A More Deserving Blackness (9 page)

             
Colored lights, red and yellow and green spinning around sickeningly, around and around above my head.  Raindrops dropping on my skin, one after another, measuring time in excruciating slow motion. 

             
I can’t breathe.  I lurch up, gasping, distantly aware of a wide-eyed Emma stumbling back from me in alarm.  I throw myself off the table, clutching my chest as I try to stop screaming – why can’t I stop screaming?  But I’m not screaming, it’s in my head, filling my ears until I can’t hear anything else, and I don’t think, I just run.

             
Out of the classroom, down the hall, slamming through the restroom door and I’m gripping the edge of the sink, my head hanging, clawing for air.  I feel like I’m suffocating, dizzy from those lights.  My head is spinning.

             
I don’t even make it into a stall before I sink onto my knees on the checkerboard patterned tile, seizing my wrist in my other hand and slashing my thumb across it, again and again, waiting for her to stop screaming.  God, I just want her to stop screaming.

             
But she won’t stop because the screams aren’t someone else’s, they’re mine.  They’re always mine.

             
A big hand grips each of my wrists, prying them apart.  I almost cry out at the loss, my arm stinging but not nearly enough, and then my hands are flattened against a warm chest and Logan’s face floats before mine.  He breathes for me, in and out, inhale, exhale, coaxing me with his eyes. 

             
My shaky, rattling breaths are nothing like his, and I clench my eyes shut.  I can’t hear anything else.  Rain dribbles down my face.

             
Logan lets his head fall forward against mine and our foreheads are touching, huddled there on our knees on the bathroom floor, his hands pressing mine against his heart.  I try to focus on his body, his breathing, his heartbeat, the steady pressure of his hands over mine.

             
At some point, the screaming fades.

             
I pull back carefully.  Logan straightens, and his eyes are red, as if it were he who’d been crying and not me. 

             
Tears.  It’s only tears that he reaches up to brush from my cheeks, not rain.  He watches me closely as he pulls my hands from his chest into his lap.

             
That’s when I notice the blood.

             
I must’ve scraped the scab loose on my wrist because there are spots of blood on his shirt, and – I look down – small splotches on his jeans as well.  It’s still seeping from my wrist, and my opposite thumb is red, in the creases of my skin and caked under the nail.

             
Logan notices it too, of course, pulling my wrist up for closer inspection.  His expression gives nothing away but I feel the nausea return anyway.  He doesn’t do anything but stand and pull me easily to my feet, though, ushering me over to the sinks where he runs cool water over my hands and wrist, rinsing the blood away and tearing off a strip of paper towel, blotting it gently. 

             
“I called your name.  You didn’t hear me.”  He looks up at me.  “Even when I was right in front of you, you didn’t hear me.”

             
No, of course not.  I couldn’t hear him over the screaming.

             
Logan studies me for a second.  “Do you want to go back to class?”

             
My fierce headshake almost prompts a chuckle from him.  Almost.

             
“Okay.”

             
That’s it.  Just okay.  Okay, let’s hide out in the girls’ bathroom.  Okay, let’s hold hands with a girl who cuts herself with her own thumbnail just so she can hear something other than the horror show in her head.  Okay.

             
“Bree?”

             
I look up at him, not sure what to expect.

             
“Can you – will you do me a favor?”

             
Waiting, watching him.

             
“Text me.  Or call me, okay?  You don’t have to say anything, just dial the number.  I’ll know it’s you.”  I look at him quizzically and he nods his head toward the wrist he’s still holding a towel to. “Next time you feel like – like this.  Just call me, okay?”

             
I wish it was that easy.  Like it was a choice, like tying your shoes or getting your mail.  But I’m not always aware I’m doing it, not at first.  It’s just a reaction, a way to deal with the world falling out from under me.  It’s automatic.  Survival.

             
The bell signaling the end of class makes me flinch violently, my nerves still raw, and Logan squeezes my hands, steadying them.

             
He’s smart enough not to wait for an answer he knows he won’t receive, and tosses the soiled towel into the trash, bending to pick something up – my backpack – and hand it to me.  I thank him with my eyes and he takes my hand.

             
“You’re welcome,” he says, unfazed as a girl I don’t know comes around the corner and actually gasps, staring in abject horror at seeing Logan Brenner in the girls’ bathroom with blood on his clothes. 

             
I smile at his back as he leads me back into the world.

             
I want him to keep going, just lead me right out of the school and back to his car where it’s just me and him, where I can breathe, but there’s still almost a half of a day of school left so instead he walks me to my next class, sending me a quick apology before releasing my hand at the door.  He pauses just a second, presumably to be sure I won’t melt into a trembling, psychotic puddle right there in the hall, and then he’s gone.

             
It’s just after French that it happens again.

             
It doesn’t take much.  A few words, really.  But then it never does take much to get down to blood, does it?

             
“Hey, Bree.  Nice jacket.”

             
I look over from my locker at the beautiful blonde girl and realize, absurdly, that I don’t even know her.  Obviously.  I don’t know anyone.  Except for Logan.  And Erik, of course.  But after that little revelation in health he’d found me in the hall later and had asked if I was all right, real concern in his blue eyes, and I hadn’t been able to answer, I’d just tugged the leather sleeve down over my wrist.  And then his girlfriend had come up and wrapped her arm through his and he’d just left, awkwardly melting back into the crowd, which meant he almost certainly thought me insane.

             
Why is this chick talking to me like we’re friends?

             
“Are you actually
with
Logan Brenner?”  Her voice isn’t malicious, just curious.  Just two girls having a friendly conversation.  “What’s it like dating a murderer, anyway?”

             
I stop cold for a second, just a second, but it’s long enough that she and her gathered friends notice.

             
“Wait.  Ohmygosh.  Don’t tell me you don’t know.” 

             
I’m shoving books into my bag without even noticing their subjects now; I just keep cramming them in angrily, one after another, waiting for the little sharks to draw their blood and be gone.

             
This time it’s a new girl.  Just as blonde – no way is that a natural shade - just as beautiful.  She leans up against the lockers directly in my way, twirling a lock of that bleached mop around one pink, manicured finger.  “Poor thing,” she says with an exaggerated little pout.  “I forgot.  You can’t tell us.  You can’t talk.”

             
She bats her I’m-pretty-fucking-sure-those-aren’t-real eyelashes at me and I want to punch her in the throat for talking like that about Logan.  For knowing something about him that I don’t, holding that small piece of him.

             
Out of nowhere, he pushes through the gaggle of them, grasping my wrist none too gently and dragging me from the center to the sound of their dramatic gasping.  We walk for some time after their shocked whispers die out, my footsteps hurried and uneven to keep up with his longer stride.  He marches me completely to the opposite side of the school.

             
When he stops abruptly he looks angry, pulling my arm to spin me around and unzip the front pocket of my bag in one fierce jerk, turning me back around to slap my phone into the palm of my hand so hard it stings.             

             
“Call.  Me.”

             
He practically growls it and I blink at him, trying to understand why he’s suddenly so furious, those girls’ words echoing in my head.  And then I do.  I understand.  With a glance at my wrist I see a fresh ooze of blood.  I’d been scraping it again and hadn’t even noticed.

             
He sighs.  Carefully wraps each of my fingers around the phone, one at a time.  “Please.  Call me.  Just . . . try.”

             
I nod.  I can agree to trying.

             
“I’m sorry.  For telling Erik you came home with me.  I wanted to end the rumors floating around about you and Dylan but,” he shakes his head.  “I shouldn’t have put you with me.”

             
He’s holding my hands around that phone and he’s watching me and I’m watching him, wondering about the things people say about him, wondering what he’s hearing people say about me, and then, out of nowhere, his face breaks into a grin.

             
“Can I ask you a question?”

             
I shrug.

             
“Why is every single one of your books in your bag?”

             
Oh, hell.

             
But I can’t help but smile back at him - a real smile – and he seems to take that in, absorbing it.

             
“Give me that.”  He reaches around me, pulling the absurdly heavy, bulky bag off my shoulder and onto his.  There’s a small, rusty stain at the bottom of his shirt from my blood.  He takes my hand and right then I know it doesn’t matter – what people say about him, the way people hate him or fear him or both.  It’s not a decision, I don’t have to think about it, it just is.  It doesn’t matter.

Chapter 6

I awake
that night with terror hot in my throat and Logan’s voice in my head.  I push up in
bed, my shirt stuck to the sheen of sweat on my chest.  My arms are shaky as I sit, raking my hair back from my face and trying to quiet the sounds in my head.

             
I glance at the clock.  Five-thirty.

             
Pushing to my feet, I pad out of my room and down the hall to the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of water and taking a sip.  The house is quiet.  Trish is asleep in her room, but I feel restless and uneasy, haunted by the dream.  The air feels thick and sticky so I head back to my room only long enough to kick my legs into the same jeans I’d worn to school and shove my arms into Logan’s coat.  Then I’m slipping outside, shivering when the cooler night air hits me, but it feels good.

             
My skin is hot so I sink down into the damp grass, squishing the palms of my hands against the blades, absently combing them one way and then the other.

             
My eyes find Logan’s house easily as a light burns through two of the back windows, spilling out in distorted rectangles over the lawn.  And I have to admit to myself that that’s the real reason for coming out here.  The dreams were pulling at me and he keeps me from going under.  I’d hoped the closeness to him, just
that
far away, would help calm me but it doesn’t, and my chest feels achy and tight and the trembles just won’t go away.

             
I’d heard his voice in my sleep and I couldn’t escape the urge to hear it again.  Now.

             
When I find myself gripping my wrist in desperation I shove both hands into my pockets, glaring at those two boxes of yellow light.

             
The fingers of my right hand stab into something small and hard and I withdraw my phone.  Without over-thinking it I turn it on and bring up the last incoming message.

             
Any time.

             
He’d sent it after he’d dropped me off last; I hadn’t even taken off my – his – my coat when it had beeped through.  A reminder, because he must’ve sensed my reluctance at leaving him.  I needed him and I couldn’t hide it.

             
Glancing back up at his house, my heart leaps into my throat as I press once, firmly, on the icon next to his name.  I don’t look at the screen, don’t even hold the phone up to my ear.  But I can hear it ringing from where I hold it in my lap and then it just . . . stops.  Nothing.

             
Disappointment sickens me.

             
Suddenly the phone is something vile and I toss it away from me.  It lands softly somewhere out it the dark.  I pull my knees up, letting my head fall forward onto them and feeling my shallow breaths warm the thighs of my jeans.  I feel lost.

             
A small sound whips my head up.  Across the street, a shadowed figure emerges from the house, pulling the door closed behind him and then pausing, just a second, on the darkened front porch.  His footfalls are silent down the length of the drive, his stride uncommonly fast.  He walks along the edge of his yard and across the street and then climbs the slope of my sister’s lawn, stopping only when he’s right in front of me and I see that his feet are bare beneath those jeans before he drops to his knees in the grass.

             
Logan doesn’t hesitate, he just scoops up my hands and places them on his chest, holding them there while he searches my face.

             
He knows just what to do, just how to comfort me.  He’d done it enough that it is second nature now, so when I slip my hands from his chest and wrap my arms around him, falling against the solid wall of him, I can feel his surprise. He pauses, one breath, two, before his arms come around me.  Then he pulls me even closer, his nose buried in the tumble of my long hair, still tangled from restless sleep.

             
Logan holds me until I stop shaking and just a little longer, his hands rubbing up and down my back.  When I finally pull away I feel the scrape of his cheek across mine and he reaches up, hooking one finger over the few strands of my hair caught on the stubble of his face, gently pulling them free.  He still hasn’t spoken, and though I feel the burning hypocrisy of it, it bothers me, the need to hear his voice a raw yearning in my chest.

             
I reach up, touching his lower lip with one finger, and feel his sharp inhale on my skin.

             
But his eyes are waiting and he still doesn’t say anything and I sigh in frustration, which only makes that spot between his brows wrinkle in confusion.

             
I automatically pat my pockets for my phone but he’s shaking his head.

             
“I don’t have it,” he says regretfully.  As close as we are, I feel the muscles of his thighs tense as he prepares to stand.  “I didn’t bring it.  But I can -”

             
He stops when I make fists in the seams of his shirt over his broad shoulders, holding him with me, shaking my head.

             
“What?”

             
I half consider telling him.  Just opening my mouth and asking for what I need.  I let my lips fall open and almost gag on the funnel of screams roaring up my throat. 

             
Clenching my eyes shut, I breathe through my nose, swallowing back the tastes of bile and rain.  When my eyes open Logan is watching me carefully so I touch his mouth again, gesture with my fingers like something coming out from my own, tap my ear, urging him to understand what I need.

             
“You want me to talk to you?”

             
I nod, feeling oddly self-conscious.

             
Logan settles himself next to me, threading his fingers through mine and resting our linked hands atop his thigh.  He leans back on his other hand in the grass and I wrap my free arm around my bent legs, watching him.

             
“I was reading when you called,” he tells the stars overhead.  He angles a look over at me.  “Don’t even bother asking me what, it’s embarrassing.”

             
I send him a look and a smile spreads slowly over his lips.

             
“You scared me,” he admits, serious again.  “I wasn’t sure you’d ever call, and when you did . . .”  He squeezes my hand but doesn’t ask why, doesn’t ask what prompted the call.  “I’m glad you did.”

             
Then he stops, as if just considering something, and lifts my left arm to the light, pushing up the overly long sleeve of his jacket.  “Did you . . . ?”

             
I shake my head.

             
“Good,” he says, tucking my hand in his again.  “Good.”

             
We sit in silence for a second, him watching the night sky and me watching the way his nostrils flare slightly when he breathes, the soft flutter of his hair in the nearly non-existent breeze.  It looks black out here, his hair.  So do his eyes.

             
“Have you ever seen a shooting star?”

             
I shake my head.

             
“Really?  Never?”  He’s appalled, but his thumb is making circles in the back of my hand, that small motion working the last of the tension from my sleep-deprived muscles.  “My mother used to have me sit up with her at night and we’d watch for them, so we could make a wish.  I’d pretend I didn’t want to because eleven-year-old boys are too cool to hang out with their moms, and she’d pretend not to know how much bullshit that was.

             
“Can I ask you something?” he asks.

             
I nod.

             
“How old are you?”

             
Even though I know there’s nothing there I glance around for something to help and then settle for pulling his hand into my lap, laying the knuckles down on my leg and smoothing his fingers flat.  He lets me, just watching, relaxed.  I draw the number in his palm with the tip of my index finger.

             
“Nineteen.”

             
I nod my affirmation, waiting for the inevitable.  But he doesn’t ask why a nineteen year old girl is just starting her senior year in a new school, so I don’t have to explain the hospital and the specialists and the investigation and the therapists and the year I’d lost to all of it. 

             
Instead, he surprises me by falling back in the grass, folding his free arm up behind him and pillowing his head on his hand.

             
“Come here,” he says with a tug on my hand.

             
I do, scooting down, carefully laying my head on his shoulder as his arm wraps around me, fitting me perfectly against him.  He feels warm and safe and I can’t stop myself from greedily inhaling the scent of him. 

             
“Now at least I’ll be comfortable while you drill me.”

             
I sigh with mock exasperation and his silent laughter shakes us both.

             
“It wasn’t about you, you know,” he muses aloud, rapidly changing the subject.  “Those girls at school.  Their problem is me, they just took it out on you.” 

             
I shrug, my head rising and falling with his breathing, at once both intimate and reassuring.  Those girls, the school, it all feels so far away from this moment.

             
“No, seriously, Bree.  People don’t . . . like me.” 

             
I shake my head.  It doesn’t matter.  What does it matter what other people think of him when he’s the difference between breathing and suffocating?  When his is the only voice that can silence the screaming?

             
“Actually that’s a grave understatement.  I don’t want to cause you any more grief.”

             
He isn’t getting the hint so I reach my hand up and press my fingertips over his mouth, silencing him.  His lips depress slightly under my touch, dry and warm, his breath bathing over the pads of my fingers, swirling like warm smoke through the gaps.  And then Logan wraps his fingers around mine and pulls our hands down, entwined, to his chest.

             
“So what’s your favorite color?”

             
I can’t help it.  I smile, amazed at the emotion he can draw from me so easily, tucking into his chest even though there’s no way he could see me in the dark.

             
“Let me guess.  Blue?”  I shake my head,
no.
  “Pink?” 
No.
  “Green?”

             
I’m still for too long, tensing at the sight of the colors spinning and blurring behind my lids, and he asks softly, “Bree?”

             
I push up on his chest and he grunts.  Using my middle finger to tug down my lower lid I point to the outer edge of my eye.

             
“Gold?  No, not gold.  White?  White.”  I rest back against him, part of me undeservedly pleased that he’d said gold instead of plain old brown.  “Okay, white.  So what’s your favorite movie?”

             
He carries on like this, offering bits of information about himself and collecting whatever from me that he can from guessing, steering clear of anything that would make me uncomfortable.  I learn that as a boy he had a dog named Bosco for eight years before his mother told him they’d brought the dog to live out the rest of his long doggy life on a farm.  She’d told him it was so Bosco could run and chase chickens in his old age, but as he got older Logan was beginning to suspect that that might have been a lie.  I learn that his favorite color is black, that his father died when he was a baby and he doesn’t remember him, that he loves peanut butter and pickles - “Yes, even together,” and that while he sometimes likes to watch movies, he’d rather catch one of his favorite programs on TV.

             
“Don’t even ask,” he tells me firmly, “because I’m not going to tell you.”

             
He manages to guess very few other things about me, but doesn’t seem to mind the game. 

             
“So your favorite color is white and you like tea and your favorite season is winter even though you apparently don’t own a single warm coat of your own.”  He squeezes my shoulder through the worn leather of his jacket.  “And you’ve never seen a shooting star.”