An Hour and A Half

Trigger warning: Death & murder

Today’s the day I change.

Those are the first words that eighteen-year-old Olive Aiden whispered to herself on the morning of the day she died.

Olive’s morning began like any other – she opened her phone, ignored the most recent messages from her boyfriend of three years and went straight to the Tinder app. She had a lot of time to kill. Every day, her alarm rang exactly an hour and a half before she actually needed to get up for school. It was simple, really. An hour and a half was all the time she needed to make these lonely men obsessed with her.

Thirty minutes to get their attention, thirty minutes to send them pictures and thirty minutes to plan dates she’d never show up to. Once she was out of time, she would block them and never think about them again. She didn’t even remember their names.

That morning, she had found three new victims: Justin, Shane and Peter.

The problem with Olive’s routine is that she had become so good at manipulating their replies that their words no longer worked in the ways they used to. She used to come alive at every single one of their compliments, now they didn’t even manage to make her smile. The game she had carefully crafted to feel good about herself didn’t work that way anymore. She had lost the rules a long time ago. But she was far from admitting that to herself. After all, her addiction to lying hadn’t started out of thin air.

Once Olive had blocked Justin, Shane and Peter, she grabbed a towel, her school uniform and walked into her bathroom. Another part of the routine she had come to create was the good minute she spent staring at herself in the mirror, hoping someone else would appear. Then she’d quietly undress and get in the shower.

That morning was different. At some point, while staring at her reflection, she had suddenly begun to cry. It didn’t matter how many men complimented her, how many of them went crazy, day after day, at the pictures she had spent hours taking.

She was a fraud. A liar. How could she be sure that the men on Tinder really believed their words?

She wiped her tears on the back of her hand, flipped her long blond hair out of the way and took a deep breath.

“Today’s the day I change.”

For the first time in years, Olive stepped into her shower hopeful in herself, hopeful in the day she had in front of her.

It’s a shame the only words she knew how to speak were little white lies.

As Olive walked to school, she thought about the promise she had made to herself in the bathroom. What did it mean to change? How could one achieve that?

She thought about the many self-help books on her shelves that she had bought to feel better about herself. When she did end up reading them, it was for the thrill of being able to ignore everything she had read. What had they said? Olive couldn’t remember.

Something about the past. She needed to figure out when and why it had started. Was it because of her strict father, who screamed insults at her when she dared to color outside the lines? Or was it because, over the years, she had learned to automatically give people her everything before they even asked?

All Olive knew was that lying was the only thing in her life that felt right.

When Olive walked down the hallway, she could see her boyfriend waiting in front of her locker. He was furiously typing on his phone, simultaneously sending vibrations to the one in her pocket. She put on a smile and stopped in front of him.

“Good morning, Nick.”

His head popped up. Once he registered who was standing in front of him, he quickly shoved his phone in his pocket and crossed his arms on his chest.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Again?”

Olive chuckled innocently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you. You know I always forget my phone home during my morning runs!”

That wasn’t exactly the truth but change or no change, there was no way in hell Olive would ever let Nick find out about the trophies of men hiding in her phone.  

“Don’t you listen to music or something? What kind of psycho runs to nothing but the sound of their own thoughts?”

Olive smiled, grabbed Nick’s hands and pulled him closer to her. “I’m sorry. I’ll really try to remember.”

She batted her eyelashes.

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply and rested his head on Olive’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I just worry about you, you know?”

Olive secured her arms around his chest and held him tight. She didn’t say anything else.

“I was thinking,” Nick started, “Would you feel like going to a party with me tonight? This guy from another school’s throwing a huge thing about twenty minutes from here.”

Surprisingly enough, Olive wasn’t much of a fan of parties. You’d assume that she’d be, because of her obsessively narcissistic habits, but she absolutely loathed them. If there’s one thing that made her insecure, it was being in a room full of people that were ten times hotter than her. At home, in her room, she didn’t have to compare herself to anyone. Crowds brought out the worst in her.

Olive opened her mouth to accept the invitation but quickly closed it. She didn’t want to go. She took a deep breath, but before she could try again, Nick pulled away from her.

“Are you really gonna say no?” He rolled his eyes. “It’s the least you can do.”

“No, no, I’m not saying no. I was just thinking about what I was gonna wear.”

For a moment, he didn’t say anything. Then he smiled and pulled her back into a hug.

“Don’t worry about that. You’re gonna look amazing.”

Even if her face was smothered in his chest, hidden in his hoodie and lost in the smell of his deep cologne, she faked a smile and slowly closed her eyes. She thought about what she had promised herself that morning.

Well, maybe tomorrow would do too.

           Nick’s car pulled into the driveway of the house an hour and a half later than they were told to arrive. A lot of people were outside, already drunk, screaming the lyrics to the song that was playing at the top of their lungs. It wasn’t that late, but it being the beginning of November, it was already pitch-dark outside.

           Olive made her way through the house with her head held up high, with Nick following closely behind her. She gave every girl looking at her a subtle glare and every guy staring at her a flirty smile. When they got to the kitchen, Olive turned to Nick and kissed him quickly.

           He smiled. “I’ll go get us drinks, okay? Don’t move.”

           “I won’t.”

She watched him walk to the kitchen. Seconds later, a girl wearing a short red dress went up to him and put her arms around his neck. He looked uncomfortable, but Olive knew he wouldn’t have the heart to tell her off. She was beautiful. Her long, wavy brown hair fell like fairy lights on her back as she tried to dance with Nick. Even if she closed her eyes, it’d be impossible to ignore the expression he now had on his face.

He was into her.

            Olive didn’t want to see more. She decided to escape the room and walked downstairs. It wasn’t her first time at a party in a house this big. There had to be a bathroom close by.

           As if on cue, she found it a few seconds later. She closed the door behind her and locked it. Then she unlocked and locked it over and over again to make sure the lock worked.

           When she knew it was safe, Olive sat on the side of the bath and took her phone out of her pocket. Then, like muscle memory, she opened the Tinder app and began swiping. With every potential match, she ignored the pit in her stomach begging her to stop. It was her first time doing this outside of her morning routine, but she needed this. Alcohol wouldn’t do half as much to make her feel better.

           Her phone flashed with a match. Before she could see who, someone started banging on the door. She jumped up, shoved her phone in her pocket and slowly opened the door.

In front of her was a tall guy with brown hair and the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen. The kind of green eyes you’d be a fool to forget.

 “Yes?”

“You’ve been there a while,” He said, “Are you okay?”

Olive smiled innocently. “This is gonna sound ridiculous, but I get a bit overwhelmed by parties. I was just calming down.”

The best part about this was that, once it was out of her mouth, Olive realized it wasn’t a lie.

“Right. I totally get that.” He smiled back. “Do you want to walk outside with me?”

Her smile spread wider and broke out across her face. “Sure.”

“So, who are you?”, the guy asked as they walked outside, “have I seen you around before?”

“Most likely not. I go to Sabon High.”

“Really? What’s your name?”

They went back in forth for a while. She was Olive, he was James. She wanted to become a lawyer, he wanted to become a teacher. They were both eighteen, they both agreed that Wendy’s was miles better than McDonald’s, and they both had nothing more interesting to do at this party than getting to know each other.

Not once did Olive lie to him.

They were now sitting at the bottom of a big tree behind the house, at the entrance of the private woods the owners of the party house probably owned. It was cold, it was dark, and it was late. People were starting to leave, but Olive would’ve spent her entire life there if she could.

James got up. “I’ll go grab us some drinks, want anything in particular?”

“Just a Coke, please.”

“You got it!”

Olive smiled as he walked away and had to physically restrain herself from squealing. The feeling in her chest was something she had never felt before. It felt calm, warm, safe. She brought her hand to her heart in hopes it would capture this feeling and keep it from ever going away.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Nick.

She quickly unlocked it and saw her Tinder match from earlier. When she registered the face in front of her, her heart fell in her chest.

James, 18.

What were the odds? This was fate, she thought. This is where all the lies were meant to take me.

Before Olive could even swallow this newfound happiness, or put her phone back in her pocket, a beer bottle was smashed on her head. She fell backwards.

It was too late for her to register what was happening. The hits kept coming, and when the people at the end of them ran out of bottles, they picked up a large rock and threw it at her temple, ending her suffering instantly.

As they watched her lifeless body bleed out in front of them, Olive’s attackers took deep breaths.

“Are you sure she’s dead?” A first voice said.

“She better be.” A beat. “Now let’s go, I’m not going to jail.”

The two walked back to the house slowly, covering their tracks. While one of them fixed their dress and made sure its beautiful red fabric wasn’t full of wrinkles, the other one unlocked their phone and deleted a newly made Tinder account. They stopped in the parking lot and turned to each other.

“Well,” the girl started, “I’ll go back to my new man. Thanks again.”

“No worries. She had to pay for playing me last week, anyway.”

           They quickly hugged and swore to never talk to each other or about this night ever again.

           Olive wasn’t found until the next morning. Nick spent the whole night looking for her, and when he found out what had happened, he cried for days. But once a bit of time went by, he got over it and found solace in a new relationship.

           He never found out about what Olive had done and all the lies she had told him. In the end, Olive left and died without leaving a trace. Without hurting anybody. Well, without hurting him.

           When she fell backwards in the woods, Olive’s heart was still throbbing in her chest. She was, if she could’ve dared to admit it, happy.

           Plus, she had changed. For that small moment in time, James had seen nothing but the truth. And she was so hopeful in him, in this new feeling, that she had died thinking, knowing, that Nick would never know about her sins.

           That was the only happy ending she needed.

That day, she had changed. And she would forever remain the same.