She likes to watch Sam draw his projections. His movements are so precise, his concentration intense. It's like watching a tailor at work. The creation of a whole from small, exact pieces, placed together with talent and skill.
But more than that, she likes to fight about poetry with him. Maybe that's cliché — being a girly girl, talking about pretty words — but Olivia doesn't care.
Sometimes when they're both lounging on the futon in his room, or sitting on the sidewalk early in the morning before she goes to school, Olivia lets Sam play with her messy, uneven hair. In those moments, she asks him to recite parts of plays and epics, or to tell her what the structures of stories mean.
'The great Greek plays are tragedies,' Sam says, his fingertips smoothing back a loose lock of hair behind her ear. She's resting her head against his shoulder, her reader full of textbooks abandoned on her lap. His T-shirt is soft under her cheek. Olivia wishes that the moment could last forever and ever.
'The tragedy has to come from a terrible error the hero makes. That's what Aristotle says. The word is hamartia, which is usually translated as "tragic flaw". But that isn't what it means. It just means one mistake. One mistake that ruins everything.
'Tragedy gives the audience catharsis — release, relief. We're healed through the experience of watching characters go through suffering and pain.'
Olivia frowns. 'That's not a very good theory; not for applying across a whole medium. Why do we have to find healing in a story about somebody being broken? Can't we find healing in a story about somebody, you know, healing?'
'Howard Barker — he was a British playwright — said that tragedy equips you against lies, but after a musical you're anybody's fool.'
Olivia smacks Sam's chest, making a noise of outrage. 'You can't get away with calling me a fool just by attributing the words to someone else, jerk. And I still say I'm right. Tragedies never feel complete to me. They're stories that don't have a third act.'
'Just because you don't like the ending doesn't mean it's not an ending,' Sam replies, flat-toned but in good humour. It's an old argument, one they enjoy too much to ever agree about.
'Yes it does,' Olivia fires back, sitting up properly so she can look Sam in the eye. 'Sad endings being treated as automatically profound is so sophomoric-'
'To be fair, you are a sophomore.'
She ignores the interruption. 'And it's just wrong. Things start out all right, then they go bad, and then they're supposed to get better. That's how stories are meant to go. Otherwise you're ending Star Wars with The Empire Strikes Back.'
'In tragedy's defence, a lot of people would be perfectly happy if Star Wars did exactly that,' Sam jokes, deadpan. 'And tragedies are exactly right, for what they are.'
'But what they are is wrong.'
Sam gives a shrug. 'They can't help that.'
12
One afternoon, a whole glut of customers order souvlaki at once. Olivia helps where she can in the kitchen. Even with the extra pair of hands, it's a very hectic hour or so for all of them.
By the end of it she is exhausted and exhilarated, but Sam's a complete wiped out wreck. He sits on the kitchen floor, leaning against the side of the fridge and closing his eyes, his face relaxing as he's soothed by the hum of the motor.
It's almost closing time, and Olivia thinks the other people who work behind the counter can manage the rest of the shift without their help.
'C'mon, let me help you upstairs,' she says, reaching to help him up. Sam shies away from her touch, climbing to his feet on his own and shuffling towards the narrow flight of stairs.
Olivia's worried by how strung-out he is. It's as if dealing with that many people has used up every reserve of energy he had. Sam kicks off his shoes and lies on top of his thin coverlet, his hand making that same nervous-fidgeting flapping movement that he did the first time she came around.
'Are you okay?'
He glances down to see what she's looking at, and gives a weird, nasty-sounding laugh at the sight of his own hands and arms.
'My mother always used to tell me "quiet hands, Sam",' he says, making his voice stern and sharp on the last three words. 'I tried, as much as any five-year-old can. She'd tape my hands and wrists to the arms of chairs, trying to teach me how to keep still, but it…' He closes his eyes, as if the memory is painful enough that he has to brace against its hurt. 'I didn't learn the lesson. Within my first week of starting preschool, the teachers noticed my hands. That tipped them off to look for the rest — and here we are.'
Olivia can't breathe. She can't move, can't speak. Her mouth opens anyway. 'You can't mean—'
'It's a form letter. The escort officer brought it when he came to pick me up. One page, folded into thirds. It looks so ordinary.'
There's a shell-shocked wonderment in Sam's words, as if he can't believe the details, even after all this time. 'Dear madam, your son has evidenced a failure to thrive. He is being relocated in order to allow for a more appropriate resource allocation to take place. As compensation, you are entitled to government-supported prenatal and neonatal care for your next pregnancy. Please call the following numbers for further information on this incentive scheme. We wish you better luck in the future.'
And there it is. Failure to—
'You're a thrive,' Olivia whispers.
'It's not catching, don't worry.'
'Fuck you.' She kicks against the side of his bed. 'As if I'd be like that about it.'
'You'd be surprised. People are…' Sam pauses, closing his eyes as he searches for the right word. 'Unpredictable.'
'I should have realised. God, I'm an idiot. I didn't even think about why a kid no older than me was working instead of going to school, or how you had grey market connections, or where your family was or anything. I'm sorry.'
'What're you sorry about? It's good that you didn't think of it. Isn't that supposed to be the ultimate goal for a thrive, to pass undetected? We can even earn integration certificates if we pass tests. I haven't tried to take the tests. I thought it was better to keep going as I was. Not to rock the boat.'
'Fuck.' Olivia doesn't know what else to say.
'Hmm?' Sam is confused by the venom in her reaction. His confusion makes her sadder, more upset.
'It's really fucked up, Sam. You're a kid. I couldn't manage if I was shoved out on my own and had to get a job and everything.'
He gives her a crooked smile. 'You're an entirely different circumstance. You've already proved you're worth the investment just by being normal, so it's all right for them to put in the effort of raising you. I wouldn't be a good return prospect on the nurture.'
Olivia didn't think it was a literal thing, when people said being shocked felt like their head was spinning. But it really is just like vertigo. Her feet are bloodless and her head is dizzy. How can this be happening in the world she knows, to someone she cares about?
'I didn't…' She has to swallow twice before she can talk. 'I didn't know that thrives happened in this part of the city.' At school and on TV, she'd always heard that the defects and disorders that thrives had were caused by stuff like radiation leaks or chemicals in the soil, leftover remnants from the Wars. That stuff wasn't supposed to be around in the city anymore. Not in the part Olivia lives in, which has trains and plumbing and schools and everything.
Thrives happened in a blurry, distant land called somewhere else. They were something for politicians to make up scare campaigns about and for her parents to discuss over dinner while Olivia pushed her food around her plate and ignored them.