❦ WINNER OF THE RIVETING WRITING CONTEST ❦
OLIVER IS DYING
With only months left to live at just seventeen, Oliver spends his remaining days of endless tests and debilitating drugs in the St. Andrews paediatrics ward planning his impending funeral...
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I'm sitting at the dining room table alone with my clasped hands in my lap, my knees pressed tightly together, my right heel picking at my left.
My eyes follow my father pacing back and forth. His fists are balling and releasing.
My mother is standing in the archway of the dining room with her arms wrapped around her thin frame. She looks about as terrified as I feel.
"Start explaining," Dad snarls in a low tone. "Now. And fast."
"What's there to explain?" I reply calmly.
"Don't backchat to me, Nicholas. You're skating on thin ice."
"I'm pretty sure I've fallen in at this point," I grumble under my breath.
I don't jump or flinch when Dad pounds his fists on the other side of table, fury cleanly etched on his face.
"I should send you far away," he threatens. "New Hope isn't far enough."
"Then why don't you? You did with Matt. Why not to your other pathetic excuse for a son?"
"Don't turn this into a pity party, Nick. Don't be so pathetic."
I stand. I stand so abruptly that the chair I'd been sitting on falls back, crashing to the floor.
"No, Dad, you are!" I point an angry finger at him. "You wanna know why I didn't tell you the truth? Because there's nothing—nothing—to make me think you'd be accepting of me."
"Of course, I'm not accepting of this lifestyle! You're an abomination!"
"Maybe I am," I say with a slow nod. "But you know what? Accept it or not, like it or not, I'm gay."
I take a shaky breath. "I'm gay, Dad."
Those two words. They're so heavy. They're weighed down by everything that matters to me—my parents, my friends, my sister, my life.
Ollie.
Ollie matters to me. He matters to me more than secrets and lies and what people think about who I really am. He matters more to me than what my father thinks of me and what my mother thinks she can sweep under the rug. He matters more to me than my sister's opinion on my distrust and dishonesty and deception. He matters more to me than those two words and the importance of them and having to admit them.
He matters more to me than everything.
"You're no different to your brother," Dad continues with a stab of a finger at me. "And I'll be damn sure to fix you like I did him."
"You didn't fix him!" I bellow back. "You ruined him! You destroyed him! He killed himself because you tried to change him." I splay my arms. "You tried to fix him when there was nothing wrong with him. Matt being gay wasn't his fault. And it's not my fault either."
