The Tale Of Oliver Corentine

I would start from the beginning, but then there would have to be one.

Most people would want me to start the story when Oliver died, but that doesn’t feel right. For me, the story began with the beginning of my junior year.

It was the first day of school, and Oliver couldn’t care less.

“Where oh where has my little dog gone, where oh where can he be?” He sang, arms wheeling through the air like stray windsocks.

“Home, home on the range!” Melissa continued with a flourish of her hands, fingers dancing in the early autumn sky.

“Where the antelope—“ I started, but was cut off rather abruptly.

“No James!” Oliver grabbed me by the shoulder. “You have to pick a new song.”

I glanced at Melissa for backup, but she just shrugged. I was a little irked, because if it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t have even been walking with him to begin with.

She had met him at an improv group, and they bonded instantaneously. I knew I didn’t have a right to be jealous, but all the attention she gave him filled me with invidious resentment.

“Fine. When I was first saw your face, I lost all my taste, that black low cut dress, you were a mess.”

Oliver rolled his eyes good naturedly, and laughed his electric laugh. If I had to pick one word to describe Oliver Corentine, it would be electric. He had this seemingly magnetic field surrounding him at all times, and let off an unimaginably reactible charge. He was nearly impossible to predict, but the one thing I knew for a fact about him, was that he was as dangerous as a wet cat.

“Ugh, you’re so emo, James.” Melissa giggled, and I allowed her a slight smile. However, had she been anyone else, I would have been less than amused.

We trampled up the leaf-strewn sidewalk and onto the large tarmac square of our school’s infamous parking lot. Let’s just say there have been more than a few public indecency arrests here.

“Look at Dina O’Hara this year!” Oliver muttered un-covertly into Melissa’s ear, and incidentally mine as well. “Which do you think are faker: her boobs or that knock-off Chanel handbag?”

Melissa took it upon herself to snicker again at Oliver’s half-hearted attempts at humour. “Boobs.”

“James, you?” I paused for a moment, attempting to discern deception.

“Uh, I don’t know.” I sputtered after detecting none, and turned Crayola Cranberry, glancing back down at my scuffed up Chuck Taylor’s.

“I think it’s the handbag.” Then he puffed his chest and gave Melissa, and incidentally me as well, a meaningful look. “But I’m going to go find out.”

And then he nearly skipped over to where Dina was leaning against the hood of her car, attempting to attract any male’s glance from the nearest ten-mile radius.

Oliver gesculated at her ridiculously low cut shirt for a second, and then started talking rapid-fire to her.

“He is just so—“ She looked around at the sky, trying to find the right word. “Oliver.”

Anyone who hadn’t met Oliver before would have been confused, but I knew what she meant. He was charged and electric, one of those people who you could tell just by looking at them that they were going to make a difference, that they mattered.

Flash-forward a couple of weeks, and you find that he did just that.

While Melissa, Dina and I hunched around the linoleum table, Oliver stood perched atop it, orating the latest segment in the school’s newspaper.

“And so, our school has announced that its annual production of Romeo and Juliet is to be altered slightly due to a minor—no that’s not right.” Oliver clears his throat and continues on with a determined, Oliver, smirk on his face. “A major rebellion held by the Drama club at Oakdale High. The play will feature Romeo and Julius!” Oliver slammed the paper down on the table. “We did it guys! We have successfully gay-ified theatre!”

Everyone else at the table, all verified thespians, clapped at the verdict. I shrugged, and smiled along.

“Come on, James! Tell me this isn’t exciting news!” He clapped me on the shoulder, and then slipped back down to a hyper-human level.

“This is exciting news.” I monotoned.

“Good boy.” He ruffled my hair like I was a dog, which wasn’t so far from the truth. Pretty much everyone to ever meet him was almost immediately his bitch.

I made a big show of rolling my eyes at the girls, but on the inside, his affection didn’t bother me in the slightest.

What did bother me only appeared later on. It must have been about seven or eight weeks before opening night.

I was pacing around backstage attempting to figure out how to get a green light purple without melting anything or starting a fire, when I heard a grotesque noise emanating from the bathroom, or what the resident theatre nerds have sobriqueted: Little Shakespeare’s room, for absurdly unfunny reasons.

I quietly pushed the door open, figuring that whoever was in there was having a remarkably common nervous breakdown. I’d handled them before, as I was quite good at letting actors monologue their tragic life stories at me.

Instead, I found none other than Oliver Corentine puking his guts out.

“Um, Oliver? You okay?” I cautiously approached him, and he spun around so fast I was impressed at his lack of whiplash.

“What are you doing here James?” His green eyes were wide as the Brandberg Massif, and he looked more alert than I’d ever seen him, which was saying something.

“I heard a noise and I was checking to see if everything was okay.” I knelt down carefully on the floor next to him. “Are you okay? You can trust me Oliver.”

He choked back a sob, wiping his mouth off with the heel of his hand.

Then he did something extremely unexpected. He spastically wrapped his arms around my shoulders and started to snivel softly, his wet tears staining my black hoodie.

“I’m bulimic James.” He pulled his head back, noticeably keeping his hands placed protectively on my shoulders, protecting whom, I’m still not sure. “I’ve never told anyone.”

He stared at me with his huge green eyes, and I melted.

“Oliver! Why didn’t you tell me?” My hands were getting uncomfortable at my sides, so I clasped them together in my lap.

“I was scared, Jamie.” He blanched a little. “You won’t kill me if I call you that, right?”

“Of course not.” I creased my eyebrows together in a frown. “Have you told anyone else?”

He glanced at the ground then fished around in his pocket for a second. I nearly startled back at the thought of what it could be, but it was only some Wrigley’s Double Mint.

He pulled two out and peeled off the silver. When he offered the box to me I shook my head and he sighed. “No one. Not a single person knows about it.”

“Not even Melissa?” I wondered.

“I was scared to tell her because she believes only popular cheerleader type girls have eating disorders, and well—“

I cut him off by pressing my index finger to his lips. The gutsiness of the move surprised both of us.

Then I immediately pulled away, and turned Rose Art Ruby.

He gripped my shoulders just a smidgeon tighter and then dropped his voice to a whisper: “I like you, James.”

I was about to reply with god knows what, when the bathroom door flew open, and Bobby Watterson sailed in. Immediately I pulled away and stood up. Bobby didn’t even notice me as he whooshed over to Oliver’s spot on the floor.

I slipped over to the stall Oliver had vacated, and flushed the toilet before Bobby could question the contents.

Oliver shot me a look of gratitude, and I hurried out of the room, pondering what he had said when he told me he liked me.

It was a long time before we ended up alone together again, Oliver Corentine and I, and by that time, all the lighting had been solved, and our posse had gained another member.

“So what do you think of Surly Sue?” Oliver joked as we slipped out of the changing room and across the stage.

“She’s interesting.” I was getting nervous jitters I couldn’t place, and quite frankly, being in the auditorium on a Saturday was strange enough.

“That’s all?” He knocked me in the shoulder, and I shrugged.

“So she’s butch. I don’t see why I should care.”

“She’s not just butch, she’s also like the most pissed off person EVER!” He punctuated his statement a small leap off the stage, a broad grin on his face as he sailed down into the house below.

I sat down and slid carefully off the edge. Jumping wasn’t worth the fall to me.

I landed with more pressure than intended on my ankle despite the precaution, and winced as I hobbled over to balance on one of the seats.

“You okay?” His eyes were liked algae scuffed ponds, wide, wet, and mysterious. I felt myself turn Herlitz Halaya.

“I’m fine.” I shifted weight back onto my foot, and grimaced again.

“You should sit down.” He pulled the seat into a sitting position, and I sat down timorously. He lounged on the armrest.

“I’m fine you know.” All of this attention was disconcerting.

“I know. I'm just making sure you’re one hundred percent okay.” He smiled at me, showing me his anti-flash tinted teeth.

Then he leaned down a little farther, putting a hand on my shoulder.

I turned Sharpie Scarlet, but didn’t flinch.

He stood up brusquely.

“You are gay, right James?” I nodded carefully, spilling my biggest secret. “Good.”

The smile that had masked his face only stretched wider as he set himself on my lap. I swallowed nervously. I’d never been so close to a boy before.

He threw his legs up over the armrest and slung an arm around my neck. I swallowed again and tried to control my breathing.

My heart rate wasn’t the only thing that was up.

His other hand strayed downwards, startling me backwards, but he only looped his index finger idly in my belt loop.

“You’re pretty cute you know.” His Oliver green eyes stared me down. “You’d be even cuter if you cut off some hair here.” He took the hand from behind my neck and twisted a finger through one of my blonde curls. “Put on some eyeliner here.” He traced a finger around my eye. “And got some more flattering clothes.”

He started to pull my jacket off, and a hailstorm raged in my stomach.

“Lean forward, Jamie.” He commanded, so I obliged, because it was Oliver asking.

He slipped my hunter green army jacket off, and hung it carefully on the back of the chair next to me.

I was extremely aware of the long cuts slipping down my left arm.

He touched one tenderly, as if it were still an open wound.

“What happened?” He looked concerned; really concerned as if he cared about me, not just the amount of blood I lost.

“I’m depressed, Oliver.” It was easier to just put it out there instead of lie like I normally would.

“Oh, Jamie.” He leaned his head down in a feat I would have deemed impossible had I not seen it with my own eyes, and gently placed his lips against the scar.

I shivered despite the heat seeping through my body.

Oliver shifted again, one leg on either side of my hips.

My face seared to an even brighter Paper Mate Pink.

He leaned in and kissed me.

I momentarily forgot how to breathe.

I kissed him back hungrily.

He put his hands on my hips.

I put mine around his neck.

He opened his mouth.

I opened mine.

It was fantastic.

Of course good things can’t last forever. Soon enough he pulled away, and soon enough I skittered off, afraid to believe I had just made-out with a boy.

But it wasn’t the kissing that scared me the most, no, it was the connection we had. I knew we had something, whether I liked it or not.

It was about time I came out to Melissa anyway.

Oliver and I took to meeting at strange hours in illicit places to continue what we had started.

It became a regular thing, lining my calendar right along with rehearsals and dentist appointments.

Whenever we were in public though, we pretended like nothing was going on. It was simply far too strange to fully comprehend.

Our odd encounters were fantastic every time, and he opened up an entire world to me. I knew I was ridiculously lucky. There wasn’t a person out there who wouldn’t love to be going out with Oliver. He radiated pure awesomeness, in the traditional sense.

As the play grew nearer, rehearsals became more and more frequent, and my meetings with Oliver grew more and more sporadic.

What we had was not love, per se, it was more of a period of experimentation. But over the course of weeks that we spent together, sharing fervent glances, I began to enjoy his company more and more, if only for that fact that it was his.

However, it was more than just hook-ups to both of us. He cared about me, though it manifested itself far less frequently while we were in the company of others.

Melissa definitely noticed something, but being the good friend she is, confronted me about none of it.

If I loved anyone, it was Melissa, although it was only platonically. Yet Oliver told me I couldn’t tell her about us for reasons I only understand now.

Going out with Oliver had a strange affect on me as well. I found myself speaking up more than I used to. This became inherently clear when Oliver dragged us to the Moonlight Bowling Alley.

Melissa, Dina, Sue, and Oliver decided that we had to go somewhere to celebrate our victory in one of the many rehearsals. In this case it happened to be the perfect spotlight angle that lit Oliver up like an angel, and Melissa wasn’t shy about telling him that.

“You look amazing Oliver!” She gushed, and Dina nodded in agreement.

“It’s all in the light.” Sue grunted, and I shrugged non committaly.

“What do you think, James?” Oliver prodded, his eyes glowing at me.

“It’s a mix of both?” I tried, and he laughed his electric laugh.

“Let the games begin!”

Oliver started organizing us into teams, but Melissa and Dina quickly began arguing.

“I want Surly Sue on my team!”

“You have James!”

“James can’t bowl for shit!”

“So why do you think I can bowl any better?” Sue interrupted.

“Because you’re…” Dina trailed off.

“Because I’m gay?” She raised her eyebrows past the ozone layer.

“Well…” Melissa looked uncomfortable.

“Yes. Duh.” Oliver made a face. “Why else? Surly Sue is gay so she’s good at sports. Duh.”

Dina and Melissa cringed, but said nothing.

“Don’t go around perpetuating stereotypes. It isn’t good for anyone.” He had no idea what perpetuating meant.

“Yeah.” Everyone turned to look at me because I barely ever said a word. “Well, Oliver’s right. Don’t go surmising stereotypes.”

“He said perpetuating.” Melissa pointed out.

“And I said surmising.” And with that I shut up and bowled.

I thought the most about it when we were backstage before the first dress rehearsal, and he was vibrating. I was comforting him, something no one noticed because I was constantly reassuring the thespians of their worthiness and ability to succeed.

“Are you okay?” I was rubbing small circles near the bottom of his back, picturing what it looked like in my minds eye.

“I feel weird.” He looked defocused, his eyes fluttering about, hands shaking ominously.

I immediately chastised myself for the impure thoughts I’d had, and gripped him tighter.

His Julius costume had the most awful frill around his neck, and from the way he was itching at it, I knew he wanted it off.

“Oliver, why don't you change?” I offered, and helped him onto his feet.

Our entire encounter was strange because of what had happened last night, and while I wasn’t complaining in the least, it was still strange to see him like this.

As he shuffled to the changing room, he muttered to me, far quieter than he had so many weeks prior when he was commenting on Dina O’Hara’s boobs, “Are you doing okay? It hurts a lot the first time.”

I blushed Expo Eggplant.

“Uhhh.” I glanced around. “Later, okay?”

I dragged him into the changing room and tugged at the zipper on his collar.

“I can manage, Jamie.” Oliver shoved my hand away and with shaky grip commenced his undressing.

“Which one’s yours?” I scour the benches for a backpack that could belong to him.

“Black one with the pink, blue, and purple pin.” I nodded.

I found it quickly and realised his pin was for bisexual pride. I wasn’t shocked, as Oliver flirted with everyone, but it still came as sort of a surprise.

I’d never thought too hard about his sexuality. I guess I just thought he was being courteous.

I shook the thought from my mind and hurried back over to where he stood. He gave me a shy grin, but reluctantly grabbed the pack from me.

I handed him a curt nod, and slipped out the door to backstage.

“Where’s Oliver, James?” Bobby’s foot tapped the ground, beating an impatient rhythm. His small, dim eyes looked me up and down.

“He’s feeling sick.” I didn’t like to lie very often, but I wasn’t about to spill Oliver’s closest guarded secret to anyone, especially not the infamous Bobby Watterson.

“So?” It was clear to everyone except Bobby himself that he had the largest unrequited crush in the history of Oakdale High.

“So what? He’s not feeling well so he’s going home!” I spat as Oliver trudged out the door, his moony eyes surveying the scene wildly.

“James?” Melissa came running towards me, arms outstretched. “James, I have to tell you something important.”

“What?” I snapped impatiently.

“Uh, never mind, Jamie—“

“Don’t call me that.” My head was aching and all I wanted to do was go home, or perhaps make out with Oliver. I was sick of secrets, sick of lies, sick of all the drama that Drama had brought upon.

I stormed past an astonished Melissa, an angry Bobby, and a very, very confused, Oliver.

He started after me, but I didn’t give him a chance to catch up. I blatantly ignored all of the confused Capulets’ glares as I strode across the full stage and leapt off the stage into the abyss below.

I was outside in under a minute, heading efficiently towards my car, a depilated Honda civic.

I clicked the car unlocked. Or at least I attempted to.

I shoved the key into the manual lock and twisted. The door swung open. I threw my bag inside and reached to unlock the driver’s side.

A startling tap to the shoulder caused me to jump.

“Jamie?” Oliver’s eyes were gaping holes of black, their usual phthalo swallowed up by dilation.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Oliver.”

“So we don’t have to.” He traced erratic lines down my arm, and I let out a deep breath.

“Okay,” was all I could manage at that point.

I stuck my hand in and unlocked the back door of the car.

Oliver opened it and sat down comfortably, as if the car were his.

I followed him in, and relinquished the world.

Time doesn’t pass conventionally when you’re lying horizontal in a Honda civic on a Thursday afternoon, the guy you’re sort of dating lying on top of you, his mouth pressed to yours, your shirt balled in his fist, your hands crawling every which way, holding each other in a way some people would consider sin.

It’s exactly what we both needed right then, him to distract himself from his spasming body, me to distract myself from my spasming mind.

He slipped my shirt off over my head, and I did the same to his.

He radiated heat that bounced off my body and filled the air with an aura of lust and desire.

I yanked him upwards, and his hands grappled for support.

Then I heard a knock at the window and froze.

Four faces stared back at mine; each one looking more betrayed then the others.

“James?” Melissa gasped at the same time as Bobby Watterson, Dina O’Hara, and Surly Sue asked: “Oliver?”

I looked at him. He glanced at the floor. I felt the knife of betrayal slip into my gut, not once twice, but five times, each by the hands of the people around me.

“Open the door!” Melissa pounded on the window, and then tried to force the handle outwards. It shot open with a potency that sent everyone tumbling somewhere, which for me happened to be the asphalt.

Tears streamed down Melissa’s face, and I felt some struggling to push their way out too. I didn’t let them. I wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t cry.

Oliver stood up from the ground next to me, and brushed himself off.

He didn’t apologize. He was above it. I wasn’t.

“I’m so, so, so sorry Melissa! I’m an idiot! I’m telling you, it’s not what it looks like!”

“Shut up! Just shut up James!” Her shoulders started to heave and I had to fight the impulse to protect her.

“Yeah James.” I turned to face him, wondering how he could say something like that and expect to get away with it.

“You were just as much a part of this, Oliver!” I set my jaw as menacingly as I could muster.

“Was not. You begged me to.” And for the first time I saw his nasty side. I’d heard plenty of stories, Oliver backstabbing his way to the top, but I never bought it. A guy like him didn’t have a mean bone in his body. But seeing the leering sneer on his face then, I understood.

This was a boy capable of sabotage, and I was his main victim.

“You, you…” But I said no more. I wasn’t one to waste my words so freely, and I also wasn’t one to fight a losing battle.

“YOU LYING MAN-WHORE!” Melissa shrieked suddenly, then with a click of her heel spun around mercilessly leaving me needlessly confused.

“It’s true, you know.” Oliver whispered to me after everyone had followed a pissed Melissa across the parking lot. “You were only ever a pastime. I have a real girlfriend. And it’s her.”

Then he too deserted me, and for the first time in my life, I was completely alone.

He died two weeks later, the night before the show. He was in the shower when it happened.

His weak heart failed him, sending his body spasming, not unlike it had before, into a deadly heart attack.

They found his corpse not too long after. They called an ambulance, but it was too late.

He was dead.

Gone.

Oliver Corentine, an unstoppable force of nature, died.

People in the beginning couldn’t understand why a seemingly healthy teenage boy would suffer a heart attack, but I knew. I knew it had been coming for a long time. Bulimia is hell on your body, and I knew Oliver hadn’t had long to live.

But that isn’t to say I was ready when it happened. It still ached like an open wound.

Sure he had strung me along, lied, and manipulated me, but at the end of the day, I still cared about him. Care about him.

I left an anonymous tip about the cause of his death, and soon enough, the story had passed through school.

The worst part of it all to me was the fact that the show went on. They said Oliver would have wanted it that way, but I knew better. He loved the spotlight, and wouldn’t have wanted an understudy to have it instead of him.

His funeral was packed. Almost everyone at school showed up, from pimply freshman, to burly seniors.

I was invisible.

I slipped my hand into my pocket and fumbled with the small pin I had taken from him. Maybe stealing from a dead boy is wrong, but no one else was going to want it, were they?

During the wake, while others cried or snivelled, clutched each other or themselves, I strode purposefully towards his casket and looked inside.

He smelled of disinfectant and tears.

I pulled the pin out of my pocket and clicked the needle free.

I pricked the tip of my index finger until a blossom on crimson expanded around it.

I then placed my hand against his unbeating heart, staining the cloth dark red.

A tear soon followed.

“Your secret killed you. I’m not going to make the same mistake.”

I walked away to the back and found Melissa.

“I’m sorry.” She stared at me with her dull grey eyes.

“Me too. We only went out once you know.” She glances at the floor. “I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t apologize, Mel. It wasn’t you—“

“I was in love with him!” People turned and stared, some in disgust, others in recognition.

She wasn’t alone with that. Everyone was in love with Oliver Corentine.

The funeral was slow, the speeches dull, mostly from his family about what a wonderful boy he had been, and what a shame it was that he died so young.

I wasn’t having any of it.

After the eleventeenth cousin finished their speech, I strode dutifully to the podium.

“My name is James and I knew Oliver pretty well.” People didn’t really notice me. Not yet anyway. “I was also sleeping with him.”

That got their attention.

“Oliver and I had a complicated relationship, but he was a complicated person. I only knew him for a few months, but he changed my life, not all the ways good.

“Oliver Corentine was a force of nature, to the point where one might even call him a freak of nature.” That got me some startled laughs. “He left an impression on everyone he ever met, and he always had infinite amounts of energy, not all of which was used for good.

“Oliver was a manipulative little bastard, and that may not be what you want to hear right now, but it’s true. He strung everyone along in his web of lies, flirting with anything that moved. He rose his way to the top ruthlessly, destroying anyone in his path.

“But that’s not to say he was all bad. He also had a severe eating disorder. Bulimia. For those of you who don’t know, bulimia is basically where you can eat as much food as you’d like, you just puke it all back up when you’re done. But it’s not a perfect method. It happens to be the reason we’re all congregated here today.

“Oliver died because the puking pretty much stopped his heart from working. He essentially killed himself, if indirectly. He was a fool, but you don’t have to be too.”

“Come on!” Bobby Watterson stood up, his tie crooked, funeral brownie in his angry fist. “We all know you’re just bitter cause he dumped you for your best friend!”

“But aren’t you just proving my point?” I gripped the podium. “He’s a manipulator. Was a manipulator.”

“He is a great guy!”

“Was, Bobby, was! He’s dead now and he isn’t coming back.

Oliver’s mom was in tears.

I wished I could cry for him.

I wish I could cry for him.

But I can’t.

It’s been a year since he died, and I still can’t cry for him.

Sometimes when I fall asleep, I see his eyes flashing in front of me, those huge, green, Oliver, soulful eyes, brighter than the moon, and more distant than the stars.

Oliver was a strange boy. The world revolved around him, so when he died, we were all launched out of orbit. It threw a lot of people off, but it was grounding for me. I finally felt like my life was my own to live.

And that’s the tale of Oliver Corentine. He was a whole lot of things, not all of them good, but the one that sticks out to me the most is an example.

I’m not saying he deserved to die, I’m just saying he didn’t deserve to live, either.

#gay #eatingdisorder #bulimia #theatre #theater #death #maincharacterdeath #queer #love #ya