56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard

18 Days Ago

Oliver is on the floor and his head is filling with pain and there’s shattered glass everywhere and the water is warm and Ciara is shouting something at him, the same words over and over, sounding like she’s very far away.

He tries to clear a patch in the fog, to catch the words, to hear them.

“I’m Shane’s sister! Ciara Hogan. And I know. I knew it all, from the start. And it’s okay, Oliver. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay . . .”

He thinks he says, “What?” but he doesn’t hear it; it may have only been inside his head.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just wanted to know what had happened that day. And what Shane might be now. What he might be like. And if the answer is like you, then that’s a good thing. Because you’re good. You’re a good man. I believe that. I’ve seen it.”

Oliver starts to cry.

If he really was a good man, he’d tell her the truth.

All of it.

“No,” he says. “I’m not.”

And those words do come out.

Ciara says something about calling an ambulance.

Everything he has left, everything the rolling tide of dark hasn’t yet reached, he uses to roar out, “No!”

“But you’ve hurt your head—”

The water stops. Ciara must have turned it off.

Oliver tries to turn and look up at her face, but everything feels so heavy. How did he ever carry his head on his shoulders when it feels like this? It’s pulling him down, toward the ground.

And he realizes he’s on his knees, inside the shower, with little pebbles of . . .

Is that glass?

“You need help, Oliver. Here, let me—”

But when she reaches for him, he grabs her legs.

“No,” he says through clenched teeth. “No.”

“Oliver, for God—”

“I don’t . . . deserve . . .”

“Oliver—”

“It was me. It was me. All . . . me. Not Shane.”

Her hands release him and he falls away, drops his head back to the ground.

For what feels like forever, there is no noise at all except the drip-drip-drip of the tap above his head. Oliver is dimly aware of the corresponding droplets hitting the back of his neck.

“Not Shane,” he says again.

Then Ciara says, very quietly, “What are you talking about?”

He turns his head until his cheek is on the cold, wet tile and his mouth isn’t obstructed. “When I told you . . .” His lips feel loose, his tongue thick. He needs to sleep. He can’t outrun it anymore. Everything is too warm, too heavy . . . “What I told you . . . happened. What was me . . . was Shane.” One last push, with all the force he can manage, clearer words, louder voice. “Swap us over. Swap me with Shane. That’s . . . that’s the truth.”

He starts drifting off, feels the dark tide lapping at his feet, swirling around his ankles.

“You’re saying . . .” Ciara sounds so far away. “You’re saying that you started it? That you beat up Paul? That it was your idea to drown him?”

He opens his eyes.

All he can see are Ciara’s sneakers, inches from his face, but they’re red.

No, wait—everything is red. Like a filter.

Something is bleeding.He is.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes. That’s why . . . he attacked me . . . I wouldn’t tell the truth . . . He couldn’t go on . . . No one believing him.”

He hears Ciara crying, but he can’t console her.

He can’t do anything.

He tries to lift his head, but only manages to move it slightly, so that now he’s looking at tile.

And then he hears something else.

Feelssomething else.

Water.

Not just in his mind but here, in reality. And not a drip-drip-drip like before. This is a thundering downpour, splashing all around him, filling his head with its gushing sound.

And Ciara crying, still.

And then no more.

The tide is in.