Four Weeks

Chapter One

                                                                                OLIVER

I'd grown up with the stories, the way Mom and Dad talk about Aunt Leslie and Uncle Ben, and all the people they left behind when they moved away, when they got new jobs, when they had me, and then my sister. And a part of me always felt like it was my fault, it was my fault for the dusty picture frames and photographs, and the piles of scrapbooks left untouched. There just isn't enough time to always be who you want to be, and who you are to others. Sometimes, you leave people behind simply because the person you are to them is harder to be when there's a million other things you have to do. And, I guess, that's probably why Mom and Dad moved here. Why they got new jobs and stopped holding the phone to their ear like they were born with it attached, and why they stopped talking suddenly and then, the other day, Mom was almost crying because she had forgotten something Aunt Leslie once said to her. I mean, we have our lives now, and my parents' past selves, in the town where they met and the friends they had who knew them when they were just starting out, well, it's just not a part of my life, or my sister's. It's not even a part of my mom or dad's life anymore, either, to be honest. It just sort of drifted away, like when you get distracted and the litttle shell you've been watching drifts off, further into sea, like a message in a bottle that you can't decipher, or maybe you can, but you don't want to, because once you do, the excitement of not knowing will not be there anymore. I guess that's what it's like. But I've never been anyone else. Knowing the same people for my entire life allows me to only be one person, but I've never had the chance to pretend to not be Oliver. I think I'd like him a lot more if I wasn't him all the time, if I didn't have to be so ambiguous. It's not just never knowing how I was born, or not knowing where I came from, what this mysterious place where I came to be was, and why I'm here, in my living room, at 3 in the morning, and staring at an old picture of my mother and a young woman with blonde hair standing by a giant hole in the ground. I can deal with my parent's awkward history, and just regular awkwardness. But I feel out of place. My sister--her entire being is here, in Michigan. She was born here. She grew up here. She doesn't have this awkward toe stuck in another state, so she can never fully move around. 

Except for her name. My mother named her, and I've always felt it in my tongue like a curse. It feels wrong, like sandpaper, because I never know if she is the little girl who's always been at my side, whether I wanted her there or not, or whether she's the ghost of a stranger in photographs. I'd like to think she's my sister. I've talked to her. I know her, I know who she is. I can name all of her favorite movies and favorite books and every single one of her celebrity crushes since she was eight years old. I don't even know the echo in the photographs, but I've spent so much of my life staring up or down at the mysteries in the picture frames, like fingerprints that the police avoid because they don't want to admit all the mistakes they've made, and maybe I'm one of them. I wonder if my mother regrets me, regrets leaving her first family, before me, before Dad, before any of us. I wonder if she wishes she hadn't even lived there, if she hadn't gone to that public forum that night. None of this would have happened--not that this is bad---and she wouldn't be mourning the miles between her and her best friend who always had metaphors up her sleeve and support and comfort like a warm, fuzzy sweater after a day of sledding and nearly freezing to death. 

What would I choose, if I had been her? Would I want to go back, give up my children and big house in Michigan? 

It's an impossible question with no answer. 

[hey everyone so since the parks and rec finale aired i've decided to finally start writing this....i've kinda been half shipping oliver and wesley since we first saw leslie's kids (though i called him glasses boy then) so i figured i might give it a try....if it's terrible thats ok because you guys don't know my name so no one can track me down and shame me with my failure. please give me criticism and advice so i can improve it!]