Twisted Vows

CHAPTER 9

Leah

Daytime was harder.

Daytime had no shape unless I forced one onto it, and forcing shape onto anything took more energy than I wanted to admit. I applied for the campus library job because Olivia found the posting, printed it out, and left it on the kitchen table without comment.

She had drawn a tiny star in the corner.

Not pushy.

Just Olivia.

I submitted the application the same day. I got called in for an interview and wore the one good blouse I’d packed. I spoke clearly and carefully about information access and work ethic and the importance of libraries, and somehow no one seemed to notice I was holding myself together with safety pins and spite.

They offered me the job.

Starting in September.

Twelve hours a week.

Minimum wage.

The numbers didn’t add up to anything close to enough, but they added up to something.

Something was better than zero.

Zero was what I’d had three weeks ago.

I didn’t call my parents again after the first time.

The first time had been eighteen days after I left. It was late, Olivia already asleep, and I sat on the couch with my phone in my hand, feeling lonely in a way that had nothing to do with being alone.

I had been part of a house.

Then I had been removed from it.

I pressed my mother’s name and listened to it ring four times before her voicemail picked up. Composed. Professional. The voice she used for people who didn’t deserve the real one.

I left a message.

I’ve tried since to remember exactly what I said, and I can’t. But I know what I didn’t say.

I didn’t say anything about the baby.

I’d taken the test by then.

A CVS test, bought with shaking hands and hidden in the bottom of Olivia’s tote bag so Maggie wouldn’t see it. I sat on the bathroom floor for twenty minutes before the second line appeared.

Two lines.

That was all it took for the world to tilt.

I think I told my mother I was scared. I think I said I didn’t know what to do. I think I sounded like I was begging, and I’ve never forgiven myself for that.

Not because asking for help was shameful.

Because I asked her.

And she didn’t call back.

I didn’t call again.

It wasn’t even anger.

Not really.

More like the last small click of a lock turning. The door had always been mostly closed. I had just stopped standing outside it.

I still hadn’t told Olivia about the baby.

Not because I didn’t trust her.

I trusted Olivia with everything.

That was the problem.

Once I told her, she would make it real. She would sit down beside me and say okay, and then we would have to talk about doctors and money and school and choices and Jacob.

Especially Jacob.

I wasn’t ready to tell Jacob.

I closed the laptop and sat in the kitchen for another twenty minutes. Then I stood up too fast.

The room tilted.

I put my hand on the table and waited for it to pass.

It passed.

I went to bed.

The weeks started to blur after that.

The UT Austin plan did not survive the empty bank account. I deferred my place before classes started and registered late at a local university in Dallas, one I could reach from Maggie’s apartment by bus and one that still offered the social work degree I wanted. It felt like losing one more version of my life. I tried not to call it that.

Orientation emails arrived.

I attended things.

I smiled at people I didn’t know and answered questions about my major. When people asked where I was from, I said Dallas, which was true and not enough.

I went to the library and shelved books and learned the catalog system. I started to like the quiet of the stacks, the clean order of the shelves.

Every book had a place.

Every book could be found if you knew where to look.

I liked that more than I wanted to admit.

I wasn’t eating enough.

I knew that.

Not on purpose.

Not exactly.

Food just felt like one more thing I was supposed to manage, and I was already failing at too many things. By the time I noticed I was hungry, I could usually ignore it.

I told myself it was temporary.

Once the semester really started, I would be better.

Once I had a schedule.

Once I figured out the money.

Once I told Olivia.

I had a lot of plans that started with once.

Olivia noticed anyway.

“You didn’t eat yesterday,” Olivia said one morning, sliding coffee across the table without being asked.

“I did,” I said automatically.

She raised an eyebrow. “Half a granola bar.”

I wrapped my hands around the mug.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just haven’t been that hungry.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it keeps being true.”

“Lee.” Olivia leaned back in her chair and looked at me over the rim of her mug. Her hair was piled on top of her head with a pencil stuck through it, and she wore a silk blouse she had found at a thrift store for six dollars and altered until it looked expensive. “You know you don’t get extra points for suffering alone, right?”

“I’m not suffering.”

“You ate half a granola bar yesterday and called it dinner.”

“That was not dinner.”

“You’re right,” Olivia said. “Dinner usually involves food.”

I almost smiled.

Almost.

Then I looked down into my coffee.

“I just don’t want to be a burden,” I said.

Olivia’s face changed.

Not pity.

Never pity.

Something fiercer.

“You’re not a burden,” Olivia said. “You’re my person. There’s a difference.”

My throat tightened.

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do.”

I stared at the mug because looking at her was suddenly too hard.

Olivia reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

Firm.

Grounding.

Not dramatic.

“Okay,” Olivia said. “Then we’ll figure it out together.”

She didn’t offer ten solutions. She didn’t make me perform being okay. She just stayed there with her hand around mine until I could breathe normally again.

That was the thing about Olivia.

She made help feel like something you were allowed to accept.

I still didn’t tell her.

The afternoon I collapsed was a Tuesday in late September.

I was in Intro to Business, which I didn’t care about at all but had to take as a general requirement. The professor was saying something about supply chains. I was taking notes anyway, thorough and mechanical, the kind of notes I took when I was too tired to actually listen.

I’d skipped breakfast.

I’d skipped lunch too.

Not on purpose exactly.

The morning just kept happening, and food kept getting pushed to later.

My body had apparently been keeping score.

The heat came first.

Then the dizziness.

My notes stopped making sense. The professor’s voice faded in and out. I reached for my water bottle, but my hand missed it.

“Leah?” someone said beside me. “You okay?”

I tried to nod.

The room narrowed.

Black at the edges.

The clicking of the projector was suddenly too loud.

I opened my mouth to say I was fine.

Someone said my name again.

Far away this time.

Then the floor came up too fast, and everything went dark.