I wondered the same thing. It seemed such a senseless act, but within seconds it was all too obvious why he’d done it. As Josh bent down to pick up the papers, Oliver pretended to help him, As he leaned down, he dropped the vial into Josh’s pocket. Josh didn’t notice.
“Ah, who cares?” Alex demanded, stealing my arm, “I’m taking your Sil and we’re going. You two bore us shitless.”
I allowed him to haul me off. “What was that about?” I asked as he dragged me around a corner and sat with me on one of the benches outside along the corridor. “That was rude, Alex!”
“Just wait,” He grinned. He looked just exactly like Oliver when he smiled. Breath-taking, really, how closely the two of them resembled the other.
“What did you two do to poor Josh? I thought you three were friends!”
“Don’t worry about it,” Alex said quietly, giving my shoulder a playful squeeze, “It’s a game! Josh knows it! He gives it right back!”
Oliver appeared around the bend and sat on the other side of me. Immediately, those two began to snigger, “About fifteen seconds, I’d reckon,” Ollie said, turning to peer back at the direction he had come. “I can hear the girl’s football team coming up the corridor…”
“What’s going—“ I began to ask the question, but was never able to finish before there was a loud bang that sounded something like a gun shot. Seconds later, a flock of startled girls in their football uniforms ran squealing around the wall past us out on to the quad. About ten feet behind them followed Josh McGuigan, his mouth open in a silent scream, moving at full speed. The dishevelled notes were still clutched in his hand.
“What the hell was that?” Professor Rankin, the physical education instructor, jogged into the quad to gather her distressed team. “Is everyone all right? Is everyone here? Calm down, Ladies!” She shouted, and then paused, “Joshua McGuigan? What on Earth are you doing out here with the girls? Go on! Go to class! Clear off or I’ll give you detention!”
Oliver and Alexander howled with laughter.
Josh’s face was deep red as he walked off the quad. He looked at the twins, shook a fist at them, and began to chuckle.
The boys doubled up.
I didn’t need to ask what they’d done. I knew Oliver had packed that test tube with dry ice. Dry ice packed tightly enough in an Eppendorf tube will explode. It shouldn’t have hurt Josh, not inside his pocket, but it certainly went off with a bang that was amplified between the stone walls of the corridor. Timing it so it happened as the girl’s football team was leaving the dressing room was just a stroke of genius.
“You are evil!” I told Ollie, giggling along with the two of them.
“Yes, but you love it!” He swore and patted my knee just as Madame Pennyweather rounded the corner. She stood in her black dress with her pointed shoes planted firmly on the concrete and gave the three of us such a stern look that we immediately jumped to our feet. I thought she was deciding on a reprimand, but instead she just glared at us. She shook her head and disappeared back into the wing.
“Wow,” Oliver muttered, “She let us go! You’re our lucky charm, Silvia!”
“Damn straight,” Alex added, “Can I rub your bum for luck?”
Oliver punched him in the shoulder. Hard.
That night, Oliver and I decided to have a stroll together after supper. It was quite cold, unseasonably so, and in a hurry to have him all to myself I had not worn anything other than my uniform jumper for extra warmth. I had my arms crossed tightly in front of me, shivering as we walked along. Oliver was chattering on about an out of control rugby match he was involved in once when he stopped and turned, “Cold, Sil?”
I nodded, allowing my teeth to click together, “I didn’t think it was this chilly!”
He pulled off his uniform jacket and put it around my shoulders. “Put this on. Better?”
“Oh, yes.” I could feel the warmth from his body inside it. I slid my arms into the sleeves and stretched my fingers to see if I could poke them out. I couldn’t. When he wasn’t looking I took a second to turn my head and sniff his collar. It smelled like soap mixed with the freshness of the earth after a good rain, with just a hint of burned wood. I closed my eyes and smiled. The scent of him made me cheerful. It was the essence of Oliver and a fragrance I would smell for many years to come, only I didn’t know it then. All I knew at that moment was that he was fantastic and smelled wonderful and I was in his school coat and that all things in the universe seemed correct and proper.
It was then that he held my hand for the first time. He rolled back the sleeve of the jacket, took my hand in his and looked at it carefully, “You have beautiful hands, Silvia,” He said simply, then he wrapped his fingers through mine as we strolled on. “Cold, but beautiful.”
With no fanfare, he continued to tell me about the game, giving a quick wave to his mates who were hitting golf balls into the water.
“Want a go?” Alexander called out.
“No, taking a walk with my Sil,” He shouted back, “Nice swing, though, Lance! You looked very tall when you did that!”
Everyone laughed, including Lance.
We walked on, around and around the lake until the bell rang for curfew. I was in heaven. Heaven! No boy had ever taken the time away from his mates to walk with me before, much less hold my hand in front of them. Oliver’s hands were large and warm and strong. Just the way I thought a boy’s hands should be. Every time we met from then my hand was in his as if it belonged there naturally.
We did have our differences. We discovered this one lazy, rainy Saturday as we sat at one of the tables in the fifth year common room. The topic of discussion was “I want to know everything about you.” Quite literally, as Oliver had wandered into the room, sat across from me and said, “Good morning, Silvia. Put your book away, because I want to know everything about you. Now, tell me exactly when and where you were born.” After that, our conversation had wandered all across the board.
“How can you only be Scottish? You’ve nothing else mixed up in there?” He asked.
“I’m just Scottish as far back as I’m aware.” I knew I had English and Irish in me as well a ways back, but I didn't say it, “I’m sure that there’s something else in there somewhere, though I don’t like to admit it.”
“Purist, I see. Well, I’m a couple of things. Welsh, primarily, of course. My mother’s side is Welsh, Irish, English and German. My father’s side is Welsh, English and French, but my great grand mum. She was from Egypt.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s where you get the dark skin and those dark, mysterious eyes.”
“Must be,” He paused. “Tell me something odd about you, Silvia.”
“Odd? I don’t know. I’m quite boring.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Actually, I am. Let me think. Oh! I don’t like purple.”
“That’s all right. I don’t like cake.”
“How in the world could anyone not like cake?” I was bewildered. “It’s soft and sweet even without icing. What do you eat on your birthday?”
“Mum gives Alex cake. I eat hot sausages.”
“You stick candles in hot sausages?”
“No, not in the sausages. In the ice cream.”
“You’re barmy!”
“So says my mum. What I can’t understand is why you don’t like the colour purple.”
“I hate purple!”
“How can anybody hate purple? Purple is the colour of kings and queens! It’s noble!”
“I hate purple because I knew someone once who was all about purple. I had to room with her at my old school and everything had to be purple. The twat was obsessed with bloody purple! Her bed, her lamp, most of her clothes…all purple! She went as far as having pencils that were purple and smelled of grapes! Ugh! I couldn’t stand her! She was a pathological liar as well! I mean, she lied so much she actually believed her own lies! She had really bad breath and she snored like an
ogre! And she never brushed her teeth, either! She wore so much hairspray that her hair moved in one solid brick when she scratched her head! Oh! I still can’t stand her! To this day she makes me want to pass my lunch straight out my nose!”
Oliver blinked a few times, “That’s immensely disturbing.”
The one subject that seemed to create a problem for us we talked about only once in those early days. That subject was religion. Catholics had raised Oliver and I was brought up by Protestants, but I had thought the whole subject to be mostly rubbish.
“It’s barking,” I said passionately, “A man builds a boat and gets two of every animal? How’d he travel to every continent and how’d he feed them? Did he really go to Antarctica and make his way through the glaciers in a giant dingy to gather up penguins and polar bears? Why didn’t one eat him? Polar bears eat everything! Plus, do you have any clue how many species of animals there are on the planet, not to mention back then before we conquered the land and killed most of them off? And an olive branch? How did an olive tree survive the flood? They’re native to the Mediterranean coast! Oh, yeah, the bloody coast survived a flood and was the first to produce new, fruit bearing trees! And how did a flipping little dove carry a branch in its beak...”
“I think it was a twig, actually,” He interrupted my tirade, “And I’m glad you know so much about the origin of olive trees, but that’s not the point. God was with him. I agree that the bible stories may be a bit far-fetched, even some of the stories of the divinity of Christ are a little hard to handle in a logical sense. You have to believe in some sort of mysticism to accept any of it. It’s not about what you can see or know. It’s about believing in what you can’t see or know. It’s about faith. That set aside, though, how can you explain creation if there is no God?”
“Science,” I answered simply. “Quantum Physics. It’s all a system of natural events and mathematical equations and we don’t have the answer yet.”
He looked at me as if my response made him sad, “OK,” He said slowly, “But do you believe in God at all?”
“I haven’t gotten proof yet,” I answered, “But I’m waiting. I hope there’s a God, but I don’t think for one second God is what you think it is.”
Oliver sat for a long time just looking at me before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was quite soft, “I think that you have to believe in things at least a little to have them be a genuine experience. You have to open yourself up to magic to have any magic come to you. God is magic, I think, in its oldest and purest sense.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m saying,” He looked extremely serious, “That God is not some ancient bloke sitting on a chair looking down through the clouds, randomly lobbing lightning bolts at bad people. I’m saying that God is more than that. Like you, I’m saying he’s something we can’t understand.”
“And I am saying that one day Science will allow us to understand.”
Oliver leaned back in his chair, “I honestly hope not, Sil. I honestly hope not. If it did, what would happen to faith?”
I was about to answer him when there was a great clatter as Merlyn flipped backwards in his chair and landed flat on his back on the floor.
“Oh, shite!” He lay there stunned. “That wasn’t good!”
Alexander and Lance laughed shamelessly.
“Are you all right?” Oliver showed a mild amount of concern. He leaned forward a bit to have a look at his fallen comrade, but made no move to help him.
“My neck’s not broken,” Merlyn stood up and lifted his chair. “I’m okay, I think.”
“Well, that’s a good thing!”
I never answered Oliver’s question about what would happen to faith. I don’t know how I would have, to be honest. Whatever it would have been that I came up with, it wouldn’t have been nearly as profound as I would have thought at the time.
The next day proved to be sunny and warm. Oliver and I took one of our walks after breakfast, hand and hand down to the lake. We walked around a few times before we decided to sit down in the grass. I had a Snickers bar my father sent from home and I took it out of my jumper pocket, “Would you like to share, Ollie?”
“Silvia Cotton, you have to be the most fabulous person in the world! How did you know?” Oliver was a fan of mostly any kind of chocolate, but Snickers were far and beyond his favourite.
I let him take the first bite. “Great gliding green gophers!” He pointed, “How big are your feet?”
I blushed, “They’re not that big.”
“Not that big? They’re like gun boats! They’re bloody gigantic!”
“No they are not! They’re only a 41!” My face was on fire.
“Yeah, they are!” He teased, “A 41! They’re more like battleships!”
“My feet might be long, but they certainly are not battleships!” I covered them with my hands, “My feet are too narrow for most shoes! And look at yours! Yours are as if…I don’t know! They’re like oil tankers!”
“May I have another bite of chocolate?” He asked and I indulged him. He looked at his shoes as if to inspect them, “Yeah, I suppose they are large, if a 48 and a half is large. They’re a full size larger than my brother’s.”
“My goodness! You have feet like great, giant sea faring vessels!”
“Yeah, well, I guess if we had children they’d be doomed to sport massive footwear. We could teach them to float sitting on one of those inflatables and send them here to Bennington and they could paddle about the lake like bizarre little ducklings.”
I laughed and took another bite of my candy bar. “You’re very funny,” I told him sincerely.
Oliver’s face came close to mine.
He kissed me. It was quick, smooth, and square on the lips. I felt my face go redder. I dropped my eyes and continued to chew my chocolate.
Oliver looked away casually and then turned back, “That was nice. I think you got more chocolate than I did. May I have another?”
I nodded and held out the candy bar.
That wasn’t what he was talking about. He kissed me again, only this time it was longer and more skillfully done with his palm against my cheek. His mouth was so warm. I had no idea a boy’s lips could feel as soft and lovely as his did. I closed my eyes and I let him kiss me and I kissed him back.
Merlyn Pierce catcalled us from across the lake, “Snogging!”
“Right in public!” Lance added, “That’s a thirty minute detention, Dickinson! I’ll tell Pennyweather straight away!”
“Brilliant, Oliver!” Yelled Alexander, “Can I have a go next?”
More people who were walking or studying turned and looked. I could feel my face beating and burning. Oliver leaned in and kissed me again then shouted to our hecklers, “There! Now it’s an hour in detentions and worth every second! Light off flair to alert the staff if you like, Lance Crosby! Piss off, you, Alexander Dickinson! She’s my Sil!”
“I’ll stop the world and melt with you, Oliver Dickinson!” Merlyn replied. It was about two seconds later that the three across the lake began to serenade us with the Modern English song that those lyrics came from before they returned to their golf game.
After that day I was “Oliver Dickinson’s girlfriend”.
“What’s with the new girl?” A girl named Peggy McGhee whispered in library. She was good friends with that Jennifer Eisenberg, the prefect who had been so rotten to me the day I arrived. I could see her between a row of books and the top of the shelf as I roamed the reference section. She tossed her dark hair off her shoulder as she leaned toward another friend, Molly Weathersby, “Which Dickinson is she involved with? I see her with them both all the time.”
“She’s Oliver’s girlfriend.” Molly Weathersby replied, taking a half step forward. “He was kissing her by the lake!”
“Kissing her?” Peggy stiffened.
“Oh, yeah,” Molly seemed to be enjoying her friend's disappointment. She smiled evilly, “It looked rather sweet.”
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“Really?” Peggy's shoulders slumped. She took a quick breath, however, and seemed to have a change of attitude, “Oh, well. That won’t last. Oliver never has girlfriends at Bennington. Are you sure it was him and not Alexander?”
“It was definitely Oliver.”
“Oh, crap.” She sounded sincerely disappointed as they walked away.
Later that day, I entered a classroom. It's a horrible feeling when you know people are staring at you and the prof, an older man with a charcoal coloured hair and a thick black moustache, did not see me enter. He continued to scribble course instructions on the blackboard while I shifted my books from arm to arm and rubbed the tip of my maryjane into the back of my other. When he finally noticed me, he yanked his belt up to his chest and smiled kindly, “Oh! Hello! How can I help you, Dear?”
“Hello. Professor Walker? I’m Silvia Cotton. My schedule has changed. Is this Advanced Chemistry?”
“Ah, yes, you must be Oliver Dickinson’s girlfriend!” He set down his chalk, “I was told you were coming by! Please, yes, find a seat! What was your name again?”
Oliver was, as I had guessed when I’d first seen him, quite popular, and that made me less welcome by most of the girls. Sandra Ashby, who had quickly become my best girlfriend ever, always knew everything about everyone at Bennington. It wasn’t that Sandra was the gossipy type, quite the opposite, but she was involved in everything from being President of the Student Body to being a long standing member of the Photography Group. Sandra had a hand in everything you can imagine at Bennington. She was always darting from class to this meeting or that meeting and at those gatherings, people talked and Sandy listened. Therefore, she heard all the codswallop imaginable. After gathering it up, she usually set about finding out the truth from fiction. She was an excellent source of both tittle-tattle and genuine scandal. She never spread it about, but she was always more than happy to sit and give me the full report after curfew when her meetings were over and it was just her and me in our room.
I was telling her about what I’d heard Peggy and Molly saying in the library and about how I felt I was getting the cold shoulder from many of the female students. “It’s been like this from day one, people staring at me and gossiping. I don’t think it’s very friendly here,” I told her, hugging my pillow to my chest, “I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.”