A More Deserving Blackness (8 page)

             
“I’m sorry.  I wasn’t angry before -” He stops.  Starts again.  “It wasn’t you.”

             
He seems to be waiting for a response so I nod and he starts up the car.  The entire way home he is quiet and solemn, and my thoughts swirl in my head.  I can’t help but wonder who he is, why someone would spray paint the word “Muderer” across the face of his garage in stark red paint, why everyone either hates or fears him, why I seem to be the only person who isn’t afraid while he is equally the only person I’m not afraid of. 

             
God, I’m so sick of being scared.  Every move, every breath, every touch is like sandpaper, scraping at my flesh until I’m raw and bleeding and exhausted.  All day long I’m constantly working, rebuilding the wall inside of me that keeps the screaming at bay.  Laying brick after brick, terrified the whole thing will come crashing down at my feet and I’ll be there again, that rainy night, staring up at the bright lights twinkling merrily overhead.  Raindrops falling down almost gently, unhurried in their plunge to the earth.  They were cold as they soaked into my hair, my clothes, as they slipped like thieves down the paths of my tears.

             
Logan’s hand clenches down over mine and I flinch, drawn out of my churning thoughts by the pressure of his grip.  I realize my breathing had gotten all messed up again and close my eyes, letting my head rest back against the seat, focusing everything on the touch of his hand alone, forcing the last claws of the memory from my mind.  When I open my eyes I see two things.  One, we’re sitting in my driveway.  And two, his eyes are concerned.

             
He must think I’m crazy. 

             
I am crazy.  Crazy and terrified and wrecked.

             
It’s only when I’m ready to climb out of his car that I realize I want him to come inside.  I don’t want to let go of him just yet, and I wish I could ask him somehow.  I hesitate, wondering if I should.  I could probably get the message across with body language, or I could pull my phone out and text him, but still I waver.  Terror is a difficult thing to ignore.

             
Logan is, of course, watching my indecision unfold.  “What?”

             
I force myself to shake my head, dismissing it and opening the door.

             
“Bree?”

             
I turn back.
              “If someone’s hurting you -”

             
But something in my face stops him, and his hands wring over the top of the wheel, his lips pressed together.

             
I draw the sleeves of his overlarge coat down over my hands and climb out, closing the door. 

             
“Tomorrow?” I hear from behind me, and I turn back to see him leaning one elbow out the window, the sleeve of his shirt stretched tight over his arm. 

             
I don’t even think about it, I just nod.

             
Like yesterday, he waits until I’m safe inside the house before driving the fifty yards to his own home across the street.

             
But he’s wrong, because I’m not safe.  I’ll never be safe.

Chapter 5

When
Logan stiffens in front of me, my skin goes cold.  He’d driven me to school the rest
of
the week, and today, Friday, is no exception.  We’d been amicably silent, as we usually were; the school mute with the school pariah, who was admittedly reticent himself.  It was comforting being around him, just being with him, merely because he didn’t see silence as a thing to stuff full of meaningless words, snatching them up and spewing them at me like a short-order cook, hoping maybe one more heaping pile would clear up that unsightly emptiness drifting between us. 

             
Logan was content in quiet.  Like he preferred it.

             
And he never asked me why.  A whole week spending more time with him just with the drive to and from school than I’d spent with any human being in the span of almost two entire years, watching that bruise on his cheek slowly fade away, and he never once asked me why I wouldn’t speak to him.  I’d heard the rumors.  I was crazy or foreign or stupid or disfigured; they kept getting more and more creative the longer they went without answers, feeding off each other like the school’s entire drama department locked in a roomful of coffee and pixie sticks. 

             
Erik hardly even looked at me anymore, and he didn’t wave me over at lunch.  When I’d walk past the table to drink my half of a V8 outside in the courtyard, he’d just glance up at me with an expression that looked almost remorseful.  It surprised me that I’d actually miss it, his company.  That it had actually mattered. 

             
And Dylan gave me the same force field of no-fly zone everyone gave Logan, which I figured worked out best for all parties.

             
But Logan barely even acted like I was different.  He was calm and quiet and steady and by far the very best part of my day.

             
Which was why I was feeling increasingly hateful toward Friday in general.  Every minute was a step closer to the precipice of two entire days without seeing him.

             
So when his whole body stiffens, his eyes going even darker, goosebumps skitter over my skin.

             
Logan shifts his stance, staring at someone over my shoulder, and his hand settles at the small of my back.  A gentle pressure, but I can feel the tension in his muscles.

             
When I turn I see Dylan standing behind me, one hand holding the strap of his obnoxiously orange backpack at his shoulder, the flex of his arm showcasing an excessively large bicep.

             
“Back off Brenner, I’m just here to talk to Bree.”

             
Logan says nothing but shifts slightly, his fingers curling over the edge of my hip, easily steering me back enough that somehow he’s put himself in a position to step between Dylan and me should he need to without obstacle.  He hasn’t taken his eyes off of Dylan, who is sneering at Logan, only an inch or so taller but at least forty pounds heavier. 

             
“What are you gonna do, Brenner?  Beat me to death?”

             
Logan blinks but doesn’t move, glancing at me for a second before settling his infuriated gaze back on Dylan.  “If you want to talk, talk.  If not . . .” and he gestures down the hall at the doors leading to the parking lot.

             
Dylan’s glare is openly hostile, but Logan doesn’t back down.  Seeing that Logan isn’t about to leave, Dylan finally focuses on me, pushing a lock of too-long hair from his eyes. 

             
“I’m sorry.  I wasn’t – I shouldn’t have . . . done that.”

             
As far as apologies go it’s pretty lame but I don’t care, I just want him gone.  Having Logan so tense beside me is setting my nerves on fire, and my skin has started to crawl.  But Dylan must smell that same stink of inadequacy in the air because he reaches out for my arm, his eyes all imploring, and I can’t help but jerk away from his touch.  While Logan’s hand never leaves my back, he still somehow manages to suddenly be up in Dylan’s face, snarling and pissed as hell.

             
“Don’t fucking touch her, douchebag.”

             
“Jesus Christ!” Dylan shoves Logan by his chest, Logan’s boots scuffling back barely an inch across the carpet.  Even still, I feel his fingertips tighten down on my hip when Dylan narrows his eyes and spits out, “Fucking psycho.”

             
He slams his fist into the lockers by Logan’s head and then stomps away, leaving a ring of spectators, eyes and mouths equally gaping.  As soon as Dylan is through the doors, Logan turns to me, as close as he can be without touching me, nose to toes.  Brown eyes churning, he slips his hand from my back and loosens the death grip I hadn’t even known I’d had on my left wrist, enfolding my hand in his and snatching up my bag from where it sat at our feet.  He slams the locker shut and drags me down the hall toward my class.  I follow, conscious of the sea of eyes that rush into the void of our retreat.

             
Logan doesn’t stop until we reach the door to my first period, and he’s a little out of breath when he asks softly, “Okay?”

             
I nod but he doesn’t move, even when the bell shrills overhead, electrifying the goosebumps still gripping my skin.  I nod again, firmer this time.  Dylan isn’t a threat.  Not to me anyway.  He’s just a stupid teenager who drank a little too much at a party.  I know that.  I
know
that.

             
“Okay,” he says, and squeezes my hand once before setting off with his usual lack of hurry down the hall.

             
I slip into the classroom, get barely a sideways glance from my teacher – perks of being the school freak – and easily find my desk in the back row.  When I pull my notebook from my bag there is a thin trickle of blood on my wrist, I must’ve broken the skin back there, and I wipe it off on the inside of my shirt, wondering whether or not Logan had noticed.

             
He’s surprisingly early to health class, arriving at the door at the same time I do, and we walk together to the back of the room.  As I slip into my seat I see him glance at my wrist before I shove it under the table and my stomach drops sickeningly.

             
He’d noticed.  Of course he’d noticed.

             
I drop my head, not sure whether I should be ashamed but feeling only a deep and reaching cold.  I jump when he stretches a long leg across the aisle and nudges my foot with his boot.

             
“Bree?” he mouths when I look up at him, his brows raised.  He doesn’t have to ask.  I know what he means.

             
I nod. 

             
Yes, I’m okay.  I’m always okay, aren’t I?  Forever okay.

             
Because I can never tell him how ferociously
not
okay I really am.  I can never tell him about the screams that want to slash their way out of my throat every time I open my mouth.  I can never tell him about the nightmares that suck me under, how I awake nauseous and sweating to the sound of my own hideous shrieking, only in my head.  I can never tell him how every day, every hour, every minute is a gut-wrenching struggle to keep standing, keep smiling at Trish so she doesn’t have to worry, keep my mouth shut over the sounds that swell up and gag me.

             
I can never tell him anything.

             
Logan looks concerned but Mr. Apligian is there, rocking a new sweater vest in pale peach and saying something about CPR.  He directs us to grab same-gender partners and suddenly the room is in motion, chairs scraping back and everyone talking at once.  I glance with longing over at Logan but he’s staring straight ahead blankly, and I notice no one going anywhere near him as they pair themselves off.  Or me, for that matter.  Eventually Mr. Apligian steps in and Logan is assigned to work with Erik, who looks less than thrilled as he grabs his stuff and heads back to us, and I’m partnered with a girl named Emma that I don’t remember ever noticing in class before, not that that really means anything.

             
Mr. Apligian fires up a power point, holding a severed plastic torso up as a demonstration.  The sightless thing stares back at us, grayish white bald head, eyes closed, mouth hanging slack and open, waiting for someone to save it.  Mr. Apligian slaps it down on the front table and I jump at the noise, watching the plastic head jiggling slightly as it settles, and somehow I can’t look at it anymore.  I feel slightly sick as I look away, searching and finding Logan.  He’s mostly obscured by Erik, but I can see one black boot propped on the support leg of the table, one hand resting on the tabletop before him.  That’s enough.

             
As Apligian fires up the slideshow and we’re treated to more faceless dummies like in those emergency procedure leaflets they use on airplanes, I see Erik leaning over the aisle, trying to get my attention.

             
“Bree,” he whispers loudly.  Unnecessary, as I’m already staring at him.  “Hey, who
did
you go home with that night, anyway?” 

             
I stare at him, unsure of his phrasing.  Did he think . . ?

             
Erik pauses then asks, a little too eagerly, “
Was
it Dylan Tanner?”

             
Ah.  So the rumors have already swung around full force.  I was seen kissing Dylan at the party, if you could call it that, and now what had just happened out in the hall was most likely being sugared into a coy lovers’ spat.  In between the who-knows-what I’m purportedly doing with Logan in return for his jacket, of course.

             
I’m still staring at him.

             
“‘Cause I heard -”

             
“Me,” Logan says over him, leaning forward across the table and barely making the effort to whisper.  Apligian keeps plugging away at those slides, totally oblivious.  “She went home with me.”

             
Erik snaps around, stunned, which is good, because he misses the matching expression on my face.  Logan doesn’t blink though, and Erik looks away, leaving it at that, his previous enthusiasm deflated.  But he crosses his arms and slouches back in his chair, effectively positioning himself as far from Logan as possible.

             
Despite the now unobstructed view, Logan doesn’t look at me.

             
As the intention of this exercise becomes clear, I find myself growing more and more uneasy.  Under the teacher’s guidance people are wrapping their arms around each other to practice the positioning of the Heimlich maneuver and Emma gives me a we-might-as-well-do-this smile as she gives me her back.  My heart is hammering as I quickly snake my arms around her, focusing on my breathing.  She says something I don’t hear and then laughs lightheartedly, taking my hands and placing them where they need to go.  It’s over quickly but then it’s my turn and I force myself to turn, force my mind to blank as her arms come around me and squeeze tight.

             
Not the same.  My arms are free.  She’s not trapping me.  She’s just playing at saving my life.  I’m not in any danger.  It’s not the same.

             
But my heart is pounding and I can feel myself sweating and then she lets go and I take a shaky breath, catching the questioning look she sends me out of the corner of her eye.  I raise my sight and see Logan watching me as well, his dark brown eyes taking everything in.

             
“Do you want to go first this time?” Emma asks lightly, and I blink at her.  I have no idea what she’s talking about.  She gestures inanely at the table and I glance around, seeing kids hiking themselves up onto the long tables and laying back, little bursts of uncomfortable laughter fraying apart from the general din.

             
My chest freezes.

             
No.  No no no.  Nonononono.

             
But I’m supposed to be fine, I have to be fine, I can’t have a panic attack in the middle of health class and keep up the façade for Trish, I can’t shatter in the middle of a CPR tutorial when I’m supposed to be fine.

             
Emma’s waiting, that probing look quickly becoming something else, so I take a deep breath and slide my butt back onto the cold table and lay down in one quick motion, pretending the nausea I feel sliding up my throat is from lying down too fast.  The table is hard beneath my shoulder blades and when she touches me, positioning both hands on top of one another for the chest compressions, my eyes fly open.  All I see are the school’s neon overhead lights.  So bright my eyes water.