A More Deserving Blackness (23 page)

             
“Okay?” Logan leans down to ask in my ear. 

             
I can’t control my trembling but I nod.

             
We weave through groups of people; crowds of teenagers, moms pushing strollers, dads with little kids on their shoulders, their eyes drooping with sleep and their faces sticky with cotton candy.  As we make our way past one of the rides - kids packed in swiveling metal buckets with bright, chipping paint - a shrill scream makes me jolt and Logan stiffens.  His arm slips protectively around my waist underneath his jacket as he moves us away, and he looks down at me, searching my face.  I nod again.  I’m okay.

             
As darkness descends in full force, the parking lot is lit entirely by the lively glow of the fair lights.  We walk aimlessly, taking it all in, Logan somehow knowing that I just need to be there and nothing more.  That I need to face it.  Even though I can’t tell him why.

             
The smell of warm elephant ears hits my nose, sugary and sick, when Logan lurches to a stop beside me. 

             
My heart stutters at the tension I can feel in him, my body latched securely to his side under a sudden, crushing grip.

             
I look up to find that Logan’s face is a stone mask, a muscle ticking in his cheek and his eyes hard and guarded.  He’s staring straight ahead at an older man in a dark blue uniform approaching us; a police officer.  He looks enough like Dylan that I don’t have to guess.

             
“Go home, Brenner,” the man says authoritatively.  He’s restraining himself, standing back at least three feet in a posture that could easily be considered casual, but for the barely contained fury in his glare.  His steely blue eyes are fixed on Logan’s chest, like he can’t stand to even look him in the eyes.

             
Logan’s voice is steady, though his arm is still rigid around me.  “Sir, unless I’m breaking some law I’m unaware of, I have every right to bring my girlfriend to a public community event.”

             
Although his eyes narrow, Dylan’s father says nothing else, and Logan stands still under that bitter glare for a moment longer before forcing out a tight-lipped, “Sir,” and leading me away.

             
He’s walking quickly but without a destination, and once we’ve nearly crossed the length of the entire fair for the second time I pull at his arm, coaxing him to stop.  I tow him over to a black metal bench next to a neon ring-toss game and sit.  The surface is cold beneath me as I tuck one leg up, facing him with his hand clasped between both of mine in my lap.

             
“I’m sorry.”

             
I slant him a look that says it’s unnecessary.

             
“I didn’t think about– but it makes sense that there’d be security here.”

             
Rocking onto one side of my butt I reach back and dig out my phone. 
Are you okay?

             
“Yeah.”  He blinks the distant, pained look from his eyes and leans in, kissing my forehead.  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

             
But then he catches the expression on my face.  “What?”

             
You called me your girlfriend.

             
He scans the message and looks up at me, just the flick of his eyes to mine, his face unreadable.  “Aren’t you?”

             
He acts like it’s so simple, so obvious, and I can’t explain why it terrifies me.

             
Yes.

             
A slow smile.  “Okay, then.” 

             
He leans over to kiss me lightly on the mouth and when he pulls back he’s still smiling. I laugh and shake my hair back from my face and that’s when I freeze.  Because we’re seated beneath the Ferris wheel and I hadn’t even known it and I’m looking up at it and it looks just like it did that night and I can’t look away.  The spinning lights are mesmerizing and gaudy and sickening and I want to close my eyes but even if I did I know I’d still see it.

             
“Bree.”

             
I force myself to look back at Logan.

             
“Is it that?” he asks cautiously, with a nod of his head toward the giant thing.  His thumbs are smoothing over the backs of my hands.  “The Ferris wheel?”

             
Ashamed, I close my eyes and nod.

             
“Okay.”  He pulls me up from the bench.  “Come on.”

             
Logan leads me in a path straight away from the wheel, as direct as the crowd and the booths will allow.  I follow him unquestioningly, just watching his wide shoulders as he weaves his way through, the movement of his back beneath the soft material of his shirt, allowing him to pull me along, oblivious to everything we pass.  But when someone bumps into my shoulder I release his hand and grab instead for the back of his jeans under his blue shirt, cleaving myself to him so my nose almost presses into his spine.  He reaches back, cupping a hand lightly over my hip, leading me past the large, showy façade of the funhouse and over the flimsy metal barricades, reaching back to help lift me over them when my legs aren’t quite long enough.  Then the funhouse is blocking the lights of the fair and Logan is still leading me away, our shoes kicking little bits of trash and debris on the cracking blacktop of the parking lot, surrounded by a few dark, empty trailers from the carnival.  The cacophony of music and screaming dim as we pull further away.

             
Finally Logan stops, facing me.  “Better?”

             
I look back and then nod.  This far away the lights of the Ferris wheel are almost completely hidden by the trees, just a few twinkling flashes peeking through like fireflies flitting in the sky.

             
“Why’d you have me take you in there?”

             
I glance back at it again, impotent now that it’s mostly hidden.  I can’t explain it to him, not without questions I don’t want to answer.  It’s too dirty, too awful, too ugly.  I don’t want him to know.

             
“Do you -”

             
Logan stops abruptly.  His head jerks up, his body rigid and still.  Grabbing me with one hand at my waist, he roughly shoves me behind him.

             
And that’s when I see them; several large, shadowy figures moving toward us in a slow semi-circle, their faces ghastly in the barely-there kaleidoscope of mostly obscured lights.

             
In the tense silence I can hear the fear in my sharp inhale.

             
Logan shuffles me back a few steps, the muscles of his arm tense and hard, his hand firm on my hip.  Panic has me gripping his ribcage, just beneath his arms, and around his shoulder I see there are five of them, young guys about our age, all of them focused intently on Logan.  Just right of center I make out a face I recognize, frighteningly stark like the rest.  Dylan.

             
Logan’s voice is tight.  “Bree, get out of here.”

             
No.

             
The thought barely burns through my mind before everything explodes all at once.

             
I hear Dylan’s low voice command, “Grab her,” just as one of them breaks off and moves forward.  At the exact same time Logan shoves me hard, easily breaking my grip so I sprawl back onto my butt on the pavement.  He sprints, lunging at the guy coming at me, crashing into him with enough force to send them both flying backward, Logan following him down with a fist in his face.

             
He lands on the guy’s chest, pinning him, smashing him with his fists. The sound is wet and sickening and the guy stops fighting back but Logan is still hitting him.

             
When the shock wears off I hear from one of the others, “Fuck!  Get him off!”

             
The four of them break into movement and I don’t even think, I just scramble up and run for Logan.  I don’t even see the guy before an arm snags around my waist hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.  I gasp, kicking and struggling, but he easily drags me back, lifting me from my feet.  He doesn’t cover my mouth; he doesn’t have to.

             
Logan!

             
I’m fighting the bands of the thickly muscled arms around my waist, thrashing wildly, and I hear a grunt from behind me when I throw my head back into his face.

             
“
Fuck!
  Stop!  We’re not gonna hurt you!”

             
It’s Carter.  The guy whose hand Logan had smashed in the locker the second week of school.

             
But I don’t stop and suddenly Dylan is bending over, grabbing something from the pavement near one of those trailers.  Logan is still perched on the chest of that unmoving, bloody heap, and Dylan charges at him, his lips drawn back in a snarl, his arm shooting up behind him, bicep tight.

             
With a sharp jerk of his arm Dylan arcs a long chain through the air and it snaps against the back of Logan’s head, cracking against his skull.  Logan crumples forward, his head whipping down from the brutal impact and then jerking back again when the tail end of the chain snakes around, biting into the flesh of his cheek.

             
Blood sprays from Logan’s face but Dylan doesn’t stop running.  He wrenches the chain free of Logan’s body and snaps it up in a tight circle in the air, winding it around his fist.  The other two descend quickly to where Logan is huddled, dazed and bleeding, on his knees.  They capture Logan’s arms and yank them back roughly, hauling him up from the moaning shape of the boy and holding him suspended between them. 

             
Logan is barely standing in their grip, still stunned from the blow to the back of his head, and vomit lurches up my throat as Dylan rushes him with a wordless growl, smashing his chain-wrapped fist into the side of Logan’s face.  Logan’s head whips to the side and then bounces as if barely connected to his shoulders before Dylan rears back and swings again.

             
NO!

             
I lift my knee and stomp down as hard as I can with the edge of my shoe on Carter’s jean-covered shin.

             
“
Shit!
  Fucking
bitch!
”

             
He furiously throws me forward.  My palms smack painfully against the gavel-strewn pavement, loose strands of my hair exploding around me.  At some point my braid must have fallen apart.

             
I barely blink before I’m pushing back up from the ground, just trying to get to Logan, but Carter drops to his knees behind me and snatches me back.  He locks an arm around me, imprisoning both of my arms, my shoulders trapped against the hard wall of his chest.  His other he winds tightly around my waist, his huge hand secured intimately over the bone of my hip below my jacket, and drags my butt back,
hard
, against his hips.

             
God. 
God.
 

             
He smells like sweat and beer and nausea pitches against the back of my throat, my chest constricting in fear.

             
“You don’t kill a fucking cop and get away with it,” I hear Dylan hiss, burying his fists into Logan’s chest, his ribs, his stomach.  He shifts back on one leg, breathing heavily, and then drives one knee forward with a grunt, slamming it into Logan’s gut with enough force that it lifts him from his feet.

             
From the corner of my eye I see movement.  I look, desperate for help, in time to see a familiar dark figure pause for a moment, shocked, before turning away.  I recognize just enough to know it’s Dylan’s father.

             
But by then he’s already gone.

             
No.
  Please. 
No!

             
I’m yanking feebly on the arm around my shoulders as Logan crumples, his legs giving out beneath him, sagging between the arms stretched out from his sides.  His knees crack against the pavement and his head falls forward before he painfully lifts it again, bobbing slightly.  Blood is dribbling, bright red down his face from the long split in his cheek, seeping from between his lips, splattered over his shirt.  His bruised, black eyes find me instantly, and I stop.

             
My heart breaks a thousand times in that one second his gaze meets mine, because Logan knows he’s going to die.  I can see it in the dread, the unchecked horror in his eyes.  He knows he’s going to die, and he doesn’t want me to see it happen.

             
Then his head whips back violently when Dylan knees him in the face, and he sprawls backward, his arms suddenly released, dumped to the ground.  He doesn’t get back up.