56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard
23 Days Ago
He dares look at her, wanting to find her eyes, to meet them with his and use them to show her that he is still him, still Oliver, the man she knows, the one who feels like his heart is too big for his chest every time he looks at her, who thinks he could be falling in love with her, who wants nothing more than for her to stay because she is the only thing that has ever truly made the pain go away.
But Ciara’s eyes are in her lap. She’s as still as a marble statue. With the blood having drained from her face, she’s the color of one too.
“It was just a normal day . . .” There’s nothing else to do now but keep going, to rush it all out before she leaves, to try to explain before what might be his only chance to comes to an abrupt end. “I was walking home from school with this other boy from my class, Shane, and . . . It was all over something so stupid. And we were stupid. But in just a matter of minutes, everything got completely out of hand.”
He blinks back tears, thinking of it.
He’s spent the last seventeen years trying not to.
“There was this boy,” he says, “in Fourth Class. A couple of years younger than us—we were in Sixth. He lived next door to Shane—we all lived in Mill River—and he would sometimes follow us home, asking us questions and trying to tag along. He was annoying but . . . I think he just wanted to hang around with us. He was the only boy in his family and I never saw him out around the place with any other kids from the estate.”
He’s going to have to say his name. He can’t very well tell the story without it, so he takes a deep breath and pushes it out even though the words feel like sharp, pointy objects that slice open the inside of his cheeks.
“Paul Kelleher. He was . . . he was ten.”
Ciara’s head is still down, but he sees her shoulders start to shake—with shock, or maybe even fear. The idea that she would be physically afraid of him makes his chest constrict.
But it’s too late to stop now.
He has no choice but to keep going.
“So on this particular day, Paul is following us home like he usually does, but he’s being more annoying than he usually is, calling out our names, over and over and over. And then he . . . Well, for some reason, probably because we were totally ignoring him, he starts throwing things at us. Pebbles. Most of them miss, but a couple hit our schoolbags and then Shane gets one square in the back of his head. And he like, reels around on Paul, and I think he’s going to roar at him or something, but instead he says, ‘Okay, fine. You can come with us. We’re going down to the water to skim stones.’ And then he gives me this look, like . . . Follow my lead. And he takes off running. Paul follows him. I do, too.”
Oliver tries to take another deep breath, even though it feels fruitless, even though it feels like his airways have permanently closed for business and all he has is what’s in his lungs and however many minutes it will take him to exhaust it.
“The estate was built on the bank of the river,” he continues, “that’s where it got its name. The houses kind of sloped down to the water, and then in order to actually get to it, you had to climb through some trees . . . So once the three of us were down there, we were pretty much hidden from view. And that’s when . . .” He swallows. “That’s when . . .”
Now, finally, Ciara lifts her head.
“That’s when Shane just starts, like, pummeling Paul. That’s the only word I could use to describe it. Shane had been kept back a year, he was nearly thirteen by then, and Paul was small for his age . . . I don’t remember everything but I remember Shane towering over Paul, and Paul looking up at him”—his voice cracks—“like—like—”
He can see him now, as if they’re all here, in this room.
Paul’s eyes, not pleading, but questioning.
Why are you doing this to me?
Oliver is struggling around sobs now, but there’s no point trying to stop it, he just has to get the rest out and then he can talk to Ciara, try to assess the damage, try to start fixing things.
He will do anything to fix this.
To keep her.
To keep them.
“At first, I didn’t intervene. I just stood there. But then Shane was like, come on, and Paul was kind of squirming, trying to get away, and he’d started to cry by then, so I went and I”—his voice cracks again here, goes up a pitch—“I didn’t intervene. I joined in. I held him. By the arms. In place. So that Shane could keep . . . So that Shane could—”
Ciara looks away; she can’t look at him anymore and he can’t blame her.
He swallows hard, twice, trying to force the lump in his throat out of the way so he can get the last bit of horror out.
The worst bit.