The Dead Boy's Guide To Second Chances

25. perchance to dream

SEVEN DAYS AFTER THE DEATH OF OLIVER SALLOW

The funeral happened. Finn wasn't very present throughout it. He wasn't very present a lot of the time.

They'd scheduled it on a Sunday. The December sun beamed from a bright blue sky as a small crowd gathered around a headstone. The black suit that his father had borrowed him had a hole in the lining of the pocket. While the priest droned on and women with too much perfume whispered hollow condolences, Finn dug his thumb into it until it swallowed his knuckles, then his entire fist.

He wanted it to split at the seams. He wanted to take every single person around him by the shoulders, all the people from school who hadn't spoken to Oliver once and the people who'd crossed to the other side of the street when he'd passed just last week, and ask them what the hell they were doing here.

"A real shame," murmured Dorothea Bailey, one hand pressed to the cross necklace at her throat.

"Such a bright kid," agreed Marge McKinnon.

Finn strained his hand against the fabric until it dug into his skin.

He jumped when a figure sidled up to him. "Hello, Finn," Mrs. Thistlecloth said softly.

Finn nodded at her, eyes fixed on her red-rimmed ones, the crumpled handkerchief clutched in her hand. He hadn't cried once. He'd expected it to happen in church, or maybe on the walk to the cemetery. Instead, he'd sat in the pew for an entire hour, listening to a priest give a generic eulogy that Oliver would've torn to shreds, his eyes so dry they stung. What was wrong with him? Why wasn't he fucking crying?

"Are you here all alone?" Mrs. Thistlecloth inquired.

"Yeah," Finn said tonelessly. "My parents couldn't make it."

She looked away, but not quick enough for him to miss the pity that flashed in her eyes. Gazing over at the black mass gathered around the pit in the ground, she murmured, "He would've hated this, don't you think? All the affectation. Who even are these people?"

Finn couldn't have told her. None of this made sense. Not the crowd. Not the sunshine singing the back of his neck. Not the idea that there was a body in that pit, hidden in a closed casket that someone must have picked out and paid for, for which a receipt was flying around somewhere amid a flood of petrol station sympathy cards.

He wished he could feel any anger over it. Or sadness. Or anything at all that wasn't the horrible numbness that had started to spread in him the night that Gabby Walker had called on his parents' landline to speak to him.

"Do you want to go over? Say hi?" Mrs. Thistlecloth gently asked.

Did Finn want to go over? Did he want to meet eyes with Oliver's foster mother, who had been sobbing through a speaker the first and last time they'd talked? Did he want to shake his foster dad's hand, an introduction a year too late? Did he want to say hello to Milo?

God. Milo.

"No," he said, and then: "Thanks."

He left without another word. No one but her noticed he had ever been there.

***

At school, everything was business as usual. Classes carried on as if nothing had happened; in the hallways, students continued to laugh and shout and shove each other into lockers; on the bulletin board, someone had put up a note that read Wanted: Student librarian.

Finn wandered through the chaos in a trance. He felt like he'd been dropped into a parallel universe where November 17th had never happened. He couldn't fathom that the world could keep spinning without Oliver Sallow stomping through it in lace-up boots and a scowl.