A More Deserving Blackness (7 page)

             
“Do you want me to drive you home?”

             
I stall. 

             
But Logan is a master of patience.  He simply waits until I’ve gathered my books into my bag and rearranged them twice to catch my gaze, bending at the knees slightly and ducking to see my face past the curtain of my long hair, raising his brows. 

             
“Should I text you instead?” he deadpans.

             
I shoot him a look which only makes his eyes smile in victory, even though he manages to keep it from reaching his lips.

             
I nod.

             
“Yes, you want me to drive you home?”

             
Another nod.

             
“Good,” he says, and I reach up to close my locker.

             
His hand shoots out, clamping over my left arm.

             
“What the hell is that?”

             
He’s staring, appalled, at the raw welt across the skin on the inside of my wrist, his fingers biting into the flesh of my forearm.  His face is unmistakably angry and I lurch back but his grip only tightens, refusing to release me.  My breathing hitches in fear.

             
“What is that?”

             
I shake my head, not really an answer, but my heart is hammering in my chest and it feels like someone is pushing down over my mouth and nose, stealing away the air.  Logan’s eyes are dark and glaring at me and inexplicably, utterly pissed.

             
“Was it Dylan?  Did Dylan hurt you?”

             
I shake my head slightly, just enough.

             
“Someone else?”

             
Shocked, staring at him.

             
“Did someone hurt you?”

             
We’re frozen like that, his hand holding my arm up by my shoulder, his eyes boring into me, teeth gritted, and though I know there are other students walking past I don’t see any of them, don’t see anything but Logan.  Something in his eyes shifts as he realizes I’m not going to answer and he visibly works to control the burst of anger, his fingers loosening, slipping down to tuck against the palm of my hand.  It is clammy and cold. 

             
Logan’s eyes are gentler now, almost like it never happened, but something still hangs, haunted and heavy in them.  He scoops up both my hands, presses them against the center of his chest for a moment, all without looking directly at me, and then he’s gone. 

             
As Logan walks away, I see Eric standing with a group of his friends I recognize from lunch.  He gives me an odd sort of stunned, dismayed look before I turn and leave, frustrated and completely baffled.

             
But I know there’s no way in hell Logan is driving me home from school that afternoon, no matter how much I might want him to.

              I hear little of what is said during first period, unable to shake the image of the rage in Logan’s eyes.  After that night in the car, it was unsettling to see that display of emotion directed at me, and it should’ve frightened me, past that initial shock.  Should have.  But it didn’t.  I wasn’t afraid of Logan.  Not at all.  Mostly I was just afraid of the way he’d turned and walked away, afraid that meant he’d changed his mind about me.  It was startling to realize how much that upset me after so little time.

             
Although I never put much effort into my schoolwork, not anymore, I find it difficult to focus the rest of the day.  At lunch I grab my V8 and scan for Logan, but I already know he doesn’t share the same lunch period.  I would’ve noticed him.

             
I sit next to Erik at the usual table, unable to catch his gaze before I lower into the seat; just one more hazard of not speaking.  I look up from popping the cap off my drink to find several of the girls staring at me, although Erik is noticeably looking anywhere but.  Though I’m used to the stares, I’d hadn’t been on the receiving end of this much attention since the first days of school.  I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

             
“Is that . . . Logan Brenner’s jacket?”

             
I blink at her, the jacket suddenly burning where I’d draped it across my lap when I’d sat down.  From the way she’d asked it, the girl with the pixie-cut – Chloe, I think - already knows the answer.  And from the way Erik suddenly freezes like a statue in the seat next to me, he does too.

             
Oh.  Right.  Here was the reason for that odd look in the hall.

             
“It is,” says another girl with a skinny black ponytail; Andrea.  She’s nodding like it was all part of some script.  “He wears it all the time.”

             
Chloe smirks at her, and I’m idly aware that by then I should’ve learned something more about them than just their names, but I hadn’t. 

             
“Stalker much?” Chloe taunts.

             
Andrea of the black ponytail pops a tater tot into her mouth and smiles wickedly, her lips an unnatural shade of dark magenta.  “Um, no.  He’s totally hot, don’t get me wrong.  But I don’t do psycho.”

             
“I thought she was Dylan’s new thing, anyway,” Chloe says matter-of-factly.

             
What?

             
And – yea! - now they’re both looking at me like I might leap over the table at any moment and attack their male friends with my overzealous vagina.

             
I’m just staring at them, my drink open and untouched in front of me, when Erik clears his throat.  He leans sideways, bumping me with his shoulder.  “I’m pretty sure they think you’re deaf too,” he tells me in a mock whisper.  On the other side of him, on-again Jess gapes at him in open disapproval.

             
“No, I think she’s crazy,” Chloe says, looking straight at me.  Her eyes are rimmed in thick silver glitter, and all I can think is how much that must hurt at the end of the day when it does the inevitable and slips inside her eyelid like tiny shards of glass.  “She’d have to be, to wear that.”

             
“Or just to hang around him long enough to get it,” Andrea chimes in, now staring at me like I’m the Bride of Frankenstein, which is definitely an improvement.

             
It’s just a jacket
, I think, but Erik is the one that speaks.

             
“Maybe he was just trying to be nice.”

             
From the other side of Erik, Jess scoffs, leaning her elbows on the table.  “Logan Brenner isn’t nice, Erik.  He’s scary.”

             
“Totally psychotic,” Andrea agrees succinctly, like it’s common knowledge, and I can’t help but remember Logan’s sudden, unexplained anger.  Had it all been about that red wound on my wrist, or something more?

             
Erik just shrugs, sharing a look with his girlfriend, and thankfully the conversation moves on.  Nobody looks at me, their exaggerated lack of staring almost unnerving.  I don’t bother drinking my lunch, I just wait impatiently for the bell.

             
Health is the only class I share with Logan, and he isn’t in his seat when I enter the room.  As per usual, he’d wait until the last possible moment, and sometimes even slightly after it, to find his way through the door.  I dart to the back of the class, ignoring the prickle of the eyes that always follow me.  As I pass, I notice Erik in a seat three up and one over. 

             
I’m taken aback for a second, but then just slip into my seat, exhausted.  Apparently nothing is going to make any sense at all. 

             
When he sees me he leans an arm over the back of his chair.  “Hey.  Where’d you disappear to Saturday night, anyway?”

             
His blue eyes are smiling jovially as always, like it’s no big deal that the girl he’d brought to a party had disappeared without him.  Though, to be fair, I hadn’t really given him a choice.  There’s a new reluctance beneath the lightheartedness, though.  A distance, punctuated by his choice of seat, leaving the one next to me empty for the first time in a while.                 

             
Needless to say, I don’t answer.  I just brace myself for when Logan would take his usual seat across the aisle, and Erik twists his lips with an odd look of regret and swivels back in his seat to face front.

             
Once again, it’s the boots I see first.  He walks by without a pause and drops into his seat, as always never exchanging a single word with another classmate, though they all seem to watch his every move.  He ignores them and I ignore him, though it isn’t easy, forcing myself not to look at him, not to see the disgust and anger I’m afraid will still be raging in his eyes.  I can feel him watching me, and I resist the urge to drop my wrist into my right hand and scrape away the nerves.

             
When the bell clamors overhead I lurch from my seat without looking back.

             
Dylan avoids me in pre-calc, aiming his loud intentions elsewhere for once, pretending I don’t exist, which is fine with me.  I keep my distance and easily ignore him, shutting him out like the rest of the world.  Only Logan slips through.  His eyes.  His face.  Those damn boots that were all I’d seen of him.  His voice.  He squeezes past every other thought.

             
Hours later, I’m shocked to find him waiting for me at my locker after school.  Shocked enough that I lurch to a stop, still a few steps away.  He’s still there, leaning casually against the wall.  When I step toward him, he watches me trade out my books and slip on the coat I was still carrying before slinging my bag over my shoulder.  I try not to look at him too much, but he does his bending at the knees to catch my eyes thing again and when I finally look up at him his expression is ambiguous, though his brows are furrowed tightly. 

             
I’m wary, waiting for the sudden fury to return, but it never does.

             
When Logan sees I’m ready he turns, starting off down the hall.  There’s a couple walking hand in hand opposite him and the boy actually tugs the girl away from Logan’s path by their linked hands, like he’s a leper or a rapist or both.  Then Logan turns a corner and he’s gone.

             
I stare after him, undecided.  Did he come over here just to ditch me?  Or am I supposed to follow?  I’m not sure.

             
Shifting slightly, I feel the soft inner material of his jacket lick over the welt on my wrist.  I shift again, turning away.

             
My phone jangles in my bag and I jump, then twist my bag off and fish it out.

             
I thought you wanted me to drive you home
.

             
I glance down the hall where he’d disappeared but he’s not there. 
Thought you changed your mind
, I type quickly.

             
You coming?

             
I drop it into my bag and follow him.

             
Somehow I’m not surprised to find him just around the corner, waiting for me.  He doesn’t smile when he sees me, but he reaches his hand out for mine and that’s infinitely better.  His fingers close over mine and we walk like that all the way to his car, earning ourselves more than a few stares and whispers along the way.

             
He opens my door for me and I sit, but he doesn’t close it immediately.  I glance up at him in question.

             
“Okay?”

             
He waits for my nod before he shuts the door.

             
My eyes follow him around the car and when he slides behind the wheel he leans across me, reaching to pop open the glove box.  Inside he finds a small white first aid kit and withdraws it, snapping it open and snatching a single bandage from inside before tossing it back.  He carefully takes my arm and places it over the armrest between our seats, unwrapping the bandage and smoothing it gently over my wrist.  He’s being careful not to hurt me, and it feels nice.  His fingers are warm on my skin.  When I look up I see him already watching me grimly, his eyes darting back and forth between mine.

             
This close, his irises are a deep, endless brown, pure of any flecks of other color whatsoever.  The edges are rimmed in almost black, and from there they lighten only just enough to be called brown before they end in the small black centers of his pupils.  They are at once the darkest and most honest eyes I’ve ever seen.

             
Holding my gaze, Logan slips his fingers over the bones of my wrist, down the slope of my palm, and between my fingers until our hands are clasped tightly together.