by DM Sharp
“I’ve just got off the phone with the principal. He’s just told me about the suspension. Have you got anything to say, Olivia?”
I shrug my shoulders avoiding her searching eyes. Words form in my head. I want to tell her the truth, but nothing comes out. Everything has happened so fast.
“Please, darling. I know there’s something. The last few months have just been … Well, this is just nothing like you.”
“Maybe it is me. Maybe I’m just like my father and you can add me to the Carter addict black sheep part of the family tree.”
“This is no joking matter.”
“Do you see me laughing?” Tears well up in my eyes.
Victoria grabs both of my hands, and starts rubbing at them to warm them up, tears forming in her almond-shaped eyes, her voice low as she says, “What I see, Olivia, is a young, beautiful woman who has everything at her feet, but who is in a lot of pain. How can we help you if you don’t let us?”
Tears run down my face. I still cannot look at her.
“Whatever answers you are looking for, you certainly won’t find them at the bottom of a bottle of prescription pills.”
Pulling away from her and rising from the bed, heading for the bathroom so she can’t see the silent tears now turning into sobs.
Her hand reaches out to me, trying to hold onto me and stop me from creating a distance between us.
“Sweetheart, please tell me why you are doing drugs and who is giving them to you.”
Pulling my arm out of her grasp and any safety she offers, I slam the bathroom door shut, locking myself in as I talk to myself in the mirror.
“Sure, Aunt Victoria, what started out as weekly trips to the school ‘cannabis club’ for weed products, soon turned into prescription pills, then to cocaine, and eventually ecstasy. I pop Percocets like M&Ms. Any few friends that I did have at school now shun me and all the teachers have stopped trying to find out why my grades are slipping.”
I can’t even bear to look at my reflection. “Oh and Lucien Borgia raped me.”
I hear muffled voices through the door and creep down to listen through a crack.
“It’s going to be all right, Preston. Please calm down.”
“No, it’s bloody well not going to be all right, Victoria. Our family is on the verge of catastrophe and we are just standing around doing nothing about it.”
“Maybe it’s just a phase she’s going through. You read about it all the time.”
“A phase? Like the one my brother went through and that he’s still going through thirty years later. Something is just not right. Do you recognize her anymore, Victoria?”
Listening to them talk about me actually makes me feel so bad that I put the end of a towel into my mouth so that I can cry properly. I was now hurting the only people who I was grateful for. The people who had taken me in when I was twelve and shown me a decent life and who provided me with a life of love and culture I would never have known existed.
The guilt and shame makes me want to scrape my insides out.
Chapter Six
Lucien Borgia
The vicious and cowardly crime that has been perpetrated by someone known to me, close to me even, against my poor innocent Olivia, of all people, has filled me with rage and the deepest revulsion. I’m mad.
My father always quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas talking about anger being an attack on the evil present in the mind, and how if one ignores this evil—the thing that’s wrong—the result is sadness. He’s right. Olivia’s been suspended and now she’s sick. That makes me really angry and disgusted. Rules are there to be respected and they’ve been broken.
I was only just thinking that the thing about being murdered is that it usually comes as a surprise. Well, to the victims in Mafia II anyway. It’s not like a person wakes up expecting on that given day that they are going to die.
Walking over to my CD player, I hit play and whack the volume up full blast before slipping on my boxing gloves. Eminem. Good choice, Borgia. There is an old saying in boxing, a great boxer plays chess and the average boxer plays checkers. A great boxer like a chess master plans his moves by setting up his opponent, takes advantage of tactical errors with pinpoint sharp-shooting, and uses combinations when his opponent is on the defensive. He positions himself where he makes his opponent think he is just out of range and catches him coming into his perfectly timed counterpunches.
Evander Berkelely has made himself my opponent by betraying me and hurting what belongs to me. Drug dealing scum.
The screen on my iPhone lights up and the highlighted text says that the boys have picked Evander up and are on their way over here. I psych myself up in front the mirror, making finger gun gestures at my reflection. Hey, Narcissus, I totally get how you fell in love with your reflection in a pool of water.
Clique by Kanye and Jay-Z comes on and my body is possessed as it launches into a frenzied boxing training regime as I picture Evander’s reptilian hands handing out drugs to Olivia.
My nose is directly in line with the vertical seam between the mirrors while in my stance. I move my upper body quickly to the left so the reflection of my right ear is past the seam of the mirrors. Avoid the jab. Quickly I move my head back to the center so my nose is in line with the seam again. Moving my upper body quickly to the right so my left ear passes the seam. Move back to the center, bringing my nose back in line with the seam. My feet moving like I’m dancing on hot coals so that I control the pace and momentum of the fight. I take a small step to the side before whipping in vicious hooks to the image of Evander’s head and body, the image of his bleeding flesh arousing me.
Showered, I take care to shave carefully, dress in my beloved Boss suit and slip on my Rolex. If Evander suspected his fate, he might at least have kissed his mother goodbye. Sporco traditore.
My phone buzzes and I answer. The boys are here and on their way up to my bedroom. I love this room. Everything that’s worth anything happens in here and today maybe I’ll be doling out my first punishment. I feel pumped.
My heart pounds at the sight of Evander being pushed into my room by three other boys, my soldiers. He looks pale. I can feel the heat of my blood spreading throughout my whole body. He stills as I inch right up to him so that I can smell his breath. I think he’s shaking. It’s like a series of pleasurable electric-like shocks go through me.
“Evander, I appreciate your cooperation in willingly surrendering yourself after being summoned. I may take this into account when deciding on your punishment. Have you got anything to say, brother?”
“Look Lucien, I’m so fricking sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a problem. I just wanted to help out.”
“Evander, I obviously misunderstand. You thought you would help Olivia how exactly? Oh yes, by supplying her with prescriptions from your dad’s medical office?”
“Aw, man. Come on. I felt sorry for her.”
He falls to the floor, not even seeing where my right hook came from.
I can’t believe that my plans to burn Evander with cigarettes are being delayed because none of us smokes and we hadn’t thought about the tiny detail of actually procuring any fucking cigarettes. Jesus, Lucien, it’s all in the details. I straighten my back, crack my knuckles one by one, a smile spreading across my face as the scene where the mafia guys burn the grasses with cigarettes plays out for me.
When I decided to research it on the internet, it turns out there are some sick fucks who actually do it to themselves. They call it self-harm. This is precisely why some people just disgust me, then it occurred to me that Evander’s dad is some celebrity psychiatrist, so how fitting that his son should end up being a self-harmer. That’ll make him think about even going near his dad’s prescription pad again. Maybe when he’s older and I’m New York State Attorney General he’ll thank me for teaching him what happens when you break the law. Yeah, he’ll be grateful one day that I helped him see where he was going wrong.
Evander’s sniveling interrupts my thoughts. Is t
hat blood from his nose dripping on my carpet? We don’t have cigarettes. Maybe boiling water, drop by drop, onto the backs of his hands? Another cool scene from Mafia 2.
An amazing idea pops into my head.
“Guys, wait here. Put one of my pillow cases over this douchebag’s head or I’ll do something I’ll regret. I’ll be back in a minute.” They nod and move like the well trained soldati they are.
My heart is thumping so loudly it’s all I can hear, sweat prickling my upper lip as I move towards my father’s study and head for the Spanish Cedar wood box that sits on its own special table. If my father notices that someone’s been in his precious cigar humidor, he’ll never suspect me.
I wonder what sound the Stradivarius Churchill that I’ve picked will make as it burns through the first layer of skin.
Chapter Seven
Olivia Carter
“Tyler, hit the volume. I need to hear this track … I want it LOUD,” I shout at my drug-dealer-cum-new-best-friend Tyler White, affectionately known amongst his ‘clients’ as Snow White for his skill of acquiring the purest, whitest cocaine on this side of Manhattan.
Galvanize by the Chemical Brothers pulsates through every cell in my body making my bones buzz with every note. The windows of my shiny, black BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe are down and we are driving in unadulterated freefall through the country roads in Fairfield County.
I’m in the care of Snow and the emaciated Ava Forrester-Payne whose Asprey jewelery glints and sparkles in every direction drawing attention away from her ravished and pale face that has self-loathing and bulimia written all over it.
Only six months ago I would never have dreamed about knowing that my present company even existed at Westbourne Prep.
Tyler passes me a bottle of Grey Goose, which I guzzle. Swallowing at least a quarter of its contents at such a speed that the clear liquid spills down both sides of my mouth, running down my throat, disappearing down the front of my blouse. I catch Tyler’s eyes pause at my top button, which lies half open.
Tyler catches me looking at him looking at me, before saying. “I like you, Olivia Carter. You are discreet and always pay up front. Ava Forester-Payne on the other hand is a pain in the ass. I’ve had to learn the hard way that the least profitable customers are friends. Ava never has a problem calling at six a.m., and she always expects low prices.”
I thought I was his friend.
“Are you still wrestling, Tyler?” asks Ava, as if she could read my mind.
“Yeah baby, that’s what I got my college scholarship for.”
“You have to show me your muscles sometime big boy,” giggles Ava.
“Ava, you do realize that my business success is because I’m educated enough to keep the ball turning. It’s not just all good looks.”
Turning to me, he taps my thigh saying, “I run the prep schools and college campus in a business-like format using a combination of microeconomics and proven statistics to enforce a safe and guaranteed profit.”
As he presses his foot down on the gas pedal, his whole body’s pushed back into the black leather seat. It makes the car feel like it’s gliding effortlessly ten feet off the ground. It reminds me of when I was in the water.
My shirt flickers just above my left breast. I picture the rapid flutter of my heartbeat under it. It’s thrilling driving at this speed on the windy back roads of Connecticut. Way better than any swimming race.
Turning to look at Tyler, his skin is flushed, glowing even. My eyes run over Ava next, who’s slumped over in the backseat, eyes half open in some entranced dream-like state, her pupils as large as big black grapes like mine and Tyler’s.
Ava doesn’t look too great, her skin a pale blue color, her breathing shallow. She looks like a wax dummy, but the eight ball of cocaine that we took earlier that morning has pounded all my senses and just allows me to park that thought somewhere before racing on ahead with another thought to take its place.
“Ava,” I manage to slur, noticing how her hair sticks to her forehead.
She turns her head towards me, attempting to raise her hand, but it falls heavily on her lap eliciting a contented smile.
I remember the first time I saw Ava at school. She looked preppy, snobbish even. Her long luxurious blonde hair was always worn up in a bun with a bow, a ponytail with a bow, or a braid with a bow. The epitome of good breeding.
“Pass me the vodka, you mongrel,” slurs Ava.
“Shut up, Ava. Don’t talk to Olivia like that or I’ll kick you out of the car you stupid bitch.”
“Don’t talk to her like that, asshole.”
“Whoah, everybody. We’re all getting a bit frosty in here.” I hope there’s nothing wrong with the drugs we’ve done.
I pass the vodka bottle to Ava who drops it on the floor, spilling the contents all over the seats, flopping back in the seat again.
“Jesus Ava, watch the fucking car,” says Tyler who momentarily turns his entire body to face Ava in the back.
I look out of the window, taking in the vivid colors of the countryside around me. The stalks of green wheat wave gently in the wind.
The sudden screeching sound of metal twisting and tearing rips through my head. Ava is screaming and screaming. My heart lurches up into my throat. My hands are all wet, my body shaking. I cover my ears with my hands, trying to stop the noisy assault, and then we begin to slide. We slide forever, like we are on an infinite skating rink. The speed of the car seems to be picking up, forcing all of us to slam against one side as the car whips around the corner. Tyler’s skull cracks against the window.
The car veers off the road, starting to roll over and over in one of the fields.
Ava’s head hits the seat in front of her and a growing crack appears in the windscreen. Plastic pieces from the dash are flying everywhere, until it all slows down somehow. As my eyes close that’s the last thing I remember.
Chapter Eight
Olivia Carter
An ethereal symphony of notes floats into my ears, enchanting my every sense. It is quite unlike any music I have ever heard before. My eyes are closed but somehow I know that there is a magnificent brightness in the distance. My body whooshes through a tunnel towards the light. As I pass through the dark vortex, my whole life’s events play out for me like my very own home movie.
I’m being born and my dad is crying as he lifts me up, smelling and kissing my newborn skin. Everyone in the room looks so happy. My mother is talking to me, telling me softly that they named me Olivia because it meant peace—from the olive tree and that she hoped that my addition to the family would bring about peace between my father and his estranged family.
Scenes of my father shouting with people on the telephone play out in front of me as I watch on. I’m sitting on my daddy Henry’s knee as he explains to the bewildered toddler how he is the black sheep of his family.
It’s bath time and as he washes my hair he tells the five-year-old, who asks why she doesn’t have any family like everyone else, that her grandparents have cut them off because they wouldn’t accept the Cherokee Indian girl he decided to runaway with and marry.
“Who was that girl?” I ask.
“That girl is your mom,” he says.
I’m six now, Mom works two jobs and I’m waiting for her to come home because we always roll sugary dough together late at night and it tastes so good and takes away my tummy ache. My dad’s eyes look sad a lot, even though he always tries to be happy for me. He starts to hang out with some of the local men that my mom doesn’t like. Daddy is the odd one out with his blonde hair and pale skin, the rest of the men with their matching high cheekbones and long jet black hair. They all look like my mom.
I’m eight now and Daddy drinks a lot of the stuff that has a bad smell, but he loves to tell me stories about the past and his family and I love hearing about this strange, rich world that only exists in my imagination. I always ask the same question: Why is it so bad that he fell in love with my mom? Depending on his mood, he eit
her says that his brother was also in love with my mother but didn’t have the spine to stand up to his family or I would get an absorbing history lesson.
Daddy is patting the dried mud on the ground signaling me to sit there as he brings the white container to his mouth. “Little Olive, in the late nineteenth century, the U.S. government put new restrictions on marriage between a Cherokee and non-Cherokee, although it was still relatively common. A European-American man could legally marry a Cherokee woman by petitioning the federal court, after gaining approval of ten of her blood relatives.” He takes a large swig of the plastic container.
“Ten of her relatives?” I question in wonder, my huge brown eyes and mouth both wide open at the prospect of such a huge number.
“Oh yes, ten indeed. Once married, the man had status as an ‘Intermarried White,’ a member of the Cherokee tribe with restricted rights. For instance, he could not hold any tribal office. He also remained a citizen of and under the laws of the United States.”
“Don’t you miss your family, Daddy?”
“They are bad people, Olivia. They are what is called a white WASP family.”
“Like the insect that stings?”
“Yes, exactly like that. Now go and bring me another white container from behind the hut.”
I’m ten and I’ve discovered a lake not far from where we live and spend most of my weekends swimming. When I’m not at school, the meals are few and far between and being in the water distracts from the hunger. I run there first thing, jumping in, waiting for the way my breath comes in big jolting gasps like someone has clamped on an ice neck brace. The water bites, my skin smarts and burns. I love the way the water plays with me.
I’m still passing through the tunnel while the movie is playing, watching myself over time.
Momma cries a lot now, she’s always coughing. Daddy shouts at her about how he gave everything up, all the wealth and privilege, that he has broken my grandmother’s heart in the process, for her. They are shouting because of a magazine lying on the table in the kitchen with a picture of a man that has the same hair as my daddy on the front. I’m twelve and I love reading.
