GUESTCRIB: OLIVIA by Morountodun

Hi everybody,
   Welcome to this week’s GuestCrib. The guest writer this week is Morountodun and her story is titled ‘Olivia’
  Please follow her on twitter @Morountosweet and read her blog at http://www.morountosweet.wordpress.com

OLIVIA

People often stop Olivia and I on the streets to ask if we’re sisters, and we either simply smile and say no, or yes if we’re feeling up to some mischief.

Olivia is my bestfriend, we’ve known each other for quite some time now.
On a particular warm Monday morning three years ago, there stood a nervous me at the back of the assembly hall with my school bag clutched tightly to my back, beads of sweat forming all over my forehead. My family had recently relocated, and I was a new student at St. Brown’s High School.

I must have been shivering, because a girl walked up to me and asked in a slightly alarmed tone, “Are you okay?”
I simply nodded and looked away.
“Is this your first day?” the girl asked again. 
I nodded again, embarrassed by the pity in her eyes. 

She told me quietly, “It’s okay, I could help you settle in if that’s what you’re worried about.”
The care with which she said those words made me look up at her. I just knew I had found a friend.

They say when two people walk together, they start to do things alike. There are times she completes my sentences perfectly, and even I say some things that sound totally Olivia-like to my ears. We also have the same petite stature and it perhaps explains why people think we look alike. I’m lighter in complexion though, and her legs are slightly bowed but it only makes her look cuter. 

Grad’s two months away and who’s taking who to prom is the topic on everyone’s lips in school right now. I don’t yet know who I’ll be going with, but things are looking up for Olivia. She sent me an SMS last night saying she was down, so she wasn’t in school today, and her crush who happens to be our class rep asked me this morning if she already had a date. Just so she knows he might ask her, i’m on my way to her house to give her the great news!
“Hello?” I call out as I push the front door open after knocking twice without a response.

“Olivia?”

Thinking she might be asleep, I gently shut the door and walk quietly to her room where I find her curled into a ball and shivering under a blanket. “Oh, I didn’t know it was this bad,” I say, hurrying over to the bed where I peer at her face to find tears streaming down. I ask her, really wanting to know, “What is it?”

Sniffing, she shakes her head and I reach out to feel her temperature. She is blazing hot, so I ask her, “Do you have a headache?”

She shakes her head again and whispers, “I feel weak.”

“Have you taken any drug?”
She nods. 
“Had your bath yet?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you try getting up? You might feel a bit better if you did.” I say, helping her up.
She’s already on her feet when a strong stink hits me and I look from her back to the bed and ask, confused, “Olivia, are you on your period? ‘Cause your dress is stained and you’ve messed up the sheets.”

She stops dead in her track. “I have?”
“Yes. Can’t you feel it?” I ask, frowning now as she feels the wetness at her back with her hand. She starts to continue walking to the bathroom but crumbles instead on her first step, landing on the floor with a thud. 
Suspicious now, I rush to meet her. “What exactly is wrong?”

She breaks into sobs while still on the floor, and getting impatient, I say, “You really have to tell me what’s up.”

“Please…get me a pad…from my wardrobe,” she manages in between sobs. 
I wordlessly do so, only for her to ask if I can put it on her. “Please…Please,” she pleads, writhing on the floor. 

“You better have a very good explanation for this, Olivia, ’cause it’s gross,” I grumble, unwrapping the sanitary pad with my nose crumpled, just before I notice she’s passed out. It’s when I go get help.

                            *    *    *

Her parents are huddled together at a corner in the ward, and i’m sitting in front of the hospital bed Olivia’s in, all three of us staring at this girl we love so much that has just broken our hearts into a million pieces. 

I particularly feel betrayed. I’m infact still reeling from the shock of it all. How come I knew nothing about it? I might not have supported her, but I certainly would have listened! This is my best friend in the whole world, why didn’t she say anything to me?

…It’s been twenty-four hours now and the doctor says she’s going to be okay. I really do hope so. I hope she knows she’s going to have a lot of explaining to do too. I just wish I knew how it all started, when and how it happened, what made her tight-lipped the whole time when she should have known I’d be there for her no matter what. 

Still looking over my bestfriend’s seemingly lifeless body connected to so many tubes, I hear her mum sob into her dad’s chest and ask for the millionth time how this could be happening. 

It beats me too. Olivia’s like the smartest person I know, I just can’t fathom where her good sense wandered off to, how this could ever happen to her, if I would have known had the abortion been properly done. I doubt it though.

  And it really hurts. I used to think it’s what friends were for, to talk to when you absolutely should.
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    Now, let’s get your comments. And don’t forget to check out her blog at http://www.morountosweet.wordpress.com