Creeps, Anonymous

Chapter 8 - You Chicken?

"Okay," Olivia said, forcing out a breath instead of hurling her phone into the harbor, "Fuck."

She jumped down from the retaining wall and headed back to the car with a single-minded passion. Stay cool. Stay cool.

Shaking her car keys out of her pocket, Olivia fumbled them into Chaka's door handle, feeling an almost physical itch crawling up the back of her neck. Closed up in the car, with the windows rolled up, Olivia braced herself on her knees and let out an almost keening scream.

"Fuck," she said, feeling her voice go hoarse and ragged.

Her voicemails to Macks floated back to her in piecemeal, private pleas. Their intended recipient could never hear them again, but that just brought her back to the question of who was. A guttural groan of shame bubbled up in her throat.

"A neutral party, huh?" she said bitterly to herself, slumped over the steering wheel, "Real fucking nice job on that one."

***

At the base of the ivy lattice, Olivia stared upwards towards Sammy's lit window, wondering if she was in shape enough to make her way back up. She gave a frustrated shake of her head at the day's absurdity, "Whatever, how hard can it be?"

Like a baseball pitcher, she wiped down her sweaty palms, and then poised herself to grab a nearby lattice plank. Placing her boot on a lower rung, she gave the structure a testing lean with her full weight. The old wood groaned beneath her, an uneasy omen for her upwards ascent.

She took a small breath and reached above her head for another plank on the lattice, and pulled herself up. She found another foothold in the dark and moved diagonally towards the window. The mold and dust in the old ivy kicked up underneath her hands, making her nose itch.

Olivia held her breath as she made it halfway up, too afraid to sneeze and lose her balance. She happened to look down, feeling a dizzy nausea creep into her stomach. The process down the lattice looked like it was a lot easier than the way back up–which Sammy had conveniently forgotten to mention–and Olivia had famously forgotten to account for. She made a note to have Sammy leave open the back door for her next time.

After a few more nerve-wracking rungs up, Olivia strained and reached for the windowpane, sliding it upwards.

A thick stem of ivy snapped beneath her, sending Olivia sliding backwards into nothing. By sheer chance, Olivia's hands scrambled up, pinching down hard on the peeling windowsill. She blessed the fact that she was doing this sober, or she'd most likely have folded herself in half by now.

Righting her feet, she used the momentum to messily vault herself through the window. Sammy sat up in her bed, putting her phone down.

"What are you doing?"

"Coming home," Olivia said, briskly jerking her chin towards her cousin, "What are you doing?"

"I was watching Running Man, until that Kramer Entrance just now," Sammy replied, giving her a pointed look as she picked her phone back up.

"Yeah, sorry, I'm heavier than you–I think," Olivia said, panting, using her hand to brace her side, "Look, something weird happened tonight."

"What do you mean, weird?"

"Okay–so this is going to sound really stupid, but I've been leaving messages on Macks' old telephone number. Just like, you know, when I get really overwhelmed and I feel like I want to talk to him, tell him stuff."

"I don't think that's stupid, but continue," Sammy said, pulling the covers back and swinging her feet over the side of her bed.

"Well, so, I've been kind of reaching out on a number that basically, you know, goes to nowhere–so I thought it would be safe to just, I don't know, kind of just say what was on my mind, stuff I wished I'd said sooner."