Disclaimer: Too bad for me, I don't own Dark Angel. I do own Heather, Sara, Lauren, and Mrs. Woodman, Michael, and Mr. P.
Time Frame: Total AU, 2005. No Pulse, no Manticore, no virus, no breeding cult psychos! Yay!
Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews!: RubyStar, mackenzie, Cuthien, J, dleep, Natters, abregaza, lil-DA, CharmedOneJayme, and Elisha!
Five - The Start of Something
Logan sat on the cool kitchen counter and watched the rain pour down the large windowpanes. He was surrounded in darkness, feeling more alone than he ever had. The massive house was empty: his parents were off at some charity function, and the maid had left for the night. Downing more of his soda, Logan reflected back on his first day of this junior year. It had started out bad and had gotten worse. That Mrs. Woodman had had him pegged from the first class, and now she knew about Max. She wanted him to write about Max, but he couldn't. He already had boxes upon boxes full of his sufferings and rantings about her, his regrets, her face- Logan couldn't get her out of his mind even if he was dead.
Sighing, he slid off the counter and padded back upstairs to his room, the only place he called home. After what happened in LA, it was too painful to even consider the palm trees and his beach home anymore. Logan flipped a light on and looked around. It was a mess. Clothes were strewn all around the room, wrappers and soda cans lay dead on the floor, and his journals were scattered across his desk after he nearly blew up when his father had come in to talk to him once he had gotten back from LA. That was over two weeks ago.
The talk had started out with good intentions, like his father always had, but as it went on, the talk had changed into a lecture about not being in the family business. Logan sighed at the memory and bent over to pick up the trash on the floor. Any talk Logan had ever had with his father had always led back to the family business. His father had been a capitalist all of his life; starting with that stereotypical lemonade stand and it just kept going from that. When Logan was growing up, he made money by telling the great adventures of his idol, Superman. He and his father had very little in common.
After throwing away the last of his trash, he plopped into his computer chair and turned on the monitor. "Download complete" windows from #X-Files-Central smiled at him. Closing the windows, he then filed the episodes away according to season. Logan loved the show to death, even though it had ended three or four years ago. He opened an episode, minimized the window, and continued to file the latest downloaded episodes, the extra-terrestrial jargon spouted by Mulder and Scully filling the air.
As the episode ended, he opened another and started on the dull task of homework. The first day of school hadn't changed since the day he was a shy young freshman anxious about starting school far away from those slow, pre-puberty middle schoolers. Teachers yapped on about the same policies, had the same expectations that would never be met, and practically gave the same syllabuses. The faces and the classroom walls were the only things that changed from year to year. The rain and X-Files comforting him, he and his pen started to pour the same boring statistics onto the crisp, white papers one by one. Later in the night as his hand moved across notebook paper, forming words and equations, his mind wandered to Max and Los Angeles. Did she live in California? Did she try to contact him? Where was she? Questions consumed his mind as his pencil continued to move on the paper. Where was she right now? Was she okay? Did she miss him as much as he missed her? He could see her with her sister now, talking and laughing... she probably wasn't going to miss him that much or go through as much pain as he was going through right now.
Bennett always told Logan that he grieved too much and for too long, and right now his words seemed to ring true. But it wasn't everyday he met someone that amazing and beautiful and smart...
His eyes moved to the next calculus problem, but he realized that he had finished with his calculus homework. Pushing his books off of his lap, he opened Internet Explorer and stared at the blank screen thoughtfully. Where should I go? Logan mused. He thought of Max at that moment: her curly hair, her pouty smile. The thunder suddenly crashed behind him, making him jump a little. Damn thunder.
Logan hated thunderstorms; they were always so loud and menacing. When he was younger, he would run into his parents' room and stay with them until the thunder had passed. Now that he was older, he still hated thunder, but he drowned it out with music instead. He reached for his remote in its usual place in his top desk drawer, but he found the spot to be empty. Rummaging through some piles on his desk, he came across his return plane ticket from Los Angeles. Logan looked at it for a moment, then picked it up, feeling some kind of power drawing him to it.
"Plane tickets...plane tickets!" he muttered to himself, a light bulb turning on in his head. He sat back down and typed in the address for American Airlines.
"Alright, let's see if they have a database of all the flights in the past month."
Logan clicked the search box and typed in "past flights" and clicked "Go." After waiting for the site to load, he read the results of the search. Nothing.
"Damnit!" he cursed, slamming his fist on the desk, causing little odds and ends to jump. "There has to be a way to find the list!"
He started to search the site manually, leaving no link unchecked, but he found nothing. Sighing, he highlighted the URL and changed it to another airline web address.
"This is gonna take a while."
Hours later Logan was still sitting at his desk searching every airline that ever existed to find a list of past flights. He had failed miserably. The only databases that anyone might have had were only a couple weeks old, and that didn't help at all. He had tried calling those "24/7" phone numbers to find out what flight she took, but, according to the drones of operators who answered, Logan "did not have access to that information."
"Damn them," he grumbled, downing another cup of strong, black coffee. "There's gotta be a way to get into those databases!"
Logan put the now empty mug next to a large collection of unwashed mugs and started looking through the sites again, hoping to find something that he may have missed. As he typed in the address for American Airlines again, the moon slowly retreated to the other end of the sky, fading into the early morning light.
"Logan? Logan!"
A voice and a shove forced Logan to sit up and slowly open his eyes. The blurs that surrounded him gradually came back in focus. He was in the cafeteria before school, what most kids did when they wanted to catch up with old friends. In his case, he just wanted to catch up on sleep. The biggest blur in front of him turned out to be Bling, his good friend whom he had met when he was a terrified freshman at Seattle High. Bling was giving Logan a concerned look, but sat down anyway and gave Logan a fresh cup of coffee.
"Oh, hey, Bling." Logan muttered sleepily. "How are you?"
"I'm fine, but what about you? Are you all right?" Bling looked at his friend curiously. Logan's hair was more disheveled than usual, the bags under his eyes were getting heavier... Logan just looked bad. "You look like crap scraped off the back of Billy Winters' monster SUV."
Logan grumbled a laugh and took his glasses off to rub the sleep out of his eyes. "I was up til about five this morning looking for Max," he sighed. After putting his glasses back on, Logan took a long sip of his coffee, hoping it would wake him up.
Bling shook his head. "Logan, my man, give it up! You've been looking for her since the moment you stepped off that plane! And what have you found so far?" Logan glared at the laminate table, jaw clenched, unable to say anything. "Logan, you're running yourself into the ground! You look like hell-"
"Thanks," Logan finally remarked, his voice tainted in sarcasm.
Bling ignored the comment and went on. "You look like hell every time I see you! That was okay over the summer when you had time to kill, but school's started! No more time!"
Logan cocked his head and look at Bling in mock confusion. "Really? School's started? No way!"
"All I'm saying is," Bling sighed, "you need to get some sleep, maybe eat a little. You don't wanna die of malnutrition and sleep deprivation, do ya?"
Logan slid his glasses back on and took another sip of coffee. His best friend's words had run pretty deep, but Logan would most likely forget it in a couple days. Bling finished his coffee and dunked the paper cup into a trashcan.
"So..." Bling drawled, trying to think of something to talk about. It had been hard to talk to Logan when the only thing Logan was thinking of was Max. "Have you at least found out if she lives in California?" You're supposed to be helping your friend move on, not make him worse, he chided himself.
"She doesn't. She left on a plane," Logan said somberly.
Bling rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to slap his friend. "She left on a plane?"
"Didn't I just say that?"
"Logan, lots of people leave on planes! Just because she left on a plane doesn't mean she doesn't live in the state!" Bling couldn't believe how stupid Logan was becoming.
"Most of the school districts in California don't have a Max Guevara in their schools," Logan finally said.
"Have you tried to find her flight?"
"I'm not able to access that 'top priority information,' " Logan grumbled bitterly.
"Well, do you know when her flight was?" Bling could see the answer forming in his head, but obviously Logan hadn't seen it yet.
"The week, but not the day." Logan had tried to remember the day, had known it once, but then a realization hit him: Why did Bling care? "Why do you ask?"
Bling groaned and ran a hand over his face. "I can't believe you!"
"What?" Logan shouted, causing some heads to turn. "What the hell did I do?"
Bling rolled his eyes and tapped the side of Logan's head. "Hello? Anybody home?"
Logan was getting irritated with Bling now. "Cut the crap and tell me why you're treating me like I'm an imbecile!"
Bling shook his head and laughed. "Because that's what you are! Don't you see what's right in front of your face?"
Logan groaned and slammed his fist on the table. "No! I don't see it! I musta lost the memo to look around every now and then!"
Other people in the cafeteria were starting to stare at them, wondering how a fight could start so early in the year.
"You can find her, you ass!" Bling finally yelled.
Logan looked at him, dumbfounded at Bling's outburst. "How?"
Bling took a few deep breaths, calming himself down. "Don't you remember that trip we were planning freshman year? When we wanted to see Radiohead in New York?"
Logan vaguely remembered the trip that the two had planned to a tee that year. They had never gotten the permission to go, but they had had fun in the process of planning. "What's your point?"
"Do you remember how we planned for that trip?" Bling leaned in closer as Logan searched his mental database.
Radiohead was blasting over the new speaker system Logan had gotten for his birthday. He and Bling were sitting on his floor in his room, buried in maps and guidebooks about New York. Both were clad in their favorite Radiohead shirts, the boys' latest obsession. Sure, those girls had their pop icons and their overage male artists, but Bling and Logan had Radiohead.
At the moment, the two were planning their big trip to hopefully convince their parents to let them go to New York to see the big Radiohead show at Madison Square Garden. As soon as the set list for the tour had come out, Logan and Bling had been devising a plan. Bling had never been to New York before and wanted to see everything. Logan, on the other hand, had been there a couple of times to visit his mom's sister, a famous Broadway actress and singer extraordinaire.
"All right," Bling said, pushing some of the maps off of his lap. "Your internet working? Maybe we can find a good deal on a flight over there, which is the best way to convince any parent about flying to the other coast."
"Maybe," Logan said, moving to his computer, "Last night's blackout is still kicking my connection in the ass." Logan opened an Internet Explorer window only to be greeted with a "this page cannot be displayed" screen. "Nope. It's still down."
Bling muttered under his breath. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. "So how are we gonna be able to convince them to let us go if we can't find when we can come in or if we can get a deal?"
Logan just sat there, his pensive look burning an invisible hole into the screen. Suddenly he jumped out of his chair and walked quickly out of his room.
"Logan! Where are you going?" Bling rushed out of the room, following Logan as he headed downstairs into his father's study.
Logan walked into the study closet and flipped on a light.
"Whoa," Bling whispered. The whole closet was stuffed wall-to-wall with little thin booklets. "What are these?"
Logan skimmed his fingertips along the books, looking for the one with the month that matched the month of the concert. Finally, he saw it. "Ah ha! Found it!" He pulled it out and handed it to Bling. "That is how we find a flight to New York without our lovely friend, Mr. Internet."
Bling looked at the cover, his eyes skimming over the bright blue letters. "OAG? What is this?"
"A flight guide. It has-"
"-all of the flights listed of that month!" Logan whispered to himself. "Bling, you're a genius!"
Bling laughed and shook his head. "No, you're just slow, man."
Logan groaned at the clock bolted to the cafeteria wall. He only had about 10 minutes until the bells rang, warning that their free time was nearing an end.
"It won't work, man," Bling said, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. "You don't have enough time to go back to get it."
Logan silently cursed to himself and nodded. "I know," he said under a cool façade. Logan slowly stood up and grabbed his backpack. He started to make his way towards the hall of his first class when he felt a tug on his bag.
Bling was trailing at Logan's heels with a bewildered look on his face. "You know?" Bling said, taken back by his answer. "Why are you so calm about this? I was expecting you to be late so you could go back and get the book from your dad's office!"
"Well, as you said," Logan replied smartly, "I don't have enough time."
"That's never stopped you before!"
Logan smiled and tapped the side of Bling's head. "Did you forget about off-campus lunch, oh smart one?"
Chagrin slid on Bling's face. "Oh yeah," he said sheepishly. "I forgot."
"It's okay," Logan said, patting him on the back. "Now we're even."
As the first dismissal bell chirped loudly through the school, laughter floated down the hall, letting ease pass through Logan, for the moment anyways.
"All right, chickadees." Logan sat in creative writing later that morning, listening to Mrs. Woodman talk about the dreaded ten pages. "I hope you've gotten your first drafts started, done if you intend on turning it in at the end of the week."
The stale air in the classroom was overcome with groans and gasps.
"By the end of the week?" Megan Smith shrieked.
Obviously she took this class as a blow-off... Logan chuckled to himself.
"I can't write ten pages in one week! I'll... I'll ruin my manicure!" She shoved her finely buffed and polished hand out for Mrs. Woodman to see.
Mrs. Woodman walked up to Megan's desk and pushed the manicured hand away.
"I'm sure you can get it redone with daddy's credit card in the other hand," Mrs. Woodman sneered. She turned on her heel and walked back to her stool. Megan gasped in disgust as Mrs. Woodman readjusted her reading glasses still perched on the bridge of her nose. "Anyway, back to the summer paper. Yes, it is due on Friday, but come on! This paper is about you! All of you should have no problem writing about yourselves!"
Logan sat in his chair slowly processing her words and letting them mull over in his. If only she knew how hard it'll be to talk about Her again. His thoughts about Max were abruptly ended by a loud smack on his desk. Mrs. Woodman had slammed a piece of paper in front of him.
"I know you have a lot to write about," she said, cryptically to the onlookers, but quite clear to him. "Tell me about her."
Once the class heard that, they were up in arms.
"Awwww, Logan's finally met his special someone, hasn't he?" Ryan Banks cooed sarcastically.
Logan bristled at Bank's words. He had hated Banks and his cold ways since elementary school. Logan had gotten over the fact that Banks was an inconsiderate ass, but this just hit too close to home.
"Shove it, Banks," Logan muttered.
"Oh, I guess he did! Did she leave you for somebody better?"
Logan clenched his teeth and turned around to face Banks. "I said shove it. Did those nice people at Hooked on Phonics tell you what it means?"
Ryan's face turned red in anger. "That's it!" He lunged out of his chair and at Logan, tackling him to the floor.
The boys were rolling on the floor, wrestling and throwing punches. One saw it as defending his honor. The other saw it as an opportunity to get his anger out about what had happened a couple of months ago that had led to the living ninth circle of hell.
It all seemed like one big blur to Logan. The only thing that was clear to him was Banks's face. He could hear people yelling, mostly Mrs. Woodman, but none of it made sense to him. He could feel his body moving and slamming against the carpeted concrete floors. His glasses had flown off, maybe they had gotten crushed; it didn't really matter at that moment. Hands were pulling at his body, trying to separate him from the other angry body. Logan struggled out of their grasps and landed a solid punch into Banks's jaw. As Logan's knuckles pulled away from Banks's jaw, he gave in and let the hands pull him back.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Mr. Brookson scolded, pacing behind his desk. "You boys could've severely hurt each other or the other students in the classroom!"
Logan and Banks were sitting in two hard, wooden chairs in the principal's office. Bruises were starting to mar both of their faces, and Banks had an icepack on his jaw.
"Oh, really?" Banks mumbled through his pain.
"I don't need any of your mouth, young man," Mr. Brookson snapped. "You both should be old enough to realize that there are other alternatives to settling an argument than by fighting!" "Yes, sir," they both muttered, their eyes to the floor.
Mr. Brookson sighed and plopped down in his executive office chair. He opened Ryan's files. "Well, Mr. Banks, it seems that you don't get into fights everyday, but quite often in the past two years at Seattle High School. Why is that?"
"Because people piss me off, sir," Banks spouted mockingly.
The principal grunted to himself, unsatisfied with the answer, but knowing he wouldn't get anything out of Ryan Banks. He never had. Mr. Brookson opened Logan's file. After skimming over what just seemed to be a transcript and academic achievements, Mr. Brookson looked up at Logan, who was pensively staring at the floor.
"Now, Mr. Cale," Mr. Brookson said, making Logan looked back up. "You have nothing on your record. No detentions, no records of fighting or causing a disruption... So why start now?"
Logan shifted in his seat a little. He knew his principal wouldn't give a damn about Max; it seemed that nobody did except for him.
"Banks just pissed me off, sir. That's all."
Mr. Brookson found this hard to believe. "He just pissed you off?"
"Yes, sir," Logan said slowly. "Just pissed me off."
Logan hastily unlocked the door to his house. He had served a lunch detention, forcing him to wait all day before he could find Max's flight. He was kicking himself mentally for getting on Bank's KO list, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Moving quickly through his house and brushing past the maid, he ran into his father's closet. He flipped the switch and slowly began to look through his father's archive.
"Monsieur Cale? Where are you?" the maid's voice called, getting softer and softer as she went the wrong direction.
"June 03, July 04, December 04..." Logan's eyes scanned the spine of everyone, looking for the one book that held the answer. "Yes! August 05!" he yelled.
Logan sat down and flipped through the book. He was amazed that they could fit both arrivals and departures in such a small book. As he got to closer to the end of the arrivals, he realized that arrivals were the only thing in the book. They didn't have departures. He needed to know where she went, not where she came from.
"Damnit!" He threw the little booklet against the wall, causing a loud smack. I'm never gonna find her... never...
"Monsieur Cale! What are you doing in the closet?" the maid asked, cautiously entering the closet.
"Nothing, Sandrine, nothing," he lied. He took off his glasses and slowly rubbed his eyes.
"Monsieur," Sandrine said, sitting down next to him on the floor, "I have known you since before you could walk. I was there when you took your first everything. Don't think I don't know when there's something wrong."
Logan sighed in defeat. "Well, over the summer...." He began telling the long story about him and Max, how they met and how they were torn apart. "And I need to find her. I need her."
Sandrine blew her nose into her handkerchief. "C'est si triste, mon cher," she said through her sniffles.
Logan handed her a tissue box, making Sandrine laugh. "Such a sweet boy," she said, taking the box. "Oh! My friend has a garçon you could talk to about finding ton amour. He's about your age. Poor boy's in a wheelchair. She tells me that he has a horrible disease that slowly cripples his body. The doctors say that when he's thirty he'll be quardi...quadri-"
"Quadriplegic?" Logan offered.
"Yes." She pointed in his direction as if the word was floating in the air. "That. Would mon cher like to talk to him?"
"Yea, I think I'd like that." Logan didn't need to think twice about it; he would do anything to find her. "Thanks, Sandrine," Logan said, giving her a sideways hug.
"Mon plaisir. Now, what do you say we get out of your father's closet and eat some dinner that I made, oui?" Sandrine got up and extended her hand for him.
"That'd be great." He took her hand and stood up. "I don't know what I'd do without you," Logan said sincerely, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as they walked to the kitchen.
As the sun slowly said its goodbyes to the day, Logan sat at his desk, staring pensively at the slip of paper Sandrine had given him. It read: "Sebastian - 564-2982." After taking a deep breath, he hooked his headset onto his ear and dialed the number. Anything for Max, he thought to himself. Butterflies were riding monstrous roller coasters in his stomach as the phone rang. Finally, someone picked up.
"Hello?"
Logan froze.
Time Frame: Total AU, 2005. No Pulse, no Manticore, no virus, no breeding cult psychos! Yay!
Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews!: RubyStar, mackenzie, Cuthien, J, dleep, Natters, abregaza, lil-DA, CharmedOneJayme, and Elisha!
Five - The Start of Something
Logan sat on the cool kitchen counter and watched the rain pour down the large windowpanes. He was surrounded in darkness, feeling more alone than he ever had. The massive house was empty: his parents were off at some charity function, and the maid had left for the night. Downing more of his soda, Logan reflected back on his first day of this junior year. It had started out bad and had gotten worse. That Mrs. Woodman had had him pegged from the first class, and now she knew about Max. She wanted him to write about Max, but he couldn't. He already had boxes upon boxes full of his sufferings and rantings about her, his regrets, her face- Logan couldn't get her out of his mind even if he was dead.
Sighing, he slid off the counter and padded back upstairs to his room, the only place he called home. After what happened in LA, it was too painful to even consider the palm trees and his beach home anymore. Logan flipped a light on and looked around. It was a mess. Clothes were strewn all around the room, wrappers and soda cans lay dead on the floor, and his journals were scattered across his desk after he nearly blew up when his father had come in to talk to him once he had gotten back from LA. That was over two weeks ago.
The talk had started out with good intentions, like his father always had, but as it went on, the talk had changed into a lecture about not being in the family business. Logan sighed at the memory and bent over to pick up the trash on the floor. Any talk Logan had ever had with his father had always led back to the family business. His father had been a capitalist all of his life; starting with that stereotypical lemonade stand and it just kept going from that. When Logan was growing up, he made money by telling the great adventures of his idol, Superman. He and his father had very little in common.
After throwing away the last of his trash, he plopped into his computer chair and turned on the monitor. "Download complete" windows from #X-Files-Central smiled at him. Closing the windows, he then filed the episodes away according to season. Logan loved the show to death, even though it had ended three or four years ago. He opened an episode, minimized the window, and continued to file the latest downloaded episodes, the extra-terrestrial jargon spouted by Mulder and Scully filling the air.
As the episode ended, he opened another and started on the dull task of homework. The first day of school hadn't changed since the day he was a shy young freshman anxious about starting school far away from those slow, pre-puberty middle schoolers. Teachers yapped on about the same policies, had the same expectations that would never be met, and practically gave the same syllabuses. The faces and the classroom walls were the only things that changed from year to year. The rain and X-Files comforting him, he and his pen started to pour the same boring statistics onto the crisp, white papers one by one. Later in the night as his hand moved across notebook paper, forming words and equations, his mind wandered to Max and Los Angeles. Did she live in California? Did she try to contact him? Where was she? Questions consumed his mind as his pencil continued to move on the paper. Where was she right now? Was she okay? Did she miss him as much as he missed her? He could see her with her sister now, talking and laughing... she probably wasn't going to miss him that much or go through as much pain as he was going through right now.
Bennett always told Logan that he grieved too much and for too long, and right now his words seemed to ring true. But it wasn't everyday he met someone that amazing and beautiful and smart...
His eyes moved to the next calculus problem, but he realized that he had finished with his calculus homework. Pushing his books off of his lap, he opened Internet Explorer and stared at the blank screen thoughtfully. Where should I go? Logan mused. He thought of Max at that moment: her curly hair, her pouty smile. The thunder suddenly crashed behind him, making him jump a little. Damn thunder.
Logan hated thunderstorms; they were always so loud and menacing. When he was younger, he would run into his parents' room and stay with them until the thunder had passed. Now that he was older, he still hated thunder, but he drowned it out with music instead. He reached for his remote in its usual place in his top desk drawer, but he found the spot to be empty. Rummaging through some piles on his desk, he came across his return plane ticket from Los Angeles. Logan looked at it for a moment, then picked it up, feeling some kind of power drawing him to it.
"Plane tickets...plane tickets!" he muttered to himself, a light bulb turning on in his head. He sat back down and typed in the address for American Airlines.
"Alright, let's see if they have a database of all the flights in the past month."
Logan clicked the search box and typed in "past flights" and clicked "Go." After waiting for the site to load, he read the results of the search. Nothing.
"Damnit!" he cursed, slamming his fist on the desk, causing little odds and ends to jump. "There has to be a way to find the list!"
He started to search the site manually, leaving no link unchecked, but he found nothing. Sighing, he highlighted the URL and changed it to another airline web address.
"This is gonna take a while."
Hours later Logan was still sitting at his desk searching every airline that ever existed to find a list of past flights. He had failed miserably. The only databases that anyone might have had were only a couple weeks old, and that didn't help at all. He had tried calling those "24/7" phone numbers to find out what flight she took, but, according to the drones of operators who answered, Logan "did not have access to that information."
"Damn them," he grumbled, downing another cup of strong, black coffee. "There's gotta be a way to get into those databases!"
Logan put the now empty mug next to a large collection of unwashed mugs and started looking through the sites again, hoping to find something that he may have missed. As he typed in the address for American Airlines again, the moon slowly retreated to the other end of the sky, fading into the early morning light.
"Logan? Logan!"
A voice and a shove forced Logan to sit up and slowly open his eyes. The blurs that surrounded him gradually came back in focus. He was in the cafeteria before school, what most kids did when they wanted to catch up with old friends. In his case, he just wanted to catch up on sleep. The biggest blur in front of him turned out to be Bling, his good friend whom he had met when he was a terrified freshman at Seattle High. Bling was giving Logan a concerned look, but sat down anyway and gave Logan a fresh cup of coffee.
"Oh, hey, Bling." Logan muttered sleepily. "How are you?"
"I'm fine, but what about you? Are you all right?" Bling looked at his friend curiously. Logan's hair was more disheveled than usual, the bags under his eyes were getting heavier... Logan just looked bad. "You look like crap scraped off the back of Billy Winters' monster SUV."
Logan grumbled a laugh and took his glasses off to rub the sleep out of his eyes. "I was up til about five this morning looking for Max," he sighed. After putting his glasses back on, Logan took a long sip of his coffee, hoping it would wake him up.
Bling shook his head. "Logan, my man, give it up! You've been looking for her since the moment you stepped off that plane! And what have you found so far?" Logan glared at the laminate table, jaw clenched, unable to say anything. "Logan, you're running yourself into the ground! You look like hell-"
"Thanks," Logan finally remarked, his voice tainted in sarcasm.
Bling ignored the comment and went on. "You look like hell every time I see you! That was okay over the summer when you had time to kill, but school's started! No more time!"
Logan cocked his head and look at Bling in mock confusion. "Really? School's started? No way!"
"All I'm saying is," Bling sighed, "you need to get some sleep, maybe eat a little. You don't wanna die of malnutrition and sleep deprivation, do ya?"
Logan slid his glasses back on and took another sip of coffee. His best friend's words had run pretty deep, but Logan would most likely forget it in a couple days. Bling finished his coffee and dunked the paper cup into a trashcan.
"So..." Bling drawled, trying to think of something to talk about. It had been hard to talk to Logan when the only thing Logan was thinking of was Max. "Have you at least found out if she lives in California?" You're supposed to be helping your friend move on, not make him worse, he chided himself.
"She doesn't. She left on a plane," Logan said somberly.
Bling rolled his eyes and resisted the urge to slap his friend. "She left on a plane?"
"Didn't I just say that?"
"Logan, lots of people leave on planes! Just because she left on a plane doesn't mean she doesn't live in the state!" Bling couldn't believe how stupid Logan was becoming.
"Most of the school districts in California don't have a Max Guevara in their schools," Logan finally said.
"Have you tried to find her flight?"
"I'm not able to access that 'top priority information,' " Logan grumbled bitterly.
"Well, do you know when her flight was?" Bling could see the answer forming in his head, but obviously Logan hadn't seen it yet.
"The week, but not the day." Logan had tried to remember the day, had known it once, but then a realization hit him: Why did Bling care? "Why do you ask?"
Bling groaned and ran a hand over his face. "I can't believe you!"
"What?" Logan shouted, causing some heads to turn. "What the hell did I do?"
Bling rolled his eyes and tapped the side of Logan's head. "Hello? Anybody home?"
Logan was getting irritated with Bling now. "Cut the crap and tell me why you're treating me like I'm an imbecile!"
Bling shook his head and laughed. "Because that's what you are! Don't you see what's right in front of your face?"
Logan groaned and slammed his fist on the table. "No! I don't see it! I musta lost the memo to look around every now and then!"
Other people in the cafeteria were starting to stare at them, wondering how a fight could start so early in the year.
"You can find her, you ass!" Bling finally yelled.
Logan looked at him, dumbfounded at Bling's outburst. "How?"
Bling took a few deep breaths, calming himself down. "Don't you remember that trip we were planning freshman year? When we wanted to see Radiohead in New York?"
Logan vaguely remembered the trip that the two had planned to a tee that year. They had never gotten the permission to go, but they had had fun in the process of planning. "What's your point?"
"Do you remember how we planned for that trip?" Bling leaned in closer as Logan searched his mental database.
Radiohead was blasting over the new speaker system Logan had gotten for his birthday. He and Bling were sitting on his floor in his room, buried in maps and guidebooks about New York. Both were clad in their favorite Radiohead shirts, the boys' latest obsession. Sure, those girls had their pop icons and their overage male artists, but Bling and Logan had Radiohead.
At the moment, the two were planning their big trip to hopefully convince their parents to let them go to New York to see the big Radiohead show at Madison Square Garden. As soon as the set list for the tour had come out, Logan and Bling had been devising a plan. Bling had never been to New York before and wanted to see everything. Logan, on the other hand, had been there a couple of times to visit his mom's sister, a famous Broadway actress and singer extraordinaire.
"All right," Bling said, pushing some of the maps off of his lap. "Your internet working? Maybe we can find a good deal on a flight over there, which is the best way to convince any parent about flying to the other coast."
"Maybe," Logan said, moving to his computer, "Last night's blackout is still kicking my connection in the ass." Logan opened an Internet Explorer window only to be greeted with a "this page cannot be displayed" screen. "Nope. It's still down."
Bling muttered under his breath. He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. "So how are we gonna be able to convince them to let us go if we can't find when we can come in or if we can get a deal?"
Logan just sat there, his pensive look burning an invisible hole into the screen. Suddenly he jumped out of his chair and walked quickly out of his room.
"Logan! Where are you going?" Bling rushed out of the room, following Logan as he headed downstairs into his father's study.
Logan walked into the study closet and flipped on a light.
"Whoa," Bling whispered. The whole closet was stuffed wall-to-wall with little thin booklets. "What are these?"
Logan skimmed his fingertips along the books, looking for the one with the month that matched the month of the concert. Finally, he saw it. "Ah ha! Found it!" He pulled it out and handed it to Bling. "That is how we find a flight to New York without our lovely friend, Mr. Internet."
Bling looked at the cover, his eyes skimming over the bright blue letters. "OAG? What is this?"
"A flight guide. It has-"
"-all of the flights listed of that month!" Logan whispered to himself. "Bling, you're a genius!"
Bling laughed and shook his head. "No, you're just slow, man."
Logan groaned at the clock bolted to the cafeteria wall. He only had about 10 minutes until the bells rang, warning that their free time was nearing an end.
"It won't work, man," Bling said, swinging his backpack over his shoulder. "You don't have enough time to go back to get it."
Logan silently cursed to himself and nodded. "I know," he said under a cool façade. Logan slowly stood up and grabbed his backpack. He started to make his way towards the hall of his first class when he felt a tug on his bag.
Bling was trailing at Logan's heels with a bewildered look on his face. "You know?" Bling said, taken back by his answer. "Why are you so calm about this? I was expecting you to be late so you could go back and get the book from your dad's office!"
"Well, as you said," Logan replied smartly, "I don't have enough time."
"That's never stopped you before!"
Logan smiled and tapped the side of Bling's head. "Did you forget about off-campus lunch, oh smart one?"
Chagrin slid on Bling's face. "Oh yeah," he said sheepishly. "I forgot."
"It's okay," Logan said, patting him on the back. "Now we're even."
As the first dismissal bell chirped loudly through the school, laughter floated down the hall, letting ease pass through Logan, for the moment anyways.
"All right, chickadees." Logan sat in creative writing later that morning, listening to Mrs. Woodman talk about the dreaded ten pages. "I hope you've gotten your first drafts started, done if you intend on turning it in at the end of the week."
The stale air in the classroom was overcome with groans and gasps.
"By the end of the week?" Megan Smith shrieked.
Obviously she took this class as a blow-off... Logan chuckled to himself.
"I can't write ten pages in one week! I'll... I'll ruin my manicure!" She shoved her finely buffed and polished hand out for Mrs. Woodman to see.
Mrs. Woodman walked up to Megan's desk and pushed the manicured hand away.
"I'm sure you can get it redone with daddy's credit card in the other hand," Mrs. Woodman sneered. She turned on her heel and walked back to her stool. Megan gasped in disgust as Mrs. Woodman readjusted her reading glasses still perched on the bridge of her nose. "Anyway, back to the summer paper. Yes, it is due on Friday, but come on! This paper is about you! All of you should have no problem writing about yourselves!"
Logan sat in his chair slowly processing her words and letting them mull over in his. If only she knew how hard it'll be to talk about Her again. His thoughts about Max were abruptly ended by a loud smack on his desk. Mrs. Woodman had slammed a piece of paper in front of him.
"I know you have a lot to write about," she said, cryptically to the onlookers, but quite clear to him. "Tell me about her."
Once the class heard that, they were up in arms.
"Awwww, Logan's finally met his special someone, hasn't he?" Ryan Banks cooed sarcastically.
Logan bristled at Bank's words. He had hated Banks and his cold ways since elementary school. Logan had gotten over the fact that Banks was an inconsiderate ass, but this just hit too close to home.
"Shove it, Banks," Logan muttered.
"Oh, I guess he did! Did she leave you for somebody better?"
Logan clenched his teeth and turned around to face Banks. "I said shove it. Did those nice people at Hooked on Phonics tell you what it means?"
Ryan's face turned red in anger. "That's it!" He lunged out of his chair and at Logan, tackling him to the floor.
The boys were rolling on the floor, wrestling and throwing punches. One saw it as defending his honor. The other saw it as an opportunity to get his anger out about what had happened a couple of months ago that had led to the living ninth circle of hell.
It all seemed like one big blur to Logan. The only thing that was clear to him was Banks's face. He could hear people yelling, mostly Mrs. Woodman, but none of it made sense to him. He could feel his body moving and slamming against the carpeted concrete floors. His glasses had flown off, maybe they had gotten crushed; it didn't really matter at that moment. Hands were pulling at his body, trying to separate him from the other angry body. Logan struggled out of their grasps and landed a solid punch into Banks's jaw. As Logan's knuckles pulled away from Banks's jaw, he gave in and let the hands pull him back.
"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Mr. Brookson scolded, pacing behind his desk. "You boys could've severely hurt each other or the other students in the classroom!"
Logan and Banks were sitting in two hard, wooden chairs in the principal's office. Bruises were starting to mar both of their faces, and Banks had an icepack on his jaw.
"Oh, really?" Banks mumbled through his pain.
"I don't need any of your mouth, young man," Mr. Brookson snapped. "You both should be old enough to realize that there are other alternatives to settling an argument than by fighting!" "Yes, sir," they both muttered, their eyes to the floor.
Mr. Brookson sighed and plopped down in his executive office chair. He opened Ryan's files. "Well, Mr. Banks, it seems that you don't get into fights everyday, but quite often in the past two years at Seattle High School. Why is that?"
"Because people piss me off, sir," Banks spouted mockingly.
The principal grunted to himself, unsatisfied with the answer, but knowing he wouldn't get anything out of Ryan Banks. He never had. Mr. Brookson opened Logan's file. After skimming over what just seemed to be a transcript and academic achievements, Mr. Brookson looked up at Logan, who was pensively staring at the floor.
"Now, Mr. Cale," Mr. Brookson said, making Logan looked back up. "You have nothing on your record. No detentions, no records of fighting or causing a disruption... So why start now?"
Logan shifted in his seat a little. He knew his principal wouldn't give a damn about Max; it seemed that nobody did except for him.
"Banks just pissed me off, sir. That's all."
Mr. Brookson found this hard to believe. "He just pissed you off?"
"Yes, sir," Logan said slowly. "Just pissed me off."
Logan hastily unlocked the door to his house. He had served a lunch detention, forcing him to wait all day before he could find Max's flight. He was kicking himself mentally for getting on Bank's KO list, but there was nothing he could do about it now. Moving quickly through his house and brushing past the maid, he ran into his father's closet. He flipped the switch and slowly began to look through his father's archive.
"Monsieur Cale? Where are you?" the maid's voice called, getting softer and softer as she went the wrong direction.
"June 03, July 04, December 04..." Logan's eyes scanned the spine of everyone, looking for the one book that held the answer. "Yes! August 05!" he yelled.
Logan sat down and flipped through the book. He was amazed that they could fit both arrivals and departures in such a small book. As he got to closer to the end of the arrivals, he realized that arrivals were the only thing in the book. They didn't have departures. He needed to know where she went, not where she came from.
"Damnit!" He threw the little booklet against the wall, causing a loud smack. I'm never gonna find her... never...
"Monsieur Cale! What are you doing in the closet?" the maid asked, cautiously entering the closet.
"Nothing, Sandrine, nothing," he lied. He took off his glasses and slowly rubbed his eyes.
"Monsieur," Sandrine said, sitting down next to him on the floor, "I have known you since before you could walk. I was there when you took your first everything. Don't think I don't know when there's something wrong."
Logan sighed in defeat. "Well, over the summer...." He began telling the long story about him and Max, how they met and how they were torn apart. "And I need to find her. I need her."
Sandrine blew her nose into her handkerchief. "C'est si triste, mon cher," she said through her sniffles.
Logan handed her a tissue box, making Sandrine laugh. "Such a sweet boy," she said, taking the box. "Oh! My friend has a garçon you could talk to about finding ton amour. He's about your age. Poor boy's in a wheelchair. She tells me that he has a horrible disease that slowly cripples his body. The doctors say that when he's thirty he'll be quardi...quadri-"
"Quadriplegic?" Logan offered.
"Yes." She pointed in his direction as if the word was floating in the air. "That. Would mon cher like to talk to him?"
"Yea, I think I'd like that." Logan didn't need to think twice about it; he would do anything to find her. "Thanks, Sandrine," Logan said, giving her a sideways hug.
"Mon plaisir. Now, what do you say we get out of your father's closet and eat some dinner that I made, oui?" Sandrine got up and extended her hand for him.
"That'd be great." He took her hand and stood up. "I don't know what I'd do without you," Logan said sincerely, wrapping his arm around her shoulder as they walked to the kitchen.
As the sun slowly said its goodbyes to the day, Logan sat at his desk, staring pensively at the slip of paper Sandrine had given him. It read: "Sebastian - 564-2982." After taking a deep breath, he hooked his headset onto his ear and dialed the number. Anything for Max, he thought to himself. Butterflies were riding monstrous roller coasters in his stomach as the phone rang. Finally, someone picked up.
"Hello?"
Logan froze.