Thrive - Mary Borsellino

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sense of things being unfinished between her and Hannah. Olivia can't forget her, can't put the whole experience into the past. It doesn't feel over yet, and if nobody ever finds out what Olivia did, it never will be.

      For all that her parents talk about the importance of closure, Olivia doesn't mind the thought that things will never be properly finished between her and Hannah. It feels like there's still some connection between them, a part of each other they'll carry into their separate futures.

      As time goes on, it's easier to talk about things. Eventually, Olivia is brave enough to raise the topic with her mother.

      'Those security guys, the ones that rescued me… they were really good at their jobs.'

      'Yes, darling, your father hired the best in the business. We wanted to be as sure as sure can be that we'd get you back safe and sound.'

      'But...' Olivia frowns. 'If they were as expensive as all that, why not just pay the ransom and get me back that way?'

      'That's not how things are done,' her mother answers stiffly. 'You know that.'

      Knowing and understanding are different things, but Olivia thinks that saying so would cause trouble. Arguing with her parents never does any good.

      'You missed your birthday while you were away,' her mother says, like Olivia's been at school camp or on holiday. 'We should have a party.'

      'I don't have any hair,' Olivia reminds her. Olivia doesn't care about that, but she knows her mother does.

      'We can buy you a good wig. Real hair,' her mother assures her.

      'I don't want a wig.'

      'Don't be difficult, sweetheart.' The words have a scolding edge, but then her mother's expression softens. 'Oh, my little darling,' she says, hugging Olivia close. 'Better to lose your hair than an earlobe or a finger, at least.'

      Olivia misses Hannah.

      7

      Her parents send her to a new school, one with stronger security. Olivia thinks this is pointless; she's already been kidnapped. The extra protection is too late.

      The kids at this new school are the kind of kids that Olivia's parents wish she was. They're perfectly groomed and work with quiet diligence and are horribly, horribly cruel to her and the others among them who don't fit in. They make up nicknames for the misfits, and mock their bodies and voices and families.

      One of them trips Olivia as she's going down a flight of stairs one day, and she injures her elbows and chin so badly that she needs three stitches. The blood all over her school uniform makes her think of gunfire, and she idles over thoughts of the private security thugs bursting into the classroom and killing the bullies who torment her.

      She doesn't think she'd be all that upset to see them die. She hadn't cried when it happened before, and the maskers had never been horrible to her like these kids are.

      Olivia daydreams of violence, but her night dreams are softer and sadder. That's why she finally works up the courage to look for interesting books; she thinks giving her imagination more things to do during the day will make it quieter at night, and let her sleep better.

      She has to buy a new reader. Her old one was left behind in the cement room, along with all her other schoolbag things.

      Hannah was right about there being stuff worth reading in the legal archives. They contain lots of classic novels that someone decided must be harmless simply because they're old.

      As if history were full of only safe and friendly thoughts and deeds.

      Olivia's careful to space the interesting books out between drier texts, to hide her tracks on the system. Even reading the boring books is better than having nothing to do, and her dreams lose the worst of their dark edges.

      Among the sanctioned fairy tales on the school server is a collection of ones that never got properly sanitised for modern readers. These stories are old and wild, full of blood and forests and fur and teeth and magic. Olivia wishes she could read them in privacy. She lives with a constant and pervading anxiousness at the thought that someone, somewhere, is paying attention to what she's accessing on her reader.

      One of the stories in the collection is called Donkeyskin. It's a distant relation of Cinderella, Olivia thinks. The two have a common ancestor but they grew in very different directions. Donkeyskin is Olivia's favourite; it's one of the most important and strange things she's ever encountered.

      If someone notices that a story like that is available, and that she reads it so much, something terrible might happen. Because Donkeyskin is the story of a little girl, a princess who grows up into a beautiful teenager, so beautiful that her own father — the King — decides he must marry her no matter what. Since Olivia's own father is so rich and respected, there are lots of people who'd like nothing better than to destroy him. If one of them is watching her reader in the data cloud, and notices how often she reads and re-reads Donkeyskin, it would only take one news article full of speculation and innuendo to ruin her father's hard-built reputation as a good and honest man.

      While Olivia might not get on well with her father, she really does love him. More importantly, he has never done anything like the King in the story. Her father would kill anyone who tried to hurt his child.

      That's not even a figure of speech; it's simple fact. The gunshots in her nightmares bear testament to that.

      The King has nothing to do with why Olivia's captivated by the story. It's how the girl escapes that enchants her. The princess stitches a disguise for herself out of fur and feathers and animal hides, helped by all the woodland creatures she's fed at her windowsill since she was small. They repay her kindness by giving little pieces of themselves, building her a costume as feral and strange as anything in the forest.

      The princess leaves behind her home and her father and her name, and because the cloak she's sewn has tall, odd ears sticking up from the top, she calls herself Donkeyskin.

      Donkeyskin carries three dresses from her princess life in her satchel, in case she ever needs to sell the jewels on them to buy food. She doesn't have anything to worry about, though. No sooner has she made her way to the next kingdom than she finds work as a scullery maid in the castle kitchens.

      Nobody's kind to Donkeyskin. They kick over her bucket as she scrubs the floors because they didn't notice her there. She has to live off scraps from the kitchen plates because nobody remembers to save food for her. Nobody's kind, but nobody's nasty either. They just hardly see her, even in plain sight. The ugliness of her Donkeyskin disguise makes her invisible.

      It makes Olivia think about the information updates everyone gets sent all the time, about how you're not allowed to wear this or that geometric makeup design on your face because it scrambles the facial recognition software in public cameras. Some hairstyles are illegal for the same reason, and of course there are maskers.

      Olivia thinks Donkeyskin's way is smarter than any of those. Donkeyskin knew that the way to hide wasn't to do anything except to be ugly, to be too gross for anyone to want to pay attention. Not weird enough to be memorable, not strange enough to be noticed by anybody: just a part of the general noisy, crowded background of the world.

      The story has a typical ending, of course. It's related to Cinderella after all. There are three royal balls and the princess puts aside her Donkeyskin costume and wears her three dresses, and the prince falls in love with her. She leaves behind a shoe at the third ball by mistake when she runs away (because she has to run away; staying anywhere for too long without her disguise is too hard for her) and then the prince demands that every woman in the land try on the lost shoe to see if it fits. And Donkeyskin — who has fallen in love with the prince; she didn't mean to but she couldn't help it — goes along, and everyone scoffs and laughs that the weird ugly scullery maid wants to try, and the shoe fits and the prince loves her the same in rags or in ballgowns, and everyone is happy forever et cetera, et cetera.

      Olivia doesn't care about that part. She's most interested in the beginning, when Donkeyskin runs away and

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