Hey y'all. Sorry that there was no update last week. Here's why:
I was tired. I also had a fever and terrible headache! So, I was planning on writing this earlier that day, but then I kept falling asleep due to this fever. So I laid in bed and watched BTR on Netflix on my phone.
I was so sick last Sunday that I missed the last show date for my school musical (which I was in, by the way) so there was a lot of chaos I presume.
However, I am no longer sick.
Also forgive any errors with time and age and things. As of right now, they're all 12. When I know they were thirteen before but time doesn't make sense. So they're 12, it frustrates me too, don't read into it too much.
This took a very long time and I was not expecting it to, I was distracted with other story thoughts that will be known to the general public of very soon. Dedicated to
Not.
Skipper.
But.
Shipper.
(I am convinced this is the only way the website will let me write usernames)
Because she gladly accepts and responds to my word vomit PMs and surprisingly this new chapter was not a subject of this word vomit. So, you lovely human, please especially enjoy this.
There's some spontaneous Cargan that I didn't know I was putting in here. Please enjoy it!
Happy reading! Enjoy!
He could smell burnt toast.
Toast was burning.
He was not having a stroke. That was a common misconception. At worst, his olfactory glands were suffering from phantosmia, a condition that causes things to be smelled that aren't there. Severe phantosmia could be indicative of a temporal lobe seizure. Though, it would only last for a few minutes, and wouldn't his head hurt if he had a seizure?
He had never had a seizure before.
He groaned, turning over in bed.
That burnt toast smell was still persistent as ever.
"Mama," he mumbled. "I think I'm having a stroke."
"What, love?" he heard her call from the kitchen. That's where the burnt toast smell was.
He wasn't having a stroke. Only Carlos still thought people smell toast when having a stroke, it was common knowledge that this wasn't a true fact.
He heard his mother walk into his bedroom, her slippers gently padding on the wood floor. Her hand was warm as it made contact with his forehead. He squirmed away.
"You're not sick, honey."
"I didn't say I was sick," he murmured into his pillow. "I said I was having a stroke."
He heard her laugh softly. "You're not having a stroke either. Why would you think that?"
He closes his eyes, not willing to admit that for a minute, he had bought into the oft-repeated, common knowledge lie that smelling burnt toast meant that you were having a stroke.
"The toast is still burning," he says instead, which causes his mother to jump, sitting up immediately.
"It's not burning," she argues. "I did not burn toast."
"Yes, you did. I can smell it," he protested sleepily. He yawned, pulling the blankets up closer, up to his neck. "I'm going back to sleep."
Truthfully, he wasn't tired enough to sleep more. He was tired, slightly. But really, he didn't want to move from his bed, and he did not intend to do so with this desire in mind.
However, his intentions were not well received by his mother. She tugged the blanket off him. He sat up, frustrated. He glared, before laying back down. He wasn't planning on sleeping, just resting. He didn't technically need a blanket, he just was not getting out of bed under any circumstance today.
There was a specific reason for this, but if he didn't bring it up, she would forget. Which would be preferable. So then he really could stay in bed.
"No, you're not. Don't you remember what today is?"
Of course he remembered. He had an exceptional memory.
But she did not remember. She wouldn't usually remember things. Of all the things she used to forget, and now she wouldn't forget a single thing.
"Don't you remember when you would sleep for seventy-two hours at a time?"
She doesn't respond at first, which leads him to believe he's said something wrong. He didn't lie.
"Don't be rude to me," she says. He said something wrong, evidently. Something rude, which was entirely not his goal. "Come on."
"Mom…" he protests, drawing out the one syllable word like Kendall had done when he was annoyed with Mrs. Knight. Sometimes it worked for Kendall, so he figured, why wouldn't it work for him?
It wouldn't work for him because no matter how many times he had tried to convince himself, his mother was different from Mrs. Knight. Which wasn't necessarily bad, but different. He didn't understand his mother, how she could be so motherly one minute, and then so opposite that the next. Mrs. Knight was always very distinctly a mother.
"Logan, you need to eat breakfast. I need to get to work, and I don't want to have an argument before I leave."
Breakfast wasn't even the most important meal of the day. Medical research personnel were conflicted over the subject. Conflict in the medical community meant that something was not proven to be entirely true.
Something that wasn't entirely true was automatically false.
Breakfast was not the most important meal of the day then, and he was not hungry. There was no reason to eat breakfast today, therefore, and no reason to move from his bed.
"You burnt breakfast."
"Mrs. Knight is going to be here very soon."
"I don't care!"
She went silent again, lips pressed together. She sighed. "It's just for a few hours. It's just summer camp."
Just.
He could think of so many things wrong with the typical summer camp experience, so it really didn't seem fair that she dismissed that, saying just.
The doorbell rang.
"See? That's her."
He pressed his face into the pillow. "No."
"Logan, you have to go."
"I can stay home. Please let me stay home."
Someone was now knocking on the door.
"I can't do that."
"Why not? Kendall—"
She let out a frustrated groan. "You are not Kendall. You are wildly different, and it would be considered irresponsible if I left you home alone."
"Kendall and Katie get left home alone sometimes. And when I was there too, it was really fine."
The knocking on the door became louder. Logan flinched.
"I am not having an argument. You're going. You don't have time to eat breakfast now, I don't know why you thought that arguing over something non-negotiable was a good use of time."
He didn't think it was a good use of his time, that was not the point. The point was to not go.
"Joanna?" Mrs. Knight called from the door. "Logan?"
"I'll be right there, Jen," his mother replied. She had her eyes fixed on him. "Logan, this is unreasonable."
"This is not unreasonable."
She stood up from his bedside, sighing. She began rifling through his closet, setting aside a t-shirt that was particularly uncomfortable, but she didn't know that. She laid a pair of jeans—also an uncomfortable, undesirable clothing choice—next to the shirt. She pulled out his shoes from the back of the closet.
"I'm going to talk to Jennifer. Get dressed."
He stared at the shirt. It didn't fit, for one thing. It was obnoxiously red. It was quite possibly the worst shirt ever to be manufactured by whatever clothing company had manufactured it.
He stared at the jeans. Jeans were not an option. It would be too warm to wear them by mid-afternoon, only a few hours from now.
Then he shut his eyes. He drowned out the sound of Mrs. Knight talking to his mother. He purged the sight of the red shirt from his memory.
He might have fallen asleep for one blissful minute, which had not been what he had set out to do. There didn't seem to be an issue with this happening.
Not until he saw his mother's professional real estate agent shoes, not her slippers, on her feet. She was standing in his doorway. He turned away.
He tried to ignore the yelling. His mother had yelled at him before, but that was when something was wrong with her. When she hadn't been taking medication.
Hadn't things gotten better? Did she not take her medication? Is that why she's yelling at him?
More people are in the room, the door flies open.
He can hear Mrs. Knight talking, and he knows, then, that Kendall and Katie are with her.
He wants Kendall to go away. He wants his mother to go away. He just wants everyone to go away.
—
His mother was late for work. He knew this because she had stood in his room and yelled at him for twenty minutes more. Then her alarm went off, which made him yell too, out of surprise. And she yelled back, saying things he didn't want to remember. The alarm kept going off, and everyone was still in the room, watching this all happen.
His mother had left for work ten minutes ago.
He had spent these ten minutes laying down on his bed, trying not to hear the yelling reverberate in his skull.
He understood, on some level, that Mrs. Knight was also going to be late.
He was making everyone late, which was not the original plan. The original plan had been for his mother to forget about stupid summer camp, and he could lay in his bed, and maybe read up on a new study he had found. The original plan had drastically failed.
Everything was messed up.
Everything was messed up, and he didn't know how to fix things, and he couldn't move because if he moved then more things would be messed up, and that was a potential outcome he simply could not deal with.
"Logan?" Katie asked.
Katie was still there, Katie was looking at him, which meant Kendall was there too. They had both seen everything. He did not want to think about that.
"Logan, are you okay?"
He did not want to answer, because that would mean all of this had actually occurred. He had actually fought with his mother over summer camp, which triggered a meltdown. He had done his research, he knew that these things happened as a neurological consequence. But.
Awful. Awful, terrible, horrible, disgusting, it had all happened in the first place.
Technically, the answer to Katie's question would be no, if his distressing response had been any indication, but also, he did not want to admit that he was not fine. They all knew that already, he did not need to confirm it.
"I'm fine."
He closed his eyes. He did not want to go to summer camp.
—
"Logan, I know you don't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to this morning either. But I think summer camp will be fun. James and Carlos will be there, too."
"Everything is messed up," he replied. He buried himself deeper under the blankets. He did not want to move. He did not want to admit to himself that he had just been as stupid as he had been.
It's a neurological response, because he cannot regulate his emotions properly, and he knows all about that already. His research has not gone to waste. But he still didn't want that to happen.
Not in front of his mother, who is definitely mad at him now and will sleep for seventy-two hours at a time again as a result.
Not in front of Mrs. Knight, who had already seen it happen before. But, not again.
Not in front of Kendall, who has seen it before more than anyone.
Not in front of Katie, who likely does not understand what is going on with him. He's already freaked Katie out so much. He's already freaked himself out so much.
"What's messed up?" Kendall asked.
Logan didn't want to talk, he didn't want to be talked to.
Kendall's voice grated on his eardrums.
Kendall replacing the uncomfortable jeans that Logan was supposed to wear with less uncomfortable shorts on this chair where the clothes were laid out was an appreciated effort, but opening and closing drawers, drawers that slam shut, that was almost worse.
"Your mom isn't mad at you, you know that, right?"
She was yelling. People only yell when they are mad.
"You just—whatever. She's not mad at you. Nobody's mad at you."
Kendall could not prove the validity of this statement without consulting both their mothers. At the present moment, that was impossible.
Something that wasn't entirely true was automatically false.
Kendall opened the shaky closet doors. The squeaking sliding was far worse than the drawers slamming shut.
He turned in bed again, trying to not focus on the sounds.
"Camp is fun, Logan. Last year I had a counselor who volunteered at the hospital during the school year. They're probably still at camp. You could talk about doctor stuff with them. I think they'll be going to med school in the fall."
This seemed slightly intriguing.
"And they read a lot too. They run all the camp activities that you'd like. The quiet ones. But you should still do the fun things."
Doing 'fun things' did not seem nearly as promising.
He did not want to go to summer camp.
–
Kendall sits next to Logan in the deathly silent car.
That's the only way Logan would agree to come with them, and Kendall knew it without asking (he needed to be silent, too, in order for anything to happen), but it was challenging, to say the least, to not turn on the sports radio coverage station because they were talking about Matt Cullen going into the preseason next September.
As badly as he wanted to hear about the future preseason, and Matt Cullen (who was born in Moorhead, but never played for the Wild) he also knew that he would much rather hang out with Logan at camp.
The only way this would be possible is if they drove in a silent car, so they drove in a silent car.
Logan seemed marginally better from his meltdown earlier. His eyes were closed, he was resting his head against the window sill, but he wasn't asleep. He was tapping his foot nervously.
Kendall would've commented.
But he knew the car needed to be silent.
So, he didn't say anything.
They pulled up to camp.
Camp Wonky Donkey.
—
He did not want to be here.
It was already too loud. The sun was too bright and only moderately warm. The breeze was aggressively cold.
There were too many people to begin with. Even less who could be identified in blue shirts as the counselors. Even less who seemed to fit the description of the one tolerable camp counselor Kendall had described to him.
"Where is the counselor you told me about?"
Kendall shrugged. "Um, I haven't found him yet. He might not be our counselor."
"But you said—"
"I know what I said. We'll find him. Let's get Katie to her group first."
He begrudgingly agreed, it would only take a few minutes to determine which blue-shirted psychopath had the nerve to deal with twenty-three seven year olds for several hours.
Katie's counselor was intolerable just by this fact. Some peppy seventeen year old with blonde hair and a bright smile that seemed anatomically impossible.
Kendall handed her off to this seventeen year old. Logan watched as Katie pulled a yellow Camp Wonky Donkey shirt over her head.
He certainly hoped he didn't have to do that.
—
He did.
He had to wear an ugly, uncomfortable shirt. He had to stand, sweltering in the sun, and play games likes dodgeball where the bigger kids still liked to terrorize him. He had to sit through a viscous arts and crafts session, and then was not allowed to wash his hands as completely as he would've liked 'because they didn't have time'
The camp activities director had handed him an itinerary that stated otherwise.
But when he had tried to protest and show the actual handheld proof that he did indeed have enough time to thoroughly wash his hands, the mob of kids had swallowed him up and spit him back out in the middle of the activity field.
He did not find this magic counselor, and Kendall wouldn't help him look anymore because he was too busy actively participating in Capture the Flag with James and Carlos.
At the present moment, Logan was not actively participating, because he was still stubbornly searching for this counselor that Kendall tried to convince him wasn't there at all this summer.
When this failed, he begged the director to go sit inside. Lunch would be soon enough anyway. The director denied this request.
Another swarm of children rushed past him as he trudged back to the area of the activities field where the Capture the Flag game was. He's not sure who these kids are. He must be mistaken for an intruder on enemy lines. He feels someone slap him hard on the back.
He returns to his spot watching the game. He was not content here, he was not a happy camper. He wouldn't be, not until he got home.
But now the situation has escalated to the point where it should be considered nasal assault. He physically cannot stand in this field any longer. It's terrible, it smells absolutely awful, worse than it had been. The camp was located right next to a dairy farm down the road. He had been smelling cows and their various odors for the past three hours.
But this is not cows.
People are farting on him as they pass, which is not only nasal assault, but also highly unsanitary.
Why are people doing this?
It doesn't make sense, not until he receives another smack on the back from someone deep within the gaggle of gameplayers that pass him. He reaches behind him, clawing at his shirt. He rips the piece of paper off his back.
Someone taped a sign to his back.
FART ON ME.
—
"Logan's missing," Carlos informs the group as they sit down for lunch. "I only saw him after I put the sign on. I think he's gone."
"He's not missing," Kendall refutes, biting into a french fry that is an unsettling combination of soggy and crispy. "I just saw him too."
"When did you see him?" James asks. "I haven't seen him since I re-taped the sign."
Kendall swirled another strangely soggy-crispy fry in a puddle of ketchup. "I don't know, maybe I didn't."
"Logan's missing," Carlos concluded, taking a fistful from the basket of fries in front of them. It might not have mattered that they were soggy-crispy, not to Carlos.
"He's not missing," Kendall repeated.
"So then where is he?" James asked. "If none of us have seen him, where would he be?"
"Probably ran home," Kendall muttered. Carlos raised his head, his eyes alight with an idea. "No, Carlos, he didn't actually run home. He probably just wanted to."
"But he could!" Carlos insisted. "Logan is really fast."
"He wouldn't run all the way home," Kendall decided.
He knew it wouldn't make sense, but maybe Logan really was so out of it that he did run.
No, that didn't make sense.
He pushed away from the table. "I'm going to talk to the camp director. Maybe he knows. Tell me if you find Logan."
With two determined nods from each of his friends, Kendall set off in the direction of the camp director's office.
Only to collide with a very distressed Logan, one who didn't seem to see him.
"Logan," Kendall said, intercepting him.
But Logan still tried to ignore him, pushing past.
"Logan," Kendall repeated. "Come on, it's lunch."
He did not want this to be like this morning, when he wouldn't get out of bed until there was no sound. This was quite possibly the loudest place on earth at the moment.
Logan was at least standing, walking. He wasn't doing either of those things that morning.
Progress.
Though, the progress seems kind of backwards when Logan doesn't acknowledge James or Carlos, simply sitting down, and shoving his head down on the table. Arms wrapped over his head. Not responding.
The progress was definitely not progress.
—
"I didn't mean to make him so upset, Mama," Carlos murmured from his spot at the dinner table. Papi would be home soon, but his spot was empty. Which was good, because Carlos did not want to be yelled at by his father too.
His mother could yell enough if she wanted to. She wasn't yelling yet.
She joined him at the table, nodding. "I know that. But I don't think you were thinking."
That was not true, he was thinking! He's always thinking, if you weren't thinking, Logan says you'd be brain dead. And he wasn't brain dead. He's always thinking.
Why does everyone think he doesn't think?
He had to think in order to make the plan in the first place.
Because he knew Logan had been upset, Kendall told him so. He just maybe didn't know how upset Logan was.
Because he originally thought that he could get Logan to play Capture the Flag with them. That didn't work. So, he thought about the FART ON ME sign.
Maybe too many kids farted on Logan for the plan to work
He thought it would make Logan talk about weird science things, because when Logan talks about science, he's never sad. And farting is science. Fartology or something. And Logan knows about science.
Carlos also knows that Logan doesn't like to talk to people. So, with the sign, he wouldn't have had to start the conversation, not really. He could just do what he does all the time, and just say the facts out loud, and then—conversation!
Carlos does not bother to explain this logic to his mother, because his mother would think it is stupid, and punish him for doing such a stupid thing. His father would enforce the punishment, definitely.
Carlos thinks that it is punishment enough he had to see Logan so upset.
And now since Mrs. Mitchell has to deal with sad Logan, she's sad. And when Mrs. Mitchell is sad, she doesn't hang out with Carlos's mother anymore, or James's mom, or Kendall's mom. So Carlos can't hang out with Logan either.
Carlos can't do anything about this.
He just prays Logan feels better soon, and that Logan tells him something stupid about science that he'll say is boring and forget.
But he doesn't usually forget Logan's science facts. Not when they're the only thing that makes him smile so much.
Not when they're what make Logan so happy.
Carlos cannot live with the fact that his stupid plan made Logan so sad instead.
I can't believe myself I can't believe I finished the chapter. I'm quite pleased with this effort. I will see you all next Sunday. Please don't be frustrated that my other stories are not updated. This one chapter took several hours and I don't have the mental energy to write something half-hearted right now. So please enjoy this and let it hold you over until Easter!
Have a lovely day!