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“Point proven. You’ve got to stop bailing him out or he’s going to get worse.”
She jabbed her spoon at her cereal. “Look, I shouldn’t expect you to understand this. You come from a big, happy, intact family. Your siblings have lots of people to rely on. Matt only has me. Growing up, my father wasn’t around much, and my mom worked two jobs. We got through our childhood by being there for each other.”
How could Carson criticize that? He admired it. And yet at the same time, he knew she was wrong. He watched Olivia take another bite of cereal. “How is Matt there for you? He left you to clean up his mess.”
“He’s done things for me. For example, in high school, after you turned on me, he superglued your locker shut.”
“Matt did that?” Amateur. “That was pitiful revenge. All that did was give me a legitimate excuse not to do my homework that night.”
She tilted her chin down. “It’s the thought that counts.”
“What has he done for you lately?”
She didn’t answer, just took another bite of cereal.
Nothing Matt had done could make up for leaving her with a twenty-one-thousand-dollar debt to deal with. “It’s nice that you want to support your brother, but there’s a difference between support and enablement.”
“You can tell me about it after you let one of your siblings go to jail.” She returned the almond milk to the fridge. “Thanks for the massage. I’m going to find a place where I can sit down, put my feet up, and eat this protein-less meal.” Without waiting for a response, she marched off toward the stairs.
Well, none of this visit to the laundry room had turned out like he expected.
How had Olivia gone from someone he wanted to see humbled to someone he was worrying about? She didn’t even like him. She’d made it clear she was only helping him because he’d forced her into it. He needed to remember that.
He was going to be so glad when this project ended, his foot healed, and he could go back to Denver.
10
Olivia retreated to her room and sank onto her mattress. She finished her cereal in sullen silence. It was bland and soggy. If she hadn’t been so tired, she would’ve gone down to the kitchen to get something else. She should’ve expected Carson to criticize her for helping Matt. Annie and Riley, her roommates, had done enough of that when she’d told them she was helping Matt work off his debt.
They meant well, but it was still a little hypocritical. Any of them would’ve helped out a sibling. Olivia’s family with all of their problems needed more help than an average family, not less. How could people expect her to stop being the thread that patched her family up, to just let them fall apart? How would that be a virtue?
Olivia put her cereal bowl onto the crate she used for a nightstand and picked up the silicone wristband sitting there. Yellow letters against the red band proclaimed Lark Spring High’s motto: Discover, Dream, Achieve. The principal had given wristbands to the entire school because she wanted to remind the students that they needed to have dreams, that they could go places and do important things in life.
Olivia had been wearing hers on the last day of school when Carson brought her here. Perhaps that was ironic. This was the summer she’d planned to build a website and finish all those paintings she’d already sketched. One of the reasons she’d become an art teacher was so she’d have time to work on her art and hopefully sell some. But the canvas she’d toted up here sat untouched in a corner, and she’d hardly even cracked open her sketchbook. She’d been too tired in the evenings to feel creative.
And okay, she did feel resentful toward Matt that his stupid choice was keeping her from painting. But part of her knew that if she’d been able to help Matt more when he was growing up, he wouldn’t have the problems he did now.
The month their father left, Olivia had volunteered to play baseball with Matt a few times. He turned her down, said he didn’t feel like it. She stopped asking him after that. She’d actually been glad he’d let her off the hook because she hadn’t really wanted to throw a ball around.
He never played again. Not baseball. Not any sports. In high school when their mother asked Matt if he was going to try out for any of the teams, he told her that sports weren’t his thing. Olivia had figured he didn’t want to lay another expense at their mother’s feet.
It had been Olivia’s second chance to step in and help Matt. Instead, she’d accepted his decision as the normal one. She never did anything in high school that cost money either. The money she made babysitting and working part-time went to her college fund.
For years, she watched Matt drift away from his friends who played sports without understanding the damage it would do, without understanding that sports had become a reminder of their father’s rejection. Matt started hanging out with guys on the fringe—the troublemakers, the ones who partied too much and didn’t care about school.
All of that might have been different if she’d just made him play baseball with her when they were younger and if she’d paid the fees for him to play sports in high school.
She’d failed Matt twice. How could she fail him now when it mattered so much?
She had the sudden urge to talk to him and called his number. He didn’t pick up. Instead, he texted:Can’t talk right now. I’m about to snake a toilet.
Good. He was busy working that second job. Carson was wrong about him. Or at least mostly wrong. Matt felt bad about what he’d done. He wouldn’t be working so hard now otherwise.
Olivia picked up the school wristband and slipped it over her hand.Discover, Dream, Achieve.She would still achieve her dream of finishing those paintings. It would just take her a little longer than she first planned.
She pulled out her sketchpad and considered what to draw. The first thing that came to mind was Carson. He had a strong profile, cheekbones that she’d already traced with her eyes enough times to know their slopes and curves.
But she wasn’t going to draw him. With her luck, he would end up seeing the sketch and assume she was infatuated with him.
