Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel and any other brand names/pop culture icons mentioned in this fic. I do own everyone else.
Author's Note: I'm soooooooo sorry this has taken so long! School and all of the other crap I'm doing outside of school has taken over my life, again! I hope these nine pages make up for it! R&R and enjoy!
Thanks for the reviews!: opalglacier, Jayme (I thought you were gonna be the 1st to review? ;) ), dleep, phoenix spirit, Mitika, natters, sandy, Cuthien (the html is purdy, isn't it?), Firmament, mackenzie karls, lil-DA, beth (glad you're so forgiving :D ), Gozer, me, Discordia the Goddess of Irony, MRW, Lee Belle, Jenica1, Fudge (You rock! Your review made my day!!) and my girl, RubyStar (BS-ers forever!)! You guys are so awesome!
Seven - Let's Kick It Up a Notch, Shall We?
"Hello?"
Logan froze. How could he go through this? What was he thinking? Asking a complete stranger for help on a totally personal matter? Coming up with no answers to his questions, he pulled the headset away from his ear and pushed the "off" button on the phone's cradle. Tossing the headset in a heap on his desk, he sighed and rubbed his forehead.
He might have killed the last possible opportunity to have someone help him find Max, but his pride reared its ugly head. He didn't want to pour out his heart and soul to some random person; he didn't want to seem weak and... well, emotional. He'd handle this on his own. Suddenly the phone sprang to life and rang, startling Logan.
"Hello?"
"Is this Logan Cale?" a male voice asked.
"Yes...who's this?"
"Sebastian Ruter."
Logan scrambled on his desk to find the slip of paper he had crumbled up. Smoothing the paper out on his desk, he found the name "Sebastian Ruter" in Sandrine's handwriting. "How did you get this number?" Logan asked, somewhat shocked that Sebastian called him back.
"Caller ID."
"Oh." Logan felt embarrassment slap him across the face.
"Why did you call?"
Logan shifted in his seat, mentally debating on whether or not to tell Sebastian his troubles. After thinking it over for a few seconds, he sighed resignedly. He would tell him. "I'm looking for someone. I thought you could help me."
"And what makes you think I can help you?" Sebastian asked, his voice bristling.
"My friend, Sandrine, told me you could help."
"Sandrine? Do you mean Sandrine Moreau?"
A smile spread on Logan's face. "That's the one."
"Well, then... who are you looking for?"
Logan sighed to himself. How was he going to sum two months up into two minutes? "Well..." he said, hoping that words would come. They didn't. "I...um, well..."
Sebastian cut him off before Logan could ramble any longer. "How about we just meet somewhere and discuss it there?"
Relief flooded Logan's body. "That would be great," he said gratefully.
"Rabb's Coffee House okay? At four?"
Images of Rabb's and their colorful décor popped into Logan's brain. "The one on University?"
"Yeah. That okay?"
"Perfect. Thanks, man."
"Thank me after I find this mystery person," Sebastian laughed.
The summer of my seventeenth year was rather uneventful. I was shipped off to the familiar destination of Los Angeles to stay with my stuffy relatives while my parents jetted to the South Pacific. They always claim that they're "vacationing," but my father will usually get called off on business to Asia halfway into their vacation, causing my mother to spend two to three weeks alone. So there I resided in sunny Los Angeles with everything I could want at my fingertips. A surge of power flooded my lungs as I drove down the city streets where I had spent more time on a sidewalk then in the driver's seat. Even with all the life pulsing in the city, the beach and the boardwalks are what have always allured me more. So much mystery lingers on the salty air and in those beachside cafés. I would spend my days wandering the boardwalk for little bits of life and surrounding myself in sand, writing the vibrancy of the beach on paper. It's been a tradition of mine to document what I see there. So whenever the rain flows down in buckets with the dreary, bleak sky as its dance partner, I just pull out my old journals and soak up the life and memories of a brighter place and time.
"Pass it up!" Mrs. Woodman shouted, her voice shattering the silence that had hugged the room.
What? Pass it up? I have nothing to pass up! Logan panicked. He didn't have much, only about two pages or so, and he had to crank out eight more before Friday that unfortunately arrived in two days. He had no idea how he pull it off, let alone make it to the minimum... and now she was asking them to hand it up?
Mrs. Woodman walked up and down the aisles collecting disgruntled students' papers. As she put the papers in a large stack, she looked over them, muttering to herself and marking some things that she saw with her deadly unsheathed pen. Logan felt his body freeze in fear as she slowly moved her away around to his desk.
"Mr. Cale," she greeted as she took his paper from him, stopping to skim over his pen scratchings, making the students behind him even more impatient.
Logan could feel his heart beating faster and faster. He could see her eyes flying over his paper, taking in his words at a lightning fast pace, but it felt painstakingly long to him. Flipping the page, her eyes skimmed over the remaining paragraphs, a calm demeanor on her face, telling him nothing about how bad it really was. Upon finishing the paper, she slammed it onto his desk, her eyes blazing and the demeanor gone.
"I told you to write about her," she said through gritted teeth. "This," she shook his paper in front of his face, "is not about her. This is about another boring boy named Logan in another dimension. If you do not choose to write about her, you choose to fail. Understood?"
Feeling his stomach drop, he slowly nodded. Resuming her walk, Mrs. Woodman left Logan at his desk in shock of his new assignment: Max or fail.
"Which one is more important, Mr. Cale?" Mrs. Woodman asked, moving back up the aisle to her desk, her arms full of papers. "Saving your reputation or saving your grade?"
Physics moved along slowly, his teacher blabbering on about the properties of matter while cracking stupid tongue-in-cheek jokes for ten year olds. Why hadn't Logan switched out when he'd had the chance?
Sighing to himself, he shoved his books into his locker and grabbed his running shoes; Phys Ed was next. Logan was never a big fan of Phys Ed- he found it to be a poor excuse to force people to work together while overweight "coaches" sat around reading sports magazines and stuffing Krispy Kremes into their disgusting mouths. What was the point of being a coach and preaching about fitness if you were fat?
Each year the class seemed the mimic the year before: they stretched, they ran, they played a "team sport," they sat. He usually despised the monotony of it all, but now he found it strangely comforting. It was the only thing he had that seemed the least bit stable. He knew that he wasn't going to become clinically depressed or have his life drained down the tubes if he lost a game or failed to run enough laps for a quiz grade. The latter would never happen though.
Running seemed to be his new escape. As soon as the overweight coaches bellowed "RUN!", he would fly on the rubber track, off in his own world. When he ran, everything around him just kind of vanished: Mrs. Woodman's ultimatum, finding Max, Bling constantly on his back, his father wanting him to be the "Next Big Capitalist"... all those shitty feelings were gone. The emptiness gnawing at the bottom of this stomach stopped, leaving him be for twenty minutes. Even the other people panting and running on the tracks disappeared, as did the sight of his school a couple of meters away. The only thing that mattered was that he kept running. Running to her.
He would see her as he ran, standing right in front of him or at the opposite end of the track, that adorable scowl bewitching her features and her arms crossed angrily over her chest like when they had first met. He would never really catch up to her; every time he got closer, she seemed to get farther and farther down the track, making him run faster and faster. When the twenty minutes was up and everyone was writhing in pain and agony against the chain fence surrounding the track, Logan was always forced off the track. He never wanted to stop running-as soon as he stopped everything came rushing back to him, slamming into him as if he'd just been hit by a monster truck. It seemed that he always went from Mercury, fast and free, to Atlas in four seconds flat.
Walking into the locker room, he was immediately assaulted by body odors and the faint smell of weed, both making his eyes water. Tobey Stevens had been busted last week for lighting one too many joints in school. Sitting on an empty bench, he slipped off his shoes and changed into his Phys Ed uniform. After tying the last lace of his shoes, he hopped off the bench, feeling a little lighter. The sooner the class stretched, the sooner he would be free to run, wild and oblivious to the world. With that thought in mind, a rare smile crossed his face, and he walked out of the locker room.
As soon as Logan left, Ray Joiner walked to his friend Joe.
"Did you see that guy?" he said, pointing to the empty doorframe.
Joe looked up at him in confusion. "What guy?"
"The guy with the spiky hair and the glasses that just left."
"No..." Joe scratched his head. "He sell X or something?
Ray backhanded his friend's arm. "No, fool! He's the runner guy!"
Joe thought this over for a second. The runner guy... "Oh! You mean the guy that runs so freakin fast?"
"Yeah, you fool!" Ray groaned. "Why else would I call him 'the runner guy'?"
"I dunno..." Joe muttered, feeling stupid for not catching on. "Why the hell does he run so much, anyway?"
"Beats me, man, but whateva the reason, it betta be good."
Joe nodded. "Totally."
In the heat of the afternnon sun, Logan coule feel tiny beads of sweat starting to form on the back of his neck as he stood at the starting line. His peers, clad in oversized and grubby uniforms, stood around him in clumps, leaving him separated from the rest or the students.
"All right," the heaviest coach, Coach Butts, drawled, doing a strange waddle-pace in front of them. "I'm only gunna say this once- you need a mile and a half to pass. Next week, the stakes get higher." He gave them an evil smile. He raised his flabby arm above his head, a stopwatch in hand. "GO!"
Logan sprang into action and launched down the track, leaving the slugs behind to trod along. The wind ran its fingers though his short hair and brushed his face, caressing him as he got into his zone. Halfway down his first straightaway he saw her. She looked the same as she always did: the pouty look, the scowl and the crossed arms. The grim surroundings of a track and a football field faded, replaced by the boardwalk they had walked on after they had went out to dinner one night. He could hear the waves crashing against the shore, and the poignant smells of sea salt filled his senses. He felt a small smile growing on his face as he rounded the first corner.
Welcome back, Logan, they all seemed to say. Welcome home.
Farther back on the track, already panting and sweating buckets, Ray and Joe were struggling to keep up with the rest. Pulling up his oversized shorts, Ray looked ahead and stared at the runner guy. He was already half done with his first lap. Ray elbowed his wheezing friend and pointed.
"Look, man! He's gonna lap us soon!" Ray whined.
Joe squinted his eyes and saw the tall blur getting closer and closer to where the coaches recording laps stood. "Damn! He's gonna make us look bad!"
Ray nodded. "No shit!" Ray turned his head and watched two kids racing after each other. "Hey!" he exclaimed, the light bulb going on in this head. "We should race him, man!"
His friend, still wheezing, shot him an incredulous look. "What are you on? We can't race him!"
Ray rolled his eyes. "No, fool! We act like we're racing him!"
"Then people will think we're winnin'!" Joe realized, the "brilliance" of Ray's plan slowly dawning on him.
"I know," Ray said, his chest puffing up. "I'm just that good."
"Hey!" Joe said, pointing over his shoulder. "Here he comes!"
Logan breezed through another straightaway, feeling himself run farther down the boardwalk. As he reached another curve, he could see Max farther down the boardwalk, leaning against the railing, her gaze softer as she looked out at the ocean. Running faster down the empty boardwalk to her, he could hear some talk from the real world filter in.
"Ray! He's... going... too... fast!" a voice panted.
"Aw, shut up and keep running!" another voice answered.
Smiling to himself, he surged forward towards Max, leaving the pesky whining in the dust.
"CALE! Get your scrawny ass over here and stop running!" Coach Butts yelled amidst the mass of kids writhing in the agony of running for twenty minutes.
Logan was on the last straightaway of his eighth lap, feeling the zone around him slowly crumble as he neared the coach. The sounds of the ocean and the smells of the sea were starting to disappear, replaced by the distinct odor of sweat and the rumble of cars speeding down the road adjacent to the track. Logan looked down to see the sight of the sandy boardwalk dissipate under him, leaving him once again with the black rubber of the track. She was gone too as the final strand of his old world broke away from him.
As he walked up to the starting line, the other students got up for a "cool down" lap and the coach approached him.
"Son, I've noticed you've been runnin' a lot more than you have in your past PE years, and I'm proud of ya." Logan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "What I'm tryin' to say is, I think you'd do real fine on the track team. So, whaddya say?"
His abruptness startled Logan. His man had hated him for three years, and now that the world had gutted him, someone else wanted a piece of him?
Squelching his frustration, he shook his head. "No, thanks," he muttered, walking down the track, trailing behind the crowd.
As he walked away, Coach Butts scratched his head in confusion. What just happened? He'd offered this kid a prime spot on one of the most well-known track teams in Seattle and he said no? That's some weird kid.
Logan pulled into the last space near Rabb's Coffee House and turned off his car. His mind raced as he sat there, unable to force himself to move. What if Sebastian couldn't help him? What if he could? Would Max still want to be with him? What if she had moved on? What if he never found her?
Finally he forced himself to open the door, absentmindedly getting out and locking it, and started walking toward Rabb's. Pushing the door open, he was immediately hit with the strong, comforting smell of coffee, but it little to suppress all of the questions he had flying inside of his head. Surveying the activity inside, he felt the time flying outside slow down to a more relaxed pace. A few people were populating the tables strewn about the coffee house, most of them nurturing their coffee as if it was the last thing keeping them sane. Moving deeper into Rabb's towards the back wall, he saw a teenage boy about his age in a wheelchair sitting at a small table, typing away on a laptop. The teen had somewhat shaggy reddish-brown hair that seemed to cover his eyes as he worked, forcing him to brush it out of his eyes every so often. His actions fit the person Sandrine had described... but Logan still wasn't sure.
"Sebastian?" he asked tentatively, stepping a little closer to the booth.
The teen looked up at him, searching Logan's face for some kind of recognition. "Logan Cale?"
Logan smiled and extended his hand. "That's me."
Sebastian shook Logan's hand and gestured him to sit down in the seat across him. Logan had obviously interrupted Sebastian's work when he had come; after Sebastian offered him a seat, Sebastian's eye contact went back to his computer screen. Not bothering to tear his eyes away from the screen, Sebastian mechanically reached for his coffee and brought it to his lips, a brown liquid flowing over the brim and down his throat.
He looked up apologetically at Logan and said, "I have something that I need to wrap up really quickly."
Logan nodded in understanding and gestured to the front counter. "I'll just get some coffee."
Standing near of the counter, looking up at the menu, Logan wondered what Sebastian was working on. Whatever it is, it must be important, he thought to himself. Getting fed up with the plethora of Italian names and different blends of coffee and espressos, he stepped closer to the counter, deciding to stick to a classic: black coffee.
The girl behind the counter turned around and greeted him with a peppy smile. "Hi, I'm Courtney," she chirped. "What can I get you today?"
"Hi, my name is Courtney, what can I get you two today?" she had sprouted happily for someone who had just interrupted one of the best acting moments of his life.
"Uh, a black coffee," he ordered quietly, his mind reeling back down Memory Lane to that café in Los Angeles.
"How bout some privacy?" Logan muttered, causing laughter to bubble out of Max's throat.
"Sir?" Courtney said tentatively to a spacey Logan. "Sir?"
Logan's mind snapped back to reality. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"Your coffee'll be $3.25," she said, a worried look on her face. "Are you okay?"
"Are you two okay?" Courtney asked, holding Max and Logan's coffee with a worried look on her face.
He flashed her a quick smile and handed her a five he had pulled out of his wallet. "I'm fine."
Another girl behind the counter handed him his coffee in a bright blue mug. "Thanks."
Logan sipped his coffee as he walked back to the table. Courtney... how odd... When he sat back down, Sebastian had just closed him laptop.
"Sorry," Sebastian apologized. "I just had to wrap something up for a friend's website."
Logan nodded in understanding and took another sip of his coffee.
"So, Sebastian started, tapping his fingers on the lip of his cup. "Who are you looking for?"
Logan put his mug down and cleared his throat nervously.It's now or never. "I'm looking for a friend..." Sebastian arched an eyebrow at him. "... a girlfriend."
Sebastian opened his laptop and pulled up an empty word document. "Name?"
"Max Guevara. G-U-E-V-A-R-A."
"Age?"
Logan counted back his own age to when he was a freshman. "Fifteen."
"Parent's names?"
Logan bit his lip. What were their names? Max hadn't really talked about her parents much. She'd mentioned a couple of times that her mother was paranoid and that her father was a small-business kind of man, but that was all he knew.
"I have no idea," Logan finally answered.
"Are they divorced?"
"I don't think so." They looked pretty together and equally angry when they took Max away...
"Any siblings?"
"Yeah," Logan chuckled, remembering Heather's introduction. "She's got one older sister, Heather."
"Where did you meet Max?"
"Los Angeles."
"How long were you with her?"
"July and August of this year."
Sebastian's typing suddenly stopped and he looked up at Logan with a bewildered look on his face.
"What?" Logan questioned irritably.
Sebastian shook his head. "Nothing," he said quickly, looking back over the information he'd just gathered.
Soon realizing what Sebastian was getting at, Logan's face fell.
"Where we lived never came up, okay? For the longest time I thought she lived in LA!" he said defensively, his voice rising.
"I said it was nothing," Sebastian said lightly, his eyes laughing.
"Sure..." Logan said, still unconvinced. "She left to go back to wherever she lived in August."
Sebastian's fingers resumed clinking the keys. "Any idea where to?"
Logan shook his head. "No clue."
The clicking stopped again. "Is there anything else?"
"Not that I can think of."
Sebastian cracked his knuckles and took another sip of his coffee. He reread the word document once more before he looked back at Logan.
"Here's what I can do. I can probably find her flight, but I'm not sure I can trace it all the way back to her exact street."
Logan nodded, a smile blossoming on his face. "That's great. Thanks, man."
"Anytime. I'll call you when I find her flight, okay?"
"That'll be great," Logan said, running his fingers through his hair.
Sebastian closed his laptop and started to wheel backwards, away from the table. When he was clear of the table, he tucked his laptop in a bag hooked to his chair and extended his hand in Logan's direction.
"Thanks, Sebastian," Logan said again, shaking the other boy's hand. "This means a lot to me."
Sebastian smiled. "I know. I'll give you a call when I find something."
As Sebastian wheeled away, another "what if" popped into Logan's head.
"Sebastian!" Logan shouted as Sebastian was about to push the door open. Sebastian turned. "What if she had a connecting flight?"
"I'll find her, Logan. Don't worry." With that, Sebastian waved and left the coffee house, leaving Logan alone at the table.
Taking a sip of his coffee, he sat all the way back in the booth, still processing what had just happened. Sebastian's last words kept playing over and over in his mind. I'll find her...
With those words hanging in the air, he'd felt something he hadn't felt in a while: comfort.
"Sandrine!" Logan yelled, walking in from the garage. "I'm home!"
He was answered by the sounds of pots clanging and drawers slamming at first, soon followed by a "Bonjour, mon cher!"
Smiling, Logan dropped his backpack on the floor and pushed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. He was greeted by the sight of Sandrine chopping vegetables like a maniac around lots of pots and pans simmering on the stove.
"Are you intending to feed the whole block?" Logan smirked, causing Sandrine to look up at him and laugh.
"No, Logan, just you and your ego," she joked back, making Logan laugh. "So how was your meeting with Sebastian?"
Just as he was about to answer, Logan's mother walked in from the other swinging door, a coffee cup in one hand and a manuscript in the other.
"Sandrine," she said, waving the manuscript in the air.
"Did I ever mention how much I hate consulting for publishing companies?"
Sandrine chuckled to herself and dropped the cut vegetables into a boiling pot. "Oui, Madame, I think you have."
"Ils sont si bête!" Elise muttered to herself. She turned to Logan and smiled at him. "Hey, honey."
Logan walked up to Elise and gave her a quick hug. "Hi, Mom."
"How was your day?" Elise asked, walking towards the coffee press.
He shrugged nonchalantly and replied, "Oh, you know, the same ol', same ol'- school, homework, getting asked to be on the track team..."
He grabbed a stray carrot that had stuck to the cutting board and popped it into his mouth with a Cheshire cat smile on his face.
"Mon cher!" Sandrine gasped angrily, swatting his hand.
As Elise poured her coffee, she noticed something different about Logan. That little spark that was in his eyes before he left for Los Angeles was back. Elise hadn't seen that kind of confidence in him for a while now and she was glad it'd returned, whatever happened before.
"The track team, huh?" Elise finally said, setting the press back on the table. "I thought you said that the coach yelled at you all of the time."
"He did, " Logan confirmed, leaning his back against the counter. "But I guess he's just really desperate to fill his team."
"Aw, Honey, you don't think that, do you? You've probably earned a spot on that team," Elise coaxed, looking to Sandrine for some backup.
"C'est vrai, Mrs. Cale. People just don't get good things handed out to them like bread." She sliced some stands of rosemary and sprinkled it in a pot. "You've earned a good thing."
Logan sighed. "Thanks, ladies, but I already declined."
"Pourqoui?"
"Why?"
Both of the women's faces were scribbled with confusion.
Sighing, Logan ran his fingers though his hair, trying to think of a way to tell them something that they would believe, even if it wasn't the truth. "I just don't want to...ya know?" he said feebly, knowing that they would never buy that.
"Is that the real reason, Logan?" Elise asked softly, her look enquiring into him.
Logan looked at his shoes and said nothing, not wanting to tell his mother that he was just so tired of everything and his struggle to find Max. She would never understand.
"Since when did you lose the ability to speak?" Sandrine asked, still bewildered.
Elise's expression suddenly morphed from one of confusion to a more maternal one, her lips pursing before she said anything.
"Honey," she finally said, "I don't know what happened over the summer, or what really goes on at school anymore, but I do know that something's happened. You never used to just turn things down just because. Never." Logan shifted his weight to the other foot, feeling even more uncomfortable. "I know there's a reason why you said no, and you don't really have to share that with us if you don't want to as long as the reason makes sense to you." She put her hands on his cheeks and tilted his head up so he could look at her. "Does it make sense to you?"
Logan gave her a small nod and immediately looked away. "It does," he said softly.
"Okay," Elise smiled, putting a kiss on his forehead.
"Madame," Sandrine interrupted the mother/son moment and pointed to the oven clock. "You have a meeting tonight, n'est-ce pas?"
Elise's face fell. "Oh no!" she exclaimed, smacking her palm on her forehead. "I do! And it's all the way in Olympia because of those stupid Olympia writers who just have to have their meetings in their own-"
"Mom," Logan smiled, putting his hands on her shoulders. "It's okay. Go get ready for the meeting," he said rationally.
Elise smiled and stopped ranting. "What would I do without you, Logan?"
Logan shrugged. "Dunno."
Grabbing her mug and manuscript off the counter, she blew him a kiss and hurried out of the kitchen, allowing silence to settle over the kitchen. The only thing that filled the void of conversation was the occasional tapping of a wooden spoon against the innards of a pot.
This time it seemed to be Logan's turn to say something profound. "Is my dad coming home tonight?"
Well, it was as profound as it was going to get at the moment.
"Non." Sandrine lifted the lid of another pot and sprinkled parsley inside. "He's in Genève working on a big..." she waved her hand idly, "business deal."
"Sounds like Dad," Logan commented grimly.
"You know your father," she said, turning off the stove. "Work, work, work."
"Yeah, I do."
"So," Sandrine prompted, grabbing Logan's plate and dishing food onto it. "Was the rest of school good?" She handed his plate back to him, then took her plate and began to serve herself.
"It was okay," Logan answered tersely, shoving a forkful of mashed potatoes in his mouth.
"Really?" Sandrine said doubtfully, knowing that Logan was hiding something else. "Nothing interesting besides gym class?" she asked again, leaning in closer.
He stopped mid-chew and looked up at Sandrine innocently. "Uh, no?"
Sandrine arched her eyebrow, giving him a look that she didn't buy it. "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?"
Gulping his mashed potatoes, he met her gaze and decided to drop the façade. "My Creative Writing teacher is having us write about our summer vacations."
"And...?"
"And what?" Logan snapped irritably. "I have to tell people-who I know won't care-about her!" His volume rose with each enunciated word. "And, to make it worse, if it's not about her, I FAIL!" Logan slammed fist angrily against the glass table, making the silverware jump.
Sandrine's face remained neutral during his outburst and when he broke his mother's rule of hitting the glass table. She quietly got out of her chair and headed to the pantry. Logan, who still had a little steam coming out of his ears, stabbed some green beans and shoveled them in his mouth, mashing them under his teeth. When Sandrine emerged from the pantry, her composure still cool, Logan could see two Hershey's bars in her hand. Placing them next to a serving dish, she calmly sat down as if nothing had happened.
"We'll eat those after we finish our dinner. Then we'll talk, okay?" she finally said.
"Okay."
Once the table had been cleared and the Tupperware full of leftovers had been tucked away in the stainless steel fridge, Logan and Sandrine sat back down at the table. She opened her Hershey's bar,broke off one chocolate rectangle, and popped it in her mouth. Logan slowly followed suit, putting some chocolate in his mouth as well.
"Mon cher, have you tried to talk to ton prof about your paper?"
He shook his head shamefully, his eyes memorizing the small bubbles in the glass table.
"Well, mon cher, how do you plan to write this paper?"
"I don't have a plan; not anymore," Logan finally spoke, fiddling with his chocolate bar wrapper.
"So you're just going to give up and fail?"
Logan toyed with the edge of the colored plastic and the foil that was starting to separate.
"Logan!" Sandrine said, starting to get fed up with his silence. "You can't just give up!"
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Logan yelled. "Lie?"
Sandrine's eyes lit up. "Bien sûr! That's it, mon cher!"
Logan rolled the idea around in his head slowly, unsure how it would work. Mrs. Woodman seemed to be pretty all-knowing, but would she be able to pick up on the fact that he was lying?
"I'll give it a try," he said firmly, prompting a smile and a hug from Sandrine.
The moon had been up for two or three hours when he started writing about Julia, his "summer girlfriend." He had decided to give this girl a different name because it would hit to close to home if he named her Max...and would be a little too strange.
Julia was totally different from Max. Julia was from high society, and her father was one of Jonas's best clients. She'd been fed with a silver spoon since day one. He had met her at one of his uncle's infamous business parties when she had randomly asked him about a painting on the wall of Jonas's sitting room. It was a classic Americana Norman Rockwell, a style and painter in which that Max had never been interested in. They had run into each other again when Logan pulled over to help someone change a tire on a sparkling white Jaguar convertible, a convertible that belonged to her. As he was changing her tire, he asked her to dinner at Chez Mignonne and the rest, as they say, was history. Yep, Julia was nothing like Max.
A sense of control and order came back to him, something he hadn't had in his grasp in a while. It felt invigorating. Sighing happily to himself, he saved the pages he had written so far and sat back in his chair. This was gonna work.
In the midst of his contentment, the phone rang. Logan leaned forward and picked up the cordless phone.
"Hello?" he said happily.
"Logan?" a male voice asked.
"This is he," Logan replied, trying to recognize the voice on the other line.
"It's Sebastian."
"Oh, hey. What's up?" Logan said casually, picking up his empty mug and heading towards the stairs and the kitchen.
"Well, I poked around a bit with some airplane manifestos in some airports in LA and the surrounding area."
Logan walked down stairs and waved to Sandrine as she left. "Yeah," he said distractedly "What'd ya find?"
"I found a flight departing from LAX on August the twelfth with four Guevaras seated in rows thirteen and fourteen."
Logan pushed though the kitchen door and reached the counter, grabbing the coffee press and another chocolate bar. "Well that's great!" He poured himself a full mug. "Where were they going?"
"Seattle."
Logan's mug fell out of his hand and smashed against the pristine kitchen tiles.
"Seattle?"
Author's Note: I'm soooooooo sorry this has taken so long! School and all of the other crap I'm doing outside of school has taken over my life, again! I hope these nine pages make up for it! R&R and enjoy!
Thanks for the reviews!: opalglacier, Jayme (I thought you were gonna be the 1st to review? ;) ), dleep, phoenix spirit, Mitika, natters, sandy, Cuthien (the html is purdy, isn't it?), Firmament, mackenzie karls, lil-DA, beth (glad you're so forgiving :D ), Gozer, me, Discordia the Goddess of Irony, MRW, Lee Belle, Jenica1, Fudge (You rock! Your review made my day!!) and my girl, RubyStar (BS-ers forever!)! You guys are so awesome!
Seven - Let's Kick It Up a Notch, Shall We?
"Hello?"
Logan froze. How could he go through this? What was he thinking? Asking a complete stranger for help on a totally personal matter? Coming up with no answers to his questions, he pulled the headset away from his ear and pushed the "off" button on the phone's cradle. Tossing the headset in a heap on his desk, he sighed and rubbed his forehead.
He might have killed the last possible opportunity to have someone help him find Max, but his pride reared its ugly head. He didn't want to pour out his heart and soul to some random person; he didn't want to seem weak and... well, emotional. He'd handle this on his own. Suddenly the phone sprang to life and rang, startling Logan.
"Hello?"
"Is this Logan Cale?" a male voice asked.
"Yes...who's this?"
"Sebastian Ruter."
Logan scrambled on his desk to find the slip of paper he had crumbled up. Smoothing the paper out on his desk, he found the name "Sebastian Ruter" in Sandrine's handwriting. "How did you get this number?" Logan asked, somewhat shocked that Sebastian called him back.
"Caller ID."
"Oh." Logan felt embarrassment slap him across the face.
"Why did you call?"
Logan shifted in his seat, mentally debating on whether or not to tell Sebastian his troubles. After thinking it over for a few seconds, he sighed resignedly. He would tell him. "I'm looking for someone. I thought you could help me."
"And what makes you think I can help you?" Sebastian asked, his voice bristling.
"My friend, Sandrine, told me you could help."
"Sandrine? Do you mean Sandrine Moreau?"
A smile spread on Logan's face. "That's the one."
"Well, then... who are you looking for?"
Logan sighed to himself. How was he going to sum two months up into two minutes? "Well..." he said, hoping that words would come. They didn't. "I...um, well..."
Sebastian cut him off before Logan could ramble any longer. "How about we just meet somewhere and discuss it there?"
Relief flooded Logan's body. "That would be great," he said gratefully.
"Rabb's Coffee House okay? At four?"
Images of Rabb's and their colorful décor popped into Logan's brain. "The one on University?"
"Yeah. That okay?"
"Perfect. Thanks, man."
"Thank me after I find this mystery person," Sebastian laughed.
The summer of my seventeenth year was rather uneventful. I was shipped off to the familiar destination of Los Angeles to stay with my stuffy relatives while my parents jetted to the South Pacific. They always claim that they're "vacationing," but my father will usually get called off on business to Asia halfway into their vacation, causing my mother to spend two to three weeks alone. So there I resided in sunny Los Angeles with everything I could want at my fingertips. A surge of power flooded my lungs as I drove down the city streets where I had spent more time on a sidewalk then in the driver's seat. Even with all the life pulsing in the city, the beach and the boardwalks are what have always allured me more. So much mystery lingers on the salty air and in those beachside cafés. I would spend my days wandering the boardwalk for little bits of life and surrounding myself in sand, writing the vibrancy of the beach on paper. It's been a tradition of mine to document what I see there. So whenever the rain flows down in buckets with the dreary, bleak sky as its dance partner, I just pull out my old journals and soak up the life and memories of a brighter place and time.
"Pass it up!" Mrs. Woodman shouted, her voice shattering the silence that had hugged the room.
What? Pass it up? I have nothing to pass up! Logan panicked. He didn't have much, only about two pages or so, and he had to crank out eight more before Friday that unfortunately arrived in two days. He had no idea how he pull it off, let alone make it to the minimum... and now she was asking them to hand it up?
Mrs. Woodman walked up and down the aisles collecting disgruntled students' papers. As she put the papers in a large stack, she looked over them, muttering to herself and marking some things that she saw with her deadly unsheathed pen. Logan felt his body freeze in fear as she slowly moved her away around to his desk.
"Mr. Cale," she greeted as she took his paper from him, stopping to skim over his pen scratchings, making the students behind him even more impatient.
Logan could feel his heart beating faster and faster. He could see her eyes flying over his paper, taking in his words at a lightning fast pace, but it felt painstakingly long to him. Flipping the page, her eyes skimmed over the remaining paragraphs, a calm demeanor on her face, telling him nothing about how bad it really was. Upon finishing the paper, she slammed it onto his desk, her eyes blazing and the demeanor gone.
"I told you to write about her," she said through gritted teeth. "This," she shook his paper in front of his face, "is not about her. This is about another boring boy named Logan in another dimension. If you do not choose to write about her, you choose to fail. Understood?"
Feeling his stomach drop, he slowly nodded. Resuming her walk, Mrs. Woodman left Logan at his desk in shock of his new assignment: Max or fail.
"Which one is more important, Mr. Cale?" Mrs. Woodman asked, moving back up the aisle to her desk, her arms full of papers. "Saving your reputation or saving your grade?"
Physics moved along slowly, his teacher blabbering on about the properties of matter while cracking stupid tongue-in-cheek jokes for ten year olds. Why hadn't Logan switched out when he'd had the chance?
Sighing to himself, he shoved his books into his locker and grabbed his running shoes; Phys Ed was next. Logan was never a big fan of Phys Ed- he found it to be a poor excuse to force people to work together while overweight "coaches" sat around reading sports magazines and stuffing Krispy Kremes into their disgusting mouths. What was the point of being a coach and preaching about fitness if you were fat?
Each year the class seemed the mimic the year before: they stretched, they ran, they played a "team sport," they sat. He usually despised the monotony of it all, but now he found it strangely comforting. It was the only thing he had that seemed the least bit stable. He knew that he wasn't going to become clinically depressed or have his life drained down the tubes if he lost a game or failed to run enough laps for a quiz grade. The latter would never happen though.
Running seemed to be his new escape. As soon as the overweight coaches bellowed "RUN!", he would fly on the rubber track, off in his own world. When he ran, everything around him just kind of vanished: Mrs. Woodman's ultimatum, finding Max, Bling constantly on his back, his father wanting him to be the "Next Big Capitalist"... all those shitty feelings were gone. The emptiness gnawing at the bottom of this stomach stopped, leaving him be for twenty minutes. Even the other people panting and running on the tracks disappeared, as did the sight of his school a couple of meters away. The only thing that mattered was that he kept running. Running to her.
He would see her as he ran, standing right in front of him or at the opposite end of the track, that adorable scowl bewitching her features and her arms crossed angrily over her chest like when they had first met. He would never really catch up to her; every time he got closer, she seemed to get farther and farther down the track, making him run faster and faster. When the twenty minutes was up and everyone was writhing in pain and agony against the chain fence surrounding the track, Logan was always forced off the track. He never wanted to stop running-as soon as he stopped everything came rushing back to him, slamming into him as if he'd just been hit by a monster truck. It seemed that he always went from Mercury, fast and free, to Atlas in four seconds flat.
Walking into the locker room, he was immediately assaulted by body odors and the faint smell of weed, both making his eyes water. Tobey Stevens had been busted last week for lighting one too many joints in school. Sitting on an empty bench, he slipped off his shoes and changed into his Phys Ed uniform. After tying the last lace of his shoes, he hopped off the bench, feeling a little lighter. The sooner the class stretched, the sooner he would be free to run, wild and oblivious to the world. With that thought in mind, a rare smile crossed his face, and he walked out of the locker room.
As soon as Logan left, Ray Joiner walked to his friend Joe.
"Did you see that guy?" he said, pointing to the empty doorframe.
Joe looked up at him in confusion. "What guy?"
"The guy with the spiky hair and the glasses that just left."
"No..." Joe scratched his head. "He sell X or something?
Ray backhanded his friend's arm. "No, fool! He's the runner guy!"
Joe thought this over for a second. The runner guy... "Oh! You mean the guy that runs so freakin fast?"
"Yeah, you fool!" Ray groaned. "Why else would I call him 'the runner guy'?"
"I dunno..." Joe muttered, feeling stupid for not catching on. "Why the hell does he run so much, anyway?"
"Beats me, man, but whateva the reason, it betta be good."
Joe nodded. "Totally."
In the heat of the afternnon sun, Logan coule feel tiny beads of sweat starting to form on the back of his neck as he stood at the starting line. His peers, clad in oversized and grubby uniforms, stood around him in clumps, leaving him separated from the rest or the students.
"All right," the heaviest coach, Coach Butts, drawled, doing a strange waddle-pace in front of them. "I'm only gunna say this once- you need a mile and a half to pass. Next week, the stakes get higher." He gave them an evil smile. He raised his flabby arm above his head, a stopwatch in hand. "GO!"
Logan sprang into action and launched down the track, leaving the slugs behind to trod along. The wind ran its fingers though his short hair and brushed his face, caressing him as he got into his zone. Halfway down his first straightaway he saw her. She looked the same as she always did: the pouty look, the scowl and the crossed arms. The grim surroundings of a track and a football field faded, replaced by the boardwalk they had walked on after they had went out to dinner one night. He could hear the waves crashing against the shore, and the poignant smells of sea salt filled his senses. He felt a small smile growing on his face as he rounded the first corner.
Welcome back, Logan, they all seemed to say. Welcome home.
Farther back on the track, already panting and sweating buckets, Ray and Joe were struggling to keep up with the rest. Pulling up his oversized shorts, Ray looked ahead and stared at the runner guy. He was already half done with his first lap. Ray elbowed his wheezing friend and pointed.
"Look, man! He's gonna lap us soon!" Ray whined.
Joe squinted his eyes and saw the tall blur getting closer and closer to where the coaches recording laps stood. "Damn! He's gonna make us look bad!"
Ray nodded. "No shit!" Ray turned his head and watched two kids racing after each other. "Hey!" he exclaimed, the light bulb going on in this head. "We should race him, man!"
His friend, still wheezing, shot him an incredulous look. "What are you on? We can't race him!"
Ray rolled his eyes. "No, fool! We act like we're racing him!"
"Then people will think we're winnin'!" Joe realized, the "brilliance" of Ray's plan slowly dawning on him.
"I know," Ray said, his chest puffing up. "I'm just that good."
"Hey!" Joe said, pointing over his shoulder. "Here he comes!"
Logan breezed through another straightaway, feeling himself run farther down the boardwalk. As he reached another curve, he could see Max farther down the boardwalk, leaning against the railing, her gaze softer as she looked out at the ocean. Running faster down the empty boardwalk to her, he could hear some talk from the real world filter in.
"Ray! He's... going... too... fast!" a voice panted.
"Aw, shut up and keep running!" another voice answered.
Smiling to himself, he surged forward towards Max, leaving the pesky whining in the dust.
"CALE! Get your scrawny ass over here and stop running!" Coach Butts yelled amidst the mass of kids writhing in the agony of running for twenty minutes.
Logan was on the last straightaway of his eighth lap, feeling the zone around him slowly crumble as he neared the coach. The sounds of the ocean and the smells of the sea were starting to disappear, replaced by the distinct odor of sweat and the rumble of cars speeding down the road adjacent to the track. Logan looked down to see the sight of the sandy boardwalk dissipate under him, leaving him once again with the black rubber of the track. She was gone too as the final strand of his old world broke away from him.
As he walked up to the starting line, the other students got up for a "cool down" lap and the coach approached him.
"Son, I've noticed you've been runnin' a lot more than you have in your past PE years, and I'm proud of ya." Logan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "What I'm tryin' to say is, I think you'd do real fine on the track team. So, whaddya say?"
His abruptness startled Logan. His man had hated him for three years, and now that the world had gutted him, someone else wanted a piece of him?
Squelching his frustration, he shook his head. "No, thanks," he muttered, walking down the track, trailing behind the crowd.
As he walked away, Coach Butts scratched his head in confusion. What just happened? He'd offered this kid a prime spot on one of the most well-known track teams in Seattle and he said no? That's some weird kid.
Logan pulled into the last space near Rabb's Coffee House and turned off his car. His mind raced as he sat there, unable to force himself to move. What if Sebastian couldn't help him? What if he could? Would Max still want to be with him? What if she had moved on? What if he never found her?
Finally he forced himself to open the door, absentmindedly getting out and locking it, and started walking toward Rabb's. Pushing the door open, he was immediately hit with the strong, comforting smell of coffee, but it little to suppress all of the questions he had flying inside of his head. Surveying the activity inside, he felt the time flying outside slow down to a more relaxed pace. A few people were populating the tables strewn about the coffee house, most of them nurturing their coffee as if it was the last thing keeping them sane. Moving deeper into Rabb's towards the back wall, he saw a teenage boy about his age in a wheelchair sitting at a small table, typing away on a laptop. The teen had somewhat shaggy reddish-brown hair that seemed to cover his eyes as he worked, forcing him to brush it out of his eyes every so often. His actions fit the person Sandrine had described... but Logan still wasn't sure.
"Sebastian?" he asked tentatively, stepping a little closer to the booth.
The teen looked up at him, searching Logan's face for some kind of recognition. "Logan Cale?"
Logan smiled and extended his hand. "That's me."
Sebastian shook Logan's hand and gestured him to sit down in the seat across him. Logan had obviously interrupted Sebastian's work when he had come; after Sebastian offered him a seat, Sebastian's eye contact went back to his computer screen. Not bothering to tear his eyes away from the screen, Sebastian mechanically reached for his coffee and brought it to his lips, a brown liquid flowing over the brim and down his throat.
He looked up apologetically at Logan and said, "I have something that I need to wrap up really quickly."
Logan nodded in understanding and gestured to the front counter. "I'll just get some coffee."
Standing near of the counter, looking up at the menu, Logan wondered what Sebastian was working on. Whatever it is, it must be important, he thought to himself. Getting fed up with the plethora of Italian names and different blends of coffee and espressos, he stepped closer to the counter, deciding to stick to a classic: black coffee.
The girl behind the counter turned around and greeted him with a peppy smile. "Hi, I'm Courtney," she chirped. "What can I get you today?"
"Hi, my name is Courtney, what can I get you two today?" she had sprouted happily for someone who had just interrupted one of the best acting moments of his life.
"Uh, a black coffee," he ordered quietly, his mind reeling back down Memory Lane to that café in Los Angeles.
"How bout some privacy?" Logan muttered, causing laughter to bubble out of Max's throat.
"Sir?" Courtney said tentatively to a spacey Logan. "Sir?"
Logan's mind snapped back to reality. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"Your coffee'll be $3.25," she said, a worried look on her face. "Are you okay?"
"Are you two okay?" Courtney asked, holding Max and Logan's coffee with a worried look on her face.
He flashed her a quick smile and handed her a five he had pulled out of his wallet. "I'm fine."
Another girl behind the counter handed him his coffee in a bright blue mug. "Thanks."
Logan sipped his coffee as he walked back to the table. Courtney... how odd... When he sat back down, Sebastian had just closed him laptop.
"Sorry," Sebastian apologized. "I just had to wrap something up for a friend's website."
Logan nodded in understanding and took another sip of his coffee.
"So, Sebastian started, tapping his fingers on the lip of his cup. "Who are you looking for?"
Logan put his mug down and cleared his throat nervously.It's now or never. "I'm looking for a friend..." Sebastian arched an eyebrow at him. "... a girlfriend."
Sebastian opened his laptop and pulled up an empty word document. "Name?"
"Max Guevara. G-U-E-V-A-R-A."
"Age?"
Logan counted back his own age to when he was a freshman. "Fifteen."
"Parent's names?"
Logan bit his lip. What were their names? Max hadn't really talked about her parents much. She'd mentioned a couple of times that her mother was paranoid and that her father was a small-business kind of man, but that was all he knew.
"I have no idea," Logan finally answered.
"Are they divorced?"
"I don't think so." They looked pretty together and equally angry when they took Max away...
"Any siblings?"
"Yeah," Logan chuckled, remembering Heather's introduction. "She's got one older sister, Heather."
"Where did you meet Max?"
"Los Angeles."
"How long were you with her?"
"July and August of this year."
Sebastian's typing suddenly stopped and he looked up at Logan with a bewildered look on his face.
"What?" Logan questioned irritably.
Sebastian shook his head. "Nothing," he said quickly, looking back over the information he'd just gathered.
Soon realizing what Sebastian was getting at, Logan's face fell.
"Where we lived never came up, okay? For the longest time I thought she lived in LA!" he said defensively, his voice rising.
"I said it was nothing," Sebastian said lightly, his eyes laughing.
"Sure..." Logan said, still unconvinced. "She left to go back to wherever she lived in August."
Sebastian's fingers resumed clinking the keys. "Any idea where to?"
Logan shook his head. "No clue."
The clicking stopped again. "Is there anything else?"
"Not that I can think of."
Sebastian cracked his knuckles and took another sip of his coffee. He reread the word document once more before he looked back at Logan.
"Here's what I can do. I can probably find her flight, but I'm not sure I can trace it all the way back to her exact street."
Logan nodded, a smile blossoming on his face. "That's great. Thanks, man."
"Anytime. I'll call you when I find her flight, okay?"
"That'll be great," Logan said, running his fingers through his hair.
Sebastian closed his laptop and started to wheel backwards, away from the table. When he was clear of the table, he tucked his laptop in a bag hooked to his chair and extended his hand in Logan's direction.
"Thanks, Sebastian," Logan said again, shaking the other boy's hand. "This means a lot to me."
Sebastian smiled. "I know. I'll give you a call when I find something."
As Sebastian wheeled away, another "what if" popped into Logan's head.
"Sebastian!" Logan shouted as Sebastian was about to push the door open. Sebastian turned. "What if she had a connecting flight?"
"I'll find her, Logan. Don't worry." With that, Sebastian waved and left the coffee house, leaving Logan alone at the table.
Taking a sip of his coffee, he sat all the way back in the booth, still processing what had just happened. Sebastian's last words kept playing over and over in his mind. I'll find her...
With those words hanging in the air, he'd felt something he hadn't felt in a while: comfort.
"Sandrine!" Logan yelled, walking in from the garage. "I'm home!"
He was answered by the sounds of pots clanging and drawers slamming at first, soon followed by a "Bonjour, mon cher!"
Smiling, Logan dropped his backpack on the floor and pushed through the swinging door that led to the kitchen. He was greeted by the sight of Sandrine chopping vegetables like a maniac around lots of pots and pans simmering on the stove.
"Are you intending to feed the whole block?" Logan smirked, causing Sandrine to look up at him and laugh.
"No, Logan, just you and your ego," she joked back, making Logan laugh. "So how was your meeting with Sebastian?"
Just as he was about to answer, Logan's mother walked in from the other swinging door, a coffee cup in one hand and a manuscript in the other.
"Sandrine," she said, waving the manuscript in the air.
"Did I ever mention how much I hate consulting for publishing companies?"
Sandrine chuckled to herself and dropped the cut vegetables into a boiling pot. "Oui, Madame, I think you have."
"Ils sont si bête!" Elise muttered to herself. She turned to Logan and smiled at him. "Hey, honey."
Logan walked up to Elise and gave her a quick hug. "Hi, Mom."
"How was your day?" Elise asked, walking towards the coffee press.
He shrugged nonchalantly and replied, "Oh, you know, the same ol', same ol'- school, homework, getting asked to be on the track team..."
He grabbed a stray carrot that had stuck to the cutting board and popped it into his mouth with a Cheshire cat smile on his face.
"Mon cher!" Sandrine gasped angrily, swatting his hand.
As Elise poured her coffee, she noticed something different about Logan. That little spark that was in his eyes before he left for Los Angeles was back. Elise hadn't seen that kind of confidence in him for a while now and she was glad it'd returned, whatever happened before.
"The track team, huh?" Elise finally said, setting the press back on the table. "I thought you said that the coach yelled at you all of the time."
"He did, " Logan confirmed, leaning his back against the counter. "But I guess he's just really desperate to fill his team."
"Aw, Honey, you don't think that, do you? You've probably earned a spot on that team," Elise coaxed, looking to Sandrine for some backup.
"C'est vrai, Mrs. Cale. People just don't get good things handed out to them like bread." She sliced some stands of rosemary and sprinkled it in a pot. "You've earned a good thing."
Logan sighed. "Thanks, ladies, but I already declined."
"Pourqoui?"
"Why?"
Both of the women's faces were scribbled with confusion.
Sighing, Logan ran his fingers though his hair, trying to think of a way to tell them something that they would believe, even if it wasn't the truth. "I just don't want to...ya know?" he said feebly, knowing that they would never buy that.
"Is that the real reason, Logan?" Elise asked softly, her look enquiring into him.
Logan looked at his shoes and said nothing, not wanting to tell his mother that he was just so tired of everything and his struggle to find Max. She would never understand.
"Since when did you lose the ability to speak?" Sandrine asked, still bewildered.
Elise's expression suddenly morphed from one of confusion to a more maternal one, her lips pursing before she said anything.
"Honey," she finally said, "I don't know what happened over the summer, or what really goes on at school anymore, but I do know that something's happened. You never used to just turn things down just because. Never." Logan shifted his weight to the other foot, feeling even more uncomfortable. "I know there's a reason why you said no, and you don't really have to share that with us if you don't want to as long as the reason makes sense to you." She put her hands on his cheeks and tilted his head up so he could look at her. "Does it make sense to you?"
Logan gave her a small nod and immediately looked away. "It does," he said softly.
"Okay," Elise smiled, putting a kiss on his forehead.
"Madame," Sandrine interrupted the mother/son moment and pointed to the oven clock. "You have a meeting tonight, n'est-ce pas?"
Elise's face fell. "Oh no!" she exclaimed, smacking her palm on her forehead. "I do! And it's all the way in Olympia because of those stupid Olympia writers who just have to have their meetings in their own-"
"Mom," Logan smiled, putting his hands on her shoulders. "It's okay. Go get ready for the meeting," he said rationally.
Elise smiled and stopped ranting. "What would I do without you, Logan?"
Logan shrugged. "Dunno."
Grabbing her mug and manuscript off the counter, she blew him a kiss and hurried out of the kitchen, allowing silence to settle over the kitchen. The only thing that filled the void of conversation was the occasional tapping of a wooden spoon against the innards of a pot.
This time it seemed to be Logan's turn to say something profound. "Is my dad coming home tonight?"
Well, it was as profound as it was going to get at the moment.
"Non." Sandrine lifted the lid of another pot and sprinkled parsley inside. "He's in Genève working on a big..." she waved her hand idly, "business deal."
"Sounds like Dad," Logan commented grimly.
"You know your father," she said, turning off the stove. "Work, work, work."
"Yeah, I do."
"So," Sandrine prompted, grabbing Logan's plate and dishing food onto it. "Was the rest of school good?" She handed his plate back to him, then took her plate and began to serve herself.
"It was okay," Logan answered tersely, shoving a forkful of mashed potatoes in his mouth.
"Really?" Sandrine said doubtfully, knowing that Logan was hiding something else. "Nothing interesting besides gym class?" she asked again, leaning in closer.
He stopped mid-chew and looked up at Sandrine innocently. "Uh, no?"
Sandrine arched her eyebrow, giving him a look that she didn't buy it. "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?"
Gulping his mashed potatoes, he met her gaze and decided to drop the façade. "My Creative Writing teacher is having us write about our summer vacations."
"And...?"
"And what?" Logan snapped irritably. "I have to tell people-who I know won't care-about her!" His volume rose with each enunciated word. "And, to make it worse, if it's not about her, I FAIL!" Logan slammed fist angrily against the glass table, making the silverware jump.
Sandrine's face remained neutral during his outburst and when he broke his mother's rule of hitting the glass table. She quietly got out of her chair and headed to the pantry. Logan, who still had a little steam coming out of his ears, stabbed some green beans and shoveled them in his mouth, mashing them under his teeth. When Sandrine emerged from the pantry, her composure still cool, Logan could see two Hershey's bars in her hand. Placing them next to a serving dish, she calmly sat down as if nothing had happened.
"We'll eat those after we finish our dinner. Then we'll talk, okay?" she finally said.
"Okay."
Once the table had been cleared and the Tupperware full of leftovers had been tucked away in the stainless steel fridge, Logan and Sandrine sat back down at the table. She opened her Hershey's bar,broke off one chocolate rectangle, and popped it in her mouth. Logan slowly followed suit, putting some chocolate in his mouth as well.
"Mon cher, have you tried to talk to ton prof about your paper?"
He shook his head shamefully, his eyes memorizing the small bubbles in the glass table.
"Well, mon cher, how do you plan to write this paper?"
"I don't have a plan; not anymore," Logan finally spoke, fiddling with his chocolate bar wrapper.
"So you're just going to give up and fail?"
Logan toyed with the edge of the colored plastic and the foil that was starting to separate.
"Logan!" Sandrine said, starting to get fed up with his silence. "You can't just give up!"
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Logan yelled. "Lie?"
Sandrine's eyes lit up. "Bien sûr! That's it, mon cher!"
Logan rolled the idea around in his head slowly, unsure how it would work. Mrs. Woodman seemed to be pretty all-knowing, but would she be able to pick up on the fact that he was lying?
"I'll give it a try," he said firmly, prompting a smile and a hug from Sandrine.
The moon had been up for two or three hours when he started writing about Julia, his "summer girlfriend." He had decided to give this girl a different name because it would hit to close to home if he named her Max...and would be a little too strange.
Julia was totally different from Max. Julia was from high society, and her father was one of Jonas's best clients. She'd been fed with a silver spoon since day one. He had met her at one of his uncle's infamous business parties when she had randomly asked him about a painting on the wall of Jonas's sitting room. It was a classic Americana Norman Rockwell, a style and painter in which that Max had never been interested in. They had run into each other again when Logan pulled over to help someone change a tire on a sparkling white Jaguar convertible, a convertible that belonged to her. As he was changing her tire, he asked her to dinner at Chez Mignonne and the rest, as they say, was history. Yep, Julia was nothing like Max.
A sense of control and order came back to him, something he hadn't had in his grasp in a while. It felt invigorating. Sighing happily to himself, he saved the pages he had written so far and sat back in his chair. This was gonna work.
In the midst of his contentment, the phone rang. Logan leaned forward and picked up the cordless phone.
"Hello?" he said happily.
"Logan?" a male voice asked.
"This is he," Logan replied, trying to recognize the voice on the other line.
"It's Sebastian."
"Oh, hey. What's up?" Logan said casually, picking up his empty mug and heading towards the stairs and the kitchen.
"Well, I poked around a bit with some airplane manifestos in some airports in LA and the surrounding area."
Logan walked down stairs and waved to Sandrine as she left. "Yeah," he said distractedly "What'd ya find?"
"I found a flight departing from LAX on August the twelfth with four Guevaras seated in rows thirteen and fourteen."
Logan pushed though the kitchen door and reached the counter, grabbing the coffee press and another chocolate bar. "Well that's great!" He poured himself a full mug. "Where were they going?"
"Seattle."
Logan's mug fell out of his hand and smashed against the pristine kitchen tiles.
"Seattle?"