Finding Olivia

Prologue

p r o l o g u e

It’s hard pretending you’re perfect when you’re anything but.

For as long as I could remember, my dad, his eyes cold and calculating, judged every move I made.

I could hear his gruff voice, clearly in my head, scolding me. “No, Olivia! You can’t play outside! You’ll get mud on your dress!” Or, “No, Olivia! You can’t play with those children! Their parents don’t go to church!” And one of my favorites was, “No, Olivia! You can’t go to that school dance! You might end up pregnant!”

He kept waiting for me to mess up, to make a mistake that was unforgivable. It was like he knew that I really wasn’t this perfect girl that I pretended to be.

But I refused to give him that satisfaction.

As long as I lived under his roof, I hid who I really was. I was the perfect preacher’s daughter that he always wanted me to be. I wore my dresses and attended church every Sunday. I pretended that I wasn’t slowly suffocating on the inside.

I wore a smile on my face to hide the pain I felt while I counted the days until I could leave.

I purposely picked a college that would put as much distance as possible between my father and I.

I wanted to live and spread my wings.

I wanted to be wild and spontaneous.

I wanted to make mistakes.

And that’s why I sat down and made my list on the last night I lived under my father’s oppressive roof.

That list was my way of finding myself.

I only hoped it worked.

Or had too much time gone by, and the girl I was supposed to be, was lost forever?