Sin of the Saint

PROLOGUE: THE GRIEF OF OLIVIA YVES

My teachers at school told me that writing about what happened could begin to heal me, as if I were the one who needed to heal.

They had addressed me with such emotion on their faces that it made me look away in disgust. My teachers and counselors who claimed to care about what happened, had all given up talking to me after a while, pushing grief discussion group pamphlets and local therapist business cards in my already folded arms. I rejected every single one of them, letting them fall unopened on the floors of their classrooms and offices, crumpling them underfoot on my way out.

I knew where I was—they didn't need to tell me. Nobody did. I was hovering somewhere between Numbness and Denial—I took health class my freshman year, just like everybody else—so yes, I knew what was happening to me. I was wading through the quick-drying cement pit called the "Seven Stages of Grief."

I'd been thrown into this pit while holding a birthday present, clutching it like a lifeline, as a train horn blared, echoing off the mountains and between my brain and ears. I'd hit the ground hard, gravel grinding into my knees and my face, and I'd turned painfully from my position to find myself disoriented and...alone—my friend no longer behind me, and instead, blurring train cars whizzing past where I had been only a moment before.

From that day on, that moment repeated in my head millions of times...my sweaty fist tightening around the gift, and the train horn—well—that ringing in my ears never stopped. Not days later. Not weeks later. That was a detail I didn't think I'd ever forget. It was the warning I'd ignored...the consequence I thought I could escape.

So, as I sit here in my room, writing my thoughts on paper, I openly question those people who claim to care...where, in the Nine Stages of Grief listed in those pamphlets, is the part where I can go back in time? At what point can I be the one to pay the price? How can I trade my life for hers?

What can I do...? What am I supposed to do?

TELL ME WHAT I AM SUPPOSED TO DO!

Teardrops smeared the page of Olivia "Liv" Yves' journal, and she quickly wiped it, smudging black ink on the heel of her hand as she caught her sniffling, runny nose with her other hand. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do..." she gasped between sobs. "Somebody...help me. Help..."

She collapsed onto her pillow, hugging it as tightly as she could until her arms burned. She cried relentlessly into it, her tears soaking through, chafing her wet face against the fabric. She screamed—muffled, painful cries of agony getting lost in the fluff, reaching nobody.

Outside her door, her mother pressed her hand above the knob, leaning her weight against the door. Her own tears threatening to spill, she backed away and walked down the hall, leaving her daughter alone to grieve. She knew a mother's words wouldn't reach her in that state. She reached the kitchen and straightened her husband's black tie, frowning all the while.

"Do you think she'll be able to make it?" he asked.

Liv's mother sighed and patted the lapels of his suit jacket, "She waited too long to write her feelings down on paper, I think."

"But the funeral is in an hour—"

"She has not coped yet, Bob," she said insistently. "How could she? After what she saw?"

Bob sighed sorrowfully, "I just know she'll regret not going to her own best friend's funeral. She's my daughter...and as her father, I will not let this defeat her." He brushed his wife's hands from his jacket and made his way up to Liv's bedroom. He knocked softly.

"Go away...please..." she half whispered, half whimpered.

"Liv honey, it's nearly time for the funeral...you really should get ready—"

"I am not watching them bury my friend!" she screamed, and a soft "thud" hit the door as Liv presumably threw her pillow at it.

Bob bit his lip, "You should be there for her and her family, Liv. Charity would have wanted you there."

"I know that." Liv jerked the door open to look at her father with her swollen, watery green eyes. "She would have wanted me to speak or sing or something! But not now...she would have wanted that years and years and years from now!"

Robert Yves stiffened. "I'm very sorry, but that is something we can't fix now. Put on your dress, Olivia—her family is waiting for you."

Liv slammed the door shut, isolating herself in her room once more. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and caught her own reflection in her mirror. She'd never looked more devastated than she did in that moment. How many times had she and Charity looked into this mirror together? Taking selfies? Putting on makeup for the first few times before they actually got good at it? How many times had her family, that now waited for her at the funeral home, dropped her off at her house across the train tracks to hang out? Looking into this mirror for hours before finally picking a dress to wear...posing together...looking, feeling...like nothing less than sisters.

Liv lifted the mirror and slammed it against the ground. The impact cracked the glass like a bolt of lightning that now caught and distorted her face as she looked down into it alone for the first time in five years. For a single fleeting moment, Liv stared at one half of her seemingly fractioned face, and thought she saw Charity looking back...smiling.

She flinched, ready to slam her heel into the already shattered mirror but collapsed on the ground instead with her face in her hands, crying tears that wouldn't come easily, as she had already cried so many over the course of a week.

"I just want to feel okay again...I want you back...Charity, please come back," she whispered.