Chapter 6

I was doing my best to be the adorable scamp that I was by ditching my health class. The teacher was a coach who looked like she had as much sex as the average Franciscan friar. It was a sunny Friday at the end of the school year. Staying inside and watching Coach Krepsky push play on the VCR to show an antiquated film on STDs and the modern teenager would have been a crime against life. Those videos really needed an update. They still assumed the modern teenager had a pager and a Walkman.

I went down to the pier and watched the seagulls dive bomb the shore below where people threw their food and disgusting bits of... who knows what... washed ashore. People liked to throw French fries into the air and watch the gulls catch them. When I was younger I did that too, until a seagull snatched Tina's glasses off her face. It took two days of checking seagull nests and crawling though literal feet of seagull shit to get them back and by that point, none of us thought it was worth it anymore. I was trying to decide if I was going to waste the ten bucks in my pocket on riding the Zany Plane until I was sick or buying cheap saltwater taffy until I was sick when a voice caught my ear.

"And this is the wharf! We still pull in a good profit from here, year after year. Mr. Fischoeder said that he would never sell WonderWharf and he's been true to his word. Most attendants are parents with young children, the elderly, and... well see here..." Logan, leading a group of men in suits who seemed all numbers and no fun, gestured towards me when he saw me standing there. "Teenage delinquents! Well, their money is just as green and since they don't know better they may as well spend it here." The group laughed at my expense and started taking photos of the wharf with their fancy phones. My ears turned red with shame.

Those words couldn't have hit any harder than if he physically smacked me in the face. I knew he looked down on me but to say something like that in front of all those people- it stung. I thought we were at least going to be a little friendly. After all, he gave me all that money...

But he had been drunk. Maybe he didn't realize what he had done. And a guy like Logan can probably spend that much without missing it. Perhaps we weren't friendly. Well in that case I had a weapon in my arsenal he wouldn't see coming.

"Hey Logan!" I walked up to him and glared up into his stupid face. All his business-suit friends were looking at me. "Aren't you going to tell these guys about your class trip in high school?"

"What?" Logan gave me a look like I had lost my mind.

"In high school. You had a trip to Bog Harbor with your history class to see the light house." Logan's face flinched. I could tell the suits were trying to figure out what this had to do with anything and who the hell I was. "The trip where you had to stay overnight? And you had a nightmare?" With each sentence his face reached a new level of white. "Remember?"

"Shut it, Louise." He tried to usher the suits away from me. That only made me talk louder so they could hear me.

"Of course, you remember! It's the trip where you had to share a bed with Kyle Pressman, and you had a nightmare, and you woke up in the morning with the sheets soaking wet because you pissed yourself? And you- you tried to convince Kyle that it was night-sweats, but he didn't believe you and pulled back the sheets and they were yellow!" By this point I was practically yelling. Not only could the suits hear me, but so could half the wharf. "You had to bribe him with a hundred dollars not to tell anybody- don't tell me you forgot?"

Logan forced the chuckling businessmen to go over to the offices. Then he came storming back over to me. People were laughing and whispered and pointing at him. I felt pretty damn happy with myself. I smugly smiled into Logan's dark red face.

"You stupid little bitch." He literally spat when he spoke to me. I didn't give him the satisfaction of wiping my face. I was going to enjoy every moment of his rage. "How did you know that? Did Kyle squeal?"

"I'm not about to reveal my sources. But I don't know Kyle, Lolo," I taunted. He visibly flinched at the nickname his grandmother used to call him. A nickname I read he hated. "I guess I could have told your friends about the boner you got when you were asking Maria to the homecoming dance but I though the bedwetting story was funnier. Don't you think so?"

His eyes widened as he pieced together the puzzle. "How did you get my journal? How, Louise?" He stepped closer to me, and in that moment, I felt it. I had crossed a line. But my pride wasn't about to let me apologize. He was gripping his hands into fists, over and over. I could imagine that he was imagining my throat in his fingers but was settling on making fists.

"Your room."

"And what were you doing in my room?" He took another step closer. We were inches apart and he was a tower of barely-contained rage over my head. "Why were in you in my mother's house? Are you picking locks there too?"

People who, a moment ago, were watching us to laugh at Logan were now watching this interchange with rapt fascination. I c0uld sense dozens of watching eyes on him, on me. I couldn't tell if they were going to let him pound me into one hundred pounds of ground Louise or stop him before he lost it. I hoped it was the latter.

"I helped your mom during the days after her divorce from Tom- your Dad." I stammered. If you were to label the emotions running through my body, you could have called one of them fear.

"Give it to me Louise. Give me my journal," he demanded. "NOW."

"I don't have it anymore," I said. "I threw it into a dumpster behind Pancho's Tacos. The good one- on Riverside." I tossed the old lie back into Logan's face.

He looked down at the ground and turned to walk away. After two steps I let go of the breath I had been holding, without even realizing it. I felt myself relax. The crowd let out a groan of disappointment. There was nothing "viral" for their cameras after all.

But then some yahoo in the crowd had to speak. He had to put in his two cents. "That's it? She STOLE from you, man!" Logan stopped and so did my heart. He turned back to me and got so close that I could smell him- some sort of light cologne, beer on his breath from his lunch, and the smell of his fabric softener. All those normal scents contrasted with his body language, his anger. I assumed he would smell of fire and brimstone.

"You. You waste of space. I cannot believe I ever wasted any time on you. I was so wrong." He got silent for a moment and narrowed his eyes. My blood ran cold at that look. "I made a huge mistake walking into that fire. I should have let you burn."

He walked away; the crowds parted to let him by. I could feel a hundred eyes turn to me. If I could move I would have screamed at them. Go away. Leave me alone. Stop staring at me. Fuck off.

But I was frozen. Paralyzed. I'm not even sure if I was breathing. I lost track of time. The sun set to my left before I knew it. The buzz of the lamp light overhead coming on woke me from my stupor. I needed to get to work.

"Where you been girl?" Zeke shouted at me from the back. Gene was in the weeds and Zeke looked harried. I took a deep breath and shoved down everything I was thinking and everything I was feeling and put a huge rock on top of all of it. 'Get a grip, Lousie. It's time to work.' My parents had already gone upstairs to let us do the dinner shift. It was time to man up and deal. It was time to do my job. It was time to plan.

Two days later I made a call during my shift to my good old friend Sargeant Bosco. The rest of my shift at the restaurant was spent smiling. I took off my apron and walked out to the alley to just breathe. The last thing I expected was to see Logan Barry Bush waiting for me. He slammed the door shut behind me and smacked his hands flat against it on either side of my head.

"A drug bust at my apartment Louise? Really?!" He shouted at me. I traded stare for stare. I knew Logan wouldn't hit me now, if he was able to keep his cool the other day on the wharf.

"Did I ruin your weekend Logan? Any big plans you have to cancel now?" I smirked. I was glad he was so pissed off, and I did hope his weekend was ruined, at the least.

He had hurt me. Deep, in my soul kind of hurt. I had never felt anything like that before and I wasn't about to let him get away with it. I was not the type of girl to let anybody hurt me even a little. And he took the most personal part of me and strangled it. I cried because of him. I never cry, and he made me cry myself to sleep. After I had finished my shift that night I took his journal and flung in into the back of my closet. I figured I would burn it or deep fry it or turn it into a billion spitballs at some point. Then I buried myself into my pillow and cried. Next thing I knew it was morning and I had to go through the whole day with this empty hole in my chest.

I planned for two days, trying to figure out how to hurt Logan back. I considered sugar in his gas tank. Lighting his apartment on fire, which had particular poetry seeing as how it would bring things full circle, only this time Logan would have to save himself, nearly won. But then watching Gene power through eight hot dogs in one sitting and have my Dad tell a story about how he used to smoke pot and then eat hot dogs like Gene just did gave me an idea. (Picturing that image of my Dad downing hot dogs while high made me very happy.)

Logan was the kind of guy who might have "party stuff" stashed in his place. If the cops found anything, he would be in huge trouble. If he was clean, his entire place would be trashed and either way, it would be on record. And Bosco might get pissed with me but there's no way I could get into real trouble. I couldn't get caught doing anything illegal right now- for my parents' sake. Things were finally easy on them and I didn't want to ruin it by making them bail out their fifteen-year-old daughter for arson or destruction of property. I did, for a second, consider Voodoo again but I doubted it would work. So, calling in a tip to the cops it was.

I looked into Logan's face, feeling so satisfied. His breathing was quick, his forehead vein visible and pulsing angrily. Were the situation completely different, in a parallel universe, I might consider this romantic. I might have daydreamed just this situation. The way it was, in the real world, didn't feel romantic at all. In fact, it might look to a bystander like Logan was about to pull out a switchblade and slit my throat.

"There was nothing for them to find, you stupid cow. But now my apartment is trashed, my landlord wants to evict me, and my family is talking about rehab. I haven't done drugs since freshman year, Louise. I got my shit together and grew up. You should do the same thing!" He pulled away and gave me one last glare, then spat at my feet. "You're toxic. I'm done." He left.