Chapter 19
Colin
My blood is boiling as Olive Garden slams the door behind her and storms off.
At last. Or then again, maybe not . . .
Fuck.
A pathetic part of me wants to run after her and explain the whole thing with Maresa, but my last remnant of self-respect holds me back.
What the fuck business is it of hers what I did in New York, and what makes her think I was even remotely serious about her?
I’m Colin Fantino. I don’t take anything seriously, least of all someone like her.
I’ve had it with all this drama. I want to go home.
I want to be left in peace. I don’t want to think about flames towering into the sky, or the aggressive wail of fire-engine and police sirens.
I don’t want to be the one to blame for a woman’s death.
I want to get something right just one time, but it seems like I was born to always do the wrong thing.
I don’t see Olive anywhere at dinner, and I’m fine with that.
God, she’s making such a fucking drama out of something she knows nothing about.
Nothing. I can kind of understand her being pissed at seeing photos of Maresa and me, but I really don’t find it OK to assume from them that we’re together.
She could at least have listened to an explanation.
And maybe I could have kept calm and resisted the urge to insult Maresa.
But apparently, I can’t stay calm when Olive’s standing in front of me blowing her top.
I don’t want her to have this negative image of me, but everything I do in her presence confirms it, again and again.
After dinner, I hang around outside, despite the ever-colder temperatures, and don’t head back to my room until wing time.
But not to sleep. I’m meeting Kit; his boyfriend, Will; Adam; and some others at the midnight party.
Sinclair invites me too, which is surprisingly nice of him, so after a while we stroll down together.
I’d been expecting him to take Olive’s side and give me the silent treatment, but he starts to chat.
I might not find him as irritating as I did to start with, but I’d never admit that.
I’ve learned that the others are relatively unfazed about being out after wing time, so I can totally scratch my original plan to get kicked out that way.
Besides, I’d just get some other punishment dumped on me.
Even so, I haven’t given up hope of finding a crime so heinous that Mrs. Sinclair will have no choice but to throw me out of Dunbridge Academy.
I can think about the consequences of that later, but the main thing is to get out of here, especially now that Olive hates me.
It’s bad enough that I’ve been so distracted in the last few weeks that I dropped the ball on that one.
Distracted by Olive, classes, tennis, boxing with Kit, cleaning duties .
. . but that’s over now. I’ve got to focus on what matters.
It’s not long before I’m regretting having come, and now I’m slumped in one of the armchairs in the old greenhouse.
It’s seriously lame tonight. But at least these Scots are into their booze.
There’s some hard stuff, the kind of thing it’s difficult to get hold of underage in America.
Here, you can buy it in any goddamn supermarket once you’re eighteen.
Olive Garden isn’t here, but I start drinking as fast as I can.
At the same time, I remove every memory of Maresa from my socials, like I should have done long ago, and try not to get sucked into any conversations.
Not very successfully because people keep talking to me, and I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not here to make friends.
But why do I feel so weird every time I see Sinclair mutter something into Henry’s ear, on which the two of them look expressively at each other, then burst out laughing?
I wouldn’t call it jealousy. It’s more disappointment that I’ve never had that kind of friendship.
Things weren’t like that at my school. People just hung out together to share the pain.
Paxton, Ash, and I never asked each other how we really were.
It was just about having a good time. I barely ever spoke to anyone about personal shit.
Even the conversations I’ve had with Kit went deeper than anything with my buddies in New York.
They’ve got something real here at Dunbridge, something that goes deeper and forms real bonds, because of being together 24-7.
That can be superannoying, but it’s kind of nice too. Maybe I should say so to Kit sometime.
Right now, he’s preoccupied making out with Will.
Which is fine by me, even though it reminds me of kissing Olive.
A kiss I obviously do not regret. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I ever got the chance.
But I can’t because I showed her what a jerk I really am.
And this is my reward. The music’s shit, everything’s shit, so I drink more. And more.
Eventually, Olive Garden shows up with her girlfriends, gives me one of her silly death glares, and grabs a bottle for herself.
She’s impossible and I hate her. And I wish I didn’t keep glancing over to her.
Though apparently she’s the same. We aren’t speaking, we’re miles apart from each other, we’re not listening to the other conversations—or at least I’m not.
I’m way too busy winning the silent staring match we’re fighting.
I raise my wine bottle; she raises hers. Maybe this is childish, but she’s childish. Everything here is childish. I’m just fitting in. She drinks when I drink. She looks livid.
So you really want to do this, Olive Garden? No problem.
I drain my bottle in one swig and reach for the next.
But don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Olive
“So much for ‘No way he’ll be coming’!” I hiss as I slip through the door after Tori, and the first person I see in the old greenhouse is Colin Fantino.
To be fair to her, I have to say that Tori seems genuinely surprised, so at least it looks like she really didn’t know he’d be here.
At our midnight party, even though I bet he thinks he’s too cool for us.
“Hmm. Charlie said . . .” Tori’s pulling her phone from her jacket pocket. Before she even has a chance to look at it, Sinclair’s appeared in front of us.
“Hey, sorry, I did text you.” He glances at me and gestures at Fantino. “For some reason he actually wanted to come when I asked him.”
I must have misheard. “Seriously, you invited him?”
“Yeah, you’ve got to be polite.”
“Why would you be polite to him?”
“Olive, he’s new, and I’m sharing a room with him,” Sinclair says patiently. “It would be pretty shitty of me not to ask, wouldn’t it?”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” I mutter, but he’s got a point. Somewhere deep down, I’m in favor of being nice to people. But Fantino’s taken the piss once too often.
“Just stick with us.” Tori shoves me past a few lower-sixth people to the back of the greenhouse, where I see Emma and Henry and the rest of my friends.
Just as well because I’m really not in the mood to chat to Theresa about how the school newspaper is coming along.
Although she’s with Elain, and I’d like to ask her how she’s settling in, but, well, I’ve got other problems.
I fight down the urge to make a scene by flouncing out.
I’m not going to let Colin Fantino mess up this evening with my friends.
But I find it harder than I expected to ignore him while the others chat and laugh.
Especially once I notice that Colin’s not exactly holding back on the drink.
I’ve seen enough Insta stories and TikToks of him with his cool New York pals to be sure that, in the States, he was used to partying at a whole different level from what we can manage here at school, but I still don’t like it.
He might be used to it, but that doesn’t change how much trouble we’ll be in if a teacher finds us boozing.
It’s an open secret that they turn a blind eye to the midnight parties so long as we don’t push it too far.
And binge drinking is definitely pushing it.
But if Fantino wants to take his chances, let him. It’s not my problem. Quite the opposite—maybe then he’d get himself expelled. Which is what everybody wants.
I notice that Grace isn’t here. I text to ask if she’s coming, and she says she’s too tired.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no sign of Gideon here either.
The other day, I asked Grace how she’d got on at the sick bay after training, and she snapped that Nurse Petra said she was in perfect health.
I really don’t know what to do about Grace.
But even if she were here, I probably wouldn’t feel any better.
I don’t fit in anymore. Not like I did before the summer.
I can’t deny that, when Tori, Sinclair, and everyone burst out laughing over something I wasn’t there for.
Stuff in class, new in-jokes—sure, they explain them, but it’s not the same.
It’ll never be the same again, even if I get to rejoin them.
The thought comes like an unexpected blow as I sit, knees drawn up, on the worn-out carpet and listen to their plans for after their A levels in the summer.
I can’t shut my eyes to it anymore. Grace is talking to Gideon, not me.
Tori has eyes only for Sinclair, and as for Emma and Henry, well, let’s just not go there.
I ignore Tori’s brief side-eye as I reach for the wine bottle that Sinclair just opened. I never drank alcohol while I was training for a meet, but there’s nothing to prepare for now. Apart from the moment when my friends leave Dunbridge and I’m really alone.
The first few swigs taste minging, but after a while I get used to it. When the bottle is half empty, I look up and find Fantino’s eyes on me.
I narrow my eyes to slits and lift it to my lips again, and he follows suit with his. Apparently, he thinks drinking constantly makes him extra adult and cool. Surprise: I can do that too. And with a bit of luck, I’ll have a couple of hours where I can forget that I’m now just as bad as my mum.
An unpleasant chill spreads through me, and it gets harder to smile as Tori and Sinclair eventually piss off.
They’re not the only ones—the old greenhouse has emptied out, and I don’t think it’ll be long before the last stragglers want their beds.
Henry looks as if he could fall asleep on the spot.
He seems relieved when Emma looks inquiringly over to him and points to the door.
“You staying?” Emma asks as they stand up.
“Think so,” I mutter, forcing myself to smile. “Sleep well.”
“You too, Olive.”
It’s not like I’m not tired. The idea of lying in bed is tempting, but I know it’s a long way from reality.
And I want to spend a while longer acting like the fear of the nights isn’t shaping my everyday life.
Maybe I’ll be in luck and actually get to sleep tonight if I keep drinking a wee bit longer.
Although the slight dizziness and sick feeling are maybe signs that I should stop.
I can’t help my eyes automatically looking for Fantino once Emma and Henry have left the greenhouse.
I don’t see him among the lower sixth. Did he leave without me noticing?
What the hell? We didn’t even fight. And somehow it doesn’t feel so good not to be able to see him anymore.
Although objectively speaking, it’s fabulous.
Yes, it’s fantastic. Amazing. He’s finally gone, and that’s what I’ve been wanting all along.
“That’s enough.”
I jump as someone takes the almost-empty bottle from me. Turning my head makes me feel kind of sick, but I try not to let that show. Fantino’s face comes into focus above me, his expression grim. Ha. He has no right to order me around.
“Who do you think you are?” I snarl, but my tongue won’t obey me. I reach for the bottle, but Colin just holds on to it. Bawbag.
“You’ve had enough.”
“And who are you to decide that?”
He glares warningly at me. “Go sleep it off, Olive Garden.”
I open my mouth, but before I can reply, the door flies open and a couple of lower-sixth lads burst in.
“Houseparents incoming!”
Their voices are drowned by the music, but just seconds later, it breaks off. The others jump up, there are shouts mixed with panicky laughter; someone switches off the light. I go to stand up too, but I stumble sideways.
Shit. Sitting down, I felt reasonably OK but now . . . I don’t. Glass clinks on glass as I crash into bottles in the dark, and dizziness seizes me. Then a hand pulls me firmly aside.