Olivia nodded. The lump in her throat was bigger now, and throbbing. She felt a heavy pulsing behind her eyes, and her nose was starting to tingle and burn.
“He’s great at that,” Calla said. “I guess it’s what I miss the most.”
Olivia tried everything she could to stop them, but the tears were already pooling and dripping onto the tops of her cheeks. She had no idea where they’d come from, but once they’d started, there was no turning them off. Calla must’ve heard her sniffle because she turned and gasped.
“Oh, no,” she said, hurrying to put a long arm around Olivia’s shoulders. “Not you, too! It’s not that bad, I promise. God, I’m such a drama queen.”
Olivia meant to laugh, and it might have started that way, but the sound caught somewhere in her throat and turned into a loud, ugly sob. Soon she was smiling and crying at the same time, and shaking her head with embarrassment.
“No,” Olivia gulped. “It’s not that.”
Olivia hiccuped for air but the tears kept coming, and Calla rubbed her back in small, comforting circles.
“What’s wrong?” she asked softly.
Olivia pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes, wiping them dry and taking a full, calming breath.
“It’s just…my sister,” she managed, before hiccuping again. She hadn’t fully realized why she was crying until she’d said the words out loud.
Calla cocked her head forward and tucked a strand of Olivia’s curls back behind her shoulder. “I didn’t know you had a sister,” she said quietly.
“I do.” Olivia nodded. “I mean, I did. She died last summer.”
As soon as she’d said the words, she felt another wave of sobs growing from the pit of her stomach. They sounded so real. So final. She couldn’t believe they were true.
Olivia could hear Calla holding her breath, then exhaling in a long, full sigh.
“I’m so sorry,” Calla said. “I had no idea.”
Olivia nodded and squeezed her hands together in her lap.
“I totally understand if you don’t want to talk about it,” Calla said, squeezing Olivia’s shoulder. “But if you do…”
Olivia smiled and took a deep breath. It felt like she’d been living with a brick wall inside of her, holding everything back. And now, all of a sudden, the wall had crumbled to the ground. Everything came out in a flood.
“We were at our summer house on Martha’s Vineyard,” Olivia began. “It was late. My parents were out. A bunch of us went to go night swimming at the beach. There was this spot where a storm had blown over the peninsula. A breach. People said the current was so strong it could pull you out to sea in seconds.”
Olivia squeezed the sides of her knees with her palms.
“She asked me to go in with her,” Olivia continued, quieter now. “She begged me to. I told her I wouldn’t and she shouldn’t, either. I hate doing things like that. But I’ve always been the stronger swimmer…I should have gone in, too. I should have been there…”
Olivia trailed off, her voice disappearing into a cloud of buried memories. Violet standing ankle-deep in the water, the fraying bottom of her jean shorts getting wet, her green lace camisole clinging to her waist.
Violet up to her waist in the cold, angry waves, her arms flailing behind her, beckoning Olivia to come in.
Violet laughing, diving into the deep dark of the choppy sea. The water closing around her neck, pulling her down…
Violet’s face one last time, her eyes wide, panic gripping her open mouth, her hair swirling around like floating seaweed as she struggled to the surface.
And then…nothing.
Endless seconds of terrible silence, before the flurry of activity.
People running, screaming, boys holding each other back, everybody holding Olivia back, Olivia yelling that she had to go in, too.
Knowing it was too late. Knowing if she went in, she’d never come out.
Olivia gasped.
It was over.
Her face was now drenched and her shoulders shook, tiny, faraway whimpers slipping out from between her shuddering lips.
“That is so terrible. I can’t even imagine…” Calla said, after a few moments of heavy quiet. “And here I am, all pathetic and crying over a stupid boy.” Calla linked her arm through Olivia’s elbow and pulled her in to her side.
“I’m sorry,” Calla said. “I’m so, so sorry, Olivia.”
Olivia allowed her body to melt. It felt good to be so close to somebody. It felt good to finally cry. Now that it had all been said, now that everything was out, even breathing felt easier.
“I’m glad I met you, Madonna,” Calla said, looking up at the enormous sky, the moon floating high and bright overhead. “You really are True Blue.”
32
Olivia was quietly padding down the hall from the bathroom when she heard a soft whistling sound following her from behind. At first she thought it was coming from one of the guest rooms, but the doors were all closed and the hallway was empty. She heard it again and leaned over the cherrywood banister to find Soren standing at the bottom of the staircase, tipped high on his toes and waving her down.
Olivia’s pulse raced and her mind felt cloudy. Calla and Lark had been asleep in Lark’s queen-size bed when Olivia remembered she hadn’t brushed her teeth. The girls had hardly even twitched when she’d tiptoed out of the room. Glancing out over the railing, she saw that downstairs, the living room was still blanketed in sleeping boys and silence.
Olivia carefully made her way down the steps, every tiny creak sending a shiver up her spine. When she reached the bottom, Soren was leaning against the knotted railing, his hands stuffed in the pocket of a cozy white hooded sweatshirt, a purple NYU logo over his heart. He was smiling and his eyes were hopping around her face, like he was trying to memorize her features.
“Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi,” she said back.
“What are you still doing up?” he asked. His breath smelled faintly of beer, and his eyes were glassy and light.
“Bathroom,” Olivia whispered. “What about you?”
Soren shrugged and yawned, the little lines around his eyes crinkling. “Couldn’t sleep,” he said with a smile. “Want to go for a walk?”
Olivia raised an eyebrow and looked through the narrow rows of rectangular windows on the front door behind him.
“Now?” she said. It was at least two thirty in the morning.
Soren smiled and reached out for her hand, giving her fingers a gentle tug as he intertwined them with his own. “Come on,” he said. “It will be an adventure.”
Olivia’s stomach swirled as she glanced back upstairs. Calla was sleeping less than fifty feet away. The same Calla who had just admitted that she wasn’t over Soren. The same Calla who had been so comforting when Olivia had told her about Violet.
The Calla who was her friend.
Olivia took a deep breath and untangled her fingers from Soren’s warm grasp.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t.”
Soren’s chin ducked a little bit closer to his chest and he buried his hands back inside his sweatshirt. “You can’t?” he asked. He was looking down at his feet, and Olivia noticed that his muddy hiking boots were already laced up.
Olivia chewed at the inside of her lip.
“Soren, I—” This sucks. This sucks. This sucks. It ran like a mantra in her head, but she kept pushing forward, the words tumbling around in her mouth like heavy rocks. “I don’t think we should do this anymore. It’s not right. I like you…like, a lot…but…”
A rustling noise from the living room startled her, and they both turned to see Farley rolling over in his sleeping bag. Soren looked back at her, his green eyes dark and sad, before glancing back toward the door.
“Let’s talk outside,” he said, and after Olivia hesitated: “Just talk. I promise.”
Olivia looked up toward Lark’s room again. All of the lights were still off, and the only noise in the house w
as the muffled clanking of pipes in the bathroom.
Soren slowly and soundlessly pulled back the front door, quickly grabbing his heavy gray fleece from a pile on the ground and ushering her outside.
The night air felt warmer somehow, and the moon hung bright overhead, drawing the hulking, smudgy outlines of trees and mountains in the distance. Soren shut the door quietly behind them and took Olivia’s hand, pulling her onto the grass and walking in the shadows down the hill, following the sloping edge of the driveway all the way down toward the gate.
“Soren,” Olivia called, an urgent whisper, “wait, I don’t think…”
But Soren kept dragging her along. His grip around her wrist wasn’t strong or scary, and she knew she could pull away if she wanted to. But she didn’t.
At the bottom of the driveway, they crossed a wide, two-lane road. It was the same road they’d driven through the mountains earlier that afternoon.
“Where are we going?” Olivia asked, but Soren just kept walking. The leaves in the trees rustled overhead, and Olivia whipped her head back around. “Aren’t there…you know…animals out here?” she asked, following Soren down a narrow, winding path, her feet tripping over toppled rocks and a thick maze of roots.
Soren looked back, helping her over a fallen hollow tree trunk. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
Olivia huffed. “I doubt it,” she said, hopping back onto the path and holding tight to Soren’s hand. “Where are you taking me?”
“You’ll see,” Soren insisted. “You can keep talking until we get there, if you want.”
“Oh,” she said, her foot landing heavily in a pile of leaves and crunching through to the soft earth below. She kept her eyes on the backs of Soren’s hiking boots, a narrow navy stripe crisscrossing his heels. “Well. It’s just—it’s Calla.”
“What about Calla?” Soren asked, ducking beneath the low branch of an evergreen, its spindly needles brushing against his face.
“I just don’t think it’s right, for us to…” Olivia passed under the branch as Soren held it up and out of her way. “Thanks. I mean, I don’t know. She’s my friend, and I don’t want her to get hurt.” Olivia paused on the side of the path, waiting for Soren to catch up. Shouldn’t they maybe stop to talk about this?
But Soren pushed right past her, following the trail around a switchback turn. They were getting higher now, and Olivia looked up for the first time. All around them were clusters of gigantic redwoods, their trunks as wide as compact cars. Soren was getting smaller in the distance, and Olivia rolled her eyes, flopping her hands by her sides in reluctant surrender. This was not exactly how she’d imagined the conversation would go.
Finally, the path ended at a clearing. They had arrived at a vast, open field, at the center of which was a perfect circle of redwood trees, huddled together like a group of performers onstage.
Soren hopped over a few more rocks, pulling Olivia along until they’d landed on one with a flat, smooth surface. He stood completely still, taking in the open space around them.
“Is this—” Olivia started, but stopped when Soren grabbed her forearms from behind.
“Shh,” he said softly. “Just close your eyes and listen.”
Olivia closed her eyes, and for a moment all she could hear was the rushing of blood in her ears, the pounding of her pulse, and the whispers of the wind passing over the leaves. But all of a sudden, she heard it. A high-pitched moaning, like a muffled cry, or the slow creaking of an old rusty door.
“What was that?” Olivia asked, her eyes popping open.
Soren laughed and hugged her close. “It’s the trees,” he said. “They’re so tall that they bend in the wind. My mom used to say it’s how they talk to each other. Listen again.”
Olivia closed her eyes, this time hearing past the leaves and the beating of her heart. Soren was right. From all around her, on every side, the trees were talking, a call-and-response chorus of sighs in the dark.
Soren swiped at the rock with the sleeve of his sweatshirt and gestured for her to sit down beside him.
“That was a good surprise,” Olivia said, burrowing into his shoulder for warmth, the top of her nose pressed against the smooth, salty side of his neck.
“There’s more,” Soren said, and Olivia pulled her head back to see his face. He pointed up at the sky with one hand. Olivia sat back, craning her neck, and gasped.
The full moon was directly overhead, and all around it, like a blanket of shimmering light, the sky was dotted with a million tiny stars. There were too many to see at once, too many to organize into shapes or constellations.
“Wow,” Olivia said. It was all she could say. The lump in her throat was back, and she knew if she tried to keep talking, she’d start crying again instead.
“You said you missed the stars,” Soren said, leaning back onto his elbows. Olivia shifted closer to him, resting her head in the hollow of his chest. They lay like that, breathing together and watching the stars, until Soren cleared his throat.
“I was listening to what you were saying before,” he said, picking up a few strands of her hair between his fingers, gently working his way through her curls. “It’s not that I don’t care. Or understand. I just…I have no idea what to do about it.”
He heaved a hurting sigh, and Olivia could hear his heart drumming between the cover of his ribs.
“All I know is that I’ve never felt this way before,” he said. “And I can’t imagine losing you. For any reason.”
Olivia’s heart swelled, her lips tingling with a smile. She lifted her head from Soren’s chest and leaned back on one elbow, squinting to make out the lines of his face. Even in the dark, she could tell his eyebrows were furrowed, his mouth drawn and severe. He looked nervous, and overwhelmed, and unsure. He looked exactly like she felt.
And so she kissed him. It was all she could do.
33
“Do you need help?”
Olivia glanced over at the front desk, where Bess, the pink-haired receptionist, was sitting at her post in the lobby. The last bell of the day was about to ring, and Olivia had asked her studio art teacher for permission to be excused early. She’d said she had a personal crisis.
Which was kind of the truth. If sitting in the lobby waiting for Calla so that she could finally come clean about her feelings for Soren didn’t qualify as a personal crisis, she wasn’t sure what did.
After the rest of the weekend at the beach with Lark’s family (the guys had gone home early Saturday morning, just missing Lark’s parents as they pulled up to the gate), Olivia had decided that she was done. She couldn’t give Soren up, and she couldn’t keep seeing him behind Calla’s back. Things were getting too serious, and their circle of friends was too small. Calla was bound to find out.
The only option left was to be honest and break the news to Calla herself. Even though it was sure to be painful and terrible, in the end, it would be worth it. She and Soren could be together without being afraid of getting caught. And Calla would be hurt and mad and maybe turn all of Olivia’s new friends against her…but she wouldn’t be able to stay mad forever. Right?
Olivia fidgeted with a button at the top of her short-sleeved, brown and white polka-dot dress and managed a tight smile in Bess’s direction.
“No, thanks. I’m just waiting for someone,” Olivia said, scooting farther down the bench and toward the window. If only the kind of help that she needed were as easy as a dismissal note, or a quick call for a ride home. Somehow, Olivia didn’t think advising students on how to come clean to their friends while dating their exes fell under Bess’s front-desk jurisdiction.
The bell rang and Olivia’s temples throbbed, her hollow stomach churning as the lobby gradually filled up with students leaving class. Everyone looked disgustingly chipper and carefree. Like they’d been instructed to smile bigger and walk with extra pep, just to make Olivia feel crappier than she already did.
Olivia was keepi
ng careful watch over the arched mouth of the hallway. Every dark-headed girl in skinny jeans was Calla, and Olivia felt her bones trembling in her skin, the backs of her ears burning red. She was staring so intensely, realizing that she was praying not to see Calla more than anything else, that she didn’t notice Miles’s mushroom loafers toe-tapping the lobby floor, directly in front of her face.
“Hey,” a cool voice said from overhead, and she looked up. Of course he would find her now. Miles was nothing if not a master of impeccable timing.
“Hey, Miles,” she said quickly. “I’m kind of waiting for someone, so—”
“Oh, yeah?” he said, with a short, mean little laugh that shivered the hairs on the back of Olivia’s neck. “That’s cool. You must be really busy, huh?”
“Um, yeah, kind of,” Olivia said softly, glancing back and forth from the hallway to Miles, his arms primly crossed. “Sorry, it’s just…a long story, and I don’t really have time to—”
“You don’t have time for anything, do you?” Miles asked, dropping his hands to his sides. “You don’t have time to talk, you don’t have time to pick up your phone, you don’t have time to go to Santa Cruz to film lighthouses over the weekend like we planned…”
Olivia’s eyes stretched wide open and she brought the flat of her hand to her forehead. “Miles,” she said, rising to her feet and dropping her bag to the bench with a thud. “I am so sorry. I decided to go up to the beach at the last minute. It all happened so fast and I must’ve just totally spaced—”
“Spaced,” Miles repeated, his dark eyes narrow and angry. “And what? You couldn’t pick up your phone? I only called you ten to twelve times…”
“I was at Lark’s house in Stinson Beach,” Olivia said quickly. “I didn’t have any service all weekend long. I swear.”
It was the truth, but even Olivia could hear how pathetic she sounded. She looked up from the ground at Miles’s face. He didn’t look as angry anymore, only hurt and disappointed, which was worse.
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