Life With the Butlers

Chapter 3 | This Means War

Chapter 3

This Means War

Olivia

 

       Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a dancer. I used to dream of ballet shoes and tutus. Every Halloween when all of my friends were princesses and fairies, and one of them a dinosaur, I was always a ballerina. It was the theme of my seventh birthday party.

       Ironically that was the year I stopped dancing.

       Ever since the night of my seventh birthday party, I had terrible nightmares almost every night. Not just any nightmares, but unspeakable, horrible nightmares. It was the night my life changed forever, the day I’ll never forget.

       Tonight, for example, I dreamt I was in a ball pit. Sounds like fun, but I wasn’t supposed to be there. The little seven years old me was dressed in my signature rainbow tutu and pink ballet slippers. I was watching, as my sixteen year old self, from the center of the room.

       I knew what was coming but I couldn’t help but smile. My last night as a child was so precious, I was glad I could remember it in such great detail. I touched my own hair, remembering how mom braided my hair on each side.

       Little Olivia was having a ball in the ball pit, no pun intended. In five seconds she would pick up the dreaded red ball with the gum stuck to it. It made me forever hate the color red.

       “Gross,” we said at the same time. I laughed. She climbed out of the ball pit, and I saw her little pink name tag that said, ‘Livy the Birthday Girl.’

       Livy, as I was called back then, was so grossed out that she, I, us… It got confusing referring to myself. Anyway, she crawled out of the pit, utterly disgusted by the ball with the gum.

       This was the part where I didn’t know how to feel. I wanted to run at myself and hug the girl I used to be. The little ‘Livy’ that I yearned to be. It was a part I could never get back. But this was the most pivotal moment of my life. And I wanted to scream at myself to run.

       I wanted Livy to hear me, so I could warn her, tell her to go back to her party. She shouldn’t be here. She wasn’t allowed to be here. It was dangerous, scary, and she should run as fast as she could.

       But I’d had this dream far too many times to know Livy couldn’t hear me. It was only a dream after all. The first few times, I used to break down and cry. Why couldn’t she hear me? I was young then.

       When I was around ten, I became angry. Why did I do this to myself? Why did I have to break the rule? I used to yell at Livy, the little girl who only ever crawled out of the ball pit, and onto the bounce house. Out of the fire and into the freezer was the phrase I used to use. Livy was just a stupid kid. It was all her fault.

       By now I settled for being happy. After all, this happened in the past. It was one thing I would never be able to change. Livy was me, and this was my last moment of being Livy. I couldn’t change that, but I could change how I looked at it. I chose to be happy.

       That’s why every time Livy went to the bounce house, I followed her in that beautiful little tutu and jumped with her. We laughed, we bounced, and I was Livy again. Or rather a shadow of the girl I used to be.

       Livy laughed, and I knew the dream was about to end. I jumped higher. My last moments. Livy has so happy, I was happy.

       All too soon the door opened.