Olivia’s neighbor is out on her front lawn again. Kneeling in the dirt, tending to her beautiful, carefully cultivated flowers. If Olivia gets out of her car, she will have to talk to her neighbor. She imagines the scenario in her head, mulling over what she will say. She sees herself smiling, nodding along as she listens to the wonderful rollercoaster life of Ms. Hart.
Olivia drums her fingers on the dashboard of her car, waiting for the woman to go away. A bug crawls slowly across the dashboard. It stops randomly, before continuing on in a new direction. Old Olivia would have picked up a slip of paper and helped it out of her car, but new Olivia watches it wander pointlessly.
Her stomach grumbles, and after several painstaking minutes, hunger wins. She drags her million pound backpack over her shoulder and opens the car door. The familiar ache from carrying her book bag all day settles in her back and she fumbles for the right key to open her front door.
Just as she opens the door, she hears the shrill voice of Ms. Hart.
“Olivia! I haven’t seen you in a bit!”
Olivia disagrees. Ms. Hart has seen her get into and out of her car everyday for the past six months, and only in the last week has Ms. Hart made any attempt at talking to her. In Ms. Hart's world, mourning must have a time limit of five and a half months.
Still, Olivia turns, grinning so wide the muscles in her face hurt. “Ms. Hart! It’s so nice to see you!” She says. Olivia thinks that she must be a psychic because, as predicted, she stands there as Ms. Hart fills her in on everything she’s missed.
“You really ought to come back to the book club.” Ms. Hart says. “It’s not the same without your insight Livvy.”
Olivia cringes at the nickname that does not belong to Ms. Hart. “I’ll think about it. I’m really busy with school right now.” She says. And it almost sounds true.
Ms. Hart nods understandingly, reaches out and squeezes Olivia’s shoulders. Her eyes are filled with so much sympathy Olivia wants to vomit. “I know it’s been difficult for you. I’m always here to talk.”
For a brief moment, Olivia wonders what would happen if she marched over to Ms. Hart’s house and smashed every single flower in that stupid garden. Surely the time limit on Ms. Hart’s zero interaction policy would be extended. But Olivia is a coward, so she turns back around and walks into the house before Ms. Hart can say anything else.
She dumps her backpack onto the kitchen counter and opens the freezer, pulling out a frozen dinner. She’d been trying to make real meals for a few weeks. The kind that takes time and effort and embarrassing amounts of pots and pans.
She closes her eyes, and for a second she can almost hear the sound of vegetables being chopped, almost smell the food in the pan - almost.
When Olivia was little, she had this habit of talking. It used to get her into trouble - talking when it was her turn to speak, talking when it was not, and talking when other people were talking. Her mother, though, always listened.
New Olivia had very little to say. Mostly, she just sat and watched her life become a memory.
She tosses the frozen dinner into the microwave. The house creaks, talking to itself. Olivia hates it. Sometimes she wishes music could play itself in her head so nothing would ever be quiet.
The microwave beeps. Olivia takes out the dinner and pokes at it mindlessly. She’s not so hungry anymore.
She tosses it in the trash, ignoring her mother’s voice in the back of her head saying “Livvy, you're wasting good food.”
She wanders up to her room. Somehow, it’s dark out already. She hasn’t done her homework or the laundry. Her dad will probably be back from work soon. Though lately talking to him feels more like talking to a stranger. Neither of them spoke the same language anymore.
Olivia pauses in the middle of the room, staring down at her pink carpet. It’s ugly, and the threads are starting to pull loose, like a worn old dog.
But her mother chose it. She had picked it out from the store and Olivia had loved it, mostly because her mom loved it.
Olivia closes her eyes, desperately wishing that when she opened them, she would be old Olivia. Desperately wishing she would have her old life.
Caelan DiCosmo is a junior at Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School. She loves to read and write, and has previously won a scholastic gold key.
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