(low blow cause he likes to get) blown
in tradition of lit majors across the globe, olvia’s mom has a twisted sense of beauty and names her first daughter beatrice. this goes over exactly as expected and when the second daughter stumbles out of her, so overwhelmed her little lungs don’t even work, she breathes out “olivia” like shakespeare himself will reach up from the depths of hell and jumpstart the reincarnation of his character’s lungs.
i. in tradition of lit majors across the globe, olvia’s mom has a twisted sense of beauty and names her first daughter beatrice. this goes over exactly as expected and when the second daughter stumbles out of her, so overwhelmed her little lungs don’t even work, she breathes out “olivia” like shakespeare himself will reach up from the depths of hell and jumpstart the reincarnation of his character’s lungs.
olivia spends four days in the nicu because she swallowed so much blood at birth.
beatrice, a whole seven years old, isn’t allowed in to see the baby— not that she’s particularly inclined to, it’s the principal of the thing— and spends four days on her father’s mother’s couch watching the news because the tv only gets six channels and none of them are cartoons. also, grammie invested her pension into the stock market at the advisement of a scamming financial advisor so she watches the screen in the same way a born again christian stumbles to the altar for penance. beatrice watches, and learns, and starts mumbling under her breath when the numbers are red, too.
ii. when olivia turns seven and beatrice fourteen, grammie dies. she leaves behind an unpayed mortgage and a stock profile worth exactly four trips to the aquarium.
dad is grammie’s only son. mom hates this and hated grammie so the house is tense for days. olivia stays in her room mostly, playing with beatrice’s old toys and drawing little houses with four smiling people and the dog she’s always wanted.
“what would it’s name be?” beatrice asks tiredly. she doesn't really care, and olivia knows this, but the deep, resonating sound of dad yelling is starting to make the wood floors rattle.
but olivia has no fucking idea how to name things so she says, “dog!” in a loud voice, choosing to use tone over language to express the admiration and love she would bestow upon the possibility.
“yea, dumbass, but the name,” beatrice rolls her eyes to the ceiling like she’s saying a prayer, “nevermind, you’d pick something dumb.“
there’s silence for a beat while olivia squints. her mother starts shrieking in the background.
"the dog’s name is beatrice."
iii. beatrice the dog is bought by their father when olivia turns nine. she’s tiny and adorable and will only grow to be about twelve pounds. it’s an apology for the way he’s been working late nights but olivia is nine. she doesn't give a shit if her father wasn't home for the birthday dinner or missed out on her chorus concert last week or only remembered it was her birthday because she's been leaving post-it notes on his car for three days. she has a dog.
"she can’t fucking name it beatrice!” beatrice the human is shouting.
“watch it, bee,” mom growls, leaning on the couch like a retired circus tiger.
“why not? she can be beatrice the dog and you can be beatrice the bitch,” olivia sings to break her mom's gaze, and artfully ducks beatrice’s chemistry book.
iv. beatrice the bitch is seventeen when she kills beatrice the dog. “it was an accident”, she hiccups, perched over the toilet and puking up bright pink fluid. olivia cradles beatrice the dog in her arms, straight faced and quiet. there is the urge to have a full meltdown, of course, to scream and cry and wake her dad up from where he sleeps on the couch and demand he bring little beatrice back.
but she doesn’t.
she watches beatrice the bitch— the only beatrice, now— sob and groan and heave over the toilet. the bathroom smells like white wine and vodka.
"it's okay, bee," olivia whispers, and gently lays her dog on the bathroom rug so she can run her hand up and down her sister's back the way she's been doing for her mom for years, "i know you didn't mean it."
beatrice hiccups again, "she's just so tiny and i didn't see her ollie, i didn't—"
"i know."
v. "please don't leave me," olivia whispers so quietly beatrice could pretend not to hear.
and pretend she does.
vi. olivia does well in school. better than her older sister, better than even her mother, who was the first person in her family to go to school and still has the debt to prove it.
"you could go anywhere you want," her guidance counselor is telling her while olivia looks at the magnetic sculpture on his desk, "get a scholarship to any school you want."
she thinks about how the way her sister packed only two bags and left in the middle of the night. how the apartment still smelled like birthday candles.
"i want to go to america," she murmurs.
the guidance counselor smiles the same way creepy mr.choi on the first floor does whenever olivia gets home from school. it doesn’t matter. men have been smiling at her like this her entire life.
olivia graduates at the top of her class, clutching an ivy league scholarship to harvard in her grip like the ticket it absolutely is. she waves it in front of anyone who will listen. she draws up the floor plan to her room and makes amazon wishlists with the things she wants to fill it with. they can't afford any of these things, but everyone in the neighborhood is riding the high of her pride and want to help in any way they can.
three weeks before the plane takes off, a semi runs a red light and hits the passenger side of the taxi she's riding in.
vii. second and third degree road rash, olivia learns through a haze of exhausted moaning and the frantic sound of carts slamming around the room, is just a really mild way of saying fuckfuckfuck her skin is gone!!! she knows her skin is gone, though, so not saying it out loud doesn’t really make it feel better.
the pain is so severe she can’t cry, or speak, or do much but attempt astral-projecting her soul into a different dimension. it creates an out-of-body dichotomy. on one hand, someone has taken a cheese grater to the very fragile bits of body she has left, and on the other, she’s at the park, beatrice the puppy bringing her stick after stick after stick. olivia throws them all and watches as beatrice tries and fails to find the same one she threw.
someone abruptly pops her femur back under muscle and olivia loses her dog, promptly throws up an impressive amount of bile, and blacks out.
viii. getting crushed by an eighteen-wheeler is the easy part.
three months in the hospital with an injury list longer than her fucking brag sheet takes her to places she’s positive she’ll never come back from. her parents alternate days because they don’t want to be in the same room as each other and their vegetable daughter.
“you’re lucky to be alive,” the physical therapist is saying on week fifteen, when olivia relearns how to stand up, “if you were on the passenger side, you’d’ve been a goner.”
it feels like she’s got cooked pasta for bones and beef jerky for muscle. it isn’t conductive for walking the twelve feet to the bathroom. her mother isn’t here to see her cry, so she does. cries, and falls, and tries to punch the nurse who helps her up.
lucky fucking her.
harvard rescinds the scholarship. elitism waits for no one.
ix. olivia signs her soul to the first private loan company who offers to buy. seongnam will still take her, despite the scarring and memory loss, and olivia, exhausted from living as a guest in her own fucking body, agrees.