After Forever Ends (18 page)

They looked at each other with wide eyes and expressions that mocked a child who had been scolded. “Wow!” Alexander pointed at me, “Don’t anybody stick a pin in her!”

“Right then! That’s it!” Oliver reached over and flipped my text book shut.

“Why did you do that?” I squealed. I slammed my hands on to the table.

Alexander yanked the book away from the front of me. I made a grab for it, but Oliver swooped down and scooped me up from around the waist. “Hey! Put me down!” I cried as he lifted me and out of my chair. “Hey! Hey! Stop it! Put me down!” I screamed again as he hoisted me over his shoulder and began to carry me out of the room. “I’m in a skirt, You Twit!”

He clapped his hand on my bum as if to keep the skirt decent and continued walking. The crowd roared and cheered. I could feel my face burning blood red. I looked up through the hair covering my eyes to see everybody in the room laughing and pointing.

“Bring her back safe!” Alexander beamed as he called out over the clapping and howls that filled the room.

“Oh, I will, don’t you worry!” Oliver replied. Without looking back he continued through the door, down the corridor and straight out of the building.

“Put me down!” I hit him on his back. It had no effect. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I wasn’t angry, exactly, but I was a little more than annoyed and confused. Oliver ignored my protests. “Put me down or I’ll scream!”

“You’re already screaming,” He told me. “Nobody’s coming, eh?”

Oliver walked with me over his shoulder all the way to the lake before he set me down ankle deep in snow. “Don’t you say a word!” He put his fingers over my lips. “I know it’s cold. Just give me a minute-like.”

“Can I go back in where it’s warm if I do?”

“Yes.”

“All right, then, make it quick.”

He put his hands on my shoulders, “We’re playing a game. You do what I say.”

“Doesn’t sound fair.” I crossed my arms in front of me. I was freezing.

“Trust me, Sil. Shut your eyes.” I did. He walked around me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Now, relax and take a few deep breaths. Not like that! That’s more like hyperventilating! Do it for real! Deep, long breaths. Feel the cold air in your lungs.” I took a few deep breaths, “Let your shoulders fall. Relax your neck,” He put his chin on my shoulder and moved us in a half circle. “Now, pretend that Cardiff University does not exist. Pretend that nothing exists at all. Pretend that nothing is real but you and me, Sil, standing in the snow on a cold December’s eve just before Christmas. Just you and me in the still keeping each other as warm as we can. Let yourself be quiet and listen to the night. Tell me what you hear.”

We stood there for a long time. “I can hear an owl,” I whispered. “What’s that creaking?”

“It’s the ice on the lake,” He whispered back.

We stood there for another moment. “I can hear you breathing.”

He laughed quietly.

“It’s like I can hear the air. It’s like I can almost hear the cold buzzing in my ears.”

“Good. Now I want you to open your eyes and look up, but remember that it’s just you and me…just us…”

I opened my eyes. The sky above us was unbelievably beautiful, filled with millions of stars. In the middle of it all, right above us, was the largest, silver moon I had ever seen. Without thinking about what I was doing, I lifted my arm and reached out to touch it.

“This is what it means to be alive, Silvia,” Oliver whispered into my ear, “The cold on your skin, the owls hooting and the ice creaking. That mind blowing black sky with a zillion sparkles in it. That big old moon in the middle shining down…that’s what it is to be alive. All of that and you and me and the rest just doesn’t matter.”

I turned. As beautiful as it was, all I wanted was to see was his face.

He took my hands in his and warmed them with his breath, then put them against his chest, “I love you, Silvia. I have always loved you. I loved you before forever began and I’ll love you still after forever ends.”

“I love you, too, Oliver. I always have.”

“Then come back to me?” His voice was as soft as his eyes, “Stay with me this time? I miss you when you go.”

I buried my face into his shirt, “I’ll stay with you for always if you’ll keep me.”

“Ah, Silly Sil,” He massaged the back of my head with his fingers, “I’ll keep you for always and then some.”

We stood in each other’s arms looking up at the sky for a long time.

“Silvia?”

“Yes?”

“I can’t feel my toes.”

“Me either. Let’s go inside.”

“One promise first?” He stared down into my eyes.

“Anything.”

“It’s Friday night,” He said gently, “Everybody’s in a good mood. Promise me no books until Sunday. Sit around with me. Let me have my Sil back.”

“That sounds like the most wonderful idea ever.”

We walked back to the school hand in hand. As we entered, Headmistress Pennyweather was passing through the hall with a pile of file folders in her arms. “Good evening,” She smiled and nodded her head at us, “The opinion of most from the seventh year common room is that you would make a fine caveman, Mister Dickinson, carrying your best girl off on your back out into the snow. I hope that the cold air has brought you back to your senses.”

“Yes, ma’am. Both of us it has.” He replied.

She gave him a look that said she was amused, but he needed to watch his step. “I am glad to see you made it back by the curfew bell. You two should return to your common room. The other Mister Dickinson has pilfered a large beach ball from the gymnasium and Merlyn Pierce has managed to wire a portable karaoke machine up to a loud speaker. There is…pardon me for using a phrase I am far too old to be using…a party banging up in the house.”

“Bloody excellent!” Oliver exclaimed with a grin that would have taken any woman off her feet.

Headmistress Pennyweather’s catlike eyes moved from Oliver to me. She continued to smile pleasantly as she shifted the files in her arms, “I really must go. Please inform Mister Pierce that that tampering with school property is a punishable offence. I am very busy, however, and I might forget that he did it at all if the loudspeaker is fully functional in the morning. We do have amplifiers in the music room that may be used with permission from Professor Adkins, for future reference. As well, Mister Dickinson,” Her eyes flashed back to Oliver before she turned on her heel to leave, “Tell your brother to return the ball in the morning and that I want the painting he made on the inside of his cubboard door removed tonight. He’s quite a clever artist, but it cannot remain. If word of it got out he was creating new depictions of professors he could wind up in detentions again. I am certain you didn’t have anything to do with it yourself.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him,” Oliver gave her a wave, admitting nothing, “Have a good evening, Headmistress.”

“See you two at breakfast,” She sang as she strolled away.

Oliver had been right. Sitting around our common room laughing hysterically at our fellow seventh years belting out karaoke was all the medicine I needed to sort out my priorities. Well, that and shamelessly snogging him on the couch in front of the entire student body. The highlight of the evening was when Alexander, Nina Jacoby and Deidre McDaniel, did a searing rendition of Doctor and the Medics “Spirit in the Sky”, complete with Alexander “going on up” by climbing the tapestry. Later, accompanied by Merlyn and Lance, they danced the entire dance from the Cure’s Why Can’t I Be You? video while Ian Phelps sang it. Quite well, too. When the final bell rang at a quarter to midnight signalling us all that it was time to return to our dorm rooms, Oliver and I were the last to leave. He reluctantly walked me to the entrance of the girl’s dormitory and gave me one last lingering kiss on the lips.

“I love you, Sil.” He held me close like he didn’t want to let go.

It was the second time he’d said it. I didn’t think I could ever hear it enough. “I love you.”

“Good night,” He took a step backward, “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

“Sausages and eggs,” I named his favourite morning foods.

“And bacon and toast,” He named mine.

“See you then, Sweetheart.”

“See you then,” He didn’t leave. The midnight bell rang.

“Run, Oliver! You’ll get detention if you get caught in the halls after twelve!” I opened the door and stepped through the threshold. “Leg it! Go!”

“I love you!” He hissed, spinning on his toes and taking off at a sprint.

“I love you, too!” I hissed back, but I was sure he did not hear me. He was already down the hall and around the corner, his long legs moving him to his own dormitory as quickly as they could take him.

There wasn’t anything after that night that could have possibly made me sad. I had what I had always wanted. I had someone who loved me and someone whom I could love the same in return. Oliver and I had no fear of each other. The whole, ugly world drained away around us until there was nothing left but him and me and whatever it was we were laughing about at the moment. We had heaven in each other.

I still worked hard for that scholarship. I still studied and sometimes I got a stressed, but I knew in the end it didn’t really matter. No matter what happened, no matter where we ended up, he and I would be together. It was really the only thing that mattered to me.

Almost through our final term of school that year, spring break came around. Oliver and Alexander had set up a camping and fishing trip for the two of them at the cabin their father had inherited from their late Grandfather. It was actually a decoy so that Alex could have a rendezvous with Meredith at her uncle’s cottage in Chipping Norton while the uncle was on holiday. Meredith and I conspired to tell my father that she needed me to stay with her to house sit. He agreed, as I knew he would, never asking a question other than the address. Hence, Alexander and Meredith were free to have their affair and Oliver and I were on our own for nearly two weeks.

Ollie and Alex said they needed a night to get the cabin in order, so the two of them headed out of Bennington with their mother and I left off with Meredith that Friday evening for her uncle’s cottage. I had never spent any real time alone with her other than in the corridors at school and I was not sure how we were going to get on, but the truth was once we got out of the confines of Bennington and her guard was down, she was really quite charming. I could see why Alexander liked her. She was funny in a sort of childish way and had keen, if not a bit rose tinted, insight into the world. Her uncle had stocked the ice box, so she and I prepared a buffet of expensive foods and spread it out in the sitting room. She changed into her pyjamas before it was even dark and brought blankets in. We sat and talked most of the night. Or, rather, she talked and I listened.

It was a bit disconcerting. She was so besotted with Alexander that you would have thought that the sun rose and set only for him. “I love his laugh,” She told me and I had to agree. Alexander and Oliver both had an infectious chuckle, “And his eyes. And the way he looks at down at me just before he kisses me...” She drew her breath and smiled dreamily.

I didn't say much at all when she'd go on about him. I felt bad because I knew that Alexander was becoming quite bored and annoyed with her and this holiday was a last ditch effort to rekindle any kind of interest on his part. He'd told me that himself, that he'd about had it with her whining and clinging to him all the time. I think Meredith knew it, too, but she was not ready to let go of the fantasy element of the relationship. In her mind, Alex was the perfect man. Demented, really, as he was back to not being very nice to anyone, including her.

The twins had their mother’s car when they arrived late Saturday afternoon. Meredith and I had been watching for them all day, so we both saw them coming up the drive and raced into the garden to meet them. As he got out on the passenger's side, Meredith threw herself into Alexander’s arms and met him with a long, sloppy kiss.

Ollie covered his mouth as if he was holding back vomit and tossed Alex’s bag on to the grass, right over the top of the car. “All right, all right, you two! Take it indoors!” He said playfully, but Alex and I both knew he was serious.

“Right then, we will!” Alexander picked up the bag and put his arm around Meredith, “Happy camping, you two!”

Ollie and I watched them disappear inside the house.

“Let’s go!” I was so excited I couldn’t stand it. I climbed into the car, “Come on, Ollie! I can’t wait to see the cabin!”

He’d told me so much about it I couldn’t linger. Plus, I didn’t want to wait anymore to be alone with him.

“I give them the week before one of them’s lobbing butcher’s knives around the kitchen at the other,” Oliver shook his head as he eased into the driver’s seat. “Alexander’s out of his bloody mind with that one. She’s completely mental. Ever seen Fatal Attraction? I hope there aren’t a lot of small animals at the cottage. Oh, look, a baby cat!” He pointed at a cat sleeping in the sun in front of the garage, “Run! Run away, little puss! Run away now! Or it’s in the boiling pot for you!”

I tossed my bag into the back and threw my arms around his neck. I kissed him hard on the mouth. “A whole night and I missed you so much! I kept waking up thinking I heard the car.”

“I would have come sooner if I could have, but the cabin was kind of a shambles. No one’s been there for a while, so it needed a lot of work to make it liveable-like. I had to chase out the spiders for you.” He winked and then kissed me again, “You smell fantastic.”

“It’s new lotion. Meredith gave it to me. Do you like it?”

“Oh, yes. Keep using that.” He gave me a long stare, his dark eyes wandering over my face, “Sometimes it still shocks me how pretty you are.”

“Wow, I think I’m blushing,” I answered as I belted myself in.

“I’m so bleedin’ lucky!“ He put the car in gear, “Ready then? It’s a long enough drive, but first we’ve got some shopping to do.”

I’ll never forget the feeling of complete freedom as we drove out of England. It was truly just us for the first time ever. Nobody of authority knew where we were or where we were going. We had nobody we needed to ring to let know we were fine, no curfew to answer. We blasted down the M54 with the windows down and the radio up listening to the Cure, talking and laughing as he purposely hit puddles along the road to see if he could get me wet. We stopped at a grocer’s on the border of Wales and bought a few days worth of non-perishables and then popped into a tiny restaurant for supper where we got the giggles and sat snorting while the waitress shot us dirty looks. It was dark by the time we came out, holding hands and still laughing so hard we must have seemed mentally impaired.