Page 15

LOGAN

“D id you ask about the day pass?” I loomed over Cael, muscles aching and head pounding. I hadn’t slept in two days and we still had five left at camp.

“What?” Cael’s eyes blinked open slowly and I reached out to shake the bunk hard enough for him to sit straight up. “What the hell?” He hissed, scowling at his watch. “It’s five am, Logan!”

“Consider it payback,” I grumbled. “I need to go into the city,” I tried again.

Cael opened his mouth to argue but saw the look on my face and nodded. “I’m going to have to run it by Silas, no one leaves camp without his permission. He’s the law out here.”

“I thought this was martial law—every man for himself?” I snapped.

“That’s what he wants us to think, but if we leave without telling him he’ll have a conniption so, breakfast first, then let me talk to Silas.” Cael laid back against the pillow with a groan.

“Talk to him at breakfast.” I must have sounded pathetic because those blue eyes were wide awake with my easy acceptance of his plan.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, rolling onto his side and whispering so he didn’t wake the other two. Dean looked stupidly peaceful, his arms tucked under his head, his chest rising and falling gently against his messy sheets.

I hated how badly I wanted to touch him.

“Nothing, I just need a meeting, Cody,” I growled and retreated. “I’m going for a run. Get up and talk to Silas.”

“Fine. There’s one on the east side that starts at noon, but you’re buying lunch after because this is bullshit.” He rolled back over onto his pillow.

I took that as surrender and left the cabin for my run without another word. The sirens for the morning lake dips echoed faintly through the air the further I got from camp, and I only slowed to a walk when my lungs screamed at me to stop.

I slipped down the embankment, something I had become familiar with over the last week, and stripped from my clothes. I left them in a pile by the shore and slowly waded into the frigid water, letting my skin adjust to the temperature and shocking my sore muscles as I dipped beneath the surface.

I sank to the bottom of the lake and held my breath at the bottom for as long as I could. My lungs burned and my head grew empty of all the nightmares that followed me around like shadows. I pushed it a second longer before surfacing.

The moment I broke the water into the mild spring air I knew someone was watching me. There was an eerie feeling to it, and as a child I had never known the silent feeling of being left alone. Someone always wanted something from me; mom always needed more drugs which meant she always needed me to be someone for someone. No matter how wrong it sounded, I was only ever trying to make her love me, so I let them take what they needed so that she could survive another day.

‘That’s my baby, you’re so brave.’

Her voice echoed in my mind and the feeling of her kiss on my head seared hot in the same place it always did.

“Following a guy through the forest is a new low, even for you,” I said before turning around.

“Yeah, well, you were the one who chose Cael to be your secret best friend. You’ll learn quickly that even when he’s trying to be quiet, he’s the loudest idiot in the room.” Dean’s voice was tight and agitated.

“I thought you were asleep,” I said. I could have sworn he was.

“I thought you couldn’t swim,” he countered.

“I never said I couldn’t swim, you just keep assuming that.” I didn’t want to turn around because I could feel his eyes on my back, on my scars, and I couldn’t find the courage in me to explain them. They were my best-kept secret and the worst of my memories. Each one still radiated pain long past, caused by men long gone. Scars to remind me how much of a coward I was back then. How little my life really meant to her, compared to her next score.

“You could have told me you were doing the dips out here. I would have gone easier on you,” he said, and something about the condescension in his tone had me whirling around in the lake.

“Listen to me, Tucker, because I’m only going to say this once. I don’t need your fucking pity. I don’t want it. It’s flimsy and fake. If you think you’re finding common ground with me, you’re not. You grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth—pampered and perched on a pedestal made of gold, just for you. ” I pushed through the water to the shore and grabbed my shirt, tugging it over my wet body and pulling on my sweats.

“You’re never going to relate to me, you’re never going to find any unlocked doors to wander through. I don’t want to be friends, and you only keep trying for the sake of a win.” I invaded his space. “For the last fucking time, we don’t need to be friends for me to play baseball like a God, and that’s what I’m going to do. Whether your stupid Manson family cult likes me or not. I’m going to pitch the ball, play the game, and go home every night. End of story.”

Dean stayed quiet, his chest rising and falling in the same slow rhythm as when he slept. I despised how easily he stayed calm. I was all but beating the shit out of him and he was just there, like a brick wall, staring down at me with a smile on his face.

He moved his hand and I flinched. “Whoa,” he said softly. “Here.” He pulled out a set of keys from his pocket. “I got you permission from Silas. Just don’t do anything stupid with it.”

I stared at the keys and put out my hand for him to drop them into my palm.

I hadn’t expected him to be the one to do that for me.

“Thank you,” I said tightly, stepping back.

“I’ll expect you to make up for the practice you’ll be missing.”

Cael drove us back into the city and I was filled with instant regret.

“Can you at least try to follow the speed limit?” I asked him, as he pushed twenty over the limit with a smile on his face.

“Don’t be such a fun sucker.” He rolled his eyes at me and continued his pace. “Just because you were in a foul mood before breakfast doesn’t mean you can steal my joy.”

“You’re a cry baby,” I groaned and closed my eyes to at least get a little sleep before we made it to the city. When I opened them again Cael was pulling up to one of the churches I recognized and my phone was vibrating violently in my pocket as the missed calls from my mother flooded in at the first lick of service. It had been a long time since I was in this end of town and my heart seized at the sight of it.

The church loomed over the dirty neighborhood, mocking the poor by implying that if you just believed in something higher than yourself that it would save you. I wish that were true. I wish that faith had been strong enough to heal me, to heal my mother, but it had never been in our cards. It filled me with a resentment I couldn’t quite understand, one that maybe I would eventually get past, but for today, I just wanted to watch the world burn.

“You picked this place on purpose,” I said as I climbed from the car with him. He looked at me over the roof and propped himself up on his elbows.

“Yeah, and?” He was so honest it was almost a flaw.

“You’re an asshole,” I added.

“Tell me something I don’t know, grumpy groucher.” He slapped the hood and the alarm went off loudly in our ears as he panicked to pull the keys back out.

“Oops.” He shrugged, shoving the keys back in his pocket as we made our way up the steps to the church doors. It was smaller inside than I remembered as a kid; dustier too. There were less pews and, up at the front where I remember the pedestal being, were a few scattered chairs and a couple of guys hovering around talking to one another.

“Cael!” A shabby looking man with an unruly beard and long brown shaggy hair approached us with an overfilled cup of coffee in his hands. He smelled like mold and had stains down the cuffs of his gray dress shirt. “I’m a bit of a mess today,” he said, looking at me like he could read my mind.

“Josh, this is Neil. He runs the meetings here twice a week and I’ve never seen him put together so…” Cael laughed but hugged the weird man.

He went in on me and I stepped back from him.

“He’s jumpy.” Neil laughed and clapped Cael on the shoulder. “Grab a seat, we're going to start,” he said. He turned to me as Cael walked away and looked me up and down. “You’re from around here, aren’t you?”

“No,” I said tightly. "I’m not.”

It was a lie but I had seen that look before and it was always followed by “you’re Deedee Logan’s son.” Which was almost always followed by a fight.

The worst part about Harbor was that everyone knew everyone. When I moved to Lorette for baseball I thought that it was all over, that I never had to hear her name again in that way, but it wasn’t the case. We were only an hour apart and Lorette was the bigger city; most people came in for the night life, stayed for the drugs, and died in the dark back alleys completely forgotten.

I had almost died in those back alleys more than once, and many times before I could even get my hands on alcohol. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I started getting into my mom’s stash. Whatever would dull the roar of pain and anger that filled my muscles. Vodka was my favorite.

Everyone took their places and the meeting ran through about as normally as those meetings usually do. Everyone explained why they came and we all offered hollow optimism in return. Meetings worked a little differently for my brain. Maybe it was a toxic need to feel shame, but their stories just made me embarrassed enough to never be that person again.

The shame of being a drunk kept me from becoming one again, though it wrecked my mental health, but the anger was better than being face down on the bathroom floor begging for more, just to conceal all the other feelings I didn’t want to feel.

“Josh.” Neil’s weird, grainy voice broke through my sticky thoughts and brought me back to reality. “Anything you wanna share while you’re here?”

I stared at him for a second, contemplating telling him no, but people like him, like me, never settled for that kind of answer. “I’m Josh,” I muttered, nodding tightly as Cael watched me. He knew some of my story, the things I allowed him to hear, but I was careful to never give too much. A simple, clean alcoholic story was enough to get by in most situations, no one ever questioned when I said I was a party kid, used it to feel alive. That was enough for them and it meant I never had to tell anyone what had really happened. It meant I never had to suffer through the feelings of being a weak, defenseless coward ever again.

“Staying sober has gotten tough lately,” I said, with a huff of frustration that sounded a lot like annoyance. “I got in some trouble and had to switch my plans, it uh—” I leaned back in my chair and rolled my shoulders so my back was tight and I could focus on the way the muscles pulled beneath my skin instead of my shame.

“—threw me off a little and it’s been a long time since I craved that smell, vodka…but I woke up this morning and I swear I could smell it in the air. So, I’m here.” I nodded.

“That matters,” Neil said. “You made a choice this morning.”

“I could have just as easily made the wrong choice. I almost did,” I said, and I could feel Cael tighten beside me, holding his breath at my admission.

“There’s no wrong choice, Josh,” Neil said, chuckling when my eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.

“There’s always a wrong choice.”

“There can’t be, not without the presence of a conscious decision. Which is most cases when we wake up needing a fix, it’s not a conscious decision. It’s exactly that, a need.” Neil stared at me and waited for the words to process.

“Maybe for you,” I replied. “For me it's a decision to ruin everything. I want to make a mess, I want to destroy everything. Completely conscious.”

Neil nodded gently, sitting quietly in the response without a way to argue back.

That was the problem with these meetings, they did their job to remind me how far I could fall but at what cost. The other members in the room all looked on the brink of relapse except Cael. He stared at me like I was a shiny beacon of hope, and that alone would be the reason I fell from grace.

I pushed from the chair and left the circle without another word. Cael didn’t follow, no one did, as I wandered out into the open air. I jogged down the steps looking up and down the familiar street before I started walking to my right. There was a diner two blocks over but I circled the crumbling concrete sidewalks for nearly an hour before stepping inside and letting the smell of week old grease and onions hit my nose.

Swallowing past the cotton lodged in my throat, I found a booth at the back along the only wall without windows and slid in against the cracked leather.

“Can I get you anything?” A waitress asked from over the counter at me, her dark hair was grayed and pulled up tightly off her old face.

“Just water,” I said, turning away from her to stare at my hands. I pressed them flat against the rickety diner table top and counted the scars one at a time until my breathing slowed down. I slipped my phone from my jeans and set it on the table; it was still vibrating on and off. Mom had called three times since we had been in the city.

“Fuck.”

A plate of fries slid across the table and with it Cael’s dumb fucking face.

“Go away, Cody.” I waved him off and rested my head against the booth, hoping that closing my eyes would get him to disappear.

“Eat,” he urged, “and then tell me what the hell is going on with you.”

“Not hungry,” I said. “Just leave me alone for an hour and then we can go back to the torture camp.”

“You’re always hungry,” he insisted. “So eat—then talk.”

“How the hell did you even find me anyways?” I asked, opening one eye to look at him. His hat was turned backwards over his buzz cut and he had a serious look on his face that was rare from him.

“You’re always hungry,” he repeated gently. “We never met anywhere but a diner when it was time to talk, and this was the closest one. I’ve been sitting here for nearly an hour waiting for you, for a second there I thought maybe I was wrong, but then I remembered something,” he paused.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m never fucking wrong.” Cael chuckled, a smile forming on his face as he pushed the plate toward me again. “Eat—”

“Talk, yeah, yeah, I heard you.” I shoved a fry in my mouth, hoping maybe just the eating would be enough to get him to leave me alone, but I could tell by the look on his face I wasn’t getting off the hook that easily.

“You aren’t the only one with a shitty parent,” I said to him. “In fact, your dad isn’t even shitty, he's just really bad at communicating…”

“What’s your point?” Cael asked in a soft tone before stealing a fry.

“I grew up down the street, in the run down apartment building behind the church. I could see the iron peaks from the small window in the bathroom.” I stared at the front door, my mind trying to convince my heart to bolt before I told him too much.

“You grew up in Lorette? I thought you were a transfer…” Cael sounded confused and rightfully so. That was what had been told to everyone, but I’d forged the address on my admissions to Lorette.

“My high school teacher, Mr. Campbell, he always said that if I wanted to be someone else I just had to try, so I reinvented myself. I worked hard and got that scholarship. Mr. C let me use his address so that my mail didn’t get stolen by my mom,” I explained.

“She’s clearly your catalyst,” Cael hummed, nudging my vibrating phone and I sighed, flipping it over.

“She’s always had problems; I don’t remember a time in my life when she didn’t.”

“Never thought I’d hear the day that Joshua Logan blamed anything in his life on another person,” Cael said.

“Yeah, well, sometimes there is someone to blame.” I shrugged just wanting the conversation to be over with.

“Why’d you get kicked off Lorette?” He asked next; I knew the question was coming but I wasn’t in the mood to budge.

“I didn’t, I transferred. Drop it.”

“Josh, you preach letting shit go but you’re so wound up over something that you don’t seem to wanna feel, and I don’t understand why you aren’t being honest?” Cael pushed. His blue eyes seemed to sting as he surveyed my tight posture and squared off shoulders.

“This is different from a long-lost girlfriend and a dead mom, Cael. What I have to feel will kill me.” I stared him down for a second longer before shoving the plate back toward him. “Take me back to camp.”