if this is your first time reading the olivia chronicles, feel free to start from the beginning. just click on the “olivia” link in the multimedia box at the top of the sidebar to the right. enjoy!

dear dimestore therapists,

in my last letter, i said i didn’t talk to aidan again for two weeks. but it wasn’t because i was holding a petty grudge and giving him the silent treatment; how i wish that was the reason we didn’t talk.

life is never that easy.

no, we were on a talking embargo because i was in a coma. for two weeks.

* * *

when my mom came to pick me up from jackie’s house, she already knew something was wrong. i had never called her for a ride home, since aidan and i both had cars. one or the other of us always drove to and from where we needed to go, so she hadn’t been my chauffeur for nearly a year, since aidan got his license.

as soon as i got in the car, she started badgering me with questions. what happened? did you and aidan fight? were you crying? why isn’t aidan driving you home? i tried to put her off with some mumbled response about feeling sick, but she wasn’t having it, especially when she noticed that aidan had pulled out behind us and was following us home.

she kept bugging me and bugging me, and all i wanted to do was sit and be angry and maybe cry a little. so i yelled at her. i yelled, “just SHUT UP, mom!” like a two year-old. then i burst into tears.

my mom started to freak out, initially because i had just told her to shut up, and she was pissed. but then she saw me crying, and that freaked her out a little more, because i wasn’t the crying type. i hadn’t cried, really cried, since my dad left four years before. so she was concerned at the sight of me wailing like i’d just watched someone drown a puppy.

she kept saying “what?! ollie, what?! just talk to me!” but i didn’t want to tell her what was going on, it was all too much. i hadn’t even begun to figure out the kiss, or the slap, or the horizontal business that had been conducted in jackie’s vanilla-scented room. i couldn’t talk to anyone about it before i’d begun to figure things out on my own.

i told her to leave me alone.

she looked at me like i had stabbed her in the heart. she and i were like sisters, a closeness born of the trauma of being left behind, of having no one else to share the pain. i’d never told her to leave me alone before, i’d never had an experience that i wouldn’t talk to her about. i’m sure it must have been painful to hear.

she just stared at me, and i stared back. her expression was one of disbelief, or rather of unwillingness to believe what she had just heard. it was a face that said “who are you? do i even know this person that i’m driving home right now?”

then she looked back at the road, as did i. and right there, just yards in front of us, was a deer, standing completely motionless, eyes blazing as though with fire. a very large deer, with antlers. i remember the antlers.

then: nothing.

yours,

olivia

— Alexis