The Dead Boy's Guide To Second Chances

3. the bathroom incident

GOING BACK. FOURTEEN MONTHS AND TWO DAYS PRIOR TO THE DEATH OF OLIVER SALLOW. TWO MINUTES AND TWENTY-FOUR SECONDS BEFORE MAKING FINN O'CONNELL'S AQUAINTANCE

Whether by coincidence or by design, Sisters of Mercy were also playing the day Oliver and Finn first spoke. Well, and the day before. And the day before that.

This was because, at seventeen years and a few months old, Oliver Sallow thrived on routines.

It wasn't what one would have expected when looking at him; black leather and a sour mouth seemed to read more like misfit or rebel or, in the case of sixty-seven-year-old Dorothea Bailey, a satanist who kills cats under the full moon, or whatever it is these goths—she had spat this word in a tone others might use to say spiders or landlords or Tories—do these days!

As it was, there was little that Oliver loved more than the predictable. Stability, he had learned early on, was nothing to be taken for granted, and so he cherished the clockwork of his sixth form days. His mornings were divided into even blocks of History, Psychology, and English Lit; his breaks saw him sneaking a cigarette at his favourite spot just outside the school gates; his afternoons, he devoted to his one true love.

Which was to say, the library.

Blissby School was a monster of brick and misplaced ambition. Its halls were vast and echoing, with a myriad of alcoves that looked out at the rainy courtyard and winding stone staircases twisting ever upward.

Tragically, since it was the twenty-first century and the school filled with teenagers, this was where the visions of academics past shattered. Lockers in offensive shades of blue and orange lined the walls of the once dignified corridors, and instead of islands for quiet contemplation, the alcoves were now hideaways where prepubescent students giddily passed around their Juuls.

(Oliver was aware of his hypocrisy, but held onto it with conviction nevertheless. He preferred his lung cancer to be obtained puffing cinematically into a dreary sky, not cherry-flavoured and covered with enough body spray to induce a migraine.)

The point was this: the library, dust-filled, gloomy creature that it was, had stubbornly withstood the pull of present day. Here, all still looked exactly as it had in the school's founding days: tall shelves reaching towards the arched stone ceiling, scratched wooden desks tucked into the nooks between them, ladders that one could slide along the shelves. God, how he loved those ladders.

Even though it wasn't as large or as well-stocked as the libraries at some of his previous schools, Oliver had been instantly charmed—enough so to accept the position of student librarian without second thought. It hadn't been a difficult choice, really. He loved the library. The librarian loved not having to shelve cart-fulls of messily discarded books on her own each afternoon. A match made in heaven.

And so, here he was. Seven p.m.: time for him to pack his things and close the library. With Andrew Eldritch growling in his ears, Oliver went through his usual routine. Turning off the one functional computer in the dimly lit nonfiction corner. Grabbing a few books that some kid hadn't bothered to put back and gently setting them into the return cart to deal with tomorrow. Taking Mrs. Thistlecloth's empty coffee mug—she tended to forget them when she left—and dumping it into the sink in the tiny kitchen.

His last stop was the restroom.

It was here, while making sure that he didn't lock some unlucky sod inside the building, that his perfect routine was overturned.

There was a boy under the sink.

He sat with his back pressed to the wall, his arms slung around his knees, head wedged between them. At Oliver's entrance, he didn't look up. Oliver was grateful for this: it gave him the chance to school his expression of a shocked cartoon character with his jaw hanging open into that of a shocked cartoon character with his lips only slightly parted.