Here's the Thing

three

Dedicated to Daven because she is super sweet and TISJJ is brilliant.

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During the remainder of the ride there, we talked for miles about everything- school, family, what kinds of fruits we like, which books were worth reading and our favorite things to listen to. I learned a lot about Oliver then, more than I ever thought I'd know, like that he was still afraid of the dark and that he has an irrational fear of vanilla ice cream due to a childhood trauma.

He refused to eat that frozen delight (or according to him, monstrosity) because his older brother had once put a worm in his vanilla ice cream and it scared him to this day. "But hey, at least it wasn't chocolate ice cream. That would have been way too far." I laughed.

Oliver told me that he listened to a great deal of music, but he had set everything aside for different tasks. "There's washing the dishes music and there's falling asleep music," he explained. To me, that didn't make sense; after all, music was music, no matter the situation or the time.

But I think what really made me warm up to Oliver was not exactly what he said, but the fact that he seemed to have an opinion about everything, and he didn't seem to mind when I disagreed with what he said. He'd nod or say "each to his own" or just keeping talking as if it didn't matter. It made me wonder if all this time, I've been so afraid of something that isn't so bad after all.

The way our conversation moved was so smooth and graceful, like the fine hairs of a paintbrush. We had spent so long reeling through all these topics, picking them out and jumping to a new one so quickly and with ease, that I almost didn't notice when we'd pulled into the Mount Washington Observatory.

"Oh my God," I gasp, my breath catching in my throat. "It's beautiful." I watch as layer after layer of brown and white roll into view above me. It is so grand and seemingly even more due to the contrast of the mere grassland besides it.

Oliver grins. "It is, isn't it?" He says, and I can't help but notice that his eyes never seem to leave mine as he says it.

I quickly look away, embarrassed and feeling ashamed for making eye contact. Had I imagined that? Even though I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, a part of me felt like I was betraying Chris. After all, it hadn't even been twenty four hours since I'd broken up with him.

---

The only problem that Oliver and I seemed to have was that after searching what seemed like every inch of the observatory (and asking every worker if they'd seen a little girl that looked like Emily come by), we'd found ourselves absolutely empty-handed and utterly confused.

Oliver finally slumped against a rock, placing his head in his hands in a sign of defeat.

"There's nothing here," he whispers, and then louder. "There's. Nothing. Here."

"There's gotta be something, Oli, another note, another clue of some sort." I sit down and place a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry. We're going to find her, whether it takes us a week or a year. Got it?"

He holds out the note, stares at it, and rips it in half. "For all I know, she could be dead." His voice shakes at that last word, and his face twists and falls, his bottom lip quivering. And then just like that he explodes into a fit of crying and sputtering. It is scary, watching him fall into instability so quickly. One moment, he is Oliver with his wide eyes, full of hope and determination, and the next he has fallen, like a house of cards that's been touched by the wind. The sound of his tears are by far the worst sounds I'd ever heard. He was a bottle of dark of emotion that had only now been uncapped.

I was never one for comforting others, and this was far too rocky of a situation for me to handle. As I am trying to come up with a solution to fix the broken heap that is Oliver Vincenzo, something catches my eye.