Polly Olly Oxen Free: Chapter One - Life Kicks Me in the Cast (DRAFT 2.5)

Meet Pollyanna Marie Monroe, you may call her Pol.

Chapter One: Life Kicks Me in The Cast

**Please note that as part of “A Novel Experiment” Polly Olly Oxen Free” Chapters are only partially edited and subject to frequent updates and or complete overhauls. This is a live project! Make sure to give me your feedback below and subscribe to the separate newsletter to get a behind the scenes look at the whole process!**

I, Pollyanna Marie Monroe, will walk on my own today whether my physical therapist likes it or not.
"Which means I'm coming for you." I announce to the trail of ants that have colonized my windowsill.
They ignore me, as per usual, because they are ants. And talking to ants is pointless. Much like my physical therapist.
Badum Tss.
As you can see, I am losing my mind. Just a wee bit. A smidge you might say. But what else can you expect when you strap an ADHD running addict with a bad case of Senior-itis into a body cast and then lock them away in a six-foot box of a bedroom for five weeks?
"You watch." I say, continuing my conversation with the colony. "You'll wish you had listened. You won't like my first strike." I shoot a glower at the shriveled apple core dangling inches above the trash can.
Exactly how it has managed to cling to the ridge of the yellowing-white sill after eight days with hundreds of ants climbing over it is inconceivable. Why everyone else in my family found it fascinating and decided it would be more fun to "see how long it would take to fall" rather than fix it for me has been beyond torture.
"Final warning, before—," my threat is interrupted by an unintentional grunt as my grip slips from the assist bars above my head, "—I yeet you out that goddamned window."
A couple grunts later and I am up against my headboard. Or, to be more precise, my half-fully-casted-body is tilted slightly higher on the massive mountain of foam and pillows wedged onto my bed. It could easily double as a gymnastics foam pit and is just as impossible to get out of. As if being in a full body cast and a leg sling isn't already enough to keep me from falling out of bed.
My physical therapist tried to sell me on the set up by explaining it would decrease my pain at night and let me sleep better. After nearly three weeks of the worst sleep of my life, I call complete BS on that claim.
No. She foamed me in here for one reason: to keep me from trying to walk again like I did at the hospital, because she conveniently ignores the fact that I had a good reason to try and walk back then: Saffi.
She had been moved out of ICU and was allowed to have visitors. Finally. And sure, Gena and I had a deal where she'd keep me out of a full body cast when I got transferred home if I showed her "good behavior" while I was there. But then she up and hesitated to wheel me over to see my best friend? Saying she wanted to wait until she "discussed things with my psychologist?" What in the actual hell did she expect me to do with that?
And seriously, Gena had known me for like, what? All of ten days back then? Most of that I had been entirely trapped in a trapezoid prison of polyurethane. And yet, somehow, somehow, she felt confident enough to tell my parents that I had unquestionably done enough damage to myself that I would never recover in time for next season; and that she no longer "trusted me" to follow her accelerated recovery program.
Because apparently that one single incident showed her I wasn't "disciplined enough."
Gena doesn't know a damn thing about me, or bolsters, or what I am capable of.
A small bubble of defiant glee rushes my heart as I sweep the bolsters off my bed and yank my blankets off my hammock-raised leg.
The foam blobs bounce and bobble in a fight for space while they settle between my dresser and desk. And despite many an aim at the apple, none of my second or third bolster sweeps make it past the soccer net barricade my family erected to prevent my sabotage.
Still, I revel in the small win that is the freedom of my now non-suffocating bed. It is only ever temporary, but I'm going to enjoy every second until whichever family "Pol Checker" for the morning comes in to scold me for trying to escape my fate.
As if on cue, the first of what is generally a chorus of Monroe-family morning rage echoes from down the hall.
Shrill, nasal, and ending in a spiraling groan—and headed my direction. Thibado.
"I'M NAKED!" I yell at the closed door.
The door bursts open.
"And I care?" Tibbs scoffs as he storms in, kicking a rogue bolster under my bed as he crosses the room in three gangly steps. "Why are Mom and Dad hush-fighting about you getting kicked out of PCU?! Also, get a new threat. We all know you can't get naked on your own, Pol."
Tibbs plops down at the end of my bed and shoves my non-suspended leg out of the way so he can steal some blanket. "At least say you are crapping in your bedpan or something. Your lack of effort is embarrassing."
Of my two thirteen-year-old twin siblings, Thibado Parker Monroe, is the eldest by nearly twelve hours; and without fail people assume he is the younger one. Tibbs hates it. And though it could be said—with dead-on accuracy—that Tibbs hates most things, he hates being seen as "less mature" than his twin to a visceral degree. He also does not find this ironic in the least, which I find highly entertaining.
As a general rule, I manage his morning tantrums with a well-placed immaturity jab right about now. Something along the lines of, "Are you sure they are even arguing Tibbsy? Did you check your logic with Tell?" But that option is out of reach at the moment. It floats across the back of my awareness as all of my effort is placed on stifling my own morning impulse to enter a shouting match.
One person in this family has to be willing to, after all.
My jaw clenches and I feel an instant stab of pain shoot down my neck. The familiar tension spreads from my ear to my shoulder blades and then down to numb my fingers. I focus on Tibbs freckles, his freshly groomed brows, his piecey oil-slick-rainbow-black dyed hair, his horrible, oversized, faded-pink Pikachu pajamas. It's the sight of my old pajamas that settle the scream enough for me to talk.
"I'm not getting kicked out." I say, making a point to roll my eyes. "I think I'd be the one to know."
Tibbs squints at me. "They legit just argued about you getting kicked out if you don't come to spring training on your feet."
"No," A slightly less nasal but more or less identical voice chimes in, "They are worried you are going to get kicked out if you don't go to their spring event on your feet."
At first glance, Telemachus Atrates Monroe is—by their own admission even—a textbook definition of "emotionless DGAF." Where Tibbs is a constant tornado of feminine and masculine expression in one fluidic, dramatic package, Telly is the seemingly calm non-binary wheat field gently swaying but obligatorily tied to the Tibbs-Tornado's random manifestation.
Note that I said 'at first glance.'
Telly, dressed in a frumpy gray sweat suit set with the hood pulled high up over their head and their hands deep in their pockets, stepped into the room and dropped onto the largest bolster, curled up like a dog, and added, "what they did say was that if you did get kicked out of the track team it'd essentially be the same as you getting kicked out of PCU because we can't afford to pay tuition past the first semester the pre-contract covers. You know, thanks to all the hospital bills we have to shell out because you won't let Mom and Dad sue your rich-ass friend's jerk off parents."
"Out." It isn't a scream, but the word bursts out of me before I even fully register what Telly has said. "Get out now."
Tibbs stops my attempt to sit forward with a flat palm and a frown. Telly sits up on the bolster unhindered and continues.
"No." They say with a squinty frown of their own peaking out from their hood just long enough to make a point before returning to shadow. "I am not going to 'get out.' We need you to hear something. Right Tibbs?"
I look at Tibbs. Tibbs looks at the floor. My anger and glare beelines back to Telly.
"What did you convince Tibbs to do for you this time, Tell?"
"They didn't convince me to do anything." Tibbs snaps.
The ferocity from him gives me pause. Tibbs is only protective of Telly when they are vulnerable, and Telly is only ever needs to play defense with Dad.
"I've told you both before. I can't fight your battles for you with Dad. The way to deal with him now is exactly the way Mom is telling you. Do as they both say, when they say it, and don't ask questions or challenge them. Think rigid military. We are 'in crisis' as far as Dad's brain is concerned. Fighting each other's battles is just going to piss him off. God, you know the stories I've told you about me and Uncle Ali. Did you think I was making that all up?"
Tibbs and Telly both roll their eyes in perfect unison.
"Gods, Pol! This isn't about Dad going all Captain Commando on us." Tibbs growls and stands. He picks up the closest bolster and starts repositioning it under my knee. I grab it and chuck it back on the floor.
"Then what the fuck is it about, Thibado Parker? Because so far all I'm getting from you two is the same bullshit I always get from you two: one of you is worried I won't move out and you won't get your own room and the other one is upset that Dad doesn't let you walk all over him and Mom anymore!"
I reach up and unhook my leg harness. The chains ring out with a satisfying slink and crack as fabric and metal drop to the floor and I shift myself forward. I glare at Tibbs, daring him to try and push me back this time. Tibbs takes the bait.
"It's about Saffi." Telly says before either of us do something stupid.
There is a subtle difference to their voice, one that only the two of us would ever notice. We both turn to look at them. Sure enough, sliced below each eye is a trail of tears.
"They are going to pull the plug, Pol." Telly says, pressing a falling tear between their lips. "I'm so sorry. Her cousin Johna told us while we were playing co-op in Oxen Free—"
My heart catches in my chest as if I am slamming into a concrete barrier.
"—and we didn't know how to tell you or bring it up." Tibbs is saying. "So, we told Mom and Dad. But then they started arguing—"
I am spinning, contracting, slamming forward and back.
"—and arguing, and arguing, and arguing—" Telly added. "Until finally Dad told us to go to bed, which we didn't of course."
There is pressure now. And screaming, so much screaming. But not mine.
"Of course not." Tibbs agreed. "We stayed up to hear whether they would tell you, because we needed to know what to do about it."
The screaming stops and it's as if all the air is driven from my lungs as I try to call it back.
"And that is how we found out about the phone call with the coach from PCU that they had last month. That one you wouldn't tell us about." Telly said. "Where the coach wants you at Spring Training for a tour?"
Smoke fills my lungs. Heat—searing and suffocating. And stone. Everywhere I turn, stone. Against my hands, my legs. Oh, god. My legs.
"—and how Dad apparently assured them that you would be up for it and already walking around by then?" Tibbs said with a wince. "Which was so stupid. Especially since your PT is totally against that plan."
The twins are still talking. But the roar filling my ears is louder. All I can think to do is escape. I need to release the mounting pressure of concrete and steel.
"Escape." I say, absently.
"What?" Tibbs and Telly both ask in unison and turn to me from across the room. They are standing near the soccer net, presumably ensuring my bolster throwing hadn't compromised its structure.
That my continued misery hadn't messed with those stupid fucking ants and their stupid fucking apple. That my pain hadn't fucked with their stupid fucking game.
In one swift movement accompanied by a lightning strike of pain from shoulder to shin, I swivel off the bed and stand. Shock holds the three of us in silence before in tandem, we react in equally characteristic ways.
Tibbs, ever the self-centered sarcastic drama king gasps and claps his hands, "It's a miracle! I'll get a room of my own after all!"
Telly, always the pragmatic strategist, shields the soccer net, "Don't you dare, Pollyanna Marie! That apple is a non-competitive family project that I may or may not be winning."
And I, often at the mercy of my own gravity and momentum, take three steps while using my own cast as a crutch.
I am doing well enough that both twins step forward to help. I growl. They nod an apology and run out the door shouting for Mom and Dad.
Puke is rising in my throat. I am getting tunnel vision. But, I am triumphant.
I, Pollyanna Marie Monroe, am walking. And they don't need to know anything other than that.
Thundering steps reach me just as I reach the soccer net. Out of my periphery I can make out Mom and Dad entering the room, the twins close behind. I revel at the sound of their hopeful gasps.
All four Monroes are silent. As if once again they are watching me at a meet, about to set another state record. About to secure my full-ride to PCU. About to get too goddamned cocky about my win.
Shoving the pop-up soccer net aside, I reach out to swat the apple into the bin. But, as I do, my Monroe genetics rear their head. I turn to throw them a "never should have doubted me" smirk. But the world turns with me.
I fall hard, enough so that all five of us Monroe's scream in unison. In a blur of pain and flailing freckled limbs, I am lifted from the floor and replaced in my nest without a word. The silence is only broken when Mom stomps off down the hall.
"I'm calling Gena." She says.
Before I even form a word, Dad, Telly, and Tibbs are out the door yelling at her to put the phone down.
For the first time in my life, they fight my battle before I do.
I look to the windowsill.
"It's because they know I can't."
The colony ignores me. Because they know they can.