Olly: what do you mean?
Madeline: There were never any pills. I told you that so that you would go with me.
Olly: you lied to me?
Olly: but you could’ve died and it would’ve been my fault Madeline: I’m not your responsibility.
Later, 3:42 A.M.
Madeline: I wanted everything, Olly. I wanted you and the whole wide world. I wanted everything.
Madeline: I can’t do this anymore.
Olly: can’t do what?
Madeline: No more IM. No more e-mail. It’s too hard. I can’t go back. My mom was right. Life was better before.
Olly: better for who?
Olly: don’t do this Maddy
Olly: my life is better with you in it Madeline: but mine isn’t <Madeline has logged out>
LIFE IS SHORT?
SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE
INVISIBLE MAN BY RALPH ELLISON
Spoiler alert: You don’t exist if no one can see you.
GEOGRAPHY
I’M IN AN endless field filled with red poppies. The poppies reach waist-high on single green stalks and are so red they seem to bleed color. In the distance I see one Olly, and then two, and then multiple Ollys marching toward me. They’re wearing gas masks and holding handcuffs and crushing the poppies under black-booted feet as they march toward me, silent and determined.
The dream doesn’t leave me. I drift through the day awake but dreaming, trying not to think of Olly. I try not to think of seeing him for the first time. How he seemed like he was from another planet. I try not to think about Bundt cakes and headstands and kisses and velvet sand. How second and third and fourth kisses are just as amazing as first ones. I try not to think about him moving inside me and us moving together. I try not to think of him because if I do, I’ll have to think about how connected to him and the world I was just a few days go.
I’ll have to think of all the hope I had. Of how I fooled myself into thinking that I was a miracle. Of how the world I wanted to be a part of so badly didn’t want me back.
I have to let Olly go. I’ve learned my lesson. Love can kill you and I’d rather be alive than out there living.
I once told Olly that I knew my own heart better than I knew anything else, and it’s still true. I know the places in my heart, but the names have all changed.
MAP OF DESPAIR
LIFE IS SHORT?
SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE
THE STRANGER BY ALBERT CAMUS
WAITING FOR GODOT BY SAMUEL BECKETT
NAUSEA BY JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Spoiler alert: Everything is nothing.
SELECT ALL, DELETE
PRETENDING
I’M STRONGER WITH each passing day. Nothing hurts except my heart, but I’m trying not to use it. I keep the blinds closed. I read my books. Existential or nihilist ones. I have no patience for books that pretend life has meaning. I have no patience for happy endings.
I don’t think about Olly. He sends me e-mails that I trash without reading.
After two weeks I’m strong enough to resume some classes. Another two weeks and I’m able to resume all of them.
I don’t think about Olly. I trash still more of his e-mails.
My mom is still trying to fix me. She hovers. And worries and fusses and administers. Now that I’m stronger she coaxes me back into our mother-daughter nights. Like Olly, she wants our lives to go back to the way they were before. I don’t enjoy our nights together—I don’t really enjoy anything—but I do it for her. She’s lost even more weight. I’m alarmed and don’t know how to fix her, so I play Fonetik Skrabbl and Honor Pictionary and watch movies and pretend.
Olly’s e-mails stop.
“I’ve asked Carla to come back,” she says one night after dinner.
“I thought you didn’t trust her anymore.”
“But I trust you. You learned your lesson the hard way. Some things you just have to experience for yourself.”
REUNION
THE NEXT DAY, Carla bustles in. Her bustle is even bustlier than normal, and she pretends no time has passed at all.