Safe With Me (25 page)

Hannah turns the chair around and takes off Olivia’s black cape. “Come on,” she says, ignoring the questioning looks from Peter and Veronica as she guides Olivia toward the stairs that lead to her apartment. Once they are in her living room, with the door closed behind them, Hannah lets go of Olivia’s hand and turns to face her. “You can trust me,” Hannah says.

Instead of answering, Olivia moves her gaze over the small space, taking in the spare furnishings, the few books on the shelves. There is a purple velour love seat, a short walnut-hued coffee table, and a flat-screen television hung above the mantel, but otherwise, the room is practically empty. Anyone could live here. Why doesn’t Hannah have any pictures of her daughter? If Maddie had died, Olivia imagines pictures
would be her only link to her child—she would want them everywhere. She wonders if seeing them is too much of a reminder for Hannah of all she’d lost. “What a pretty apartment,” she remarks. Her voice sounds strange, not tethered to her body.

“Olivia,” Hannah says, undeterred. “Please. Talk to me.”

“About what?” Olivia responds, her tone as light as she can possibly make it.
This isn’t why I came here today. I came to get my hair done.

“James. Why you have to keep secrets from him. It’s not normal, the way he talks to you.”

“You only met him once. He was just . . . in a bad mood.” Olivia turns away, feeling guilty about lying to Hannah. She looks out the bay window at the blue September sky, but Hannah doesn’t give up. She steps over to Olivia and stands in front of her. Olivia tries to avert her gaze from Hannah’s, but she can’t seem to look away from her friend’s pleading eyes. She notices they are lighter in the center, like the sky, but rimmed in dark navy—framed like a picture.

“Does he
hurt
you?” Hannah asks, her voice low and thick with compassion.

Olivia presses her lips together and shakes her head, still unable to take her eyes off Hannah’s. Her gut churns, as she realizes that Hannah isn’t going to give up. What gave the truth away? James didn’t touch her in front of Hannah the night she came over; Olivia didn’t have any telling bruises. Tears threaten in the back of her throat, and she swallows once, hard, to force them down. She can’t say it. She can’t. She can’t tell a person she barely knows what her life has become, what she’s endured, what she’s allowed her daughter to live with . . . and
why. She has to stick to her plan. Get a degree, get a job, get Maddie away at school, and
then
she can leave him. Only now she’s not sure she can follow through. What seemed so plausible in theory seems impossible in practice; she didn’t return to class after that first day, unable to face what that picture had brought up within her. The disgust she felt, relating to the woman it depicted, the black, aching sense of shame that flooded through her veins.
I’m not strong enough,
she thinks.
I’m not strong enough to save myself. This is my life—I created it. I allowed it to happen. There’s no way out for me.

“His father beat him horribly,” she finally says. “He’s just a product of his environment . . . you know?” She pauses, searching Hannah’s face for the judgment she expects—the same disdain she heard in that young girl’s voice during class when she said the woman in the picture was an idiot. But all she sees in her friend’s eyes is concern—a soft, warm place to fall, someone willing to bear witness to her pain. “It doesn’t happen very often,” she whispers, suddenly unable to keep the tears from spilling down her cheeks.

“Oh, Olivia,” Hannah says, reaching out to take her friend’s hands. She pulls them to her chest, so their faces are only inches apart, their foreheads almost touching. “It shouldn’t happen at all.”

•  •  •

In the end, Olivia doesn’t change a thing about her hair. Instead, she sits with Hannah for the next two hours—the length her appointment would have been—pouring out the dirty details of her life. The words come slowly at first, stuttering out of her in fits and bursts. And after she is done describing how it
all started, trying—and failing—to pinpoint the exact moment when everything about her marriage changed, she can’t believe the woman she’s talking about is her. She can’t comprehend the sheer number of times James has raised a hand to her, the humiliation and degradation she’s lived with for almost two decades.

She takes in a few deep, shuddering breaths and waits for Hannah to speak, to ask her why she didn’t call the police or walk out the door years ago. But Hannah is silent. Olivia shakes her head. “I don’t know how he does it,” she says helplessly.

“Does what?” Hannah asks.

Olivia’s bottom lip trembles and she has to bite it before she can speak. “Makes me feel like
I’m
at fault. We go months and months when everything is fine and then, out of nowhere, he comes home and I do what I always do . . . say what I always say in the exact same way I always say it, and suddenly he’s a different person. It happens so
fast
. And when it’s over, it’s like I stepped out of my body and watched it happen to another person. Like it wasn’t real. So then I think I’m crazy, that I’m making it worse than it really is, because
he
pretends like it didn’t happen, too, so I think,
Okay, maybe it didn’t. Maybe I’m imagining things
.” Out of breath and realizing that she’s babbling, she stops herself and looks at Hannah through watery eyes. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you.” A statement, not a question, because she is so certain it’s true. “For staying with him.”

“Of course not,” Hannah says, gently enough that Olivia almost believes her. “But I guess I wonder . . . can you help me understand why?”

Olivia wipes away her tears with the tips of her fingers.
“I was ready to leave. I had money saved and a plan for us to start over without him . . .” She trails off, staring out the window again at the clear blue sky, trying to recall the sense of determination she felt in the weeks after James had choked her, when she first knew she needed to escape. “But then Maddie got so sick so quickly and I could never afford the kind of care she needed on my own. And I just knew if I tried to leave, he would threaten to prove I was unfit and take custody of her away from me.” She swallows a sob, but still, her voice feels shredded as she speaks. “He could have, too. He has those kinds of connections. That kind of power. I couldn’t lose Maddie. I
couldn’t
. So I stayed.”

“I get it,” Hannah says, though her eyes cloud with an emotion Olivia doesn’t know her well enough to recognize. “Does Maddie . . . ?” Hannah begins, blinks a few times, then starts again. “How much does she know?”

“She suspects,” Olivia says, still tearful, “but he’s never hit me in front of her.” She knows how empty this statement sounds, though she still wishes it could absolve her of the choices she’s made.

Hannah leans forward, intent. “Has he ever hit
her
?”

“Never,” Olivia says vehemently. “He loves Maddie.”

“Do you love him?” Hannah asks, visibly relieved to hear that James doesn’t raise his fists to his daughter.

Olivia presses her lips together, hard, and bobs her head. This is maybe the hardest thing for her to admit—that despite everything he’s done to her, the horrid way he’s treated her over the years, a part of her is still enamored with James. She thinks of the moments they’ve shared—lying together in bed, his body curled up behind hers, the tears he’s shed when he
allows himself to talk about his past, the insecurities he’s allowed only her to see. His fits of anger are always tempered by long stretches of passion and gentility. Her feelings about him are strung together in wild, complicated knots—fear braided tightly with adoration, tenderness shot through with shame. She has no idea how to unwind one from the other. “I can’t leave him,” she says to Hannah now. “I want to . . . but I just can’t.”

“With the right lawyer, you can fight him,” Hannah says, with a determined edge in her voice. “You and Maddie can get away. You can call the police, you can get a restraining order . . . and he’d have to pay child support. He can’t just stop Maddie’s health insurance, either. He’d be legally required to take care of you both.”

“You don’t understand,” Olivia whispers. “He’ll
take
her so he won’t have to.” She goes on to explain her plan to get a degree and leave when Maddie went to college. “But it was a stupid idea, really. I’m not going to be a lawyer. I’m not going to be anything.” She hears the defeat in her words and she hates it. She hates how weak she’s become, how inadequate she feels to change her own life.

“You can be whatever you make up your mind to be,” Hannah says and then releases a long, slow breath. “I won’t try to tell you what you should do. Only you can decide that.” She hesitates and opens her mouth, as though about to speak again, but quickly closes it.

“What?” Olivia asks. “What is it?”

“I just . . .” Hannah begins, then trails off, her lips pushed into a deep frown. She appears on the verge of saying something important, something Olivia might not want to hear. She
looks nervous.
This is it,
Olivia thinks, her stomach twisting.
This is where she tells me she thinks I’m an idiot for being with James. This is where the truth comes out.

“I just want you to know that I’m here for you,” Hannah finally says. “Okay? However you might need me.”

“Thank you,” Olivia says shakily. She looks at Hannah, wondering how they got to this intimate place in their new friendship so quickly, and concludes that perhaps it’s because they
don’t
know each other very well that Olivia feels safe enough to open up. Sometimes it’s easier to talk to someone who doesn’t have preconceived notions of who you are, no expectations based on past behavior, no running commentary on the choices you’ve made in your life. Hannah seems to take Olivia exactly as she is in this moment, and it’s because of this that—for the first time in as long as she can remember—Olivia feels like she’s finally found someone she can trust.

I feel better somehow, after writing the letter to the donor’s family. Like a weight I’d been carrying around has lifted and I can breathe easier knowing I’ve done the right thing. It must show, because as I slide into my seat in computer science a few days later, Noah throws a playful punch from where he sits across from me, lightly brushing against my shoulder.

“What are
you
so happy about?” he asks. He stretches his long legs out in front of him and leans down to pull his binder from his book bag.

“Nothing much,” I say with a shrug, uncertain if I really want to tell him the reason for my good mood. I’m sure Zoe, the transplant coordinator, has reviewed the letter by now and forwarded it to the family. I wonder if I’ll ever hear back from them, though it doesn’t matter, I suppose. All that matters is that I finally told them how much I appreciate their gift to me. And maybe more important, how sorry I am for everything
they lost. “I just took care of something I’ve needed to do for a long time, you know? I feel relieved.”

“I get you,” he says, bobbing his head. He opens his binder and wiggles his mechanical pencil between his index and middle fingers before speaking again. “So, hey . . . I was thinking. Are you busy after school today? I thought we could maybe hang out in the computer lab. See if we can figure this scripting assignment out together.” He glances at me sidelong, and I notice he’s blushing.
He likes me,
I think, and the realization creates an unexpected, fluttery sensation in my chest. The pencil wiggling speeds up as he waits for my response.

“I can’t,” I say. “Sorry. I promised I’d go to Bellevue Square with Hailey and Jade.” His face crumples, and I immediately feel awful for hurting his feelings. “Can we do it tomorrow?” I ask. “Or Monday?”

“Sure,” he says, but he doesn’t look at me. He sets his pencil on top of his desk. “Are they like, your
best friends
now or something?” He doesn’t even attempt to hide his disdain. Hailey made it clear that she doesn’t like Noah, and apparently, the feeling is mutual.

“No,” I say. “I’m new here, okay? I’m just getting to know everyone. They asked me to go and I said sure. That’s all.” He rolls his shoulders as though trying to dislodge something from the middle of his back. I want to say more, to tell him that all of these weird who-is-supposed-to-be-friends-with-whom rules are something I’ve never dealt with before. I don’t know where I fit in. And even though Hailey was seriously rude to me on my first day, I definitely understand that I don’t want to be on her bad side. Right now, she thinks Dirk is my boyfriend,
and even though it is a lie, it makes me feel like I’m just as good as she and her pretty friends.

Noah ducks his head so his hair falls over his face, ignoring my explanation. Sighing, I rip a small corner of paper from my notebook and quickly write down my phone number with a small note.
Text me later. Please?
I fold it up into a tight square and then chuck it across the aisle. It lands right in front of him, but he hesitates a moment before opening it. Though once he does, a smile spreads across his face and he surreptitiously reaches into his sweatshirt pocket, turning away from me. I feel my phone buzz inside my own jacket a second later, and I pull it out to read his text. “Is it later yet?”

I look at Noah and smile, and when he smiles back at me, I feel something in my stomach flip over, the same way it did when Dirk first spoke my name.
What is
that
about?
But before I can send a response, the teacher raps on her desk with a ruler as an indication that it’s time for class to begin.

•  •  •

A few hours later, after I meet Hailey and Jade in the parking lot and we’re on our way to the mall, I go back to that moment in class when Noah smiled at me. Specifically, I think about his mouth—the way his lips might feel against mine. Suddenly, the fluttering I’d felt earlier in my stomach moves into my pelvis and I have to suck in a quick breath.

“You okay?” Jade asks, twisting around from her place in the front passenger seat to look at me. Hailey is driving—the candy-apple-red BMW her dad bought her for her sixteenth birthday—and it was made clear that, as the new girl in their little circle, my place is in the back.