Wish

by Alexandra Bullen

  “You look…I’m sorry, it’s just, you look…”

  Just like her, Olivia thought, silently finishing her mother’s sentence. Just like Violet.

  “She’s right,” Violet said softly. “You do.”

  Olivia chewed at the inside of her cheek, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  She couldn’t begin to say all the things she was sorry for. She was sorry her mom was upset. She was sorry that her very existence was a painful reminder of everything they’d lost. She was sorry she wasn’t enough.

  “No,” her mother said through a little cough. “I’m sorry. I just realized—what time is it? I forgot I have to…I have to run back to the office…”

  Olivia watched with quiet alarm as Bridget gathered her purse and trenchcoat, opening her wallet and sliding out her MasterCard. “Here,” she said, shoving the card and car keys into Olivia’s palm. “I’ll walk. Get anything you want, all right?” Without waiting for a response, her mother started hurriedly through the store and out onto the street.

  Olivia closed herself back into the claustrophobic room. Her face burned and she felt sweat marks blooming under her arms. She imagined her mother speed-walking to her office building, sitting upright in the comfort of her high-backed, rolling leather chair, and burying herself in business.

  The business of forgetting.

  Olivia ripped the vest over her head and threw it to the floor. Suddenly, Violet’s reflection was next to hers in the mirror, watching as Olivia hurried back into her own boring clothes.

  “What are you doing?” Violet asked.

  Olivia buttoned her oatmeal-colored corduroys and sat on the stool to zip up her boots. “I’m going home.”

  Violet knelt beside her sister, picking up the credit card from where Olivia had tossed it near the mirror. “Didn’t you hear what she said?” she asked. “Carte blanche! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamed about this?”

  Olivia took the credit card and shoved it into the pocket of her fleece. “It’s bad enough I look just like you,” Olivia murmured. “I don’t have to dress like you, too.”

  Violet rolled her eyes and blocked Olivia’s path to the door. “Wait,” she begged, grabbing her sister by the elbows. “Okay. Maybe the vest was a little much.”

  “You think?” Olivia asked dryly.

  “But that doesn’t mean we can’t find something that’s more…you,” Violet insisted. “Just because you don’t want to wear a kilt doesn’t mean you have to dress like a piece of dry toast all the time, either. Right?”

  Violet swung her sister around to face the mirror, and Olivia had no choice but to accept defeat. Her pants, her sweater, and her coat, were all exactly the same shade of tan. Even she could see that there was room for improvement.

  Violet dug through a pile of sweaters on the floor and held one up, a gray and black striped tunic with a wide elastic belt. Olivia took it and pressed it against her torso.

  “See?” Violet asked, her voice warm and soothing. “Baby steps.”

  14

  Whether or not it had anything to do with the new teal tunic and pewter leggings, or the new slouchy faux-suede boots, Olivia’s reign as Princess Invisible came to an end the following afternoon in AP English.

  It was Olivia’s first time in the class. She’d been accidentally scheduled into Remedial English 101, and it had taken her a day to convince her well-meaning but flaky guidance counselor, whose office was strung with Tibetan prayer flags and smelled like scented candles, that there had been a mistake.

  After a couple of wrong turns that nearly landed her in the basement utilities closet, Olivia tiptoed in after class had already started, sliding behind a desk at the back of the room while Violet took up her usual perch by the window. Up front, Graham was holding a pristine and clearly unopened copy of To the Lighthouse, while a blond, preppy kid with a healthy dusting of youthful freckles straddled a seat backward at the front of the room.

  “Virginia Woolf was a lesbian,” Graham announced, waving his book for emphasis. “Didn’t you guys see The Hours? She made out with her sister.”

  The class erupted into giggles and a lively discussion of Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose, while the guy with the freckles dismounted his chair and flipped it around, settling himself against the teacher’s desk.

  “Thank you for that profound observation, Graham.” Freckles spoke, and Olivia’s eyes widened as she realized he was the teacher. She was busy wondering how this Dennis the Menace clone could be a day out of college, when he turned and narrowed his eyes in her direction. “Who’s this?”

  Sixteen heads swiveled around to face her.

  “It seems we have a stranger among us…” Freckles paced the length of the dry-erase board, picking imaginary pieces of lint from the waistband of his argyle sweater-vest. Olivia couldn’t help but think he looked like an eager little boy borrowing his grandfather’s clothes. The corners of her mouth started to twitch as she caught Violet’s reflection in the glass, already puffing out her chest in a dead-on impersonation.

  Olivia shook her head clear and shifted forward in her seat, sensing the fidgeting bodies around her and wondering where to start.

  “Do. You. Have. A. Name?” Freckles articulated each word individually, as if speaking to a child or a house pet, an arrogant smirk spreading across his face.

  “Olivia,” she uttered, her brain locked, her face heating up.

  “Just Olivia,” Freckles repeated. “No last name. Like Madonna?”

  The tips of her ears were on fire. Olivia couldn’t believe that on her first chance to really hold her own—in new clothes, no less—she was being mocked by an underage imposter.

  “Okay, Madonna,” he went on. “Welcome to Advanced Placement English. I’m Mr. Whitley. I realize that a lot of teachers around here—in their overalls and their flowered skirts—prefer to be called by their first names. This is because they’d like you to see them as friends.” Mr. Whitley paused dramatically in front of a row of desks, slowly rapping his knuckles against the polished wood. “I,” he continued, drawing the word across many multi-toned syllables, “am not one of those teachers.”

  A quiet, irreverent chuckle came from the seat directly in front of Olivia’s. A girl flipped her straight dark hair over one shoulder and Olivia immediately recognized the perfect profile, the dimpled chin, the almond-shaped eyes. Calla Karalekas.

  Mr. Whitley shot a grave look in Calla’s direction and Olivia sucked in a bit of air, certain things were about to heat up. But Calla simply lifted her thick, heavy lashes, staring the teacher down with what looked, from Olivia’s partially obstructed perspective, to be an almost flirtatious smirk.

  Mr. Whitley spun on his heels and resumed pacing.

  “You’re joining us a little late in the term,” Mr. Whitley was saying to the tops of his chocolate-colored loafers, “so the learning curve might feel a bit steep. We’re right in the middle of a unit on the Bloomsbury group, and today we’re talking about one of Virginia Woolf’s most significant novels, To the Lighthouse. I assume you got the reading list we sent out over the break?”

  Olivia had a vague recollection of something coming in the mail just before they’d moved, but those last few days had been enveloped in such a gauzy haze of chaos and denial that she wasn’t sure what had happened to the envelope en route.

  “Oh, um, I think so,” she quietly stuttered. “I mean, no, I think I—”

  Mr. Whitley had already turned his back to the class, pen poised at the board. “It’s not a trick question, Madonna,” he barked, scribbling a list of dates in shiny red ink. “Perhaps you could borrow a copy over the weekend. You’ll find you have a great deal of catching up to do.”

  From the corner of the room, Graham enthusiastically waved his book in her direction. Olivia kept her eyes trained on the back of Mr. Whitley’s bobbing head, the anxious drumming of her pulse quickening into an angry roar.

  Suddenly, Violet w
as kneeling at her feet, eyes wild and glistening. “Oh, no,” she muttered. “You can’t let him talk to you like that. A teacher like this will ruin you until you put him in his place.”

  Olivia looked down at her sister, who was nodding enthusiastically and gesturing toward the front of the room.

  “You’ve read that book a thousand times!” Violet encouraged. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your precious Homework Room?”

  Olivia’s cheeks flushed, remembering the intense feminist phase she’d gone through in the middle of freshman year. After reading one of Woolf’s most famous essays, A Room of One’s Own, Olivia had decided that in order to properly do her homework, she would need a room of her own, co-opting a section of the mudroom at the back of the house. It was true. She knew most of Woolf’s novels by heart, even the really complicated ones that had taken her months to decode. To the Lighthouse was not one of her favorites, but she certainly knew enough to have an opinion.

  “Now,” Whitley continued. “Who can tell me what exactly Woolf was trying to accomplish by—”

  “I’ve already read it.”

  Olivia leaned forward in her seat, the sharp points of her elbows resting lightly on the desk. The words came from somewhere so deep inside of her, they tasted funny.

  Mr. Whitley froze, his arm raised midscrawl. Slowly, he turned his head. “I’m sorry?”

  Bodies shifted as, once again, the entire class turned to look in her direction. Olivia’s nervous gaze darted from one eager face to the next, before locking with the pair of piercing dark eyes in front of her. Calla’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows were knit together in anticipation.

  Olivia cleared her throat. “To the Lighthouse,” she managed, eyes darting up and down from Violet to the class. “I was just saying, I mean…I’ve read it.”

  Olivia looked down, her eyes wide and pleading with Violet for help.

  “Excellent,” Mr. Whitley said, his voice dull and flat. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind sharing your observations with the rest of the class.”

  Olivia swallowed. “Like, now?”

  Mr. Whitley nodded. “Like, yeah,” he mocked.

  Olivia cleared her throat and steadied her hands on either side of the desk. Violet was still crouching beside her, and rested a hand on her back.

  “You can do this,” Violet said. “It’s just like back home. You’ll feel better once you start putting yourself out there, I promise.”

  Olivia uncrossed her ankles and looked up, taking a deep breath before speaking.

  “Honestly,” she said, drawing the word out to buy time, “I think the novel is self-indulgent.” Olivia cringed, holding her breath. She watched the shock travel down from Freckles’s eyes, tightening his smile into a pursed frown.

  “Care to elaborate?” he asked.

  Violet hopped up and down with glee, as Olivia settled an inch or two deeper into her chair. A familiar calm settled into her bones as she surveyed the class around her. Violet was right. She was back in her element, and she felt better already.

  “I mean, clearly,” she continued, “the book was little more than an attempt by Woolf to reconcile her feelings of inadequacy and guilt over the debt she owed her Elizabethan predecessors, from whom she struggled to separate herself to varying degrees of success for the remainder of her career.”

  Olivia inhaled the thick silence around her, her ears ringing and her face hot. Violet leaned in to whisper in her ear.

  Olivia felt the corners of her mouth turning up as she leaned farther back into her seat. “Plus,” she continued, repeating her sister’s prompt, “she was a lesbian.”

  It took Mr. Whitley three minutes of knuckle-rapping and the empty threat of detention to finally get the class to stop laughing.

  “Hey, Madonna!”

  Olivia was halfway across the street when she realized two things. One, for the first time in her life, she had a nickname. And two, Calla Karalekas was shouting it from under the branches of an evergreen tree, at the corner of Page and Masonic.

  Olivia dodged an oncoming cab and hustled to the corner, where Calla was waiting with two other girls. One was Graham’s onstage girlfriend, the petite Asian lap-snuggler from the courtyard, and the other was a Nordic-looking giantess, with a broad, shiny forehead and icy blue eyes.

  “Madonna, this is Lark,” Calla announced, gesturing to the sporty blonde, who waved the tops of her fingers and smiled. “And this,” Calla continued, linking arms with the petite girl to her left, “is Eve.”

  Eve’s shoulder-length black hair was pin-straight and styled in hard angles at her chin. She offered her hand for Olivia to shake, and Olivia noticed that even her little birdlike fingers had tiny, perfect nails.

  “Madonna kicked ass in Shitley’s class today,” Calla announced. “He went into his Little Napoleon routine and she barely even flinched.”

  Olivia tried not to let on that her memory of the experience was slightly different, as Violet nudged the back of her elbow.

  “See?” she whispered, slapping her own forehead with one open palm. “Man, I could have had a future in this.”

  “So what did he want?” Calla asked, her dark eyes warm and curious. There was something about the way she held herself that put Olivia instantly at ease, and reminded her of Violet’s confidence pep talk, but in a totally-without-trying kind of way.

  “Who?” Olivia asked. A breeze had picked up, and the green and white Golden Gate school flag was flapping noisily overhead.

  “Whitley!” She laughed. “I hope he wasn’t too hard on you after class.”

  “Oh,” Olivia replied coolly. “No, nothing like that. He just told me about the partner projects.”

  Olivia had done her best impression of nonchalance when Whitley had asked her to hang back after class, even though she’d been certain he was going to expel her there and then. Instead, he’d simply given her a handout detailing the project that was due in a few weeks, a scene-adaptation from To the Lighthouse.

  Which was quickly becoming Olivia’s least favorite book.

  “Oh, good,” Calla exclaimed. Her thick, dark brown hair fell in one perfect wave over her shoulder and had that fresh-from-the-hairdresser look. “I thought for sure he was going to nail you with extra work or something. He lives for that shit.”

  Olivia felt a twinge of guilt. Never in her life had she even contradicted a teacher in public. She felt Violet proudly beaming at her side, and was wondering if maybe this wasn’t the most brilliant start to her new academic career, when Calla reached abruptly into her bag and retrieved a shiny, goldenrod envelope.

  “Anyway, I have something for you,” she said, placing the envelope in Olivia’s palm. “It’s for this iWIN fundraiser my mom is hosting at the Academy of Sciences this weekend. Come.”

  “IWIN?” Olivia repeated, taking the envelope and holding it as if it were a small bird that might fly away.

  “International Women in Need,” Calla explained. “It’s my mother’s pet project. I’m junior chair. It should be fun. You know, speeches, cocktails, drunken debauchery…” Calla gave Olivia’s hand a quick squeeze before releasing it and skipping off to meet the other girls huddled around a waiting town car.

  Olivia felt the envelope turning damp between her sweaty fingertips and looked down to see one word, written in sharp, precise script:

  Madonna.

  15

  “Hey, neighbor.”

  Olivia and Violet were walking toward the Muni stop the next morning, Olivia’s eyes trained on the parallel cable-car tracks, per the tested I’m not hearing voices routine. She didn’t see Miles until she’d almost walked up and over the tops of his fungus loafers.

  “Oh.” Olivia stopped short. “Hey, Miles.”

  Ever since their mothers’ office reception, where they’d discovered that they lived a mere two blocks apart, Miles, Bowie, and Olivia had found themselves on similar commutes to and from school. At first, it had seemed a coincidence, and Olivia was happy for the (re
al-life) company. But Miles’s timing quickly became alarmingly precise, and lately it seemed that he was always there alone, waiting at the bus stop whenever Olivia arrived.

  “Missed you on the ride home from school yesterday,” Miles said lightly. Over his shoulder, Violet’s face was locked in a sort of half grimace that Olivia couldn’t read.

  “Yeah,” Olivia said, as the J Church Muni car squealed to a stop at the curb. “I got held up talking to a friend.” It felt a little premature to be calling Calla her friend, but Olivia figured it was easier than explaining the whole Madonna incident to Miles. Plus, something told her that he wouldn’t exactly approve.

  “No problem.” Miles shrugged, as if Olivia had apologized without meaning to. Olivia found a seat in the middle of the trolley and Miles planted himself standing beside her. Olivia turned to look out the window, hoping to avoid the uncomfortable reality of sitting face-to-face with his crotch.

  “Hey, I’ve been thinking,” Miles boomed from over her head, hugging the metal railing close to his chest. “You don’t, I mean, you haven’t picked a, uh, partner yet. For Whitley’s project, I mean. Have you?”

  Olivia’s memory stalled and she searched for Violet, who was perched on a plastic red seat across the aisle. Miles was in her English class? She hadn’t even noticed him. Violet was vigorously shaking her head from side to side, and out of habit, Olivia did the same.

  “Awesome,” Miles replied, and Violet hopped across the aisle, tugging on Olivia’s sleeve.

  “No!” Violet whispered. “I meant, ‘no,’ as in, don’t do it!”

  Olivia looked down at her hands folded in her lap and took a deep breath. “Oh,” she said, then quickly looked back up to Miles. “I mean, I thought Mr. Whitley was assigning us groups?”

  Miles hoisted the strap of his black messenger bag up higher on his shoulder as the bus pulled to a stop in front of school. “Nope,” he said happily, making his way to the front. “And this is perfect, because I was planning on working with Jake, but I think he’s trying to get with Leah, you know, that girl with the tongue ring? So he probably already asked her.”