CHAPTER FOURTEEN
merry christmas, kiss my ass

ONE WEEK TURNS INTO TWO WEEKS, two weeks melt into three, then the cold air eats up a month, and by the first week of November, the first match of the Quidditch season is upon them. Between the avalanche of schoolwork and revision, Quidditch practices had become more and more intensive, more taxing on the body and Sawyer's patience. In the morning and late evenings, private training with Violet and Harry remained a consistent, merciless demand of effort. The stress continued eating away at Violet, but she was finally heeding both Oliver and Sawyer's advice to focus on keeping her health in check. To some degree, the cracks had begun to show on Oliver, too, though there was no denying the laser-focus in his eyes. Harry seemed more and more worried by the day, considering November was encroaching.

October had been liquified in Sawyer's memory. Only a hazy, nebulous blur in periphery; of training, ignoring letters from her mother, trying to make sense of her homework, and weekly meetings with Dumbledore.

Violet's three-week probation had slipped into oblivion too. When they'd first picked out team members, Sawyer had chosen to fight for Violet's spot on the available Beater position. Despite being generally inclusive and encouraging, the other members found Violet a baffling choice for a position that demanded thrice as much upper body strength than the others, and weren't so certain of Sawyer's unshakeable decision. Nia had given them a window of three weeks to get her up to speed. And finally, after a gruelling training session, Violet was declared passable. She was to stay.

Training sessions with the Hufflepuff team, on the other hand, were amping up in brutality in quick succession. Rising tension between players wasn't uncommon, and Hufflepuffs handled the tricky situation better than the other teams. But Nia frowned each time their Quaffles couldn't make it pass the Keeper, and the Chasers had begun to exchange snide, passive-aggressive remarks between each other. Once the team was let off the pitch for breaks, nobody talked to each other. Even in the locker room, none of them could look each other in the eye for long. Sawyer kept to herself anyway, only sitting by Violet, unaffected by the tension.

"You're going to pop a vein if you keep worrying yourself like that," Sawyer had said, taking a sip from her water bottle while they lounged on the bench in the changing rooms, watching the other girls slowly trickle out in a barely contained storm of electric aggravation.

"How are you so cool about this?" Violet asked, brows furrowing.

Sawyer shrugged. "It's just a game. Everyone here treats it like it's their lifeline, and Nia wants the Cup so badly she's fracturing herself and her team over it. Learn to detach yourself from Quidditch. It'll do you some good."

Violet considered Sawyer's words for a moment. "I don't think that's entirely true. We're like this because we care. We want a shot at winning. I'd rather this over apathy."

There was that word again. Want. What did Sawyer want?

"Suit yourself," Sawyer said, and left Violet alone in the changing rooms to get to dinner.

Flash-forward: the first week of November with its chilly wind biting at her skin like wolves with ice for teeth. In the Quidditch stands, the crowds are deafening, a disorienting inferno of red in the Gryffindor section roars with House spirit, all false bravado and crimson fire. On the opposite end, Slytherin, all decked out in the green scarves and elegant banners flashing fangs at the opposing houses gleams with pride. A sea of royal blue washes over the Ravenclaw's section of the stands, regal and chanting. In the Hufflepuff stands, the yellow is blinding, swallowing them like the sun. Stone-faced and bored, Sawyer sits in her corner of the stands alone. All around her, the house colours flash in periphery. There's no escaping the noise, the pounding heartbeat of house spirit.

Last night, Quinn had turned down the offer to accompany Sawyer to the first inter-house match of the season, claiming she didn't like big, rowdy crowds. Sawyer couldn't blame her. This crowd was riotous.

Tugging on the green Slytherin scarf wrapped in a lethargic attempt to display some solidarity, Sawyer watches the players—a clash of red and green—on the ground, gathered around Madam Hooch. She toys with the frayed edges. A girl—Janie from Herbology, Sawyer remembers—beside her peers at her with a hesitant curiosity.

"Aren't you dating Oliver Wood?" Janie asks, furrowing her brows as she eyes the slash of green around Sawyer's neck.

"No," is all Sawyer says. She doesn't waste her breath on an explanation.

Taken aback by Sawyer's blunt response, Janie blinks.

"You gonna be wearing our colours or your boyfriend's?" Jeremy had asked her, moments before he'd been called away to the changing rooms along with the rest of the Slytherin team. His smile gleamed brighter than the sun.

"We broke up," Sawyer said.

Shock speared through Jeremy's widening eyes. He gaped at her. "What? Why? And when? Why didn't you tell us?"

Awhile ago, actually. They'd both figured that it'd be more natural to just let people find out on their own instead of parading it around blatantly. The conversation about terminating their fake relationship came about right after the training session when Nia had deemed Violet worthy of remaining an active Beater instead of a reserve. That afternoon, the sun had come out from under its cloudy veil, and the trees had finally completed shedding, and the wind continued its battering assault on the Hufflepuff team. Dead leaves dragged across the school grounds, fluttering like brittle bats over their legs.

After an irritable mock-match, Nia had kicked them off the pitch, only to rail into one of her half-time verbal assaults. None of the players were in the mood to listen, really, except for the newer members and Cedric. Sawyer had been stoically ignoring what was bound to be a cataclysmically motivational tirade, tuning her captain out, and apparently it'd worked all too well, because she hadn't noticed when everyone was gone and she was the only one still standing there, sipping on her water bottle. The Gryffindor team was gathering

"Violet stays," Nia had preluded their conversation with. Resting her hands atop her broomstick, Nia grudgingly appraises Sawyer with an appreciative smile. "She's showing promise. I can see why you picked her now. My only question is: how did you get her to improve this much?"

"I don't take credit," Sawyer had said, simply, and left it at that.

"Modesty isn't a good look on you."

"Good thing I don't care what you think looks good on me," Sawyer deadpanned. "I'll let her know."

At that moment, Violet had nosed her way out of the changing rooms, still flushed from the gruelling training session, and had traded her training robes for her school uniform.

"Nia says you can stay," Sawyer had told her. "Congratulations, you're on the field permanently."

A hundred emotions flashed across Violet's face. In the end, a rosy grin blossomed on her lips and her eyes brimmed with tears. "Thank you."

"You did this," Sawyer corrected her, leaning against her broom as though it were a crutch.

"What's going on?" Oliver asked, coming up behind the two Hufflepuffs. His team had begun assembling themselves all over the pitch, stretching out their joints in preparation for their training session. Oliver shot a baffled look at Sawyer. "Why's she crying?"

Over Oliver's shoulder, Sawyer spotted Harry sending Violet and Sawyer questioning looks. Sawyer nodded at him, a gesture of invitation. Lighting up, Harry jogged over, ignoring the confused looks from his teammates.

"Nia cleared her for the team. She's not getting benched," Sawyer said.

Oliver raised a brow, lips curling into a small grin. "Hey, congratulations," he said, extending his arm and giving Violet a one-armed hug. "I knew you could do it."

"Nice one, Vi," Harry piped, letting Violet throw her arms around him in a hug.

"We need to talk," Oliver muttered, suddenly standing too close. "Meet me in the kitchen at midnight?"

At midnight, the break came. Sawyer breathed a sigh of relief. Oliver was... Sawyer couldn't get a read on his expression. The firelight flickers over his features, shadows dancing over his face. Which shadows are his and which belong to the torch mounted on the wall, Sawyer can't tell for sure. Around them, the house elves make quick work of the kitchen, ignoring the two students sitting at the table, facing each other. Sawyer has a tub of ice cream sitting before her. Oliver toys with the handle of his mug of tea.

"So," Oliver began, clearing his throat. "We're done here?"

"I don't foresee Violet needing anymore extra training sessions to gain Nia's approval," Sawyer pointed out. "This entire deal was completely pointless to begin with."

It's over.

It's shorter, less taxing than they'd both expected, and briefly, Sawyer let her mind wander into the uncharted territory of what dating Oliver would actually feel like, for real. She doesn't know if she'll like it. But there's no point in even wondering because she doesn't like him like that, and he definitely doesn't like her like that either. And now that they have no reason to be around each other as much anymore, they can go back to ignoring each other's existence. Somehow, there's a small, minute pebble of disappointment sitting in her stomach. She squashed down the prick of feeling before she could read into it. It's nothing. This was nothing. They are nothing. It becomes a mantra in her head. All there is is nothing. This is what she's always wanted, isn't it? Nothing.

"It was pretty useless, wasn't it?" Oliver said, and there was the hint of a laugh in his eyes behind the sharpness, the knifelike focus. "Only stressed us out more. There were it's upsides, though. I got asked out by way less people. I'm going to miss playing the 'I have a girlfriend' card. Especially since it's you. Made it more effective. Nobody wants to deal with you."

"I told you," Sawyer said, smirking. Here's what they both realise in the dawning moment: No one really cares. Those who bother manufacturing any rumours about them have nothing better to do with their lives. They were just being overly paranoid.

"Moral of the story: stop caring so much what everyone else thinks."

"You're learning," Sawyer mused, picking at a callous on her thumb. She feels Oliver's gaze searing into her skin, the way the flame of her lighter might dance over her knuckles for a little too long. "I have to admit, sometimes, I don't want to kill you. You're down to ninety percent."

"Believe me, I did learn quite a bit from this," Oliver said, a surreptitious smile ghosting his lips.

"Care to share?"

"Little things, actually," Oliver said, tapping his fingers restlessly against the table. "You don't like being touched. I see the way you tense up around people when they get too close. You're a serial sweet tooth. You care more than you let on. Or more than you want to. You protect what's yours. You fight your friends but you fight harder for them. You say you want nothing, but I think you do. You want to make something of yourself. You're uncompromising, and sometimes infuriating, but you stand your ground. That's pretty cool about you."

Sawyer said nothing. Only watched, observed the shadows passing over his face, the way they seemed more pronounced, slanting over his sharp jaw, the little scars scattered over his chin and cheek from old accidents that gleamed silver in the yellow light. She doesn't know what to make of his observations. She'd tell him exactly what she wanted to tell Dumbledore: she'd be dead in a ditch before she reached eighteen. The dead don't need to make plans for the future. The dead wouldn't have to make something of themselves.

"You helped Violet," Oliver said, as though reading her thoughts. "Why would you do that if you didn't want to prove something?"

"I have nothing to prove to anyone."

Deep down you want to prove that you're not all monster, is what Oliver might've said. But he didn't say that. Instead, he fixed her with a knowing look. "That's your can of worms to open."

"What's your point?"

"Nothing," Oliver said, shrugging. "But I do still want to play Quidditch with you. Y'know, if you want. It'd be fun. No rules."

Sawyer lifts a brow. No rules. "Your ambition invites a knife. I'll think on it."

Oliver smiled, and when Sawyer closed her eyes that night, it was that smile that burned in the back of her eyelids, like the blinding imprint of the sun in your vision after you'd stared at it too long.

And now, they're nothing. And now, she's wearing Rio's scarf wound around her neck. And now, she ignores Janie and her friends, who're looking her way with all these questions echoing around in their skulls that Sawyer won't entertain, wondering what went wrong. Slytherin scores on Gryffindor, and the people in green explode into their chants and jeers. Sawyer lets the noise drown out her thoughts.

When Gryffindor wins the match after Harry chokes up the Golden Snitch in his mouth, Sawyer doesn't cheer as the Gryffindors explode into their fight song, doesn't look Oliver's way as he barrels straight into his team with that vibrant smile—the same smile he'd given her that night in the kitchen. A smile he reserves for winning matches.

* * *

JEREMY SAVES RIO AND SAWYER'S Potions grades once more in the library, the Sunday after their first Quidditch match. Marcus sits at their table, too, but while they're pouring over a text about Polyjuice Potion, he's working on an essay about Trolls. Rio steals glances at his boyfriend every now and then, and Sawyer wonders if she should've done more to make her and Oliver's stupid cover story more believable. But she squashes that feeling like a bug. Stop. It's nothing. It's over. And she moves on.

Jeremy casts Sawyer a sideways look the moment he shuts the enormous Potions textbook. "Are you alright?" He asks, a crease between his brows as he tries to unravel her expression, pick apart her thoughts. But there's nothing to read into. "I'm here if you need to talk."

"How precious," Sawyer muses, tapping her quill against her parchment, which is covered in ink blots and her ugly handwritten notes. Some of the words are misspelt, but she's been seeing Dumbledore about her condition, and he promises that Professor Sinistra is still working on something. "I don't need or want to talk."

"You're handling the break-up awfully well," Rio says, narrowing his eyes at Sawyer in suspicion. "You didn't love him at all, did you?"

"He was nothing more than a distraction."

"From what?" Like vultures moments before descending on a carcass, Marcus, Jeremy, and Rio pin Sawyer with stares of knife-like focus. "We thought you were happy," Marcus adds, as an afterthought, and Sawyer has to laugh because she can't remember the last time she'd felt that warm glow in her chest.

"Life," says Sawyer, and leaves it at that for them to pick apart the bones of her words for meaning.

* * *

December arrived without warning. Sawyer had been dreading Christmas break for awhile, despite her adversity towards school. Professor Sprout had gone around collecting the names of students staying at Hogwarts over the break and Sawyer desperately wanted to give hers, though the only thing stopping her was another Howler from her mother. It's a lose-lose situation either way.

Going to school was standing in the middle of a hallway where all the doors lay wide open, letting in all the noise of the outside that sounded on the same frequency with no way to separate the threads that poured into the space she stood in, and, somehow, as the sounds only grew more tangled, loud, louder, loudest, the walls started to close in and the amount of room to breathe kept shrinking and shrinking until she drowned in the chaos of noise. Going home felt like being force-fed humidity, suffocated by the sounds of her mother passive-aggressively vacuuming outside her door, smothered by her brother's natural excellence radiating in the enclosed space she was forced to face him in. Fights don't start with just one person, but Sawyer somehow feels like she's instigating something just by being present. She can sense it moving with her shadow, a monster haunting the spaces between the walls, a thunderstorm that never quite breaks. At least in school she has the excuse of distance to run interference in dealing with her family.

Since Quinn's staying over in Hogwarts for the holidays, Sawyer parts with a promise to send her a present and waves off her offer to write letters. On the Hogwarts Express, she doesn't get into the carriage where she knows Wyatt and Oliver and three of their other friends are sitting. Instead she lets Rio pull them into an empty carriage three doors down.

When the train deposits them into the bustling crowd spilling over the platform at King's Cross station, Sawyer feels something inside her brain automatically click off. The riotous noise digs vindictive teeth into her flesh, and there is a bone-deep itch to lash out, to make the girls jabbering each other's ears off next to her shut their mouths with her fists. Irritability eats holes in her veins. Before he rushes off to meet his parents, Marcus thumps Sawyer on the back so hard her lungs crumple against her ribs. Then he pulls Rio in for a bruising kiss and claps Jeremy on the shoulder. Moments later, the crowd swallows his retreating figure. Rio's the next to go. Reluctance darkens his expression when he spots his mother's pinched face and his father checking his watch in derisive impatience, both equally interchangeable with marble pillars. He knows better than to keep them waiting, so he pulls Jeremy in for a one-armed hug and flicks Sawyer on the forehead before trudging off towards them with a thunderous scowl and a storm wrapped around his shoulders.

Last to go is Jeremy, who's barely spoken two words to their group on the train ride. Usually, he's the heart of their banter, but today the sunshine's clouded over in his half-hearted attempts to keep up with the rapid-fire banter and his smile doesn't touch his eyes. Sawyer wants to press him for answers, but knows that now is not the time. Later, she promises herself. Later, she'll call and carve the information out of him. Now, she lets him pretend that she doesn't see that a stitch has come undone in his little fabrication. Finally, Sawyer spots Jeremy's father waving to them at the exit. But the space beside him is vacant.

"Where's your mum?" Sawyer asks.

"Maybe she was busy," Jeremy says, managing an upbeat tone while tugging her into his arms. She doesn't quite hug him back. She never does. But she lets her arms dangle limply by her sides and leans her face against his chest to listen for his broken heartbeat. Something's off.

"See you," he tells her, the slightest falter in his grin. He vanishes into the heaving crowd with only a glance over his shoulder to see that she's fine waiting by a pillar by herself for her brother to show up.

Alone at last, Sawyer leans against the pillar, luggage sitting by her feet. People pass by without so much as a glance her way. She flicks her lighter on and watches the flame blaze and gutter for an endless minute. The back of her hand prickles with the addict's itch to set the flame to her skin.

"Hey."

The lighter disappears back into her pocket as Sawyer casts her brother a bored look.

Chewing on the string of his orange hoodie, Wyatt pins her with a searching look. "I heard you broke up with Oliver. Are you okay?"

Sawyer flicks him a cool look. "Where's dad?"

Frustration creases his features, but Wyatt doesn't push her for an answer, knowing he'd only get her to shut down further. "He said he was going to the bathroom. Mum's waiting in the car. He told me to look for you. Anyway, Oliver's family is coming over for dinner on Christmas. If things get awkward, just let me know, alright?"

"It's not my problem," Sawyer says, flicking her fingers at him in dismissal. And leaves it at that.

* * *

LATE AT SUNSET when the coming night looks like bruised arms, Sawyer excuses herself from Christmas dinner and calls Rio from the phone on the wall in the hallway. (Bathroom, she'd told her parents, so, really, she only had a five minute window of reprieve before someone came looking for her.) With the wall barricading both hers and Oliver's family at the dining table from sight, Sawyer lets out a slow breath. Rio picks up on the fourth ring.

"I hate my dad," Rio grunts, and the murmur of people crackling in the background static must be from a Christmas party hosted by the Alvarez's. Something lavish and extravagant in their mansion of marble and old money. Over the line, Sawyer can hear someone laughing—high-pitched, distinguishably female—and someone—low and rumbling, distinctly male—boasting about a private yacht in the Bahamas. From where she stands, hidden away from her own party of people, Sawyer can picture the scene without difficulty. People in expensive suits and dresses of tulle and velvet and silk. Perfume and cologne settling over the room like evening fog, heady and achingly saccharine. Diamonds shinning from slim fingers and the soft arch of elegant swan necks, pearly teeth flashing, lips stained with wine and holidays to exotic places. "I hate everyone here."

Sawyer can see why.

"I'm supposed to be in the bathroom," Sawyer tells him, "but I needed air."

"And yet you decided to come to me?"

"You're not like them," Sawyer points out, only vaguely cognisant of the people at the dining table, their laughter and warm chatter, how it makes no difference that her chair is empty and she's taken herself out of the equation.

Family means something different to both of them. It's not about blood, nor is it about the people they like. It's about being chosen over everything else. Being chosen over and over again, never having to be susceptible to the fear of becoming the second option to something else. Deep down, they've reached a common consensus. Rio's parents knew affection in cold shoulders and snide tongues and disapproval of his choices; in their eyes, he would never be enough, would never be able to fit the mould of the perfect child who idolised his parents that they'd crafted even before he was born. Sawyer's family continues to tear away any hope for amicable relation by the year. In the end, they choose each other. That will suffice for the eternities they have. That is family.

Rio laughs. It's not happy; no part of him can be now. The caustic sound grates against her eardrums. "You're the worst. Anyway, thank Merlin you called, if I have to stand in the same room as these people for another minute, I might punch someone. All they ever talk about is who's with who, who's got a new car or a new boat, or whose cousin started seeing which celebrity, and who bought which new house. It's exhausting. They're all so pretentious. Oh, and the Malfoy's are here again. Bloody hell, their son has such a punchable face. Fucking albino brat. My dad keeps sucking up to them, it's so pathetic to watch. You should be here."

"I'd rather not. Don't make me lose brain cells. I need all three of mine to propel me through OWLs."

"How charming. How's the dinner going?"

Coiling the phone cord around her wrist, Sawyer leans over and peers into the dining room. Nobody seems to have noticed that she's been gone for long. They're still laughing. At the head of the table, her father sits, red-faced with too much wine, gesturing boldly, regaling some tale of a time long lost to memory, while Oliver's father claps him on the shoulder while he shudders with laughter. Beside him, her mother sips wine and nods earnestly at something Oliver's mother is saying. Off to the other end of the table, Oliver and Wyatt are deep in conversation, firing off something about Quidditch statistics and professional teams. The chair beside Wyatt's is empty. From time to time, the table split as Oliver's father asked Wyatt a question, and Oliver struck up conversation with Sawyer's mother about Quidditch and the upcoming inter-house games. Since she had nothing to contribute and fended off her mother's efforts to include her in the discussion with a non-committal shrug, Sawyer hadn't spoken a word since the dinner started, more interested in pushing her food around her plate.

Watching them now, Sawyer felt more ghost than girl. Sometimes she wondered what everyone's lives would've been like if she hadn't been born.

"Boring," Sawyer says, pulling back into the confines of solitude in the hallway, putting the wall back between herself and the others. "Oliver's here."

"Awkward." Rio lets out a sympathetic whistle. "I know you don't want to talk about it, but when you're ready—"

"I know," Sawyer says, pursing her lips. "But I'm fine, really. Look, if you need somewhere to hide out when you want to escape your family again, my house is available. There's room on my floor. Come collect your Christmas present."

"I'll take you up on that in the summer," Rio says. "It's too fucking cold to go outside now. I'll just have to soldier on while my dad rips me apart for my life choices and my mum tries to tell me I'll never amount to anything."

"It's a long three weeks."

"Yeah. I'll be okay. Maybe I'll even break another one of mother's precious vases again. Then I'll have a real excuse to run away and join the circus."

Sawyer scoffs. "You're so stupid."

Even though Rio isn't physically with her, she can still see his grin. It is not happy; he's never been born a happy child, much like herself. His smiles are always shark-like, a flash of teeth, a cautionary tale, more derisive than amiable. People don't like that smile. But Sawyer knows better than to be scared off by buzzcut boys with chaotic scribbles with fangs for souls and fists as calloused as hers. Sometimes she still sees the bloodstains slipping through the grooves of her knuckles. Sometimes she wishes she could punch the whole world black and blue to match the cosmos. They'll never be stars, but why reflect something that burns itself inside out when they're more homogeneous to black holes? The final stage of the stellar cycle, moments after the biggest stars collapse. Nothing, nothing, nothing dragging and compressing everything around them into nothing, nothing, nothing.

"Have you spoken to Jeremy lately?"

Flashes of her golden friend surface like the flipping pages of a motion picture book in her head. The tension in his body when he bid her farewell at the platform, the smile that never reached his eyes, the lack of conversation, the sun behind a veil of clouds, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. Such a liar.

"Nope," Sawyer says, "but there's something he's not telling us."

Rio makes a noise of agreement. "I thought I was the only one who noticed. I need to ask Marcus if he did too. Got any theories?"

Sawyer racks her brain, but comes up empty. "He'll talk to us when he's ready."

"Maybe," Rio grumbles. "You know the moron, though. He'll keep bottling up his shit under all that sunshine until he combusts."

Sawyer sees it less like an explosion. Not ashes to ashes, not a house collapsing in a fire that only knows how to consume. Bury a problem deep enough, and the cracks will start to show at some point. Cracks that start from the omphalos of a stone, and spread outwards. Spreads and spreads and spreads. As time goes by no one will notice that anything's wrong. Until the fissures touch the outside and the stone crumbles apart with no way to be put back together. No human was manufactured to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Thigh bones are stronger than concrete. That's the funny part. Human bodies were not built to break. It takes trucks to overturn them, curses so unforgivable it silences rooms at just the notion, immense heights and pressures to crush skulls. Human bodies are designed for survival, but a human will ruin themselves in increments of self-destruction because they've forgotten to make their souls strong.

Jeremy might not be human when it comes to his inability to get angry, to feel enough injustice to wish another person ill, to play dirty or call foul on a fair match. But he is not a god. Some people forget that when he smiles, when he speaks, when his tongue spills light and his eyes glisten genuine, a fifteen-year-old reminiscent of Apollo at his prime.

"When we get back to school, I'll deal with him," Sawyer says. A promise. She never breaks her promises. This one, she holds tighter than all the others.

"When we get back to school, who knows how much we can salvage?"

"I'll deal with it," Sawyer insists.

"Deal with what?" a voice behind her asks.

Sawyer doesn't jump. When she turns around to regard Oliver with a grin, all vacant cheer and whetted with warning, she winds the phone cord around her neck and mimes pulling on a noose. Unimpressed, Oliver fixes her with a flat look.

"I'll call you back," Sawyer says into the receiver, uncoiling the cord from around her neck, and then she hangs up when Rio doesn't answer quick enough. To Oliver, who stands before her with his arms crossed over his chest, she says, "we're broken up. You shouldn't be talking to me."

"Our parents don't know that."

"Your friend does."

Oliver's eyes flash with amusement. "Good thing we parted on amiable terms, though, right?"

Sawyer raises a brow. "What exactly did you tell him?"

"Nothing too dramatic," Oliver says, shrugging. "Just that we felt like this wouldn't work out because I'm too obsessed with Quidditch—used your words, by the way—and you felt a little sidelined by that. So we broke it off. You're not that heartbroken, and neither am I. Anyway, your bathroom break seems to be taking a little too long to be normal. Wyatt thinks you can't stand my face, I think it's because you don't like the noise. Which of us is right?" He cocks his head, regarding her with an inquisitive gaze. Why are you hiding?

For a dangerous minute, she wants to tell him the truth: nobody's going to miss me, so why not? But reels in her shred of honesty in exchange for the diluted version, "I hate you," Sawyer says, but it's without heat as she plays along. Oliver laughs, a rare sound, but muffles it with a hand clamped over his mouth. She ignores the insistent urge to rip his hand away. "You were supposed to be nothing more than a distraction."

"Yeah?" And she hears the challenge in his voice. "What am I now?"

"At ninety-one percent," she says, playing their percentage game. Another wall she constructs between them. Brick by brick, she lays out more distance.

In the dim hallway, Oliver's eyes glimmer. (Is it just the horrible lighting or is he leaning closer? Is he smiling at her or is he smiling because they're playing this stupid game?) "What about the other nine percent that doesn't want to kill me?"

"Undecided," Sawyer says, pressing a finger against his chest and pushing until there's at least a foot and a half of space between them. Away, away, away. Let the distance swallow their bones for breakfast. Girls like Sawyer—all burn-scar knuckled and broken glass insides and wrath rotting through veins, an old oak planted with too many vengeance roots tangled up with her guts—just can't have boys like Oliver—all blazing bravado and icy selectiveness, analytical and unsatisfied, a lesson in formulas and precision. Not in any lifetime. Out of all the calculations he makes on the Quidditch pitch and off it, Sawyer is certain not a single equation accounts for her bloodied messes.

He lets her push him away.

"You've been ignoring me since our agreement ended," Oliver says, words that have been sitting in his mouth for a long while, slowly crippling his tongue and turning his teeth to ash.

Sawyer shrugs. "It's not like we were real friends to begin with."

"Weren't we?" Oliver lifts a brow.

Sawyer flicks him a bored look. "It doesn't matter. We're nothing."

Carding his fingers through his hair, Oliver heaves a sigh, casts his eyes skyward, then back down to her, and flashes his teeth. Out of frustration or realisation, she's not certain. Either way, it doesn't matter.

"That's what you said you've always wanted, wasn't it?" Oliver says, condescension dripping off his biting tone. "Nothing."

Nothing, nothing, nothing. The sound of black holes sapping all the energy from its neighbouring stars, dragging them into nothing, nothing, nothing. The sound of doors closing, hurricane-girls who know self-destruction and a bone-deep anger they hold closer than their own twin from the womb building walls to shut out boy-oceans who are walking lessons in contradictions, who pride themselves on their own self-worth yet still beg for scraps from fathers who don't know how to appreciate gold where their sons pluck it like teeth from their gums. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything Sawyer will ever have, all that she will let herself want, and everything they will come to be.

Nothing.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
tbh i have as much anxiety as i have fun with this fic. i never know if my writing is genuinely slipping as i progress or if i'm just running out of words or if my vocabulary is just so limited. i read everyone else's works and i can't help but think that i pale in comparison especially since my writing style keeps changing and i have no clue whether that's a good thing or not???

IDK BROSKIS THIS BOOK IS JUST SO TOUGH TO WRITE BECAUSE THERE IS SO MUCH TO CONVEY AND YET SO LITTLE TO SAY IT WITH

ALSO ITS GOING TO SHIT ???? SOMEHOW???? i cant wait for part 2 to save me holy shit this first part is EXHAUSTING