❦ 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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You know that feeling you get when your entire reality comes crashing down on you? Have you ever felt like you couldn't breathe? Like someone is pushing you underwater? Like the world is caving in on you, the darkness eating away the light? Like someone has dropped the Moon on you and you've been trying to hold it up this whole time, but someone has come along and sapped all of your strength?
I'm standing here feeling all of those things dialled up to one hundred.
"You're screwing my brother!"
Ollie's wringing his hands with a distraught glint in his ocean eyes, them flicking between me and Frankie. His lips part to say something, but then he swallows his words and gnaws at his lower lip instead.
All my focus is on my sister, however, who is fixing me with a devastated expression that is like a bullet meeting its mark perfectly through my heart.
"Is it...Is it true?" she stutters, her eyes swimming with welling tears.
Her slight pause sends my head shaking left to right, first slowly and then fervently. "Frankie, it's not what you think."
"It's exactly what I think!" she screams. "You're...You're like..."
Her hands are shaking so violently she grasps one around the other to try and stop it.
"You're like Matt."
Panic claws up into my throat. My heart thumps into overdrive. My palms sweat just as much as what I feel on the back of my neck. My brain turns on the thrusters and flips into damage control mode.
"There's nothing going on between Oliver and I," I say.
A blatant, terrible lie that I can see absolutely shatters Ollie, betrayal carving agonizingly on his face. My chest tightens as I see that expression get worse and worse, and it hurts me just as bad because it's Hunter all over again.
"I saw you kiss him, Nick!" Frankie cries. "How can you say nothing is going on?" Her face contorts into pain. "How could you lie to me about this?"
I go to take my sister's hands. "Frankie, please, don't tell Mom and Dad about this. You can't say anything. Dad will send me away and—"
She rips her hands away. "You lied to me! How could you do this? How could you do this after what happened to Matt? You're going to tear us apart! Just like he did!"
Ollie takes a tentative step forward. "Please—"
"And you!" Frankie screams, whipping around to face him. "Don't you dare try to justify yourself in this. Don't you dare defend him."
"It's not his fault," he says in a soft tone.
"You're damn right it is!" She turns back to me. "I can't believe you're...you're...gay."
