Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Olivia Muenter
- Language: English
- Genre: Thriller / Suspense
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I am the one degree. I am the familiar link. I am the tiny line that separates
everyone I know from someone else, the connection that makes a fun fact
slightly more interesting than all the others shared during a forced get-toknow-you group activity, the thing that makes someone finally tune in, perk
up, say, “No. What? Really?” I am the second someone. Not the first
mentioned when an acquaintance says, “Well, actually, I do kind of know
someone famous—well, someone who knows someone famous.” I am what
comes after the part that matters.
I’m more than just that, of course. I know that. I can still name the
qualities I know to be true about myself in the way that a former therapist
suggested: I am a good friend. A truly top-notch giver of gifts. A person
who asks “How are you?” and means it, who can physically feel when
there’s an undercurrent of shame or sadness moving through someone I
love. I am a hard worker. A problem solver. More likely to get shit done
than to complain about it. I am a seeker of beauty. I can see loveliness and
humor in almost anything or anyone that isn’t me. I do it automatically,
unconsciously. I am always pointing and laughing. Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it
gorgeous? But then there’s everything else, the things I know to be just as
true, that would make my former therapist slowly nod and close her eyes, as
if she’s heard all of this before (she has) and say, “Remember how we
talked about being nicer to ourselves, Hazel?” I always imagined her eyes
were rolling under her lids. I’d try to track their movement, but I’d never
know for sure.
It didn’t really matter, though, because niceness doesn’t have anything
to do with the truth. And the truth is that I am suspicious of most everyone I
meet, distrusting and awkward. And I am stubborn. Not headstrong, or
willful, or brave. I am the kind of stubborn that means I’ve held on to every
slight, every hurt, every worst quality that I should have grown out of and
let fall away from me years ago. I’m all of that, too.
But I am my sister’s sister first. And mostly, I’ve learned to be okay
with that. Mostly, I know the alternative is not much better.
There were years when it bothered me, of course. Huge swaths of my
early twenties when the last thing I wanted to hear from a new friend was
that they feel like they know my younger sister, that they’ve been following
her since they first downloaded Instagram in college, or that she was the
reason they started doing that one eyeliner trick that makes you look more
awake, like you’ve gotten a full night of sleep. I always wanted to say,
“Don’t you mean more like her?” but I never did. Because it didn’t really
matter. Once they knew, once they confirmed that Evie Davis was my sister,
I was something else to them already.
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