Chapter 29
Colin
I know this feeling. Numbing fear, paralyzing shock. The world has suddenly gone into slow motion in front of me, while I can’t move a muscle.
Who are you?
Who the fuck are you?
Even if my tongue was working, I wouldn’t have been able to answer her question.
A monster.
A guy who doesn’t deserve to live. Not with this guilt. Not with the certainty that it was my fault someone died.
I can’t stay here. It’s all too loud, too much. The others, by some miracle, have no idea what just happened between me and Olive. She didn’t yell, she didn’t cry, she was calm. I was calm. But now I have the feeling that it could go off course at any moment.
Her holding out her phone to me, and me seeing what it said. The pictures, the headlines. I didn’t have to read them. I know every word by heart.
The firebug at Ainslee.
My legs move by themselves toward the exit.
In passing, I grab a bottle—I’m in luck: it’s heavy—and lift it to my lips the minute I’m through the door.
Darkness, the uneven stone path outside the old greenhouse with weeds growing between the slabs.
We stood here earlier yelling at each other, and I thought that was bad.
I was wrong. It’s nothing compared to what just happened.
The shock on her face as she looked at me. The horror in her eyes. She truly saw me for the first time.
Why did I let her find out this way? Why did I think it was a good idea to put off telling her?
Why didn’t I tell her myself? Not that it would have changed anything, although maybe it could have.
Given me a chance to explain. I could have worked out what to say in advance, made excuses.
But the truth is, there’s no excuse for what happened.
There never will be. I made a mistake and I ran.
I turned away and shut my eyes to what happened.
I let someone get killed. I let Mom take control and send me away, and I have no way of explaining that. All I have is my fear.
I swig the gin straight from the bottle. The glass hits my teeth. The alcohol burns in my throat and eats its way down to my belly.
I should stop, but I don’t let myself. It has to hurt. That’s all I deserve. Nausea rises in me, and dizziness, so I stand still, propping myself up on one of the school walls, which I’ve now reached. I crouch, gagging, and grip the bottle tighter.
You should never have come here, Colin Fantino.
I know. I didn’t want to. I so didn’t want to, but nobody asked me.
I kid myself that I had no choice, but the truth is that you always have a choice.
I could have gone to the cops, even after Mom had made all the boarding-school arrangements.
I should have listened to my doubts—I could have done the right thing just one fucking time. But I took the easy route.
I should never have come to Dunbridge Academy, and I never would have if I’d known what had happened here.
That there had been a fire, that a girl was injured, that I’d meet her a few weeks later, smash a display case for her, hate her, curse her, and fall in love with her.
That I’d learn the truth and make the wrong choice yet again before my lies blew up in my face.
That I’d hit rock bottom. Everything’s lost, it’s dark, and I can’t see a way out.
I truly can’t. I hate myself for the whimper of despair that crawls from my throat, the fucking pain, the self-pity I’m not entitled to.
I crouch, wanting to punch something, but I’m all out of strength. I’m eighteen years old, and my life’s a mess. Which is my own fault, so I have no right to feel sorry for myself. My actions caused someone to die.
The bottle shatters as I smash it into the wall.
How can you live with a thing like that?
I can’t, Olive. I can’t.
The shards of glass on the gravel path blur in front of me. I shut my eyes and sway. The taste of blood fills my mouth as I bite my bottom lip so hard it must have broken the skin, but I don’t feel a thing.
I feel across the floor, I find some glass, I don’t move. My heart is racing, but I can’t. I wrap my hand around it. I squeeze. I feel the pain in my palm, and I let go again.
The world spins as I stand up. It’s still spinning.
Nobody taught me to do the right thing. Nobody took the trouble. Nobody but her. Nobody, goddamn it, except Olive Henderson.
Olive
This has to be a dream. One of the bad sort, the kind I wake from with my heart pounding and my T-shirt soaked with sweat, where it’s all so real that I can’t stay in bed.
This is real. And walking through the night doesn’t help. As I walk further and further from the old greenhouse, it gets harder and harder to hold back the tears. I walk on. I don’t stop when I start to cry.
Because Colin isn’t who I thought he was. Because he lied to me. Because he let me tell him my deepest fears and worst experiences. He let me. He lay next to me, listened, nodded, and comforted me. He just accepted it all.
Maybe it’s not true. There’s this pathetic wee voice in my head that still has some kind of hope. Maybe it’s all just a massive misunderstanding. Maybe it was someone who’s out to get him.
But if that was true, why didn’t he say so? Anyone who wasn’t guilty would defend themselves when faced with something like that. But Colin didn’t stand up for himself. He just stood there, and I could see in his face that he’d been waiting for that moment. The moment when I learned the truth.
I walk faster. I feel the cool air on my wet cheeks.
His contradictory behavior, his horror when he saw my scars.
Back then, I thought the whole situation had been too much for him, when in truth, there was maybe still some kind of humanity in him.
A conscience he’d been successfully ignoring.
Once he finally knew what had happened in the west wing last summer, he kept absently glancing at it.
I can’t bear to look as I walk through the hallways. My steps echo in the dark arcades and I don’t know where to go.
My friends are partying in the greenhouse. My parents are living their own lives with their new partners. I’m just as alone as I was in the summer. The only one who left the Ebrington festival early, the only one on our floor in the west wing. Still the only one, and I’m fucking tired of it.
Why me? Why was I the one whose life went up in flames?
Who had to give up her swimming, and let her friends go on ahead of her, and—like that wasn’t enough—now even my parents are getting a divorce.
I want to rewind time; I want a second chance.
I want to stay with my friends, choose fun over self-discipline. I just wanted to do the right thing.
But I did everything wrong. I let Colin Fantino toy with me and pretend to understand me. His betrayal hurts, but it hurts more to feel that I let him take me in. That I was naive and wanted to see the good in him.
I slept in the same bed as him.
I kissed him.
I told him everything and thought he was doing the same for me.
I was wrong.
I’m a million miles from sleep, but I feel overwhelmed when someone knocks on my door. Must be Tori, who’s noticed that I left and wants to talk. But I don’t want to talk. Not to anyone. Ever.
I pull my duvet over my head. There’s another knock. Louder this time.
God, is she nuts? If she keeps on like this, we’ll have Ms. Barnett out here any minute.
I throw off the duvet and stand up.
“Are you ins—” I fling open the door and the rest of the question dies on my lips.
It’s not Tori outside my door.
It’s Colin.
No. No way.
Shut the door, turn away. That’s what I should do. Instead, I make the mistake of looking into his face.
He’s drunk. Really steaming. Worse than earlier, when he could at least stand up.
Now he has to lean on my doorframe, his face pale.
“I didn’t mean to,” he slurs. Too loud. Way too loud. I glance over my shoulder in panic. I want to tell him to piss off before Ms. Barnett hears him. But Colin lurches toward me. I can smell booze. I can see blood dripping from his hand.
Fuck, is he out of his mind?
“Piss off,” I whisper, because I can’t deal with this.
“I truly didn’t mean to, do you understand?” He’s crying—when I see that, all the blood drains from my legs. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I . . .”
He stumbles, and before I know what I’m doing, I grab his sleeve and tow him into my room. Colin staggers into the wall, and I hastily shut the door.
“It was the Homecoming Ball and I was angry at my parents, we’d had a fight, and I .
. . I was burning myself with my lighter.
Some guys walked in, some toilet paper caught on fire, but it was out.
D’you hear me? It was out. It was on the floor, and I stomped it out, but it can’t have been out, not really, and I .
. . I didn’t mean to. And I don’t know. I truly don’t know how to live with that, Livy. I truly don’t know.”
Colin’s voice breaks, and it’s like an ice-cold shower down my spine. There’s pure pain in his sobs. He’s so drunk he can hardly stand. I’ve never seen him like this, and I don’t think I can bear it even a minute longer.
I don’t want to hear his explanations because they don’t change the fact that he lied to me and ripped the heart out of my chest. But that’s the same heart that every one of his stupid wisecracks and pathetic jokes has been healing, bit by bit, over these last few weeks.
It belongs to him. It will always belong to him, whatever he’s done, and no matter how much I hate that, I can’t deny it while he’s standing here, clearly a broken man.
I realize that, and I shiver. I feel a switch flick inside me, and I make the choice to function. Just for tonight.
I turn around, grab a box of tissues, and say “Stop that” without looking at him.
It’s only a wee cut in his palm, but I still don’t want to know how he did it.
And while I despise myself for it, I’m glad he’s here.
In this state—pissed out of his skull and in total despair.
I don’t know whether I regret what I said to him.
How can you live with a thing like that? It’s a genuine question. But maybe I shouldn’t have asked him that today.
I move like a machine—I can’t allow any closeness, any warmth between us. I ignore Colin’s apologies. I want him to shut the fuck up, but that’s getting harder with every minute.
God knows what he’s been drinking. He lets me press him down onto my bed as I force myself to say it’s OK.
It’s not OK. Nothing’s OK. But we’re not getting anywhere tonight, so I might just as well pull myself together and do for him what he did for me not so long ago.
I owe this guy nothing, but I love him, so I have no choice.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he manages once he’s sitting on the bed in front of me, and I hate him for how dark his eyes are. Brown and desperate.
“But you did.”
“I know.” Stop looking at me like that. Stop doing this to me. Stop making me want to forgive you when I can’t. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to feel all this again. I wanted to do something right for once, Livy.”
I have to shut my eyes because it hurts too much. Because I suddenly want to say stuff I shouldn’t. It’s not your fault. You did nothing wrong. I don’t know enough about the situation, and I’m too hurt.
Instead, I say, “Go to sleep.” I don’t manage to sound harsh. Colin is sitting there, broken, drunk. I’m worried, I’m bloody worried about him, and even though I want to hurt him as much as he hurt me, I also want him to be OK. It’s so tiring.
The booze has knocked him out, and so have the tears—that’s probably why he lets me lean him back. Now he’s in my bed, and I don’t know where to go.
“Olive,” he says. My name always sounds so hard from his lips, but loving too. I hate it when he does that. And now I hate it more than ever.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No,” I whisper, but now my eyes are burning again because even I don’t believe that.
It feels like I’m letting myself down as I lie beside him.
I don’t want this, but I need it. My heart is racing.
I’m not crying anymore. We have to talk tomorrow, calmly, once he’s slept and sobered up.
I have to listen to everything and decide what it all means.
Whether I can keep on loving him or whether it’s too awful for that.
But I know the answer. Even if it is too awful, I won’t be able to stop, and that scares me. It fucking scares me.
I don’t want to touch him, but the bed is too narrow. So I lie beside him and feel him fall asleep. My thoughts are noisy; my head is throbbing with overwhelm. Every heartbeat is like a stabbing in my temples.
This has to stop. This all has to stop.
I screw my eyes shut.