Chapter 5
Olive
Tori, Henry, Grace, and the others hung around until just before wing time.
They only left when Ms. Barnett appeared.
Tori and Emma helped me unpack and make the bed, then had to head off too.
Now they’re just next door, but the loneliness strikes remorselessly as soon as I’ve brushed my teeth and I’m staring at my face in the mirror.
I wander from the sink to my desk to the wardrobe and back to the loo. Putting things away, folding clothes, tidying my bathroom shelves. All so that I don’t have to lie down in bed.
It’s silly, I know. It’s totally irrational to be afraid of it because it’s not even the bed.
I’m in a different room in a different wing from last time.
But I’m still back at the boarding school where I went to sleep in the summer and only woke up when the floors below me were in flames.
What if I hadn’t woken? What if I’d suffocated in my sleep?
What if the flames had surrounded me? I woke up and saw them out of the window.
I was lucky that the fire was only on the ground floor and in the stairwell.
I was on my way down when they blocked my path, not far from the exit.
I’m not scared of it happening again. I know that’s vanishingly unlikely, and that isn’t what this is about.
This is about the likelihood of everything playing out over and over again in my mind the moment I lie down in bed.
And that isn’t vanishingly unlikely. It’s one hundred percent definite.
I’ve dreamed it every night since. Or every night I can consciously remember anyway.
They’ve always been there: the images, the flames, the biting smoke, the heat of the fire, my pounding heart, my knees, which wanted to give way beneath me.
In my dreams, I can’t run—I can’t move at all.
I just stand there and sink to the floor, my only thought that this is it.
And a thing like that repeating every night is exhausting.
Exhausting, but sadly no less terrifying for that.
On the contrary. It gets worse. You start to be afraid of the fear.
Fear of the dreams turns into fear of sleep.
Fear of being alone. And fear of everything.
Plus the rage. God, I’m raging that this is my life now.
I take a step toward my bed.
OK, no bother. It’s only a problem if I make it one. It’s all in my head. It feels real because my body hasn’t twigged that the danger is over. But it’s not real. It’s over.
I force myself to slow my breathing as I sit on the bed.
I was sitting here earlier, but it was OK then because Tori, Grace, Emma, and the others were here.
I let myself sink back. OK, OK. While the light’s on, everything’s fine.
I stare up at the ceiling and try not to think.
And I’m tired. If I shut my eyes now and just drop off to sleep, nothing’s going to happen.
It’s not difficult. Slip under my duvet, ignore my throbbing shoulder, switch off the light. Breathe.
Pitch darkness all around me. And quiet. I feel my heart rate accelerating.
I have to shut my eyes. I have to . . .
OK, no. I sit up again so fast that pain shoots through my shoulder. My fingers are trembling as I can’t instantly find the light switch. My bedside lamp comes on. I jump up and pace around the room.
Good grief, why am I like this? Why is my heart racing? Why do I feel like an animal that’s been jammed into a cage to waste miserably away?
I run both hands over my face. Nothing does any good, so I grab my door key.
Ha, now I’m breaching wing time, on my first day back at Dunbridge.
At least I’m not doing it for fun. Anything but.
I’m just trying to cope. To run away from the panic that’s got me in its clutches.
I think the teachers will understand if anyone catches me.
I abandon my original plan—to face up to the west wing to prove to my body that the fire is in the past—as I walk through the dark corridors.
It’s probably more sensible to work up to that project slowly.
In daylight. Maybe start by happening to stroll past with my friends.
Baby steps. I hate being like this. A weak, delicate version of myself.
The old Olive would never have jumped in panic at loud noises or quick movements.
But that happens to me now, seriously. Like my body’s permanently in flight mode.
And however much I hate myself and put myself down for it, it never stops.
Not even here in the hush of the swimming center. The place, after the classrooms and my bedroom, where I spent most time. It’s locked at night but, like every member of the swimming team, I know the access code to the building, which Ms. Cox, our trainer, never changes.
The water is dead smooth and has an almost hypnotic effect on me.
I sit on the bottom row of the small bank of seats beside the main pool, at a safe distance from my element, because even the thought of getting too close to the water is painful.
Not because I’m suddenly afraid of it. Not in the least. After all, water’s the opposite of fire.
But it’s not my home anymore. I’ve lost it, lost my one true talent.
Swimming, doing lengths, faster than the rest, just because I can. Sorry. Could.
Eventually, I brave the edge. I didn’t put on any lights when I came in.
The main facade of the swimming center is all glass, so you’d definitely have seen a light from all the way over in the school buildings.
The low nighttime lighting and blue light in the pool are enough for me.
As I look at the water, the noise starts in my head.
My thoughts, chasing while standing still.
It’s over. You’ll never swim at that level again. Not with this shoulder, which hurts to move. Front crawl? No way. My dreams? Shattered.
I look up at the ceiling, then crouch down.
The water runs through my fingers as I dip my hand into the pool and bring it out again.
The chlorine would damage the skin graft, so I’m not allowed to spend any length of time swimming for the first six months after the operation.
After that, a few swims a month will be OK.
A few swims a month. Back in the spring, I was here every day, training for the galas. Twice a day sometimes, after Mum sucked me into covering up her affair. Anything to avoid thinking about what that might mean.
And then, as so often, I think that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t gone to bed so early that summer evening.
If there hadn’t been a comp the next day, or if I’d just gone out with my friends.
So many “what-ifs” and “hadn’ts,” because I can’t change a thing, not a thing, about the past.
I didn’t spend the evening with my friends.
I was conscientious. I wanted to wake up rested and recuperated.
But I didn’t. I came around knowing what it’s like to be frightened to death.
When your body senses danger even before your head knows what’s going on.
That “fight or flight” isn’t some far-fetched theory dreamed up by Mr. Ringling in biology, but the fucking truth. Adrenaline, tunnel vision.
I woke up after ten days that felt like a split second, and even now, I find it hard to understand what happened in that time.
Operations, intensive care, my weeping parents, whose tears sometimes pierced the fog and got through to me.
The recovery phase when, or so they explained to me later, the drugs were being reduced.
It’s unlikely I’ll ever remember any of the time before that because while I was on the ventilator, my body was pumped full of medication to reduce the pain and keep me unconscious.
Great, isn’t it? Almost two months in hospital, no summer holiday, and even though I hoped at first that I could be back for the start of term in August, my physio program was put back because I wasn’t well enough and the doctors insisted on keeping me in.
At least now I can go to a therapist from here.
I should have lived on that evening in July.
I should have followed my heart. It wanted to be sitting on those uncomfortable wooden benches in Ebrington with Tori, Sinclair, and everyone, talking about the holidays ahead, the play, the school year we’d just finished and the one to come.
The lower sixth sucked because I was raging and treated my friends like shit.
I thought I’d lost everything that mattered to me, but I was wrong.
I had it all. And now it’s actually gone.
OK, I’m exaggerating, but that’s how it feels.
I’m alive. It’s not the life I used to have, but it’s better than nothing.
I’m on a wing with my friends. I’ll sit in the lower sixth for a few weeks and cram the upper-sixth stuff at the same time.
That’s doable. And as soon as I’m eighteen, I’ll rejoin my people and we’ll do our A levels together.
And everything will be just as I always imagined.
But coming of age won’t solve the swimming problem, so I have no choice there but to listen to Dad and the hospital doctors, who told me again and again that I have to give myself time. Do my physio, moisturize my scars, wait, keep the faith. I hate it.
Right now, I wouldn’t even be able to lift my arms over my head for a racing dive.