A More Deserving Blackness (15 page)

             
He grabs a lumber cart and fills it with a gallon of white exterior paint and the boards, muttering under his breath as he scans different sizes and shapes that mean little to me.  When it’s all loaded he motions with his head toward the opposite end of the cart.

             
“Get on.”

             
I glance sideways at him but do as he asks.  Logan does a quick check to make sure we’re alone in the long aisle before taking off, pushing the cart and running behind it like a crazy person, then hopping on the back, the muscles of his forearms flexed as he hangs on to the sides.  The wheels are loose and rattling, ungodly noisy, and we’re staring at each other and the loose strands of my hair are flying into my mouth and I’m laughing out loud.

             
When Logan pulls a card from the black leather wallet in his back pocket, the graying, pot-bellied man behind the counter slides it through the card reader and then reads the name carefully, taking his time.  His eyes dart up to Logan’s neutral face, hooded by bushy brows drooping with age.

             
“Lieutenant Dawson was a good man,” the guy says tonelessly, and I stiffen.  “Changed my wife’s tire for her one time.  Followed her home to make sure she was all right.  Raining like hell that night, too.”

             
Logan accepts the card back, slipping his wallet into his jeans.

             
“You’ll never be half the man he was.”

             
I’m standing there, shock rapidly morphing to full-blown indignant anger, but Logan soundly meets the man’s embittered eyes as he leans over, signing the receipt with a steady hand.

             
“I’m okay with that.”

             
He says it calmly, evenly, and then he takes my hand, and we push the loaded cart out the door together.  When I glance back over my shoulder, the man is still staring after us, a troubled frown deepening the wrinkles of his face.

             
Logan silently loads his purchases into the car, awkwardly wedging the longer pieces into the back seat so they cross in front of my chest and poke out my window.  I can hardly move in the seat, the pleasant smell of fresh wood strong right in front of my nose, but I wish I could get to my phone, wish I could say something to take the shadowed, distant look from his eyes.  He mutely drives us back to drop it off, piling it all at the edge of his driveway, but I don’t even make it out of the car, trapped as I was under the wood, before he has it all out and slides back in beside me.

             
“I’m hungry,” he informs me, easily backing out and shifting the car into drive.  There are tiny flakes of wood on my jeans, on the floor of his otherwise immaculate car, like beach sand against the flawless black interior.

             
He presses smoothly on the gas, glancing over at me.  “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” he says, correctly guessing the line of my thoughts.  “It doesn’t matter.”

             
You’re not who they think you are.

             
“I’m exactly who they think I am.  I just don’t regret it like they do.”

             
He says this without remorse, sure and strong and unwavering.  He doesn’t regret it.  Just like that.  Like it’s that easy, looking back at the very worst moment of your life and just . . . accepting it.  Everything that happened.  Everything you did.

             
Logan drives a little longer than necessary, taking us to a diner a few exits down the highway, and I don’t have to ask why.  I order an iced tea and he just smiles and orders a coke, linking our hands together over the table, like he can’t stand not to touch me, which is a nice switch.

             
“Why don’t you drive?” he asks as I sip my tea.

             
I shrug evasively.

             
“Do you have a license?”

             
I nod that I do, but I hadn’t used it much since it happened. 

             
He seems to sense the change in my mood, because he drops it.

             
When our food comes – a burger and fries for him and an apple walnut salad for me – he pokes a fry into the ketchup and watches me for a second, waiting, before stubbornly setting it back down.  I sigh and take a reluctant bite, and he does the same, chewing appreciatively, bite for bite, until both plates are nearly clean.

             
He’s drinking deeply right from his cup – “I don’t like straws,” he’d said matter-of-factly – when I reach down for my phone, texting him beneath the table.  His phone buzzes and he raises a brow at me over the glass, drinking his fill and swallowing slowly before setting it gently back to the table.  He pushes his hips up from the seat, digging in his front pocket for his phone.

             
I’m sorry
, the screen says, and he looks up.

             
“For what?”

             
For not telling you sooner that it didn’t matter.  For being too afraid.

             
“Of what?”

             
I falter, chewing my lip as I try to find the words.
Of all the things I can’t tell you.

             
He reads it, then places his phone down lightly on the tabletop, considering me carefully.  “For someone who doesn’t talk, you’ve been more honest with me than almost anyone I’ve ever known.”

             
I visibly balk at that but he argues, “No, you are.  You don’t do that stupid coy thing girls do, you don’t sugar-coat it, you don’t pretend; you’re real and you’re brave.”

             
I don’t pretend?  If only he knew how much of my life I was pretending away – pretending to care, pretending to be okay, pretending I wasn’t haunted by the sounds of my own screaming in my head.

             
I’m not brave.

             
“Bullshit.  Every second of your life is brave.  Finish your salad.”

             
I don’t, I can’t eat another bite, and he doesn’t push it.  When the check comes he stuffs a few bills into the folder and hands it back to the waitress with a polite, “Thank you,” and a smile.

             
By the time Logan turns the car back onto our street it’s already dusk, and he pulls smoothly into my drive.  I stare at the headlights pooling against the closed white garage door and feel that same heavy cocktail of sadness and dread pulling at the core of me.  I don’t want to leave him.

             
“Is your sister okay with you spending so much time with me?”

             
I nod.

             
“Good.”  Then, “I’ll see you in the morning?”

             
It takes me a second to realize what he’s saying, to remember that tomorrow is Monday and we have school, that the real world continues on even when your life is wrecked.

             
I nod again.

             
Logan touches my face for a second, the meat of his thumb against my cheek, and for just that moment I wonder if he’s going to kiss me, my eyes flicking down to his soft lips, before he smiles. 

             
“Try to get some sleep.”

             
He waits until I’m safely inside and then backs down the drive and the headlights splash across the window before draining out onto the street.  I feel nervous and don’t want to examine it too closely, so I turn away.  Trish is awake in the living room, squinting at her computer the way she always does when she’s more stubborn than she is tired.

             
She looks up and smiles sleepily when I step into the room.

             
“How’d it go?  Did you have fun?”

             
Did I?  Fun wouldn’t be the way I would describe it, but for Trish I nod anyway.

             
“Good.  That’s great.  Did you guys talk?”

             
She means did he tell me, but it feels too private, too raw, so I just shrug.

             
“Did he feed you?”

             
I nod again and Trish beams.

             
“Liking that boy more and more,” she tells her computer screen, and I can’t help but smile as I slip down the hallway into my room. 

             
I’m too tired to change so I just slip off Logan’s jacket, push my soot-streaked jeans down my legs, brush my teeth, and slide into bed.  But sleep doesn’t come easy.  I can’t stop thinking about everything he’d told me, can’t stop seeing everything he’d described happening again and again, like an endless film reel in my mind.  It’s just as bad as the screaming, because there’s no sound.  A silent horror film, with Logan as the star.

             
This is why he buries himself in those books every night.

             
Thirty minutes and I stop resisting.  My chest hurts, this dull ache like I’d been hollowed out with a ladle.  I flop over in my bed and reach for my phone. 

             
You asleep?

             
It only takes a minute before,
No.  You okay?

             
No.
  Every time I close my eyes I see you screaming, covered in blood. 
Jesus. 

             
But I just type,
Yes.

             
Can’t sleep?

             
It wasn’t your fault,
I send back, surprising myself.

             
This time his answer is a little longer in coming. 
I know exactly whose fault it is that she’s dead. 
Then, after I think he’s done and I’m getting ready to send a reply,
But it’s my fault I didn’t save her.

             
You didn’t know.

             
Yes.  I did. 
Then,
Get some sleep.  I’m here, if you need me.

             
I need you.

             
But I don’t send it.

Chapter 9

“Hey, Bree.  Can I talk to you for a second?”

              I’m surprised to see Erik approaching me the next day at lunch.  He’d barely met my eyes in almost a week, and even now he already looks like he’s regretting his decision.

             
In his hands is his usual tray stacked full of food, the unnatural shade of aqua blue Gatorade about to pitch off onto the floor with the way he’s chasing after me, so I stop and sigh and turn.  Behind him, the entire lunchroom is papered with red and white spirit propaganda, and gauche effect something like being surrounded by a spiraling deck of the Queen of Hearts’ marching playing cards.

             
What?
I ask with a simple arch of my brows at him.

             
He sees the impatience in the gesture.  “I know.  I suck.  But the rest of them-” he gestures with one thumb back toward the cafeteria – “once you started wearing that jacket to school and everything . . .” he trails off, shaking his head, his perfectly gelled hair not even shifting with the movement.

             
Was that an apology? 

             
But I get it.  I do.  Association with Logan is obviously a death knell to my lofty social goals.  Pity.

             
I’m staring at Erik silently, but I want to shout at him.  I want to jab my finger into his chest and yell about how he’s wrong, how they’re all wrong, how I hate them for it. 

             
All morning I’d scanned the faces of my classmates, Logan’s words from Sunday rolling around, echoing in my head.  They rattled over everything else, drowning out the laughter, the friendly calls, the drone of my teachers’ lecturing.  Everything else faded into a grey background noise, toneless and meaningless. 

             
These people, these kids with their judgments and their accusations, they had no idea.  They lived their lives in safe little bubbles flavored like cheap party store

beer and watermelon chewing gum and
had no fucking clue.  They’d never seen real evil.

             
Erik sighs, glancing behind him again.  A few steps away his ex-turned-girlfriend Jess is waiting for him, appearing nervous, though I’m not sure what she thinks might happen if Erik talks to me.  Psycho isn’t catching, as far as I know.  Nevertheless she watches us carefully, fidgeting with her tray.

             
“Look, I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

             
What?

             
“And . . . to ask you to be careful.  That guy you’re hanging with?  Brenner?  He’s got a history of violence,
bad,
and I don’t want you to get – Bree, wait.”

             
But I’m already walking away, fuming, and Erik doesn’t bother chasing after me.

             
He doesn’t want me to get hurt.  Erik, the super nice not-quarterback with the dimples, who takes a girl who doesn’t know anyone and can’t speak to a party, hands her a beer, and then never checks on her again.  The almost friend who suddenly stopped speaking to me or even looking at me once I was sighted with Logan.

             
The Psycho.  That’s their uninventive nickname for Logan.  The Psycho.

             
I feel claustrophobic so I drop my unopened V8 into my bag and yank it closed, automatically scanning the cafeteria for Logan, which is ridiculous, because I know he doesn’t have the same lunch time.  I just want to see him.  But his is earlier, and I know he has pizza and a Coke almost every day, and he sits alone.  I know he wouldn’t care what Erik thought of him, even if I do. 

             
And I know he’d make this feeling in my chest go away, as if a scream could be a living thing, scratching its way out of me with sharp, clawing nails.

             
I push out the doors to the small courtyard and suck in a breath of warm, late September air.  I can smell the change of the leaves, the brittle, earthly smell of fall on the mild afternoon.

             
One more class.  I just have to get through one more class, and I can see him.

             
I do so impatiently.  And afterward Logan meets me where he usually does, in front of my locker.  When I turn the corner he’s already leaning against it, waiting for me, his arms folded over his chest and those old black boots crossed at the ankle.  His mouth twitches as I approach, and it eases the pressure that was grinding down on my chest all morning.

             
“Nice jacket.”

             
It was too warm for it today, one of the last warmer days of the year, but I’d worn it anyway, Erik and Mother Nature be damned. 

             
I switch out my books in my bag and close my locker and Logan reaches out, easing a few of the loose strands of my hair out from where they’d slipped down inside the collar of the coat. His warm fingers just barely touch the sides of my neck and I shiver. 

             
“It looks better on you.”

             
Health passes much too quickly.  When we enter the room, Erik tries to catch my eye from his seat but I ignore him, heading straight to the back of the room, the heavy footfalls of Logan’s boots right behind me.  I abandon my usual seat and claim the one at the table next to Logan instead, no longer content with the stretch of all that aisle space between us.  This, of course, sets off a reverberation loud enough that more than a few heads turn to stare.  Probably wondering when Logan is going to spontaneously attack me for popping that invisible force field that surrounds him. 

             
We end up watching a video on alcohol poisoning, and Logan scoots his boot over against my foot under the table and reaches for my hand with his, resting them on the tabletop and toying with my fingers. 

             
Everything’s easier when I’m touching him.  More bearable.  I’d gotten used to him, his soothing presence.  It daunts me to imagine of where I’d be without him.

             
But then I don’t have to imagine, do I?  I’d be right back where I always went.  Lying on my back with the lights in my eyes and the rain in my tears, choking on my own screams.

             
Logan braces his boots against the floor, levering his shoulders against the back of his chair and pushing up his hips.  He digs with his free hand in his front pocket, the muscles of his stomach tightening under the soft cotton of his t-shirt as he searches.  He’s strong and dark and beautiful, and when I lift my gaze from his body his eyes are black, watching me. 

             
As soon as his pen is free from the fabric of his jeans he reaches for my notebook, flipping it to an empty page and scribbling quickly.

             
What’s wrong?

             
I take the pen from him. 
Nothing.

             
Bullshit.

             
Well.  Wasn’t that lovely?

             
Nothing new,
I write, clarifying. 
I’m crazy and this school’s full of ignorant assholes and I want to grab you and drag you far away from here and never come back.

             
Logan reads this slowly, then looks at me.  “You’re not crazy.”

             
I don’t answer, because I know I am.  Crazy and broken. 

             
“But I’d go with you.”

             
I lay my head on his shoulder and pretend to watch the rest of the movie with my eyes closed, Logan’s lips in my hair, long strands of it spilling over his chest and his arm.

             
The rest of my classes, that time spent without him, are tedious and precarious, teetering between utter boredom and the fear that any second I would come tearing apart and he wouldn’t be there to help hold the pieces of me together.

             
I’m making my way from pre-calc when I hear someone call out to me.

             
“Bree, wait.”

             
I pause, bewildered, when Dylan falls into step beside me, a baby blue t-shirt tight over his sculpted chest and his sandy brown hair looking like he’s just stepped off the beach.

             
“Can I talk to you?” 

             
But he doesn’t wait for any kind of response at all before he says, unapologetically, “You need to stay away from Brenner.”

             
What the . . . ?

             
I stop, full reverse throttle, right there in the middle of the hall.  Dylan skids to a halt next to me and I stare at him irritably, unable to believe this was happening twice in one day.

             
Dylan winces under my glare.  “Yeah, I know.  You think I’m an asshole.  I drank too much that night, it was stupid.  But seriously, that’s nothing compared to what Brenner’s capable of.  I know him.  He’s dangerous.”

             
The other downside of having a reluctance to talk is that you can’t cut someone off who’s saying something totally asinine and infuriating, even more so because said louse actually believes that after everything he’d done I would dip even one
toe
into his pool of arrogant ignorance.  Some hand gestures are universal, though, and I consider pitching him one of those before he steps closer to me in the emptying hall, and my spine stiffens automatically.

             
“Stay away from him, before you get hurt.”

             
There’s something in his low tone, the ruthlessness of his eyes; it feels like a threat and I’m only partially aware of clamping my hand tightly over my opposite wrist.  I want the pain, bad, but -

             
Logan.

             
My back arches to put some distance between myself and Dylan, but then he steps back, and I can breathe again.

             
“Hey, Baby,” a female voice calls out from down the hall.  Her thin pump heels click as she approaches us.  “What’s going on?”

             
Dylan wraps an arm around her waist and I see it’s the blonde girl from the other day, who’d asked me what it was like to date a murderer.  They make a lovely couple.

             
“Nothing,” he says offhand, but when he dips his head to kiss her hair he sends me what can only be described as a concerned look over the top of her head.  And then he’s walking away, catching up with a group of his friends a little further up the hall.

             
The girl hovers. 

             
Damn it.

             
Her blonde hair is pulled into a high ponytail, highlighting the aristocratic cheekbones she probably worked very hard at every day, puking up everything she ate.  She’s smiling nastily at me, and it strikes me that I clearly did something to personally offend her in a past life, like break the purple crayon or run over the family Persian with my car, but I can’t think – oh.  Of course.  The rumors after the party.  I’d almost forgotten.  She was jealous.  It would almost be humorous, but then she opens her mouth.

             
“Your boyfriend ask you to homecoming yet?”

             
Homecoming? 

             
I blink at her, once, and then turn and start to walk away, but she calls after me – “Make sure you bring your rape whistle!” - and I don’t think about it, I just whirl around and march back to her, appalled that she’d actually just implied that Logan would hurt me -
rape
me - at a school dance.  I take a breath and my mouth opens and the girl’s eyes widen with surprise.

             
But I gag, instantly slamming the back of my hand over my mouth. 
No.
  The urge to tell her off is gurgling in my throat, but I can’t.  Everything, all of the filth I’d shoved down inside me for over two years would come spewing up from my lungs.  I can’t.  I
can’t,
and suddenly my hand drops, it’s choking off all circulation in my opposite wrist, I can feel the throb in my fingertips, and she’s smiling again.

             
“‘Course, maybe you’re already fucking him.”  She sidles up closer to me, and I feel like vomiting all over her pink scoop-neck top.  “Sorry, I’m just curious, ‘cause, you know, Dylan’s never killed anyone with his bare fists like Psycho, so I wouldn’t know.”  She cocks her head at me.  “When he hits you does it turn you on?”