OLIVIA
The next morning, Olivia was forced to go back to school.
She and Logan had a huge argument the morning he woke her up and forced her out of bed, and although she knew that she was the one being childish, she sulked the whole way to school. While the bike was still rolling to a stop, she slid off the back of it and nearly burned her ankle on the gas cylinder.
"What the fuck, Olivia," Logan grunted, steadying her by the arm as she stumbled. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to school." She hiked her backpack up her shoulders and turned away from him.
"Can you just be careful?"
"Whatever."
She stood there with her back to him, waiting for him to snap at her, but he didn't. His voice was dead tired as he said, "I'll just wait here for you after school-"
"I know, I know," she muttered irritably. "You've told me a thousand times."
"Don't be late."
Without waiting to say goodbye and without looking back, Olivia squared her shoulders and walked into the building.
First period was awful. All she could feel where the whispers and stares and eyes glued to the back of her head everywhere she went. Nobody spoke to her, but they parted gently in the hallways and hurriedly looked away when she turned towards them.
And the worst was that everyone thought that he had done it.
Olivia wanted to stand up and yell at all of them that he could never have done it, that Elijah didn't even have the capability to be angry at her without feeling bad himself much less stab a man seven times.
"Olivia," Ms. Rivera said quietly as students filed out of her class.
Olivia stopped and let the other students pass her. "Yeah?" she said when she was sure everyone was gone.
Ms. Rivera wrung her hands. "I've heard about-"
"Ms. Rivera, I'd really rather not talk about it right now," she said tightly. Tears heated her eyes until she could barely see.
She didn't want Ms. Rivera's pity. She didn't want her sympathy. And she certainly didn't want her kindness. Her brother was not a murderer, and he was not in there forever, so she didn't need a single one of those things.
Please just leave me alone.
To her surprise, Ms. Rivera bowed her head. "As you wish. But if you ever need a quiet place to sit, my office is always open."
Second period was the same. The teacher tried to talk to her, but she deflected his questions and escaped as quickly as possible. During third period was when it got really bad.
Coincidentally, Ms. Mayhew was teaching about the first world war. And every single time she spoke about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, she would use the word murdered and glance testily in her direction.
And half of the class would snicker. And Ms. Mayhew would do nothing about it.
After the third time it happened, Olivia got a horrible burning in her throat and started feeling nauseous from holding back the tears. She picked up her bag and slowly stood up. "I need to go to the bathroom," she said.
Ms. Mayhew turned her watery blue eyes on her and her mouth became hard set in a grim line. "Miss Powers, there are only fifteen minutes of class left, surely you can-"
"I can't," Olivia managed through the squeeze in her chest and despite all of Ms. Mayhew's calls, she ran out of there.
And thus she found that she really did need a quiet place to sit.
But she didn't go to Ms. Rivera's office. After hearing a couple of girls talking and laughing in the upstairs bathroom, she found a short dead end hallway with a window at the end of it sandwiched in between two classrooms on the third floor and slid down against the wall, her head aching.
She wanted Elijah.
She wanted him to quit pretending that this was the end of the world. She wanted him to yell at all those people that thought he had done it and tell them the truth, that he hadn't.
She wanted the knowledge that he would be there when she woke up in the middle of the night, uneasy after a nightmare. She wanted him to smile and tell her he loved her and to have a good day after school.
She wanted him to hug her.
Ambling footsteps forced her to blink her tears back into her eyes. She grabbed a random book from her bag and opened it and shoved her face inside so whoever it was would leave her alone.
But they didn't take the hint.
The tall, lanky boy with dark hair and dark eyes that had gotten detention in Ms. Mayhew's class that first day for talking back to her stood a few feet away from her, smoking a cigarette of all things.
"Oh, hey," he said, sitting down cross-legged on the opposite wall. He turned his head to the side and exhaled smoke down the main hallway. "What're you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" Olivia repeated in bewilderment. She unconsciously pressed herself back against the wall, farther away from him. Being in this close range with anyone was enough to give her the creeps, let alone being completely alone with him where no one could hear them. "What are you doing here?" she asked, not caring that her voice was slightly accusing.
His mouth turned up just a bit at the corner. "I come here all the time. It's my secret hiding spot. But I guess it's not so secret anymore."
But his voice was hardly annoyed. Instead, his lips were tugged upwards at one corner, like he was amused, almost teasing.
Olivia didn't want to make friends with anyone. In fact, she didn't plan on talking to him further at all, but the stench coming from his cigarette was getting unbearable.
"If you're going to sit here, will you please put that out?" she grumbled.
He glanced down at his cigarette, as if just noticing it for the first time. "Right, shit, sorry." He immediately ground it against the tiles, then wiped his hands on his pants and held out his hand for her to shake. "Olivia, right?" he asked.
"If you want to gossip, go find someone else," she snapped.
"Uh..." He drew back his hand. "My name's Angel."
"I know."
He rolled his eyes. "God, they didn't say something dumb about me, did they?"
"Can't be any worse than what they're saying about me."
For a while, he didn't say anything. Olivia wanted to melt into the vents behind her under his pitiful glance. She didn't need any pity. It wasn't like she was related to a murderer or anything.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Things just spread uncontrollably here whether it's a truth or a lie."
She didn't reply, but she felt a little bit of hope that he had considered that it was all just a lie. Or at the very least, pretended for her sake that he did.
"You want to get out of here?" he said suddenly. "You don't have to keep listening to all these idiots if you don't want to. We can leave."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't make friends with boys," she said point blank.
He raised his eyebrows and raised his hands in surrender. "Dude," he said. "Who hurt you in a previous life?"
"A boy." Obviously.
"That serious, huh? What'd he do?"
Olivia shoved her nose back in her book. "None of your business."
Angel leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. "Once, a member of the male species hurt me real bad too," he said. "Thought he was my friend."
Olivia had thought Milo was her friend, too. Right up until the moment he kissed her and then told the gang he was working for where she lived.
Angel sighed, drawing her from her thoughts. "Ah, well, guess some things just aren't meant to be. Like my poor cig there." He gestured towards it fondly.
Just when she could not bear his words a moment longer and was about to get up and leave, or at the very least tell him to shut up, Angel pulled a book from his backpack, put it flat on the floor, and laid his head on it. He pulled his backpack over his eyes.
"If we're not going anywhere, could you wake me up when the bell rings?" he asked, his voice muffled from the backpack. "I hardly ever hear it."
As long as he wasn't talking, Olivia would gladly do anything. "Yeah, whatever."
*****
"Hey, what happened?" Logan asked when she got to his bike that afternoon.
She had told him earlier that she had detention so he wouldn't have to wait for her, and he was right on time. Serving detention with the secretary, Mr. Kripps, had been awful. She was forced to write lines as if she was in elementary school for an hour.
The worst part was that Angel sat on the opposite side of the room serving his own detention for skipping class, making paper airplanes out of the sheets he was supposed to be writing lines on and sailing them towards Mr. Kripps every time he began to fall asleep.
That only made Mr. Kripps angrier and he ordered them both to write fifty more lines.
"Had detention," Olivia said shortly, tossing Logan her backpack.
"Well, yeah, I can see that, but - what - what in the hell are you doing?"
Olivia sat half on the bike, half off, attempting to shimmy her way out of her tights without pulling her skirt off too. "I can't stand these damn tights one second longer."
"Olivia, we are in the middle of the parking lot!"
"I'm wearing underwear!"
"How the hell does that make this any better?" Logan suddenly twisted in his seat so fast the bike almost fell over, and Olivia had to grab onto his shirt to stop from slipping clean off and landing on her butt.
Completely oblivious, Logan found his mark and yelled, "What the fuck are you looking at? Stick your eyeballs back in their fucking sockets or I'll rip them out myself!"
"Logan, what are you saying?" Olivia hauled herself back on the bike by his shirt and raised her head to find a group of students hurriedly scurrying away. "You do know that made no sense, right?"
He sighed heavily. "Can you please just quit taking off random articles of clothing in the middle of everywhere so we can go?"
Finally having pulled off the tights, Olivia balled them up and shoved them into her bag. "Okay. Yes." She breathed a sigh of relief and shook out her now freed legs. She smoothed her plaid skirt down over her thighs. "I'm better now. Can we go?"
Muttering under his breath, Logan gunned the engine and drove.
They got to the prison about half an hour later. Olivia got off the bike and stretched her sore leg muscles while Logan took out his new ID.
"Here. Your new state ID came in this morning." He handed it to her. "Now we can go in and see Elijah."
Olivia put it in her pocket. "What's it like in there?"
Logan shrugged. "I've never been."
He began walking towards the giant, grey building, then stopped and glanced over his shoulder when she didn't come. He sighed. "What?"
Olivia clenched her fingers together and looked at the looming prison. Somewhere in that huge place, her brother was waiting for them. Was he going to look different? Was it going to be terrible? What if she didn't even recognize him? Her stomach turned somersaults inside of her.
She didn't even notice Logan had walked back to her until he waved his hand in front of her face. "You coming?" he asked, and Olivia nodded jerkily and started walking because she didn't have the courage to confess that she was a little terrified of seeing her brother.
They signed into three different places, went through two detectors, and passed four locked doors. Prison guards stared them down everywhere they went. Olivia moved a little closer to Logan and walked faster so she wasn't as far away from him. He noticed and slowed down.
They were escorted through a waiting room for family members and into the meeting room, where there were five round white tables with five men in orange suits.
One of them was her brother.
Elijah had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was limp and dry, and the lines around his mouth seemed more prominent. But when he saw them, his face broke into a tired smile.
Olivia's nervous energy dissipated on seeing that gentle smile that never changed. As soon as she was close enough, she threw herself into his arms. She had almost forgotten how safe she felt in his arms, that easy feeling of warmth and security that came with being in his presence.
She pressed her face into his chest and held onto his shirt, trying to imprint the image into her mind for when they were apart and she wouldn't be able to feel this anymore.
She had promised herself she wouldn't cry, but it was suddenly getting really hard.
"Separate," grumbled a voice, bored, as if he had done this a million times.
Startled by the gruff order, Olivia stumbled backwards away from her brother. She looked at Elijah, who smiled half-heartedly. "A hug is supposed to be brief," he explained.
Olivia looked down at her feet. "Oh. Sorry."
"It's not your fault, honey."
When Elijah tried to hug Logan, Logan crossed his arms over his chest and took two steps back. "Don't touch me, you asshole," he growled.
Olivia frowned, completely taken aback by Logan's harshness. Did he not care? Did he not miss him? Would he not take any chance to be with his brother?
"Alright." Elijah held up his hands and sat down on the round white table.
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Why was her brother so calmly sitting there in his orange jumpsuit and tracking bracelet around his ankle at these prisoner tables like he really was one?
"We miss you at home," Olivia said, trying anything to get rid of the horrible quietness between them. They were a family. It should never be awkward and now it was so awkward she could hardly breathe.
"I'm sorry, Olivia," Elijah said, and he really did sound apologetic.
"If you were really sorry, you would pull that stick out of your ass and act like you actually want to get out of here," Logan muttered. He wouldn't even look at Elijah, instead glaring at the table like it was the root of all his problems.
"I am sorry, Logan, whether you want to see that or not," Elijah said, his voice a little hard for the first time since they had gotten there.
Logan swore under his breath. With a screech of chair legs against tile, he stood up and stomped away to the waiting room.
Olivia suddenly felt uneasy now that Logan wasn't sitting next to her. Elijah had to sit opposite her per prison orders, and she was sitting on her side alone. She glanced at the other prisoners sitting at the other tables and felt the urge to scoot closer to Elijah. How many of them were there because they deserved it, and how many of them were like Elijah?
"Well," Olivia said nervously. "That went well."
"He just needs a moment." Elijah shook his head. "Tell me, how is school?"
So Olivia began telling him all the things she hadn't been able to for the past two weeks. Usually, she would come home from school and unload everything she had wanted to say to Elijah over dinner, but now, she had to try to condense an entire two weeks in fifteen minutes.
She told him how Logan had made her go back to school ("he did the right thing"), how she had ditched class ("Olivia, you have to go even if you don't like it"), and how Logan had swore at a bunch of students because they had been staring at her taking off her tights in the parking lot.
"Olivia," Elijah said sternly. "That is really not an appropriate thing to do. It was okay when you did it in my car, but Logan's bike is not exactly enough cover for you to be pulling off your tights."
Olivia made a face. "Well, I don't really have a choice anymore, seeing as how you're not there now."
"Olivia-"
"Elijah, why are you doing this?" she whispered suddenly, a little bit of desperation creeping into her voice. "That's not like you. It's not - why won't you do something?"
He was quiet for a few moments, and Olivia had a random burst of hope that he was about to tell her, that she would know why they found his DNA all over the man and eyewitnesses that had seen him murder Hendricks.
"I can't," he said.
Olivia waited for an explanation, for some sort of reassurance, even for a brief reality check that she didn't want to hear.
But there was nothing.
"That's it?" she asked.
Elijah frowned. "What do you mean, that's it?"
"I don't know." Olivia was beginning to get a feel for why Logan had angrily left them. Elijah's complacency was also starting to irritate her. "I know you didn't do it but there's still something you're keeping from us."
"Olivia, how many times do I have to-"
He suddenly shifted his gaze as his eye caught something behind her. Olivia turned to see Logan behind the glass window in the waiting room, making angry hand motions at Elijah.
"I think he wants to come talk to me separately," Elijah said.
Olivia's hopes fell. He didn't even hear her out. And now this meant she wouldn't see him again until Friday.
But she couldn't make a scene. Logan had told her that people who made a scene could be denied visiting rights.
"Okay," she said morosely.
"Wait. Before you go," Elijah said quickly, pulling her back down to her seat, "I have to ask you a favor."
"A favor?" What could he possibly want her to do that would help him?
He took her hands and leaned forward across the table. His eyes grew serious.
Olivia suddenly didn't want to know what it was anymore.
"I need you to watch out for Logan for me," he said.
That was not what she was expecting.
"Logan?" she repeated. "As in -" She shifted her eyes to the side of her head towards the waiting room and lowered her voice to a whisper. "As in that Logan?"
Elijah indulged her with a smile. "Yes, silly, that one."
Olivia shrugged. That would be easy enough. She was living with him now anyways. "Yeah, sure."
"No, it's not -" Elijah let go of her hands and set his palms against the table. He struggled for the right words for a moment before saying, "It's not things like, make sure he gets up in the morning and remembers to eat. It's just -"
He rubbed the back of his neck and wouldn't meet her eyes. For a moment, Olivia felt for sure he was about to get tears in his eyes.
But then he blinked and his face was normal again and she realized she must have been imagining it.
"Sometimes...Logan needs help to keep going," he said gently. "Sometimes it gets a bit complicated for him and he needs someone to tell him it'll be okay."
Olivia wasn't oblivious. She had seen the scars on Logan's wrists, up his forearms and to his biceps. There were dozens of them, but they were old, like they had healed over years ago. After almost a year of knowing him, her eyes usually slid right past them, there for just a passing glance, but sometimes, she would wonder what had happened before she lived with them. Logan never snapped at her for staring like he had the very first time, but if he caught her looking, he would turn away so the scars weren't in her vision anymore to pull her from her thoughts.
He had told her last year that it had all happened a long time ago, but hearing Elijah's words made her realize he was still fighting it.
Elijah and Blake didn't talk about it, and Logan certainly didn't even seem approachable about the topic, but she knew it was there.
To hear Elijah voicing it out loud to her made her stomach feel cold. Like it wasn't just a passing feeling. Like it was real. Like it was final.
"I'm not going to lie and tell you it's not going to be a hard job. Because it is sometimes. But I'm not there to do it. So, please," Elijah begged, his voice bordering on desperation, "can you do that for me?"
Olivia had no idea if she could do that. She already butted heads with him enough, and she wasn't sure he would appreciate any excess conversation with her, much less comfort.
But Elijah had only ever done anything she had asked of him, so she would try to do this for him too.
And she would try for Logan too, because as much as they argued over the dumbest things, she loved him too.
"Yes, I'll try," she said.
*****
Olivia waited in the cold, white waiting room by herself for only about three minutes before the door banged open and Logan stormed in.
Her heart fell. She had hoped her brothers would last a bit longer than that before wanting to murder each other.
His glare did not disappear when it landed on her. Instead, he grasped her by the arm and pulled her out of her chair. "We're going," he snapped.
As she struggled to keep up with his long strides, Olivia panicked. Was this the part where she was supposed to tell him it was okay? Was this what Elijah had asked her to do?
But Logan's glare made her willpower falter a little.
So she stayed silent and decided she would try again another time.
Hope everyone is staying safe and their family and friends are well and everything is okay <3
For next time: we have not forgotten about Blake, I promise