The Missing O

Oliver’s childhood room resembled nothing of his new apartment. The walls were royal blue, littered with scrappy corners from where posters had been torn down, not so attentively. His bed was single, with a metal frame and plain covers, no cushions or little green bunny like the one that sat in his double bed. The room has been gutted of all his belongings, all of Oliver. The only thing that was really in there was a few old football trophies and some Drop Dead boxes.

Oliver sat on his bed, and creaked at his slightest movement, and again after I’d shut the door at sat down at opposite end from him. I looked around me, wishing that I had more to distract me, and clasped my hands together. Among the large cardboard boxes, were two huge, black duffel bags with one of Oliver’s hoodies thrown over.

“You haven’t been back to the apartment yet?” I asked, nodding at the luggage.

Oliver shook his head, and for a moment I thought he might not speak. “No,” he said airily, as if he were focused on something else. “Mum and Dad picked me up from the airport, so I came back here for a shower and tea. Long flight.”

“Where’ve you flown from?” I asked. It hadn’t even occurred to me all this time exactly how far the band could have travelled. I’d gathered from the internet that they were successful, but I didn’t know how many corners of the earth that success stretched to.

“We flew from Japan to France, then got a plane over here. Morgan, you’re avoiding why we’re here.” He said pointedly, with a hint of a sigh at the end.

I could tell both of us were reluctant, neither wanting to give in and confront the facts. But Oliver was being the bigger person, the adult, and stepping forward. Trouble was, even if we played dress up, I think both he and I were still just kids, on the inside.

Both of us had been deprived of what could be considered an average teenage life. Oliver had been living in a jet-set wonderland where by day he boasted his bands sound, by night he backed it up with a brutal performance - and from what I’d read, supposedly drinking himself to sleep. With Charlie’s pregnancy, and Kaitlyn, and having to move out and be parents so young, we’d missed out on a lot too. Maybe Oliver and I weren’t mature enough yet.

“I just - I don’t know. I feel like I’ve been lied to, by everyone.” It wasn’t a conclusion, or even a short summation of how betrayed I felt. But at least it was an introduction.

“Matt and Tom. And Charlie. They didn’t tell you because I asked them not to,” he said. “Don’t be angry at them for it.”

“I’m not angry. I’m hurt, Oli,” I muttered. I want to fling myself back onto the bed, but I wasn’t relaxed enough. So I settled for folding my legs beneath me and tucking my hair behind my ear.

Oliver inched closer. “I didn’t want that to happen. To make you feel that way, it isn’t want I was trying to do. I was trying to…I don’t know, protect you from it.”

“From what? Who you really are?”

He thought, looking at me intently, his chin resting in his hand, his brow pulled together to meet with a crease. “Maybe,” he mused. “Maybe who I am, with the band isn’t someone I wanted you to know. There’s so much shit that surrounds us - me and the guys. It’s hectic as fuck, and we’re rarely home- ”

“What about all the time we were-” I tried to think of a better word, but failed to do so. “The time we were together.”

“We’ve been on a break. The band toured for pretty much eighteen months straight, so we took some time to be at home. But we’ve just done a tour, and it’s festival season coming up. Plus we’ve got to start writing for the new album, as well as all the press we’ll be doing between now and the next leg…”

I was astonished. “That all sounds quite overwhelming.”

“Morgan, that’s what I’m saying!” He wiped a hand down his face, showing his fatigue. Only then did I notice the slight gauntness to his face, the shallowness of his eyes. “All this stuff,” he said quietly. “It seems glamorous at first. But it’s hard. And a complete turn off.”

“Oli, I told you, the money thing doesn’t-”

“I’m not talking about money. Christ, I give you more credit than that, Morgan. You’re not just another groupie, or some girl trying to get on our bus. And because you’re not just one of those girls, it makes everything so much harder. If you’d have known, you’d have looked forward and seen that I’d never be here. I wouldn’t be there for you, not to be there when you needed me.”

His eyes bore into me and I let the hair fall back from behind my ear. Oliver had always struck me as attractive, it was something that I was always aware of. But whenever he looked at me, I always felt completely stricken. It never got old.

“What if I don’t need you?” I could hear myself, sounding just like the girl that had pushed Oliver away in his apartment. Oliver looked at me, and he saw that girl again, and I saw the same rejection in his eyes. But I wasn’t that girl anymore. Not completely. “At least not all the time. Oliver, I’m not like Charlie. I don’t need constant attention and presents and fancy meals out to remind me of what I want. I think, maybe, I’d be able to deal with it.”

Between that moment, where my stomach crunched together with the reality of what it was I’d just told him, and then the next when I heard Tom’s music turn up, and Oliver was closer to me than he’d been in what felt like decades, I realised that this could be it.

It could be the turning point for me, whether Oliver and I happened or not. He’d been the catalyst that had cause a reaction inside of me, something that had made me realise that I couldn’t be this shell for ever. I had to make myself get out there, had to stand up for myself. It made me realise that I couldn’t ignore my mothers letters anymore, and I couldn’t keep being in denial over the fact that Charlie’s and I’s relationship was disintegrating.

But I couldn’t do anything about those things right now, so instead I focused on Oliver’s hand resting above my hip and how he was leaning down. Closer, closer, closer.

“So…we’re good now?” he asked, hushed, nose sliding against mine.

I breathed, panicking, but riding with it. I smiled, the skin of my upper lip brushing his lower. “Yeah. We’re good.”

One instant later, my chest melted, the skin where his clasped mine was burning, and with every touch and kiss, Tom’s music grew distant and all I saw was us.

* * *

Marlow had expected the Others to resemble aliens, or some sort of wraith. But upon herself and Marlow trying to make a quick exit through the garden of the Inn, four of them appeared seemingly out of nowhere, enclosing them in a tight circle, the air closing in around her throat, leaving Marlow petrified from the finest fibre on the head, right down to the last skin cell on her toe.

Kid, beside her, his warm arm clamped even tighter now, came across as unfazed. She’d not have known his true state if it wasn’t for his nails digging into his elbow, or his ribs quivering against hers.

“Hello, Jonathan,” One of the others said. This one hair stark white hair, pale skin that was ghostly under the half moon that was peeking between the dark, smoky clouds. It was too dark to tell, but Marlow thought that he might have had bright blue eyes. “Long time no see.”

“Don’t embarrass him, Xander,” another one of the Others said, this one female with a strawberry blonde pony tail. “He doesn’t answer to that anymore. It’s Kid, right boy?”

“I don’t answer to any of you at all,” Kid spat, pulling Marlow in closer and closer every second. The young girl, stunned into silence, felt like she could vomit.

“Now, now!” Xander sneered, an evil grin stretching his almost translucent lips, the blood beneath the thin sheet of skin not enough to lighten his complexion. “We’ll have not of that. We’re all friends here. You’ll get yourself into a lot of bother with an attitude like that you know.”

The group let out a low unanimous laugh that chilled the two to the bone. Marlow felt like a victim of bullying, being circled by the older kids in the playground. All she could do was close her eyes and wait for the fist to smack her between the eyes.

“Don’t make a fuss, boy,” the girl said. “Come quietly, and no one will be hurt. Yet.”

The group cackled again, and with eyes still shut, Marlow was pushed and shoved through the darkness. If it wasn’t for Kid holding on tightly, and whispering that everything would be fine, she would have been a hyperventilating mess, curled up in the foetal position on the ground.

They travelled a long time, and fumbling through the darkness that was forced behind her eyelids, Marlow had to sense her way through the journey. She knew she’d been in a car for an hour or so - an hour that was filled with mutterings from the Others and a keep-calm from Kid. If they’d ever wanted to melt into one another before, it was now.

It wasn’t until the car had stopped and she was pushed out into cold and the feel of heavy rain that Marlow opened her eyes. She’d lost Kids touch. She saw him, his auburn hair hanging in thick strands over his grievous face, feet in head being forced forward by one of the two that hadn’t spoken.

The girl had hold of Marlow, her hand dug into her arm, but it felt nothing like Kid’s hand had done. Her skin was clammy and cold, like having a fever tighten around you limb.

Panning up the huge building, with long Victorian windows, yellow stone holdings, an intricate roofing pattern, and a dark, grizzly feel to the entire place, Marlow realised that the two of them might not be getting out of this. At least not together.