Olive's Ocean

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of the death of a young person and the nonconsensual recording of a kiss.

Twelve-year-old Martha Boyle gasps when the older woman at her door says she’s Olive’s Barstow mother. She gives Olive a page from her daughter’s journal and then bicycles away.

Weeks ago, Olive Barstow died. While riding her bicycle on Monroe Street, a car hit her. Martha doesn’t think Olive was exceptional, and she pictures Olive soaring through the air before crashing into the pavement.

Martha reads the piece of paper from Olive’s journal. Olive dates the entry June 7, and she expresses her hopes of writing a novel. The first sentence of Olive’s novel is about an orphan who wants to fly like a bird. Writing aside, Olive wants to visit a “real ocean,” and become friends with Martha. Olive believes Martha is a kind person.

Before reading Olive’s entry, Martha was cheerful. Now, Martha feels “eerie.” With her family, she’s about to visit her grandmother, who lives in Cape Cod—a Massachusetts peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Martha wants to be a writer, and Martha wonders why Olive thinks she’s such a nice person.