The Wrongs of The Right

One

Chapter one

The Beginning

10 YEARS AGO

Olivia tip toed down the stairs, not wanting to disturb the house. She knew her mother had been up most of the night in pain, Olivia could hear the moans she had tried to muffle, painful remnants of her daily chemotherapy.

She had almost made it down the stairs when her foot tapped on the bottom stair, the one she knew but had forgotten was broken.

The squeak vibrated in the hollow home, and she was sure her mother had heard.

"Olivia?" Her mother's voice sounded weak and Olivia cursed herself for her bad memory. Dropping her backpack on the ground she turned and took the steps back up, two by two in haste so that her mother wouldn't have to waste her voice on a second call.

Her mother's door was always ajar; it was her only current connection to anything besides that wretched jail of a room. The smell inside was hospital like, a smell that always made Olivia cringe.

"I'm sorry mom; I was trying to get out of here without waking you." She dragged the side chair set there just for their daily talks, reaching but unable to touch the limp arm of her sole parent.

"You should always wake me Olivia; I want to make sure I see you off every day." She forced a smile, a smile only her mother could have the strength to muster in her state.

Olivia tried smiling back, but she hadn't brought herself to that acting level yet. "You need your rest mom; the doctor said there was a good chance you could get better if you just rested."

"And here I thought all I did was rest, are you telling me that needle knickers wants me to be lazier? Far be it from me to argue with a man in a white coat." Her laugh was raspy as it escaped her, painful Olivia could tell, and yet so much like her mother.

"Just rest mom, Janine will be here soon to take care of you. I heard she plans on making waffles today."

"Waffles? I do believe that woman is trying to fatten me up. I have a girlish figure to maintain." Olivia's mom lifted the sheet slightly, revealing the body left after months of fighting off Cancer. She mimicked a game show hostess as she waved her arm up and down.

Olivia lowered the sheet again, tucking it in the sides of the bed. "That's enough Vanna White; your girlish figure could stand a few waffles. The men will come tramping down that door whether you look like a waffle eater or salad eater, you are just that gorgeous."

Her mother beamed, ecstatic that her humor had caught on to her normally serious daughter. "Don't you worry about me any, how's the chase for my beautiful daughter doing? Any of those gentlemen close to winning the race?"

It was a daily conversation they shared, Olivia's mother asked questions to verify that her life was running normally, and Olivia would lie so that her mother wouldn't worry. "I've got some prospects, none good enough to call a BF yet though."

She couldn't bring herself to share the truth with her mother, not in this state. That the school kids treated her like a pity case, talking to her as if her mother had already died, that they whispered behind her, repeating their own parent's gossip, and then patted her on her head like she was made of egg shells. Olivia had long given up pretending to be a normal teenager, her life was what it was, and she accepted the role.

But her mother could never know that, so Olivia played the part, even dressing up for her mother on Homecoming, pretending she was going with a group of friends she did not have, and then leaving the house to sit and research Cancer cures on the internet at the local Starbucks. If her mother took strength from the standard teenage role, then Olivia would play it till she had no audience left.