Here we go, technically chapter one, but this says chapter two. Bye! OH! And the characters are OOC.


TWO


Logan and James are kissing. I try not to notice, but when you're the only person in the room who isn't wrapped around someone else, it's kind of hard not to. Also, the movie Logan picked is one I've seen before.

More than once.

Forty-two times to be exact.

I know it's a lot, but Logan really likes it, and it's better than what's on at me house, which is either the new or old sitcoms –Gustavo, my step-dad's favorites- or DVDs Mom's made from footage of her in different cooking contests. Since she entered the Fabulous Family Cook-off, she's been "studying" herself at other cook-offs to see how she can "improve her prep work."

Yes, I have watched my mother watch herself chopping onions. And then watch her critique herself on it.

So you can see why I'd rather watch a movie and why, as of right now, I'm on viewing forty-two of "girl meets boy, girl falls for boy, boy falls for girl, then boy gets cancer and dies while girl is brave and only cries once, at the end, as the boy says, 'I'll wait for you,' then dies."

I admit, I cried the first time I saw it. And the second… and maybe the third. But by the fourth time, I started wondering about the girl's best friend, who shows up at periodic intervals throughout the movie to support the girl, usually by providing ice cream and/or doing something stupid-silly like catching her skirt in the door and tugging until she tears herself out of it. She also sings to an umbrella at one point.

Anyway, by the fourth time though, I started wondering about the best friend. How come she has to be klutzy and wacky? Doesn't she get tired of being supportive and eating ice cream? I mean, I know I'm a guy and all, but still.

What's the best friends life really like? She must do something when she isn't losing her skirt of saying, "Oh, you're so brave!"

So far, the best friend has been the following- at least in my mind:

-a secret heroin user (that was the week James took Logan to the awesome indie film about the model who stayed skinny by shooting heroin and how everyone told her how fabulous she looked right up until she died. I ended up going with them because Logan said he wanted someone to talk to when he got bored. So I listened to him guess who was going to win the new-date-a-rock star reality show episode where all the girl have to try to fry an egg naked without burning themselves. But I saw of the movie was great, and I went back saw it with my mother later. She said it was "depressing," but at least I got to see the whole thing.

-a spy (because hello, obvious awesome plot!)

-a superhero who is trying to save the world while keeping her disguise as a mild-mannered klutz (another obvious but awesome plot)

-In love with the boy, who loves her back, and they have secret meetings-when the girl is in one of her musical montages-and the boy tells the best friend he really wants her, but doesn't want to hurt the girl, and the best friend agrees because she's really a good person in spite of the fact that she's totally into her best friend's boyfriend.

That last one is-well, I try not to think about it, but I do.

I do because I can see it happening- in the movie, I mean- and the best friend is a nice person. Really, she is. She can't help the way she feels about the guy.

She really can't. Trust me on this one. I might be…

Oh, forget it. I am. I'm that girl. Actually…I'm that guy. Because you know…I'm a dude, but the best friend in the movie wasn't a guy and…okay I'm just blabbing here. So, anyway. I'm the one who likes his best friend's boyfriend. In the world of friendship, I'm awful. Everyone knows the unwritten rule: You don't like your best friend's boyfriend.

I know that, I do, and I don't want to like James. He's Logan's boyfriend. He's crazy about him. If I turned my head a little, I could see them kissing. I know they're together. I know it's LoganandJames now.

I don't look at them. I don't need the reminder that they're together.

And besides, I know that if I look it'll hurt too much.

So I watch the movie. Maybe the best friend is secretly an assassin from the future, and has come back through time to make sure and evil scientist is stopped before he destroys mankind.

A sofa throw pillow hits me in the head, and since I know who did it, I say, "Hey,Logan, what if I miss what's going to happen next?"

Logan laughs and I make myself look back at him.

He grins at me, lips not attached to James any longer. "So, are you coming with us tonight or what?"

I pretend to stretch so I can look at the clock. It's only ten. Too early to say I have to go home. I'll have to make up a reason why I can't go with him. Them.

"I can't. Mom wants me to get up at five tomorrow and go shopping with her. She's doing another rest run of her recipes in case she gets the call."

"Why do you have to go?" Logan says.

"Gustavo can't because of his hip, and she wants someone there to help."

This is a lie. My mother doesn't need help when she's grocery shopping. She knows every grocery store in a fifty-mile radius like she knows our house. She knows who gets produce in when, which stores get the newest products first, and which ones are open late in case inspiration strikes and she wants to make something at 10 p.m.

Mom is intensely, fiercely focused on creating recipes. She enters cooking contest all the time, and has "placed" in four, which is cook-off lingo for coming in second or third-which everyone, even Mom, says they're happy about, but isn't.

Mom wants to win a cook-off. I know she does. She likes cooking she like making up recipes, but she also enters seemingly every sings cook-off there is. She keeps is pretty low-key-especially compared to some of the other "contesters" I've met, but it's there and it drives her to keep going.

She's always had that drive, I think. I mean, there's a reason I quickly learned to play Go Fish with Gustavo and not her when I was little-with Gustavo, I at least won sometimes.

This year she's sent in-and is now practicing- twenty recipes for the Fabulous Family Cook-Off. This is a low number in the contesting world, at least among the diehards, but Mom decided the key was to really focus on "just a few dishes." Gustavo and I have been eating them for a while now because she wasn't to be ready when (my mom doesn't believe in "if" when it comes to cook-offs) she gets the call.

Unfortunately, Logan knows all of this, and that's the problem with having a best friend who's know you since you were five. Twelve years of friendship means Logan knows almost everything about me and my family.

"She doesn't need you to go," Logan says. "She know where everything is in every grocery store around here, and besides, she's never needed your help shopping before. She has a system and everything." (Logan's right, Mom does. She can find anything in any store in a minute, tops, and probably blindfolded to boot.

But, of course, this doesn't help with the excuse thing at all.

"Maybe Kendall doesn't want to go to the party," James says, looking at the framed photo of Logan that hung on the far wall. I took it last year, when I signed up for Photography thinking it would be an easy A.

It was a very hard B-, with at lot of bad photos on my part, but the picture of Logan is a good one. He's sitting on his front steps, looking off into the distance, and I'd messed with the timer and the speed so much that I accidentally managed to get myself in the shot as I was running back to the camera to see if it was still working. I turned out as a smudge, a sort of blur of motion, but Logan is perfectly still, perfectly captured. I messed around with the photo a little and got Logan to almost glow in it because I pushed the blur that was me into a ghostly shimmer.

"He wants to go," Logan says to James, and then nudges me with a foot. "I hear Dak might be there."

I blush, and then shrug. See, Annabeth knows I'm gay, and so do most people. They don't give me any mess about it though.

Dak is in my English and Chemistry classes, and he's sweet. He's also hopelessly in love with Logan.

However, unlike most of the guys who are hopelessly in love with Logan, he knows he has no chance with him. So he decided he has to like me. Today, in school, he asked me if I was going to be at the party tonight, and I watched him start to ask if Logan was coming too and then stop, remembering he has a boyfriend.

I watched him remember he was supposed to like me.

"You don't think he's cute?" Logan says.

"He's okay." He is. He's okay. He has eyes and a nose and a mouth and hair that doesn't look like it was cut by a lawn mower and his clothes aren't hideous and he doesn't smell or spit when he talks.

"So, come with us. There's always room in James's car, you know. The whole school could fit in his cr. Which is fine! Great!" He rolls his eyes at me.

I smile, because there is always room in James's car. He drives a station wagon, and Logan hates it. He wants James to ask his parents for a new car, and has since they started going out over six weeks ago.

"I like my car," James says, and glances at me.

I let myself look at him for just a second, get a glimpse of dark hair, bright, intense eyes (so hazel you'd swear they came straight from the sky on a hot summer day, the kind of day where even the clouds have burned away, and the greenest green in the planet, and the softest coco brown ever), and the tiny scar that cuts across the corner of his right eyebrow that he got during a soccer match back in seventh grade.

"I can't go," I say. "I mean, I can, but I'm tired and I had to eat Cheesy Corn and Rice casserole for dinner again and my stomach hurts- I mean, it's the fourth night in a row I've had to eat it- so I'd rather just go home and-"

"Pleeeeeease," Logan says.

"I'm too full of corn and rice to be any fun."

"You're full of something all fight," He says, shaking his head, and then sighs. "Fine. Go home, leave me and James all by ourselves at the party."

"You'll have fun," I say.

"I know," He says. "I just like if you're there. I always like it if you're there.

I look at James again, one last quick glance before I go.

He's looking at me, and for a second, one crazy second before I stand up and smile and say goodbye and good night and walk out to me car, I think about what it would be like to be the one sitting next to him.


Thank goodness. It's done! Yeah, so this was story was in the Percy Jackson community, but I feel like it just wasn't clicking, so I put it here! I hope you guys like it! Review, alert, favorite. Whatever floats your boat! 3