all messed up. It moves from point A to point B in a straight, slow line instead of jumping around everywhere at different speeds. She makes everything slow down, drags out our time together. I think I like this slow time with her.
Olivia asks something and I’m so focused on her closeness it takes me a long moment to decipher what she’s asking me. I set the pencil down and crane my neck to look up at her. “Tea would be wonderful, thank you. Let me help.”
“Don’t get up. I’ve got it. What are you writing?” Her hand has moved again, now resting on my shoulder, thumb massaging the tense muscle of my neck.
I feel myself relaxing into her touch, body responding with a low exhalation like it’s pushing all my tension out. “Just…things about you and me. Things I can’t tell them now but that I think they’d be interested in.”
Olivia peers over my shoulder, thumb still working her magic on the knots. “Do you really think it matters?”
I can tell she’s read some of what I’ve written and I’m suddenly embarrassed. I turn the paper over. “Mhmm. It’s silly but I feel like I should record it.” I look up at her again. “It would be relevant, right?”
Olivia shrugs. “I really couldn’t say because I don’t know the parameters of this experiment, but the scientist in me thinks yes, they’d like to know.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Her hand brushes over the back of my head and then she’s moving around my kitchen and making me tea. “Lemon and honey again?”
“Yes please.” Between the medicine and endless cups of medicated tea, the cold virus is being smothered.
Olivia offers me a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.” When she comes back, leaning on the stick with a mug of tea in the other hand, she’s inordinately proud of herself. “Only spilled a little.”
“Ah, thank you.” I take the mug carefully, wrapping my hands around it and capturing her fingers by accident.
She laughs and tries to wiggle her fingers free from under mine. “Have you got it?”
I extricate the mug from our fingers. “Mhmm, thanks.”
Olivia gently caresses my cheek with a mug-warmed hand. Her eyes soften, mouth lifting in a small smile. If I turned my head, I could kiss her palm. It would be so easy. Instead, I deliberately move my cheek out of the way of her hand.
The smile turns knowing, and she makes her way around to sit next to me. “You don’t seem feverish at all and you sound much better. How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad.” I sip the tea. It’s good. Hot and strong with a nice balance of honey and lemon. “Almost feel like I can start my daily jogs again.”
She stretches her legs, a light hand playing over her right thigh, just below her wound. “I think I might have to join you on one of those morning laps around the perimeter. I miss being outside and I’m so tired of being stuck in here.” Olivia glances up. “If you don’t mind taking it slowly.”
“I don’t mind. You like walking and hiking then?” Add one point to the pointless small talk column. She’s doing an extended hike, so obviously she does.
“Mhmm. I don’t get to do it as much as I’d like but every now and then I just crave the fresh air and solitude, you know?”
I don’t know so much about the solitude part but I get the need for fresh air. I ask the question I’ve been wanting to ask for ages. “So, uh…this finding yourself idea. Can I ask why exactly you’re doing that?” I hold my breath, hoping I haven’t asked too personal a question.
She exhales noisily. “Needed to get away from my life for a while I guess. Personal stuff that I needed a break from.”
Immediately I want to know what personal stuff she’s referring to. Family? Job? Relationship? I want to know if she’s got a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
“That’s really none of your business, Celeste,” Heather singsongs.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say politely to Olivia.
“Mmm. It’s not as exciting as it sounds. Feeling a little dissatisfied with my life in general. Had a decade or so of bad romantic relationships. Working too hard. Can’t seem to find a balance between the two.” Olivia picks at imaginary lint on the leg of my borrowed jeans. “I love my job but it’s always tied up in feelings of inadequacy.”
“How so?”
“I—” She bites the inside of her lower lip, the edges of her mouth turned down.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say hastily. I’ve pushed too far.
“No, it’s fine. Just not sure how to explain it.” She’s still frowning, but it’s not so much a frown of displeasure as a frown of thoughtfulness. “My dad pulled a lot of strings to get me my current position right out of college. I know he only wanted to help and the job is the job I’ve always wanted. But at the same time it makes me feel like a bit of a failure, you know? Like one of my big tests of adulthood and I failed it. Couldn’t even get my dream job without Daddy’s help.”
I see where she’s coming from, but at the same time I’m not quite sure I understand. For me, the idea of being given a boost up like that is incredible. “Does he ever make you feel like you owe him for his help, or like you’re not capable?”
“Oh, God no. He’s not like that at all. I know he’s incredibly proud of my accomplishments.” She shrugs. “My whole family is great. Just my own weird sense of expectation I guess.”
“Does your family know where you are?” Surely there’s someone who misses her, someone who is worried? She hasn’t mentioned it and with everything else, I hadn’t thought about it.
“Well, I’m through-hiking, and they know I’m away for a while. I’ve been able to take a month off work as I haven’t had a proper vacation in years. I’ve been keeping in contact with them every time I pass through a town, and they know that unless they don’t hear from me for two weeks or more they shouldn’t worry. I didn’t give an exact timeframe for the entire trip because who knows how long it takes when you’re soul-searching.” She makes air quotes.
“How long has it been since you were in contact?” I wonder if she’s finding her soul here with me.
Her nose wrinkles. “Eight days? I think.”
“So we…you still have a little time.” Not enough. There will never be enough.
“A little bit of time, yes.”
The things she’s shared have made me brave. I ask another forward question. “And have you found what you were looking for?”
“I think I might have, yes. Some part of it at least.” Her smile is secretive and a tiny piece of me hopes the part she’s talking about relates to me, that I’ve somehow helped her find herself. I dismiss the idea almost immediately. What a ridiculous, arrogant thought.
Olivia tilts her head, making a low musing sound at the back of her throat. “You know, I still find it really hard to think there’s nobody out there missing you.”
“I have friends, but aside from that, there’s nobody. Like I said, my family is gone.” I give her a few more facts, adding to what she already knows. Drug-addict mother. Many other families. Fostered. Adopted.
It’s easier to build on what I’ve told her now that we’re not complete strangers. Maybe I have needed to talk to someone after all. I run my thumb along the handle of my mug. “Mother was apparently clean when she was pregnant with me, and on and off after. But by the time she was pregnant with Riley, she was getting fucked up again all the time.”
A hand brushes over the back of my neck, lightly stroking. I don’t bother suppressing the shiver that builds and travels down my spine to make my back muscles tingle.
“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to,” Olivi
a murmurs.
“No, it’s fine. Honestly, it feels good to talk.” I scrub a hand over my face. “Man, Riley could scream and scream when she was a baby but she was lucky in the end I guess. No permanent…damage.” Lucky doesn’t seem like the right word for it. “They took her away for a while then gave her back when she was almost one and a half because Mother somehow managed to look like she had her shit together.”
“How old were you?”
“Nearly six. I don’t really remember much. Just that Riley cried a lot.”
And Mother didn’t like crying. She didn’t like a lot of things—me learning how to hide milk from whoever we lived with at the time and how to mash up food to feed my sister, me learning how to lock doors from the inside, me learning how to use her clothing for diapers, and me learning to talk back. I learned other things too—it’s hard to dodge a cast-iron skillet when you’re trying to protect your baby sister, and that if you make a game out of eating mashed-up food and milk just like your sister does, it helps you forget the pain of your fractured jaw.
I remember more but I’m not going to talk about that. Those details are too much, too much.
“What about your adoptive mother?”
“Joanne? She was foster mom number five. I was, uh, thirteen when she took us in. She adopted us right before I turned sixteen, got all the worst parts of raising two girls. She taught me about periods and bras and boys.” I grin. “Until she realized she had to teach me about girls.”
“You’re gay?”
“Yes.”
This information seems to have no effect on her. She’s neither repulsed, nor suggestive. She’s just Olivia. “Do you keep in touch with her? Joanne.”
“She died when I was twenty-three. Cancer. It was horrible.” More than horrible. Joanne did everything for Riley and me. She taught me how to care about things again, made sure we went to school and helped whenever I felt dumb. She showed me what it felt like to belong somewhere. What it felt like to belong to someone. The memory makes my throat tighten and clearing it turns into a short coughing fit.
Olivia waits until I’m under control again, then asks, “What about your birth mother? Have you seen her since you entered the foster care system?” Her questions are probing, but I don’t feel bristly about them the way I have in the past. Talking about myself and my history usually arouses pity, and pity sucks. But Olivia seems to attach no such emotion to my story. The only thing she seems is interested.
“No, not seen or heard. Mother didn’t contest the adoptions. I don’t think she even contacted them when they notified her.”
The hand stroking the back of my neck moves to my arm. Boldly, I move my hand to take hers, which is warm and dry. Mine feels clammy. I draw in a slow, steadying breath. “When Joanne got sick I was in college, studying to be a lawyer. I wanted to work in family law, helping people with their adoptions and stuff. The way I was helped.” It feels idealistic now, and so far removed from my life that I don’t see that person anymore when I look for her.
“Wanted to be a lawyer? What about now?”
“Now…I really don’t know. When Joanne died, it was like the start of the end for Riley. She just let it all go after that, even more than usual. She spent the small inheritance Joanne had left her then came to me, pleading and begging me to help her. Promising she was done and wanted to be clean. I dropped out of law school and used the money I had for tuition to try and get her some help.” But it didn’t work, nothing worked. “Joanne and I had both tried over the years, but it wasn’t enough. She always went back to it. And it finally killed her.” I can’t help the bitterness in my tone. I am bitter and I hate myself for it. I hate myself for wanting my sister to be stronger. I hate myself for not being able to keep her alive.
“God, Celeste. I’m so sorry.”
“Mmm, thank you.” I look up. “She was already cold when they found her. Nothing they could do.” Once upon a time I would have choked on those words but the soft, empathetic way Olivia is looking at me makes it easier to get them out. It hurts so badly that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe, but at the same time, my sister is dead and I am not, and I have to live.
Strangely enough, Riley doesn’t pop up with an indignant rebuttal the way she usually does when I think about this part of our life together. Frowning, I tilt my head, waiting for her. Nothing.
Olivia interlaces our fingers. Her face is barely inches from mine, and her expression still tender. I could lean forward and kiss her, and she’d probably allow it because who wouldn’t when someone’s told you such a horrible snippet from their life? But I don’t want it to be like that. I want it to be real. And I don’t want to have the tail end of a cold.
The silence between us is long and comfortable. Olivia’s the one to break it. “I don’t see you as a lawyer.” She isn’t the first person to say that. In college I was constantly mistaken for arts or literature. I actually did start out in arts because it seemed like an easy degree but decided fairly early on that it wasn’t for me and it wasn’t going to pay the bills.
The decision was made easier by the fact I’m not an arts person. I’m science and logic. Logic. Logic is why I struggle in this place because nothing I think or feel makes sense.
I smile my best self-deprecating smile. “I’m not smart, but I worked hard. Actually, I only just passed the LSAT to get into law school. But I passed.”
Someone shakes me awake. “Hey.”
I look down at the table and the books I fell asleep on, then twist to stare up at the person who woke me. I know her—she and I have a bunch of classes together. She’s fair-skinned, clear blue eyes, and light brunette hair pulled into a messy bun.
“Celeste, right?”
Swiping my hand over my mouth, I trawl through lectures, and group activities until I recall her name. “Yes. And you’re Heather.”
“Yup.” Heather leans against the heavy wooden desk. “What are you doing in the common room at this hour?”
I shrug, still fighting the lingering effects of sleep. “Same thing you are, I guess.”
Heather grins, transforming someone aloof into someone I suddenly feel like I want to get to know. “Well, I wasn’t sleeping on my books like you. I have a bed for that.” She pulls out the chair beside me and settles into it. “Are you always here in the small hours?”
I nod.
Heather opens a book. “Need a study partner?”
I push the memory away. “That’s all in the past now.” But everything is merging—past and present and future. I can’t separate out the strands of my life.
Olivia strokes my hand tentatively. “Can I ask why you went into the foster system?”
“Mhmm, of course. Mother was a meth addict. It was mostly neglect, lack of food and clothing and cleanliness and adequate healthcare. We always slept indoors somewhere so that was something I guess, and the other abuse stuff was so infrequent that sometimes I think I don’t remember how bad it was.”
Most of the time.
My forearm starts up with a dull ache the way it always does when I think about Mother breaking my arm. Even now, after all this time, standing at the top of long flights of stairs sends a shudder of alarm through my body and I have to pause and make sure I’m safe. That nobody is going to grab my hair. That nobody is going to shake me until I feel like I can’t breathe, and then throw me down the steps for daring to tell her that her kids were hungry.
“Thank you for telling me,” Olivia whispers.
“You’re welcome. It’s okay, really. I think I’ve finally moved past it.” I frown. “Or I had, before this.”
“You seem well-adjusted, all things considered.” Her eyes widen. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound judgmental.”
“No, it’s fine, honestly. I had my phase of loathing and anger, and…uh, a bit of self-harm and stuff like that when I was about fifteen, but I realized it didn’t help. None of those things got me anywhere. Joanne stuck us in a ton of therapy and I kind of realized
there’s no point in hanging on to it.” I laugh dryly. “Well, any more than I have to. I carry it with me because you can’t not with something like that but…I don’t want to use it as an excuse to be a bad person, you know?”
“That’s really impressive.” Olivia smiles, taking the opportunity to touch me again. This time it’s a gentle stroke of fingertips over my cheek. “I think that’s one of the bravest things I’ve ever heard. You’re perhaps the bravest person I’ve ever met, Celeste.”
“You give me too much credit.” She doesn’t know about all the times I’ve been cowardly. About all the times I’ve taken the easy way out or run away from something. Or someone. I shift slightly away from her, and she doesn’t chase.
After dinner it’s time for more Monopoly because Olivia likes it better than the other games. It’s not my favorite, but I don’t care. I’d play anything, do anything to make her happy. I don’t know who should play. One, Two or Three. After a brief internal back-and-forth, I decide that I’m going to play as myself. Just plain old Celeste.
Olivia settles opposite me and reaches for the dice. “Is everything all right? You seem pensive.”
I shuffle my fake money and count it. “I just…really don’t want you to leave. That’s all.” Looking up, I catch her eye then glance away again. Staring out the window into the darkness, I mumble, “I’m going to tell them in the morning.”
Tomorrow, tomorrow, it’s only—
Stop.
Chapter Eleven
When I wake curled around her with my face buried in her neck, I decide I’m going to keep her here forever and never tell the Controllers. I scrunch my eyes closed and push the idea out of my head. Aside from being one of the creepiest thoughts I’ve ever had—like she’s a pet or a toy with no say in how she lives her life—I’m not actually going to be here forever. Dim morning light through the window accentuates the fine hair along her jaw and I want to rub my knuckles gently over the spot and feel the soft down against my skin.