echo // hemmings [completed]

thirty-seven | natural

—January 24th—  

"What's going on?" Olivia asked with gritted teeth and a terribly confused look on her face. 

Rowan did not respond at first, in shock that she had made such a careless mistake and had gotten herself caught. "Olivia," she said sadly.

"Tell me," the tall girl plead. "Tell me it's not what I think I heard."

"W-what did you hear?" Michael stuttered, asking even though he already knew the answer.

"Something about a dead girl... Something about you two putting on some kind of act... Telling a lie about a girl's life," she told them.

Rowan swallowed hard. She couldn't cover this up, no matter how brilliant she was, she had no way to get herself out of this.

"Olivia, you don't understand."

"No! No, I don't," Olivia exclaimed. "I don't understand what's going on or what you're up to." She turned to face Rowan. "Because you don't fucking talk to me anymore." Something in Olivia snapped at that moment. Catching Rowan in a lie made her remember things, things and feelings she thought she had forgotten. Feelings of anger, worry, and disgust.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You don't tell me anything Rowan. We used to be honest with each other. We told each other everything, but at some point you started acting. Not on stage or in a performance, you started being someone else. Someone who would fib their way through everything," Olivia stated angrily.

"What are you talking about?" Rowan asked. 

"I don't know when it was, maybe it was around the time when you stopped talking to your mother, but you started lying all the damn time. And nothing has changed. You're still the same way as before, always hiding behind something."

"Hiding?!" The girl exclaimed.

"Yeah, escaping. Drew knew it too. You couldn't handle your mother so you would stay away from home, you were terrible with stress and you started to smoke, and then you couldn't handle college and ran all the way to Australia."

The things that Olivia said were true and Rowan knew this in the back of her head, but she had chosen to forget her weaknesses when she became Riley. She had forgotten herself, but she refused to admit it.

"You have no idea what you're saying Olivia," Rowan seethed. Her nails dug into her palms as she spoke.

"But I know what I heard! You're running away again, only instead of moving to a whole new continent. You're trying to get away from Drew's death by pretending to be someone else, someone who isn't hurting." The two girls' eyes met, both filled with vexation and grief. And Michael stood behind them, silent, pondering over the things he had just learned about Rowan.

Everything Olivia that said made sense. Rowan's natural ability to lie, her too smooth transition from Rowan to Riley, and her willingness to comply with his crazy idea. Everything made sense when he took Olivia's words into consideration. And he wondered if the things she said about Rowan also applied to him. Was he also running away? Trying to hide from the reality of everything? But he couldn't think with the tension in the room.

"I think the both of you need to calm down," he told them, foolishly thinking that his words could somehow make the anger in the room go away.

"Calm down?" Olivia scoffed. "You're helping her get away from the truth. You're just enabling her, letting her become addicted to this fake little world you two put together." She faced Rowan. "And you're just living in it, basking in the tall tales you've spun. Refusing to accept anything."

Rowan opened her mouth, ready to say something cruel, but she held her tongue and said nothing. She didn't want to talk anymore.

-

a/n: sorry for the shorter chapter, i felt like adding more words might distract from the rest of the passage, but expect a regular length chapter next week!

thank you!

xx