SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 029 ] the opposite of fear

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
the opposite of fear

AT DAWN, Sawyer met Oliver on the pitch. Without the Valium soaking through her veins, she felt more of an extension of the world than a paper entity, a flesh wound of a sharp-mind. Mornings like these she didn't want to watch pass her by through a drug-induced haze—for once the world wasn't in chaos because its chaos-makers were all asleep, and it felt like it was just the two of them, alone together, in this cold and lonely world. Later, she would miss the peace and quiet. It's the only thing she has come to look forward to.

As the slow light of day bleached the sky of the dark, as they became less shadow and emerged more person, Sawyer regretted not keeping up with a fitness routine over the summer as her lungs began to burn by the fifth round. But she pushed through the strain of her screaming calves and the stitch stabbing through her gut.

Almost in tandem, their breaths came out in clouds, cooling against the chilly air.

When they stopped back where they started, Sawyer rolled out her dew-damp ankles, strung so tight they ached. Oliver went straight for his water.

"I had a dream last night," Oliver said, panting only slightly, barely even winded, as he pulled the water bottle away from his mouth, "about my dad. A nightmare, kind of."

People rarely made an impression on Sawyer, who regarded the world with as much cold apathy as it prodded all her buttons, trying to incite a reaction. Out of pure stubbornness and spite, Sawyer had grown a tougher skin to block all of those triggers out—the small things didn't hurt as much any more. Unfortunately, that meant her perceptiveness was a little too dulled. In the slow genesis of her friendships—especially with Jeremy—she'd received a lot of flack for never noticing the little things, little hints they would drop here and there about gifts they would hope to receive on their birthdays. (Sawyer was an awful gift-giver, which meant she'd have to press her friends for a list of things they wanted, and she had no reserve about doing so.)

But the things she did notice were the things she remembered forever. Like pieces of furniture installed in the house in the back of her mind, she held onto the pieces of information in her eidetic memory. Bits and pieces like Quinn's favourite colour and her favourite song; Jeremy's birthday and his favourite Quidditch team; Rio's obsession with anarchy and expensive cars; and Marcus' childhood pet and the whole saga of the time his parents thought he'd contracted dragon pox, when it was actually chicken pox and the school almost lost one of its sponsors.

Bits and pieces that even time would never let her forget.

One more to add to the collection: Oliver's worst fear.

"I'm up there," Oliver continued, pulling the hem of his shirt up to wipe the sweat off his face with one hand, the other pointed to the sky, the space right by the goalposts. His voice was quiet as thunder. "And there's the crowd screaming. We're playing... I can't remember against who... but all of a sudden the Chaser's closing in, and they're lining up to score, and then it gets so quiet. And it's dark. Everything falls away into smoke and there's just me, waiting to block a goal. And my dad—" Oliver swallowed, brows furrowing, lids fluttering for a second— "he's in the stands on my right. Just him. No one else. And he's shouting at me, and I keep looking at him, and I'm distracted, and the other team scores. And the shouting gets louder."

Oliver paused, lips pulled into a hard line, a clouded expression on his face.

"What was he saying?" Sawyer asked, taking the water bottle out of his hands. She drained half of it in greedy gulps.

Oliver flicked her a troubled look, a haunted look in his eyes, like there's been a ghost he couldn't seem to shake. "He said I'll never be anything. I'll never be good enough. I should quit while I'm ahead."