After Forever Ends (8 page)

"Us" was becoming a very important thing to him and me both. It was getting to a point where one of us was never mentioned without the other and neither of us made any plans that didn't include the other. Not because we weren't able and not because we didn't have the freedom to do it. I'd have let him go off with his mates as quickly as he'd have let me go off with mine. It was that neither of us wanted to. No matter what we did, we wanted to do it together.

Unfortunately, that didn't always happen. Oliver had a keen mind and a restlessness that drove him to take chances. He was always up to something or other. Usually it was harmless pranks or general nonsense that he and Alexander and their mates did for entertainment and thrills, but sometimes he'd take it a little too far and pay the price for it.

Alexander popped in another afternoon with a different explanation as to why Oliver couldn’t come. This time Alex was quite animated and not at all interested in reading books or being quiet. He strode into the infirmary and past the rows of beds, taking just a second to acknowledge one girl and wish her a speedy recovery. He then hurried to the side of my bed and yanked out the chair with a scratch against the tile.

“Silvia!” He leaned forward and kissed my cheek, "Josh McGuigan got him!”

“What do you mean? Where’s Oliver?”

Alex laughed. He had the nicest laugh, something of a chuckle from inside his throat, but when something struck him as particularly funny it was a broken cackle. Not wanting to set his full blown cackle free, he sort of squeaked and covered his mouth with his fist. He dropped it as he spoke, “In Madame Pennyweather’s office and I imagine he’ll be there for quite a while! It was bloody brilliant, Sil, what Josh did! You should have seen it!”

“What happened? No one got hurt, did they?”

“Oh, no! Not at all! We were in literature, mind, with Professor Lucas, and she told Oliver it was his turn to read. So Ollie stands up in front of the entire class and opens his book and his mouth kind of falls open and just stands there staring at the page. It was odd. Then he’s flipping through the pages like mad, right? Front to back, back to front and suddenly he starts laughing. Well, Lucas is like, ‘What are you laughing about?’ and Ollie tries to stop. He says real seriously, ‘Nothing, Ma’am, but I can’t read this’ and she says, ‘You can’, and he’s like, ‘No, Ma’am, I really cannot read this’. By now he’s being ultra-serious, mind. And he sounded all stern-like, just like our Dad. His face was blood red, though. I mean, even his neck was red like a blooming cherry. He looked very strange. I was sitting there wondering what was wrong with my brother, knowing he was very uncomfortable-like, and Lucas says, ‘I said read it, Oliver, or it’s detention!’ and Ollie says, ‘Really, Ma’am, it’s detention if I do read it!’ And she got angry and she yelled, “READ IT!” Alexander was speaking rapidly, tapping his fingers together in delight as he told the story. I’d rarely seen such entertainment on his face, “So Oliver takes a deep breath and he says, ‘All right, Ma’am, but I want you to know that I’m not responsible for the content of these pages. I wish you’d have a look…’ Now she’s ticked off, so she shouts again, ‘I SAID READ IT!’ Ollie took a breath and he says…” Alexander at this point could hardly speak he was laughing so hard. I could see tears filling up in his eyes. He squeaked again as he pinched out the words, “He says…he reads…out loud, mind you, ‘The police officer plopped me down on the bonnet of my car and shoved my skirt up past my waist. He tore my knickers away like they were made of cellophane and began licking me as if he were starving’!”

“WHAT?” My chin almost hit the mattress. “He did not! Wait! Who put that--”

“Josh!” Alex was struggling to speak through his laughter, or at least to keep his voice down. He wrapped his arms around his middle and shook. He wiped the tears out of his eyes, “Josh stole Ollie’s textbook out of his bag during lab this morning and he glued all kinds of nasty bits inside. I went up to the desk when Professor Lucas was chasing Ollie down the hall and I had a look at the thing. Filth’s on every page, you can’t even see the original text! I mean, it’s really disgusting stuff, Silvia! Pornographic pictures, dirty literature, ads for sex toys, male prostitutes, old ladies, he-she’s, sheep…you name it. Josh had to be collecting these bits for weeks! He gave the book back to Ollie just before class. He says, ‘Here, Mate, you left this in Chemistry’ and Ollie just took it and said thanks. He didn’t even think about it! Never saw it coming! Clever bastard that Josh! I didn’t know he had it in him! That’s the best one he’s done yet! I‘m so proud of him! He‘s like a son to me now!”

I couldn’t stop laughing. I thought back on all the pranks Oliver had pulled on Josh just in the time I’d known him, everything from the exploding Eppenndorf vials to super gluing the poor boy’s daps to the floor of his gym locker. Josh had fired back with putting Vaseline in Oliver‘s shorts and cutting the toes out of his socks, but nothing like he‘d just done. “Oh, he got him good! Good for Joshua!”

“Lucas freaked out, of course. She went white then pink and started screaming. Couldn’t understand a word she was saying, mind. She was just squawking like a chicken, then she hit Oliver like ten times with her lesson planner and chased him out of the room, beating him with it the whole way down the hall. He was like…fending her off,” Alexander imitated his brother by bending his arms and holding them as if to block blows, “We were all watching by the doorway. It was brilliant! By the time she got back we were passing the book around and the whole room was rolling,” He leaned back in his chair, satisfied that he’d gotten the story out, “Joshua looked so smug, the little bugger. Anyway, Ollie knows the drill. He went straight to see Pennyweather. He’s been there for over an hour. I don’t know if he’ll be coming to see you tonight or not. He might really be in trouble.”

“Oh, they have to know he didn’t do this himself!”

“Ollie won’t rat Josh out and he won’t pin it on anybody else, either. He might have to take the knock for it himself if Professor Lucas wants blood.”

“True. Poor Oliver. But it is hysterical.”

“Aye,” Alex nodded, “It is that. I just hope they don’t tell our parents. Dad will have a stroke!”

Oliver ended up going without being punished as Professor Lucas and Madame Pennyweather both agreed they believed he had been the victim of a distasteful prank. Oliver never did turn Josh in for his crime, either. He simply said that there was a lot of teasing going on amongst the boys on that floor and it really could have been anybody. However, I noticed shortly after that he, Alex, Lance and Merlyn were suddenly collecting newspapers of all sorts and that when they’d get passes to go into town they’d each come back with rolls of duct tape. I knew that they’d been having some of the girls in our form nick bags of flour from the kitchen during cooking classes. They went about this for about two months and never told me what they were up to, but in the end I heard that somebody had made a paper mache wall so thick it took an electric saw and a sledge hammer to break through it.

The story that was whispered throughout the halls was that in the middle of a dark Friday night, this person, or persons, as it may have been, sneaked out of quarters and placed this object, which was just slightly larger than the door frame, over the entrance to Josh McGuigan’s room. They then used some sort of sealant to cement it into place against the wall. This left Josh and his unfortunate dorm mate unable to open their door the next morning no matter how hard they pushed and slammed themselves against it. Nobody bothered to notify staff right away, as I suppose it was more entertaining to watch them struggle to escape their paper mache prison. When a prefect finally happened by and saw the monstrosity over the door and heard the boys pounding against it from the other side, help was finally hailed. It took another hour to get one of the groundskeepers, as it was then Saturday, to come to finally free the boys. It was said, too, that later, after swearing to Madame Pennyweather he had no idea who’d sealed him in, Josh McGuigan walked over to Oliver Dickinson’s room, knocked on the door, and shook his hand.

But long before that happened, I got over my ailment and was returned to the student population. It became appallingly obvious that I had fallen behind in my studies. I couldn’t deal with that. I was used to being the know-it-all at the head of almost every subject and the idea that I didn’t know every detail of every topic that had been covered made me wonky. Oliver and I only shared one class together, which was Physics. It was quite ironic because I needed to study up on what I had missed and poor Oliver was not getting the class through his head in the slightest. We had special permission from the professor one Thursday night to stay in the common room after curfew to work together on an essay. “Help each other out,” She had said. So there we were sitting in the common room alone on a couch in front of the fireplace with our books and papers laid out on a table before us and if you think we were actually working on that essay you are out of you bloody mind.

“Two days until Spring break,” Oliver grinned at me. The firelight caught in his eyes. He really did have beautiful eyes, so dark they were nearly black in that light, but still bright at the same time, as if they were able to absorb every bit of light around him and send it back.

“I know! I’m so excited! But what if your parents hate me?”

“Oh, they won’t hate you, take my word. My dad’s a bit of a nag. He’ll ask you a ton of questions and make you feel like you’re on trial, but he’s more or less harmless. He just thinks he has to know everything. Oh, and he’ll yell at Alexander and me as soon as he gets through the door. ‘Get down here and put away your daps!’ He’ll shout, but it’s OK. It makes him feel like he’s done something important for Mum.” He paused, as if considering this, “Plus, he likes yelling at us, so sometimes we do things to give him a reason. You can just ignore him. And as far as Mum, she’s got a sense of humour. You can get her going with a good joke, but she’s a high strung sort, so don’t mention any catastrophic bits of news, do not discuss politics and leave religion as far from the conversation as possible. She loves to serve tea, so have tea with her and make sure you eat whatever she puts on your plate. Keep telling her everything she cooks is wonderful, which it generally is, and you’ll be fine. Alexander and I have talked about you. I know she’ll love you to bits.”

I leaned forward and kissed him quickly, “Thank you for putting in the kind word. You know I’m scared to death, don’t you?”

Oliver looked at me thoughtfully and took my hand into his own. “Don’t be scared, Sil. Not of my parents. They're all right. There’s not a thing about you that they wouldn’t like and even if they did find something, I wouldn’t care. I would never change my mind about you.”

He kissed me again. We sat for a long moment with our foreheads together and our fingers intertwined. “We should probably work on the essay,” I finally said. “What will we tell the professor if we come in tomorrow and have nothing done?”

He sighed, “Aye, we maybe should.”

But of course we didn’t. We were too distracted by each other to even turn a page and by the time we got serious enough to try our time was up and Professor Wilson swept us out of the common room and in opposite directions to our dormitories.

I spent the first week of break at my house, teetering between melancholies and ringing Oliver. My father had to work the day I was supposed to arrive at the Dickinson’s, so I took the train by myself. It was a long, boring ride. I had a book, but I couldn't concentrate on reading it. I was too excited about seeing him and too nervous about meeting his parents. What would they look like? What would they think of me? What if they absolutely hated me? I wasn't rich like the girls Alexander dated. I wasn't the prettiest girl at school. I checked my reflection in the window and tried to smooth down my curly hair, wishing I'd put my comb into my purse where I could get to it easily and not packed it into my bag. The train rocked and rumbled and I stared out the window at the passing fields and hills, marvelling at how true it was that Wales was overwhelmed with sheep.

When the train stopped at Welshpool Station, I was shaking. It was my need to be close to Oliver that kept me from feeling sick to my stomach and my legs sturdy under me. As I stepped off, I saw Oliver and his family waiting for me down the platform.

“There she is!” Oliver exclaimed, holding out his arms, “There's my Sil!”

We rushed to each other, but stopped just in time before we did something inappropriate like press together and exchange tongues right in front of his parents. Instead, we gave each other a respectable hug and kiss on the cheek.

“Hello, Sil!” He gave me a look that said he would not disappoint me later. That right eyebrow shot straight up, the grin went sideways and the dimple in his cheek appeared. I immediately began to giggle like a fool.

Alexander rolled his eyes, “Hello, Silvia,” He said idly. He leaned down and pecked me square on the lips. Keeping his face still close to mine, he looked deep into my eyes and said, “Good to see you.”

God, he was a serious player. Even though I knew he was toying with the situation, it was not difficult to recognize the power he held over just about any heterosexual woman alive.

“It’s OK if you do it!” Oliver mumbled, referring to the peck, “If I kissed her on the mouth they’d put her straight back on the train, wouldn’t they?”

“Works in my favour for once, doesn’t it?” He looked at his brother from the corner of his eye, “Ha-ha, Oliver! I get to kiss Silvia! I get to snog your girlfriend! Ha-ha!”

“Shut up.”

Oliver’s mother appeared beside them. She hugged me as if I was the child of an old friend she hadn't seen since birth. She didn't look like I'd imagined her. She was smaller and plumper than I expected her to be, standing only about to my nose with middle almost as big around as her chest. She had cute, round face, though, gorgeous skin, and big hazel-blue eyes which she fixed on me interestedly. “It’s so nice to finally put a face to the voice on the telephone!” She held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. Her short blonde hair shimmered silver in the sun, “My goodness, the boys were right about you being pretty! Beautiful eyes, lovely smile…and where did you get that gorgeous red hair? Is that colour real?” I nodded. She gave me another quick squeeze. “Welcome, Silvia! We’re so glad to have you!”