Stay with me

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“There’s a villain in all of us.

Some are just better at deceiving.”

—Oliver Masters

THEY FOUND OSCAR. I wished I was more relieved than I was. Dean Lynch showed up to my dorm before breakfast one morning to tell me the news, and relief hadn’t quite washed over me yet. It wouldn’t until I saw Ollie again, and it had been another tormenting week since I’d left him in solitary confinement. I wondered what was taking him so long. Had he changed his mind on taking the medication?

I went through the same routine, waking up as soon as the automatic doors unlocked, took a shower, brushed my teeth, read in my dorm for another hour until breakfast. I’d hated to read before, but getting lost in a novel was the only way to get by. It wasn’t the same as when Ollie read to me, but I still found comfort in it—even if it was a little. I held on to the small part of happiness until I could wrap my arms around it.

Holding on to the possibility of a future with Ollie did not succumb with each passing day. I only held on stronger, fought harder. The vision of seeing his eyes light up when he met new people, seeing him cry with them through their pain, being a part of his growth, success, and his poetry … I wanted to be a part of it all. And now I had found my purpose; I also wanted to be there for girls across the world who were scared and alone. Learning to become empathetic was a whole new thing for me, and Ethan, the police officer, had introduced me to a side of myself I hadn’t known I was capable of, never fathoming how much it would touch me.

Today, I wore Ollie’s hoodie over my Dolor shirt. The temperature on campus only turned colder. His scent of freedom left unscathed as I pulled it over my head. It was the first time I smiled as the drifting scent in the air hugged me.

There was a gloominess in the mess hall without Ollie’s presence.

“Care if I sit with you and Zeke today?” Jake asked as he stood beside me in the lunch line. His smile was gone, too, but I doubted it was because of Ollie’s absence. “Alicia and I are in a tiff.”

This thing between Jake and Alicia seemed to be happening at least once a month. “Maybe you two are on the same cycle.”

Jake tilted his head, and his forehead wrinkled as we moved along the buffet line. “Bloody hell, maybe you’re right. What’s it called? Sympathy period?” Normally, he would have giggled, but he didn’t. It was because of Ollie. He was gone, and he’d taken his bright light over everyone with him.

I shrugged. “Don’t forget to acknowledge Zeke.”

“Yeah, yeah … I know the rules,” Jake muttered.

As we left the lunch line of the breakfast buffet, my legs came to a standstill, and I suddenly forgot how to breathe. My heart beat in my eardrums, and the quickening of my pulse traveled down to the tips of my fingers.

Ollie stood in the entryway of the mess hall under the curved arch. My eyes sca

Frozen.

“What’s wrong?” Jake asked, but I couldn’t respond.

I waited for Ollie to find me as he talked to another student—one I didn’t know the name of. Why wasn’t he looking for me?

Find me, Ollie. Lift your head and find me.

“Ollie’s back!” Jake called out.

Ollie turned his head at the sound of his name, and our eyes met. It was no longer the same eyes I had looked into so many times before. Now, only an emptiness resided where a wistful vulnerability used to collide with wonder. I had never seen his shade of green so dim, and it caused my stomach to fall into the same somber eclipse, spiraling faster and faster with no end, no walls—only darkness.

He didn’t even smile as I stood frozen—wasted. I waited for that smile. It seemed like forever as I anticipated in misery, but his lips never twitched. His Mia-smile was gone. I had been waiting for two weeks to see his smile. I had closed my eyes, dreaming of that smile. And now it was all a memory.

He’d warned me this would happen.

And then he averted his gaze. The walls in the room slowly caved in around me, suffocating me. The oxygen in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the flesh from my bones—all of it crumbled, breaking into small pieces yet still holding on by a thread. The thread being my heart. It still pumped on auto-pilot as if it couldn’t associate with the rest of my body. Thumping sounded in my ears, and I wished it would stop, but my heart was not ready to let go. It continued with the same steady pump, refusing to give up what was right in front of me. I was drifting, barely existing because he was gone—and that meant I was gone. We were gone. But my heart was still going, and now I hated it.

I hated my heart.

Maybe my heart believed his eyes would return to mine. Maybe my heart believed the light would shine in his eyes again. And I waited. Like I had a choice. Two seconds passed … then three, waiting as my body weakened from his disco

And then his back was to me. Whatever we’d had no longer existed, but I remembered everything clearly, and it wasn’t fair. He was detached, and it wasn’t fair. Why hadn’t he taken me with him? “Are you going to forget me or take me with you, love?” he had asked me once before. “Take you with me,” I had said, but I forgot to ask him the same question in return.

I should have asked him.

Could I ever learn to accept the hollow in his eyes over the wonder and vulnerability? Surely, anything he had to offer would be better than nothing. If only he would turn back around. Had he even noticed me? “Promise me you’ll bring me back,” he’d said to me, but I was frozen. “You have to remind me. You have to find a way.”

And then he took a step in the opposite direction. He was gone, left in obscurity, but my heart still maintained a steady beat, pumping along to a rhythm of crimson hope. “Stay with me,” he would say over and over. Who would have thought he would have been the one to take a step into oblivion? Inside, I screamed. Inside, I crumbled. Could he hear me?

Why couldn’t you stay with me, Ollie?

Even though he was only twenty feet away, I missed him, and it hurt so bad. It was quite possible he would wake up and turn back around, or I would wake up. Either way, it was a nightmare.

Each step drew more distance and less of a chance of him coming back. The darkness wasn’t better. I saw and felt his light with my own eyes and my own heart. I knew what was on the other side. He was the light. And now he was in the dark. And now I was left in the memory of it, and it wasn’t fair to be standing here alone.

The only warmth left was the water gathering in the corner of my eye, and no matter how hot it felt as it ran down my skin, I still shivered in his cold.

Dropping my tray onto Jake’s, I ran after him. My feet moved despite my inability to feel my legs. I breathed too hard, or not at all. I wasn’t quite sure, and I didn’t care. Words stuck in my throat as I tried calling out his name. His back was to me, and his shoulders were recognizable, and his stride was familiar, but he’d looked at me only moments ago like I was a stranger.