Olive

The voice speaks to me frequently, like a friend that is constantly stuck to me like glue. Except the voice knows what I'm thinking or feeling.

The only voice that does speak to me.

In classes at school, teachers never call on me. Kids never include me in anything. They assume that I'm like all the other emo kids in high school. Little did they know that the truth was worse. So I just pretended to be an emo.

Some wannabe emos would try to act like me. Apparently I was an inspiration of sorts. Never had an emo so successfully looked as depressed as I did. I disturbed some emos, and teachers as well. The voice told me things that happened around me when I wasn't paying attention, but only the important things. I had no idea what the current gossip was.

My friends had abandoned me after I pushed them away. My boyfriend was dead. No one gave me a second glance.

The voice kept me, for lack of a better word, sane. I knew there was an irony to this. I should have said instead that the voice in my head kept me saner.

It didn't stop there, though. I sometimes had hallucinations. Most of the time I realized what they were, but other times I did not. The hallucinations didn't matter, though; just like the voice, no one had ever noticed.

Until one day.

~

Mr. Simmons. He was the only teacher who seemed to notice me. I never really notice him, but my voice whispered to me sometimes when he looked at me. The oddest part was that sometimes it was a look of genuine worry. I hadn't seen that look in a very long time, so for a while I didn't recognize the strange emotion.

Mr. Simmons was considered one of the "cool" teachers. He was one of my favorite teachers before The Event, and he taught Pre Algebra. Not long after The Event, he had been very worried about me. My parents eventually convinced him that my anti-socialness was just a phase I was going through, until it got gradually worse. Multiple times I had been taken to the doctor.

The prognosis every time? "Perfectly healthy. She was in a traumatic accident, and it will take a long time to recover from. Give Olive time."

I think Mr. Simmons knew this. He rarely spoke to me, and when he did it was soft and patient. Every time I ignored him.

I was sitting in my desk at the front of the room, in the corner. The layout of the room was a bit off, so the white board was at the side of room. Mr. Simmons always walked and talked on the side of the room that was opposite of mine.

One week ago the class's seating chart was rearranged by the alphabet (last time it was ordered by first names, now by last names). Guess where I was. That's right; on Mr. Simmons's side of the room, in the second row on the side.

It was January 2nd, today.

"What do you think of those flowers out there? Getting stamped and washed of their colors by the rain?" I asked the voice, gazing out the window. I looked down at my desk.

"If a living thing has too much of something, it will surely die. A part of you seems to be dying, Olive. What do you have too much of?"

"You?" The voice was me, yet not. Always asking me reflective questions to get me to think. I didn't feel like playing that game today.

"Without me, you wouldn't be here. You'd be in an asylum, locked away because you're mind couldn't handle anything. I help you. I keep you company. If you were to get better, you loose me."

"No," I whispered fiercely. My fists started to clench. If I lost the voice, I would lose myself. Whenever I rarely considered telling someone of the voice, the voice would remind me that it could disappear.

"Olive-" The voice started to say, but it was interrupted by Mr. Simmons's soft voice.

"Olive?"

My head snapped up to see Mr. Simmons looking down at me with concern. The rest of the class were busy doing some sort of project on the other side of the room, laughing and goofing off.

The voice concluded what I feared. "He heard you speak to me."

"Olive?" Mr. Simmons repeated, looking more worried by the moment. He knelt down next to me, and shook me a little on the arm, very gently.

Mr. Simmons was a tall man, with short brown hair and kind blue eyes. He held my gaze with his blue ones, and I couldn't look anywhere else.

When I didn't reply, he stood up. "Olive, you're coming with me."

I stood up, for once in a long time afraid of what was going to happen next.