Everyone else in Logan's English class seemed to be catching up on their sleep. He wasn't surprised. The House of Mirth was hardly the world's most entertaining book, less so when you'd come to school still hungover from the kegger you'd been to the night before. But Logan wasn't going to sleep. He had too much to think about.

Normal kids, Logan knew, lived by rules. Not the rules set by parents, but the Universal Rules Of Being A Teenager. They were rules like, Only Bitch About Your Friends To People Who Could Keep Their Mouths Shut, Don't Piss Off Mom And Dad When You Want A New Car and If You Want A Girl Get On Her Best Friend's Good Side.

But Logan had never been a normal kid, and he sure as hell wasn't going to live by a normal kid's rules. When he thought someone was a total tool he told them to their face. What was the point, he reasoned, of bitching and backstabbing? No one was going to stop being a tool unless they knew they were a tool, and they'd only know that they were a tool if someone bothered to tell them. And anyway, he wasn't going to get into any trouble for speaking his mind. He was Logan Echolls. If the other kids wanted to get anywhere in life, they'd play nice with him, no matter what he said or did.

If Logan wanted a new car, he'd damn well get a new car. He knew his parents too well to worry about something like that; there was no way that he, an Echolls, could possibly be seen driving around in something that wasn't the latest, the hippest, the most stylishly European thing on four wheels. Besides, if he didn't spend at least half the day trying to piss off his parents, how would they know that he cared?

And as for girls - ha! He had watched Duncan and Veronica go through all that weird teenage courtship crap, the "my friend really likes you"s and the painful "will he ask me"/"will she say yes"s before a dance. He'd watched them settle into an old married couple, into normality. But normality was not for Logan Echolls. He'd never bothered to suck up to Veronica; Lily had liked him, and that had been enough.

But that, as the cliché went, was then, and this was now. And these days, now that his life seemed to be spinning totally and ultimately out of control, Logan craved a normal life. And naturally, now that he wanted one there was little chance of it happening. He wanted to joke around with Duncan, mocking all those tiny things that irritated him about Dick. But Duncan was gone, and Duncan The Single Father seemed to have less of a sense of humour about things, anyway. Logan wanted to have normal parents, who would ground him for his all night ravers and then refuse to let him even watch tv when he snuck out despite his grounding. But if parental normality was unlikely before, it was impossible now, what with his Mom dead and his Dad going to prison for murdering Logan's girlfriend and all.

As the bell rung for the end of period, Logan realized that left him with one option, one chance to introduce normality into his perfectly abnormal life. And as he turned into the corridor he saw his first opportunity. It was going to be unlike him, he knew, and it was going to cost him a little bit of pride. But If You Wanted A Girl…
"Hey Fennel. Good luck for the game tonight, man."

It wasn't much. But it was a start.