The Invited(17)

A Sisyphean task—that’s what it was. She’d learned about that in school. English was the one class she was in with Mike, and he loved when they did the unit on Greek myths and knew all the stories already. She thought most of the stories were alarming and sad, especially the one about Sisyphus—that poor man rolling the boulder up the hill with a stick only to have it roll back down. That’s what the renovations were like. Futile—that was the word Ms. Jenkins, Olive’s freshman English teacher, used to describe it.

Olive poured some coffee into Mama’s favorite mug: an oversized red mug that was really more like a bowl and had a chip on one side.

“When you go to a café in France, this is what all the people drink from,” Mama said once.

“Have you been to France, Mama?” Olive asked.

“No,” she said. “But that’s the first thing we’ll do when we find that treasure—go off and see the world! Sit down and have a café au lait in a French café!”

Olive checked the oven—she was baking cinnamon buns from a can. She’d bought them herself at the general store. Her father didn’t go to the grocery store much these days. Riley used to bring sacks of groceries when she came over, but Daddy got mad and told her to quit doing that, that they weren’t a goddamn charity case. Olive would ask him for a little cash here and there so she could pick up what they needed at Ferguson’s General Store in town: coffee, milk, cereal, bread, canned soups. Nothing fancy. The cinnamon rolls, they were kind of an extravagance, but she was in a celebratory mood.

    “Morning, Ollie,” Daddy said, coming into the kitchen. “You had the news on at all?”

“No,” she said.

He took in a breath, puffed out his cheeks as he let it go. “Terrible thing,” he said in a low voice. “A bus crash out on Route 4 last night. Full of seniors from the high school coming back from a trip to Boston. A bunch hurt, three killed. Might be kids you know.” He watched her, waiting to see how she’d respond.

Olive nodded. She didn’t really know any seniors. Sure, she passed them in the halls, and sometimes they seemed to know her (or her story at least, and would whisper or giggle to each other as they walked by).

“Did the bus hit another car?”

“No, it went off the road. They’re saying the driver swerved to avoid something in the road. An animal, maybe.”

Olive nodded, wasn’t sure what else to say.

Daddy looked around the kitchen, shuffled his feet.

“There’s coffee ready,” Olive said.

“Sure smells good in here.” He smiled.

“I’m making cinnamon rolls,” she said.

“Ya are, huh?” He reached for the pot of coffee on the stove, poured himself a cup. “What’s the occasion?”

“Just thought we deserved a treat,” she said.

He smiled at her, ruffled her hair. “You’re right, kiddo. We do deserve a treat.”

The timer went off and Olive took the rolls out of the oven, put them on top of the stove to cool.

“You got plans after school?” he asked.

Funny question. When did she ever have plans after school? She didn’t play any sports, wasn’t in the drama club or anything like that. She sometimes got invited to a classmate’s house after school, but since her mom left, she always said no, made up some excuse for not going. Easier that way. Because once you went to someone’s house a couple of times, they’d kind of expect to be invited to your house. And no way was she inviting any of the girls from school to her house. She didn’t want people to know about the constant state of construction, to see the torn-open walls and ceiling, the exposed plumbing and wiring, the plywood subfloor, the plaster and drywall dust that covered everything. Proof that once her mama left, everything really did fall apart. Literally.

    She even made excuses to keep Mike away. He used to come over all the time. Her mom loved Mike and got a real kick out of his encyclopedic knowledge of weird and random facts. He’d come over and tell her all about the life cycle of some parasite in Africa he’d been reading about, and Mama would ask all kinds of questions and tell him how clever he was for knowing so much while she fed him fresh-baked oatmeal cookies (his favorite). Olive’s dad never knew what to make of Mike (a kid who neither hunted nor cared about sports)—they were weird and awkward around each other, and Olive thought it was best if she just avoided the whole scene. Also, she didn’t want Mike to see how bad the house really was. He’d freak and tell his mom, who might call the Department for Children and Families or something.

But she and Mike hung out at school and in the woods. And the truth was Mike was about the only real friend Olive had these days, and Olive was Mike’s one friend.

“Odd Oliver,” that’s what everyone at school called her—even the older kids she didn’t know. The kids in her class had been calling her Odd Oliver since fifth grade, and she’d thought she’d lose the name when they all moved on to high school, but it carried over, got worse even. High school was so big and strange—a world where the normal rules didn’t seem to apply. When she walked the halls, she was reminded of another story she’d learned about in English: the labyrinth that held the Minotaur. Only in her version, there were Minotaurs everywhere, around every corner, and they wore letter jackets, or cheap perfume and pounds of makeup. The high school served three towns, so there were a lot of kids Olive had never seen before, and originally, she’d looked forward to this, thought it would help her to blend in, to hide, but really it just made her stick out more. News of her nickname and what had happened with her mother spread fast during the first weeks of school.