Runaway Train| p. jackson

Chapter nine; Creepy Cruise

Creepy Cruise

_____________________

Olive Grace Inez Alonso Saint Auclair. Two first names, a middle name from her great-grandmother, and two last names from both her mothers. A name that people liked to shorten much to her dismay.

Yes. She hated when people called her Olivia Grace because it was what her mothers called her when she was in trouble but it was her name. A name that told people who she was, and where she came from.

A fashion designer who was born in a small village in Argentina before moving to Brooklyn, a model from Monaco who spent most of her free time trying to force me out onto our family yacht, Benni. I'd always refused and here I was on a creepy cruise to Florida.

But now she didn't like her name, now she knew her entire childhood was a lie. Her mother Valentina had always said that she'd let her mom Francesca name her because she wasn't her biological mom, a compromise she said but in reality, it was because she felt guilty for cheating on her wife.

Olive glared at herself in the mirror. At the strands of hair that had turned white. She didn't know why it happened. Maybe it was stress or anxiety or maybe it was the huge life revolutions like finding out your mother is a god and impulsively setting off on a potentially life-threatening quest.

Olive breathed so rapidly that it felt like she wasn't getting any air at all. She preyed and preyed to whatever god was out there listening, for her hair to return back to normal.

She hated that her hair turned white, it just reminded her that she was a freak. An ugly, disgusting, freak.

Olive felt ashamed of herself. Ashamed that she thought of herself like that. She was a child of Aphrodite, the goddess of all things beautiful.

She sat on the bathroom floor. Her skin was pale and sticky with sweat, her stomach was tight and her hands shook as she picked at her cuticles mindlessly. "Please, please, please..." she muttered over and over again.

Olive sat like that for hours. Sweating and shaking and picking at her bleeding cuticles waiting for her hair to change. At some point she fell asleep like that curled up on the bathroom floor.

"Good morning, passengers! We'll be at sea all day today. Excellent weather for the poolside mambo party! Don't forget million-dollar bingo in the Kraken Lounge at one o'clock, and for our special guests, disembowelling practice on the Promenade!"

The announcement made Olive jump with such a start that she whacked her head off of the bath.

"Crap!" She groaned.

"Olivia Grace?" Annabeth bursted into the bathroom staring at her like she was insane. "What the heck are you doing?"

"I-I-erm.. I need to pee?"

"Well... hurry up. We need to get out of here." Annabeth said skeptically leaving Olive alone again.

She quickly washed her face and tied her hair up before changing into a lilac tank top that stopped at her waist, a pair of denim shorts, and an old oversized grey hoodie. She left to find Annabeth and the others in the boys' room.