SOME KIND OF DISASTER ─ oliver wood

[ 040 ] getting used to the rhythm

CHAPTER FORTY
getting used to the rhythm

ON FRIDAY, the full moon hung small and yellow and gibbous, like an inconvenient blister waiting to be lanced. In the corner of the room, Professor Sinistra had procured a magical clock that chimed every time a half-hour elapsed. Their test tonight was on possibly exam material, which entailed all the questions the class had spotted together last week under Sinistra's logical guidance, and over the weekend, Jeremy and Quinn had helped Sawyer cram for this test until she had pieces of information about the planets and magical implications coming out of her ears for days. Floating out of her body in the haze of her medication, Sawyer wasn't too concerned about the test. Reading the questions and writing the answers was going to be frustrating, but Professor Sinistra had offered her the option of taking extra time, knowing her dyslexia would be holding her back. When the test finally commenced and the timer started, the flutter of test booklets flapping open sounded like a flock of starlings taking off at once.

"If I don't get a perfect score on that test I'll set something on fire," Quinn grumbled, rubbing her eyes as they exited the classroom. She'd spent days burning the midnight oil in the kitchens, pouring over the material from class.

Wyatt did a double take. Eyes narrowed, he glanced at Sawyer, sandwiched between himself and Quinn. "Something tells me you're responsible for this reaction."

Sawyer levelled him with a flat look. "Who else?"

"Alvarez, for one," Oliver said, coolly, coming up behind them. Sawyer lagged behind a little, so she was walking beside him now.

"Indirectly, maybe," Quinn said, coyly, shooting Sawyer a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. Last year, Sawyer had let Quinn into the secret of true catharsis, inspired by Rio, who set things on fire because his blood was gasoline and if he couldn't set himself on fire, then he could destroy something else to supplant the feeling. Burning things was a form of unburdening. If that thing didn't exist in physical form anymore, it wasn't an issue. Problem solved. "Speaking of Rio," Quinn added, as an afterthought, "did you see him at all today? It's like he's vanished off the face of the earth completely."

In retrospect, Sawyer should've kept a tighter leash on Rio. After the Christmas break, he did seem to be getting better. But recently, it was as if he was leading some other life entirely that neither of them knew about. One moment he was here, another was was making excuses to get out of meals early. Meetings with Professor Snape about his Potions essay could stretch for hours, and nobody would see him. He almost never came to breakfast anymore. Every Tuesday he would be waiting outside Sawyer's Transfiguration class so they could walk to the library together, but lately, it was as if he'd scattered time. It was Oliver who would offer to walk her instead, since Rio would be nowhere to be found. Marcus had been ranting about how he'd miss Quidditch practice every now and then. They hardly saw him on the weekends either. It felt like fourth year again, watching her best friend grow thinner and thinner, more gaunt and blue-veined ghost than boy, watching him disappear for days on end until she was convinced he'd slipped between the walls. At that time, Sawyer had refused to believe he was ditching them, or that they were losing him. And she refused to believe that now.

On Christmas Eve last year, he'd told her to do whatever she needed to do.

The following summer, he'd broken his promise again. He didn't have to come clean about what he'd done. She knew. She'd just been waiting for him to come to her about it, because his main motivation seemed to have been getting Marcus back, but that was already a shipwreck on its own. Sawyer supposed that Rio had given up on picking up the pieces. Breaking things was far easier than putting them back together, and if destruction was a boy wrapped in scars and combustible impulse with broken glass for teeth, then fixing something wasn't going to be on his agenda for long. Some people didn't change. They just learnt to hide their ugly a lot better, buried the damage done to their system deeper. Except, Rio was doing a terrible job at both, and Sawyer was going to exorcise the truth out of him, no matter the cost.