Page 107 of 56 Days
She doesn’t close the door to the bathroom, and Oliver doesn’t want to go in there and loom over her while she’s being sick, so he waits in the doorway of the living room while she retches.
“I’m so sorry, Ciara,” he says. “I know those are just words, but I am. I’m so sorry I did this to you.”
After a while, she climbs to her feet, splashes some water on her face, and meets his eyes in the reflection in the mirror over the sink.
When she turns around to face him, she looks pale and broken.
“So who’s Laura?” she says.
“I don’t know. I don’t know her. But presumably, she’s found out where I am and is trying to get to me. To write about me, I suppose.”
“But you said you were Boy A and Boy B. She can’t report your name.”
“No, but... she could still cause trouble.” He pauses. “She already has.”
There’s a silence then that he doesn’t dare break, because he isn’t quite sure what is happening here.
Ciara is still here. That’s not what he was expecting.
And she’s asking questions, which... He doesn’t know what to make of that. But he’ll let her dictate these next few minutes. They can go at her pace.
He knows this must be a lot to take in.
“How did you get your scar?” she asks. “Really?”
“In the rec room at Oberstown.”
“What happened?”
She’s wrapped her arms around herself now; she looks likes she’s literally holding herself together. He wants to reach for her, wants to do theholding-togetherfor her, wants to tell her everything will be all right.
But he can’t. He doesn’t know if it will be.
“Shane did it to me,” he says.
She blinks at him. “What?”
“We’d been in a few years by then. He’d grown pretty disturbed. He just fell apart when we were in that place. Couldn’t cope at all. And he... he blamed me. For not sticking to the story, I suppose.”
Ciara is looking paler still.
“What happened in London?”
“I met someone,” Oliver says. “Lucy. And she was careless. I mean, I didn’t tell her the truth so she didn’t knownotto be, but... Reporters can’t print my name or show my face, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who wouldn’t know me, who wouldn’t recognize me, and go running off to Facebook or Twitter to tell everyone what I look like now and who I am. Guys I went to primary school with, old neighbors—relatives, even. No one apart from my brother really even speaks to me now. So I have to be careful. I don’t put anything online. But Lucy did. Instagram stories, with me in the background. I didn’t realize. And there’s all these forums, you see, where these nutjobs, these vigilante idiots who think it’s up to them to be judge and juryandthe prison system while they’re at it...” He shakes his head, angry at somelong-agomemory. “A picture from Lucy’s Instagram somehow made its way on there. Onto one of these forums. They couldn’t confirm it was me, of course. How would they know? There’s nothing to compare it to. But that didn’t stop them trying. They had Lucy’s name—from the account—and started messaging her, asking her questions, and thenshestarted askingmequestions...” He exhales. “I had to leave, to stop things from really blowing up.”
Ciara starts to cry.
“I have to, too,” she says, her voice wavering. “Now. I can’t stay.”
Oliver takes a step toward her, then another when she doesn’t react to the first.
He holds up his hands as if to signal that he comes in peace. She holds up hers to tell him not to come any closer.
He stops. “Can I hold your hand?”
She shakes her head but doesn’t move, doesn’t resist when he reaches out and takes it. He presses it to his chest, to his heart.
“This is me,” he says. “Here, now. Not that boy, thatchild, who was stupid and cruel and made a terrible,terriblemistake that he can never undo and never be sorry enough for and never take back but—”
