Page 40 of The Fire Between High & Lo (Elements 2)

What if Logan crossed a line?

What if he couldn’t come back from this hurt he was feeling?

It was all my fault.

Chapter Eleven

Alyssa

I hated receiving phone calls during the middle of the night. They always shook my nerves. No good news came at three or four in the morning. Unfortunately, I’d had way too many of those calls during the past few months, all because of one boy who set my heart on fire. Whenever the phone rang, my mind went to the worst possible situations—an illness, an accident, death. Some nights I’d stay up with heavy eyes, waiting for the phone calls. When I didn’t get them, sometimes I’d dial his number just to hear his voice, just to make sure he was okay.

“I’m okay, Alyssa Marie Walters,” he’d say.

“You’re okay, Logan Francis Silverstone,” I’d reply, before falling asleep to the sounds of his breathing.

But lately, we weren’t talking.

When I worried, I couldn’t call him.

When I was scared, his sounds weren’t on the other line.

So that night when the phone rang, I was more afraid than ever before.

“Alyssa?” a voice said into my cell phone, not Logan’s, even though his name was the one that appeared on my screen.

“Who is this?” I asked, sleep still stinging my eyelids.

“It’s Jacob…Logan’s friend. I…” He hesitated. “Look, I’m at this party, and I found Logan. He’s not doing too well. I didn’t know who to call.”

I sat up in bed, wide awake within seconds. “Where is he?” Jacob gave me all of the information, and I scrambled out of the bed, searching for a pen and paper to scribble it all down. “Thanks, Jacob. I’ll be there soon.”

“Yeah okay. Listen, you might want to bring Kellan, too.”

I hurried to Kellan and Erika’s bedroom and banged on the door. My heart pounded against my ribcage, and I bit my tongue to keep from crying. My body wouldn’t stop shaking as I waited to hear Kellan’s voice. When he opened the door and spoke, I took in a pained breath. He sounded so much like Logan, it almost knocked me backwards. It’d been a few weeks since Logan stopped talking to me. All I wanted to do was hear his voice again.

“Alyssa? What’s wrong?” Kellan asked, alarm and alertness filling his tones. He knew just as

I did that a late night call when Logan was using again could’ve always been the call that we each feared the most. “Is he…”

“I don’t know,” I replied. I told him everything I knew though, and we were out the door within minutes.

When we arrived to the party, Jacob was standing on the front porch of some broken down house while Logan laid on a bench. His eyes were hardly open, and he was drooling out of the left side of his mouth.

“Jesus,” Kellan muttered, walking up to his brother.

“He’s not that responsive.”

“What did he take?” Kellan asked.

“He was shooting up some heroin, and I think he did blow earlier. I don’t know what else though.”

“Why didn’t you call the cops?!” I screamed. I rushed over to Logan, and tried to lift his body. He cringed at the movement, and started to throw up on the porch.

“I don’t know, man. Listen, normally Logan can handle this shit. But these past few weeks he’s been getting into some deep shit. I couldn’t call the cops because… Look. I didn’t know what to do, so I called you guys.”

I’d known Jacob for a while. Logan didn’t have many people he called friend, but Jacob was one of the rare few that he spoke about in a good light. But I disagreed that night. A real friend—a true friend—would never let someone fall so deeply and not even reach out a hand.

“You should’ve called an ambulance,” I hissed, angered. Scared. Angered and scared.