TWO MONTHS AND TWO DAYS AFTER THE DEATH OF OLIVER SALLOW

Finn O'Connell is haunted.

Not in the traditional sense. He doesn't hear wailing at night. He doesn't have scratches on his arms that he can't explain. The things in his room don't move on their own.

His haunting is more insidious (insidious: item number sixty-four in Oliver Sallow's Encyclopaedia of Big Words). It follows him everywhere. Here, the scent of cigarette smoke drifting from an empty bathroom at school. There, a song on the radio that he knows belongs into one of his five-hundred playlists. Faint laughter that sounds a bit like his. The taste of Maltesers. The smell of nail polish. Rue and rosemary and lilac calla lilies.

And now this: a poster for a performance of As You Like It, taped to the wall next to his locker like it was meant just for him to see.

He forces himself to keep his eyes on the image. He's not supposed to avoid these things, Samira always tells him. She's usually right about this stuff.

Finn tries to be objective about it. The poster looks nice. Whoever made it really knows their way around Photoshop. Oliver would've—

He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the cool metal of his locker. The quiet Fuck he murmurs echoes inside it. Why did Oliver have to be obsessed with bloody Shakespeare, out of all writers? Couldn't it have been some niche author no one else knows?

"Oi!" Finn startles when someone crashes into him from behind, pulling the hood of his windbreaker into his face. "Come on, mate, it's almost half past. We can't be late to practice the very first day of term!"

Blinded by 100% polyester, Finn flails wildly to shake off the attacker. It's either Kavi or Aarun—he can't tell because their voices and their level of general dickhead-ness are almost identical. "Let go of me then, you git!"

The arms finally release him from their headlock. Flipping his hood back, Finn turns around to face the twins. They're each standing with their arms crossed—no way to tell which of them it was.

Judging by his grin, Finn suspects Aarun. "Come on, then!" he says. "Wiley's gonna make us run extra rounds because of you again."

Finn bites down a remark about how he technically never asked them to walk him to practice almost every day. That would sound ungrateful when he's really, really not.

He didn't use to spend a lot of time with his football mates outside of practice before Oliver was g—before Oliver died. That's changed now. They see each other every break, and after practice, they usually head to one of their houses to revise. Not to the library. Never to the library.

Finn grabs his duffel bag from his locker and slams it shut.

They do come late to practice; by the time they're changed and out on the meadow behind the school building, Coach Wiley already has the other boys doing drills. "Seven laps around the field!" he shouts when he spots them.

While Aarun and Kavi stay back to try and bargain with him, Finn immediately falls into a jog. It's possible that he wanted to run laps. They always help him clear his head: the steady pumping of his legs, the focus on keeping his breathing even. One lap after another, easy, familiar. He would do this forever if he could.

By the time he reaches seven, his cheeks probably match the red of his hair. He goes to join his mates where they're dividing up teams for their scrimmage, but his coach intercepts him.

"Birdie. Can I talk to you for a second?"

Reluctantly, Finn comes to a halt. He got the nickname Birdie after his first game on the team. Just before halftime, a pigeon landed on the field, right in front of the other team's penalty box. He was so scared to hit it, he gave up the chance at a goal; instead of attempting a shot, he kicked the ball past the side line and carried the confused bird off the field.

He thought it would cost him his spot on the team. Instead, it just landed him a nickname that has stuck for years now. He's not sure the newer players on the team even know his actual name.

"How've you been doing?" Coach asks. He's wearing his Concerned Face. It used to be reserved for situations in which they were close to losing a game—or, you know, throwing away goal opportunities in order to play PETA—but since last November, Finn has grown intimately familiar with it. "Everything all right?"

He always asks that, and every time Finn can tell from his tone that he desperately hopes the answer is yes. So he says it, almost every single time. Even though things are hilariously un-all-right. Even though he's not sure they'll ever be anything close to all right again.

"Sure."

"What about, er... your appointments?" Coach continues. "Are they still every Wednesday this term?"

Finn nods. "Yeah. My therapy appointments are every Wednesday." He says the words with emphasis. Coach Wiley has this thing where he feels uncomfortable calling it by name—like the other players aren't supposed to overhear that their team captain has mental health issues he's working through.

Finn doesn't care if they overhear. They all know he's seeing someone. They just don't know why.

"All right." Coach Wiley reaches out to awkwardly pat his shoulder. "Off you go, then."

Finn doesn't need to be told twice.

***

After practice, Kavi asks: "Hey, Birdie. Are you coming back to ours today?"

Finn considers it while he pulls a shirt over his head. "I don't think so. I promised my mum to go to Costco for her."

"Again?" asks James. He's still scrubbing a towel over his hair, his torso on full display. A few months ago, Finn would have done everything not to acknowledge his half-naked presence. By now, he knows that, while James has definitely played a part in his sexual awakening, he is not Finn's type.

(With his abs and his tan skin, the glossy hair he carefully styles after each practice and the brand name sneakers he wears, he's literally the opposite of it.)

(Which is to say, the opposite of him.)

"Yeah," is all Finn replies.

"Oh, shame on you, Birdie," Aarun chides. "We were going to play Fifa."

Finn only musters a small smile. He didn't use to mind the nickname. He still doesn't, really. It's just... it's just not enough.

When he closes his eyes and tunes out the racket, he can still hear Oliver's voice, each syllable crisp and deliberate. Finn O'Connell. Good night, Finn O'Connell. You're insufferable, Finn O'Connell. You did amazing, Finn O'Connell.

Finn wishes he would've paid more attention to the way he said it the last time they spoke. But that's the thing, isn't it? You don't know you'll never get to have something again until it's gone. Last times are sneaky like that; blink, and you miss them. The last time Oliver held his hand. The last time they passed each other in the hallway. The last time Oliver smiled at him from across the library. The last time he found a comment scrawled below one of his essays in red ink, 10/10, you using the word idiosyncrasy correctly did things to me.

It still hasn't quite sunk in. The finality of it all. The fact that this never isn't We broke up and now we don't speak but I can still watch you from afar and zoom in on your profile picture whenever you change it but You are dead and I am left here and now you'll never hear all the jokes I want to tell you that no one else would understand.

Maybe it's not so much a haunting as it is a possession. A haunting would imply it's external, a separate entity dropping by to visit. It's not. It lives inside of him. It is him. Fourteen months of knowing Oliver Sallow are woven into his identity to the point that Finn sometimes can't tell what's him and what's a dead boy's parting gifts.

He jumps when a hand touches his arm. "Hey," Kavi says, a small furrow between his brows. This is his version of the Concerned Face. "You all right?"

Finn wants to nod. The problem is that Kavi is one of  only a handful of people who know what Oliver Sallow is—was—to him. "Not really." He zips up his windbreaker and slings his bag over his shoulder. "Maybe ask again after my appointment in two days."

Kavi gives his hair an affectionate ruffle. "All right, then. See you tomorrow, yeah?"

With great effort, Finn pulls together a smile.

Outside, it's still light. Spring is starting to make itself noticeable, dragging out the days. Finn doesn't know how he feels about the fact that it means an entire season has passed without Oliver in it. It doesn't feel right for the birds to be singing when he isn't there. If he could, Finn would tell Mother Nature to have some respect and keep her mourner's veil on a little while longer.

At home, he brushes past his mum and darts straight to his room. The blinds are still closed from this morning; he doesn't bother opening them. Instead, he drops down at his desk and turns on his laptop.

This is how he spends the majority of his evenings: studying to some low-fi playlist, cramming Physics and Geography and Bio until nothing else will fit in his head. Studying so that he aces his A-Levels, so he can leave Blissby, so he can move to a place where every street corner doesn't conjure up a memory.

He opens Spotify, eyes slightly unfocused as he clicks through his saved playlists. Out of habit, they drift over to the tab on the right where he can see what his friends are listening to. There's Aarun, predictably listening to the Mamma Mia soundtrack despite swearing up and down that he's not into musicals. There's James, with his 2000s playlist he insists they listen to in the locker room before every game. And then there's—

There's Oliver. Listening to 1959 by Sisters of Mercy. Two hours ago.

It has to be a glitch.

Finn closes Spotify. Opens it again. It's still there.

He shuts his laptop off, deletes the app, re-installs it.

Oliver Sallow. 1959. Sisters of Mercy. Two hours ago.

With feeling, Finn whispers a quiet "What the fuck."

It's good he has an appointment with Samira in two days. That way he can tell her right away that his brain has now officially, properly melted.

******************************

baby boy is going through it :(

everyone meet finn!!!! what are your thoughts on him!!!!

i just wanted to thank you all so much for the response to the last chapter and 1k reads already! this book is so close to my heart and it means the world to me to have you on this ride <3

for the next chapter we'll be going back in time!! first oliver x finn interaction, are we ready?

p.s. today's song is could cry just thinkin about you by troye sivan. self-explanatory, i think </3