Chapter 4: Olivia

Olivia sniffled and snatched another Kleenex out of the box in front of her. It was the last one, and Olivia realized that she’d now gone through four boxes in as many hours.

It hurt so much. She cried and cried hoping that the tears bursting from her would easy the dead weight of sorrow that was cradling her heart. Bailey, her Bailey was just gone.

Like a tidal wave, a million memories of Bailey crashed upon her. Bailey, age 7, shoving a boy in the mud for hitting the new girl, Olivia. That was the moment she’d made her first best friend. The summer before seventh grade, the two of them lying on the grass, the hot sun beating down on them, worrying about junior high. Bailey crying at the end of the 8th grade dance because of a rumour that one of their childhood friends had cancer. Bailey’s hushed, excited voice on a midnight phone call telling Olivia all about her first kiss . . . “-felt like he was eating my face, then he started cleaning my gums with his tongue and I started laughing-”. Olivia’s sixteenth birthday when she finally told Bailey that she was a lesbian and Bailey just hugged her and whispered, “I know, but I love you anyway and I know you love me, so fuck the rest of the world.” Bailey cutting a date she’d been waiting weeks for short because Olivia’s first serious girlfriend had broken up with her and broken her heart.

With a cry of mourning, Olivia fell to her side and clutched a teddy bear to her ribs. She never imagined that anything could hurt this badly. How were people supposed to live through pain like this? What were you supposed to do to stop yourself from feeling like you were dying?

Eleven years, eleven long and short years since that day when she’d met Bailey. Eleven years was far to short a time to have the friend of a lifetime. Eleven years since that fiery redhead had pushed Todd Richards on his ass on the Whittaker Elementary playground. Eleven years of birthdays, Christmases, Halloweens, Easters, July 4th’s. Eleven years of knowing that she belonged with someone.

She remembered Bailey sending her a link to something online, a little movie about the dash between the birth and death dates on a tombstone. For most of Bailey’s dash, she and Olivia had been inseparable, for the rest of Olivia’s dash . . . Bailey would be gone.

Olivia’s mother, Lydia, knocked on the door for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Sweetie, can I come in?”

For a moment, Olivia considered telling her to go away like she had all the other times, but something stopped her. “Yeah,” she choked.

Lydia opened the door slowly and closed it without a sound, as if she was afraid to shatter the heavy racket of grief already echoing in the room. She sat down on the bed and pulled her daughter into her lap.

It always surprised Lydia how different her daughter’s body had become over the years. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held her daughter like this, but she remembered that her little Olivia had still been baby-fat and baby-fresh scented. Now, her long legs were hanging off the bed and her muscular body was hard and taunt in her arms. Olivia had become a woman. The years of dedicated soccer player had made her strong and supple, but more burly than most girls. Even so, she was beautiful.

“Honey, do you want to talk?” she asked, brushing Olivia’s long brown curls off her sweating forehead. After a moment, Olivia let out a strangled sob and shook her head violently against her mother’s arm. “Want me to just hold you while you cry.” A nod and then the pain came pouring out afresh.

Lydia rocked her daughter, wishing there was something she could do to ease paroxysm of grief ripping through her child. Even then her tears started to fall. What she was doing now was something that Bailey’s mother, Denise, would never do again. She would never be able to hug her baby close and ease her sadness away. Denise would never support her daughter through another ruined teenage romance or failed test. She would never watch her daughter graduate or go off to college. She would never see her baby grow into a woman with a family and life of her own. She’d never have little redheaded grandchildren running wild through her home. She’d never have the future that Bailey should have had.

Olivia was thinking the same things. Bailey would never graduate and go to college. She would never get married and have kids. She’d never watch grandchildren grow up and accomplish great things. Bailey would never do anything again. The misery coursing through her exhausted Olivia until she was on the verge of sleep and she relaxed against her mother.

Olivia’s last thought as she fell into a worn out sleep, despite the horrible sadness within her, was: I’m so glad I wasn’t the one who died.

As she felt Olivia pass out, Lydia looked across the room at the vanity mirror. Surrounding her own reflection was a collection of photographs that she could see, even from so far away, were almost all of Bailey and Olivia. As she continued stroking her daughter’s head, Lydia’s eyes fixed on a photo of Bailey’s laughing face, her bright hair wind-tangled with Olivia’s dark hair, she though, Thank God it’s not my daughter who’s died. It made her sick, but a token of relief was mixed with her grief. She had not lost her daughter; Olivia would grow up and live her life. Maybe Bailey’s life would have been better, maybe it would’ve meant more, but it was Olivia who was chosen in God’s plan to survive.