Wish (8 page)

“H
ow’s it coming in there?”

Olivia was sandwiched between piles of dresses, skinny jeans, and sky-high heels in an almost impossibly tiny dressing room, staring at her frazzled, half-dressed reflection in a three-way mirror. She struggled to remain decent at all times, as the door had no latch, and the chatty sales help—all of whom appeared to be identically twenty-two, rail-thin, and not at all shy about barging right in.

After a day of pushing Olivia to assert herself in class, strategically picking out places for her to sit at lunch, and counseling her on how to do everything from walk down the hall to demand (
not
ask for) permission to go to the bathroom, Violet had decided that the only thing left to overhaul was Olivia’s tired and lackluster wardrobe.

“You want to know why nobody notices you?” Violet had asked during a dejected walk home from the bus. “It’s because every single one of your sweaters is exactly the same shade of
beige, and it matches the paint on the classroom walls. Half the time,
I
don’t even see you.”

And so, when Olivia returned home from school Monday afternoon, shocked to discover that her mother was working from home, Violet convinced her to do the unthinkable and ask Bridget to take her shopping.

Three hours, six boutiques, and two different covers of the same Rolling Stones song later, Olivia was pressed against the dressing room mirror, with eager, multi-pierced hipsters filing in and out, piling dress after vintage dress into her outstretched arms. At first, Violet had been there, too, assessing each item one by one, but even she had been overwhelmed by the cramped quarters and myriad outfits, and had vanished to peruse a selection of oversize sunglasses by the window.

“Olivia?” her mother called out again from the plush crimson armchair in the narrow hall, tapping her taupe Tod’s loafer against the carpet and clicking through e-mails on her BlackBerry.

“She looks amazing,” one salesgirl or another informed her. “Almost like a young Sophia Loren, don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” the other wholeheartedly agreed.

Olivia rolled her eyes and freed a belted, vestlike garment from a hanger, holding it out in front of her shoulders.

“A vest?” Olivia muttered to herself, slipping her slender arms through the open sleeves. “Who am I, Charlie Chaplin?”

“What’s that?” her mother called out.

“Nothing,” Olivia covered, choosing from a pile of skirts, many with pleats and almost all about six inches shorter than she would ever consider appropriate for public viewing. She was struggling to pull up a pair of thick knit stockings while
standing on one foot when she lost her balance and tumbled backward into the door.

“Everything all right?” her mother tried again lightly.

Olivia sort of grunted as she shimmied the skirt back over her hips.

“Come out and show me.”

Olivia looked at her reflection in the mirror. Her red hair was frizzy and her cheeks were flushed, and all she wanted to do was put on her favorite paper-thin zip-up sweater, even if it was the color of a dirty Band-Aid. She didn’t care anymore if vests were all the rage—she felt ridiculous.

“Come on,” she heard Violet calling. “You’ve been in there for twenty minutes—there has to be
something
you like.”

Olivia sighed and pushed the door open, tugging at her sleeves and stepping out into the hall. She had been so closely watching for Violet’s reaction that she almost didn’t hear the small sounds Bridget was making in her chair, or the flutter of her fingertips as they searched for her mouth. She looked down and saw that her mother’s eyes were clouding, the soft creases at the corners deepening into hard, tired ravines.

“Mom?” Olivia spoke quietly. “What’s—”

Bridget shook her head silently from side to side as Violet stepped behind her, placing her hands lightly on the back of the chair.

“You look…I’m sorry, it’s just, you look…”

Just like her,
Olivia thought, silently finishing her mother’s sentence.
Just like Violet.

“She’s right,” Violet said softly. “You do.”

Olivia chewed at the inside of her cheek, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

She couldn’t begin to say all the things she was sorry for. She was sorry her mom was upset. She was sorry that her very existence was a painful reminder of everything they’d lost. She was sorry she wasn’t enough.

“No,” her mother said through a little cough. “
I’m
sorry. I just realized—what time is it? I forgot I have to…I have to run back to the office…”

Olivia watched with quiet alarm as Bridget gathered her purse and trenchcoat, opening her wallet and sliding out her MasterCard. “Here,” she said, shoving the card and car keys into Olivia’s palm. “I’ll walk. Get anything you want, all right?” Without waiting for a response, her mother started hurriedly through the store and out onto the street.

Olivia closed herself back into the claustrophobic room. Her face burned and she felt sweat marks blooming under her arms. She imagined her mother speed-walking to her office building, sitting upright in the comfort of her high-backed, rolling leather chair, and burying herself in business.

The business of forgetting.

Olivia ripped the vest over her head and threw it to the floor. Suddenly, Violet’s reflection was next to hers in the mirror, watching as Olivia hurried back into her own boring clothes.

“What are you doing?” Violet asked.

Olivia buttoned her oatmeal-colored corduroys and sat on the stool to zip up her boots. “I’m going home.”

Violet knelt beside her sister, picking up the credit card from where Olivia had tossed it near the mirror. “Didn’t you hear what she said?” she asked. “Carte blanche! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamed about this?”

Olivia took the credit card and shoved it into the pocket of her fleece. “It’s bad enough I look just like you,” Olivia murmured. “I don’t have to dress like you, too.”

Violet rolled her eyes and blocked Olivia’s path to the door. “Wait,” she begged, grabbing her sister by the elbows. “Okay. Maybe the vest was a little much.”

“You think?” Olivia asked dryly.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t find something that’s more…
you
,” Violet insisted. “Just because you don’t want to wear a kilt doesn’t mean you have to dress like a piece of dry toast all the time, either. Right?”

Violet swung her sister around to face the mirror, and Olivia had no choice but to accept defeat. Her pants, her sweater, and her coat, were all exactly the same shade of tan. Even she could see that there was room for improvement.

Violet dug through a pile of sweaters on the floor and held one up, a gray and black striped tunic with a wide elastic belt. Olivia took it and pressed it against her torso.

“See?” Violet asked, her voice warm and soothing. “Baby steps.”

W
hether or not it had anything to do with the new teal tunic and pewter leggings, or the new slouchy faux-suede boots, Olivia’s reign as Princess Invisible came to an end the following afternoon in AP English.

It was Olivia’s first time in the class. She’d been accidentally scheduled into Remedial English 101, and it had taken her a day to convince her well-meaning but flaky guidance counselor, whose office was strung with Tibetan prayer flags and smelled like scented candles, that there had been a mistake.

After a couple of wrong turns that nearly landed her in the basement utilities closet, Olivia tiptoed in after class had already started, sliding behind a desk at the back of the room while Violet took up her usual perch by the window. Up front, Graham was holding a pristine and clearly unopened copy of
To the Lighthouse
, while a blond, preppy kid with a healthy dusting of youthful freckles straddled a seat backward at the front of the room.

“Virginia Woolf was a lesbian,” Graham announced, waving his book for emphasis. “Didn’t you guys see
The Hours
? She made out with her sister.”

The class erupted into giggles and a lively discussion of Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose, while the guy with the freckles dismounted his chair and flipped it around, settling himself against the teacher’s desk.

“Thank you for that profound observation, Graham.” Freckles spoke, and Olivia’s eyes widened as she realized he was the teacher. She was busy wondering how this Dennis the Menace clone could be a day out of college, when he turned and narrowed his eyes in her direction. “Who’s this?”

Sixteen heads swiveled around to face her.

“It seems we have a stranger among us…” Freckles paced the length of the dry-erase board, picking imaginary pieces of lint from the waistband of his argyle sweater-vest. Olivia couldn’t help but think he looked like an eager little boy borrowing his grandfather’s clothes. The corners of her mouth started to twitch as she caught Violet’s reflection in the glass, already puffing out her chest in a dead-on impersonation.

Olivia shook her head clear and shifted forward in her seat, sensing the fidgeting bodies around her and wondering where to start.

“Do. You. Have. A. Name?” Freckles articulated each word individually, as if speaking to a child or a house pet, an arrogant smirk spreading across his face.

“Olivia,” she uttered, her brain locked, her face heating up.

“Just Olivia,” Freckles repeated. “No last name. Like Madonna?”

The tips of her ears were on fire. Olivia couldn’t believe that
on her first chance to really hold her own—in new clothes, no less—she was being mocked by an underage imposter.

“Okay,
Madonna
,” he went on. “Welcome to Advanced Placement English. I’m Mr. Whitley. I realize that a lot of teachers around here—in their overalls and their flowered skirts—prefer to be called by their first names. This is because they’d like you to see them as friends.” Mr. Whitley paused dramatically in front of a row of desks, slowly rapping his knuckles against the polished wood. “I,” he continued, drawing the word across many multi-toned syllables, “am not one of those teachers.”

A quiet, irreverent chuckle came from the seat directly in front of Olivia’s. A girl flipped her straight dark hair over one shoulder and Olivia immediately recognized the perfect profile, the dimpled chin, the almond-shaped eyes. Calla Karalekas.

Mr. Whitley shot a grave look in Calla’s direction and Olivia sucked in a bit of air, certain things were about to heat up. But Calla simply lifted her thick, heavy lashes, staring the teacher down with what looked, from Olivia’s partially obstructed perspective, to be an almost flirtatious smirk.

Mr. Whitley spun on his heels and resumed pacing.

“You’re joining us a little late in the term,” Mr. Whitley was saying to the tops of his chocolate-colored loafers, “so the learning curve might feel a bit steep. We’re right in the middle of a unit on the Bloomsbury group, and today we’re talking about one of Virginia Woolf’s most significant novels,
To the Lighthouse.
I assume you got the reading list we sent out over the break?”

Olivia had a vague recollection of something coming in
the mail just before they’d moved, but those last few days had been enveloped in such a gauzy haze of chaos and denial that she wasn’t sure what had happened to the envelope en route.

“Oh, um, I think so,” she quietly stuttered. “I mean, no, I think I—”

Mr. Whitley had already turned his back to the class, pen poised at the board. “It’s not a trick question, Madonna,” he barked, scribbling a list of dates in shiny red ink. “Perhaps you could borrow a copy over the weekend. You’ll find you have a great deal of catching up to do.”

From the corner of the room, Graham enthusiastically waved his book in her direction. Olivia kept her eyes trained on the back of Mr. Whitley’s bobbing head, the anxious drumming of her pulse quickening into an angry roar.

Suddenly, Violet was kneeling at her feet, eyes wild and glistening. “Oh, no,” she muttered. “You can’t let him talk to you like that. A teacher like this will
ruin
you until you put him in his place.”

Olivia looked down at her sister, who was nodding enthusiastically and gesturing toward the front of the room.

“You’ve read that book a thousand times!” Violet encouraged. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your precious Homework Room?”

Olivia’s cheeks flushed, remembering the intense feminist phase she’d gone through in the middle of freshman year. After reading one of Woolf’s most famous essays,
A Room of One’s Own
, Olivia had decided that in order to properly do her homework, she would need a room of
her
own, co-opting a section of the mudroom at the back of the house. It was true. She knew most of Woolf’s novels by heart, even the really complicated
ones that had taken her months to decode.
To the Lighthouse
was not one of her favorites, but she certainly knew enough to have an opinion.

“Now,” Whitley continued. “Who can tell me what exactly Woolf was trying to accomplish by—”

“I’ve already read it.”

Olivia leaned forward in her seat, the sharp points of her elbows resting lightly on the desk. The words came from somewhere so deep inside of her, they tasted funny.

Mr. Whitley froze, his arm raised midscrawl. Slowly, he turned his head. “I’m sorry?”

Bodies shifted as, once again, the entire class turned to look in her direction. Olivia’s nervous gaze darted from one eager face to the next, before locking with the pair of piercing dark eyes in front of her. Calla’s perfectly sculpted eyebrows were knit together in anticipation.

Olivia cleared her throat. “
To the Lighthouse
,” she managed, eyes darting up and down from Violet to the class. “I was just saying, I mean…I’ve read it.”

Olivia looked down, her eyes wide and pleading with Violet for help.

“Excellent,” Mr. Whitley said, his voice dull and flat. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind sharing your observations with the rest of the class.”

Olivia swallowed. “Like, now?”

Mr. Whitley nodded. “Like, yeah,” he mocked.

Olivia cleared her throat and steadied her hands on either side of the desk. Violet was still crouching beside her, and rested a hand on her back.

“You can do this,” Violet said. “It’s just like back home.
You’ll feel better once you start putting yourself out there, I promise.”

Olivia uncrossed her ankles and looked up, taking a deep breath before speaking.

“Honestly,” she said, drawing the word out to buy time, “I think the novel is self-indulgent.” Olivia cringed, holding her breath. She watched the shock travel down from Freckles’s eyes, tightening his smile into a pursed frown.

“Care to elaborate?” he asked.

Violet hopped up and down with glee, as Olivia settled an inch or two deeper into her chair. A familiar calm settled into her bones as she surveyed the class around her. Violet was right. She was back in her element, and she felt better already.

“I mean, clearly,” she continued, “the book was little more than an attempt by Woolf to reconcile her feelings of inadequacy and guilt over the debt she owed her Elizabethan predecessors, from whom she struggled to separate herself to varying degrees of success for the remainder of her career.”

Olivia inhaled the thick silence around her, her ears ringing and her face hot. Violet leaned in to whisper in her ear.

Olivia felt the corners of her mouth turning up as she leaned farther back into her seat. “Plus,” she continued, repeating her sister’s prompt, “she was a lesbian.”

It took Mr. Whitley three minutes of knuckle-rapping and the empty threat of detention to finally get the class to stop laughing.

“Hey, Madonna!”

Olivia was halfway across the street when she realized
two things. One, for the first time in her life, she had a nickname. And two, Calla Karalekas was shouting it from under the branches of an evergreen tree, at the corner of Page and Masonic.

Olivia dodged an oncoming cab and hustled to the corner, where Calla was waiting with two other girls. One was Graham’s onstage girlfriend, the petite Asian lap-snuggler from the courtyard, and the other was a Nordic-looking giantess, with a broad, shiny forehead and icy blue eyes.

“Madonna, this is Lark,” Calla announced, gesturing to the sporty blonde, who waved the tops of her fingers and smiled. “And this,” Calla continued, linking arms with the petite girl to her left, “is Eve.”

Eve’s shoulder-length black hair was pin-straight and styled in hard angles at her chin. She offered her hand for Olivia to shake, and Olivia noticed that even her little birdlike fingers had tiny, perfect nails.

“Madonna kicked ass in Shitley’s class today,” Calla announced. “He went into his Little Napoleon routine and she barely even flinched.”

Olivia tried not to let on that her memory of the experience was slightly different, as Violet nudged the back of her elbow.

“See?” she whispered, slapping her own forehead with one open palm. “Man, I could have had a future in this.”

“So what did he want?” Calla asked, her dark eyes warm and curious. There was something about the way she held herself that put Olivia instantly at ease, and reminded her of Violet’s confidence pep talk, but in a totally-without-trying kind of way.

“Who?” Olivia asked. A breeze had picked up, and the green and white Golden Gate school flag was flapping noisily overhead.

“Whitley!” She laughed. “I hope he wasn’t too hard on you after class.”

“Oh,” Olivia replied coolly. “No, nothing like that. He just told me about the partner projects.”

Olivia had done her best impression of nonchalance when Whitley had asked her to hang back after class, even though she’d been certain he was going to expel her there and then. Instead, he’d simply given her a handout detailing the project that was due in a few weeks, a scene-adaptation from
To the Lighthouse.

Which was quickly becoming Olivia’s least favorite book.

“Oh, good,” Calla exclaimed. Her thick, dark brown hair fell in one perfect wave over her shoulder and had that fresh-from-the-hairdresser look. “I thought for sure he was going to nail you with extra work or something. He lives for that shit.”

Olivia felt a twinge of guilt. Never in her life had she even contradicted a teacher in public. She felt Violet proudly beaming at her side, and was wondering if maybe this wasn’t the most brilliant start to her new academic career, when Calla reached abruptly into her bag and retrieved a shiny, goldenrod envelope.

“Anyway, I have something for you,” she said, placing the envelope in Olivia’s palm. “It’s for this iWIN fundraiser my mom is hosting at the Academy of Sciences this weekend. Come.”

“IWIN?” Olivia repeated, taking the envelope and holding it as if it were a small bird that might fly away.

“International Women in Need,” Calla explained. “It’s my mother’s pet project. I’m junior chair. It should be fun. You know, speeches, cocktails, drunken debauchery…” Calla gave Olivia’s hand a quick squeeze before releasing it and skipping off to meet the other girls huddled around a waiting town car.

Olivia felt the envelope turning damp between her sweaty fingertips and looked down to see one word, written in sharp, precise script:

Madonna.