Hey y'all! So, I hope you all enjoyed the last chapter. Now, I'd like to dedicate this one to JustChillin (Guest) who suggested this idea and told me that I nailed this story into making it feel like one of the episodes! One of the best compliments ever. Thank you, darling. Even better news, before I got this request, I was already working on yet another chapter. I'm excited to share both with all of you, but for now, here's this one!
Logan muttered under his breath as he flicked on the bathroom light, searching for his contacts. His hand swept across the sink counter, knocking unknown miscellaneous items to the ground. He would pick them up once he found his contacts, he resolved. If he could find his contacts at all.
HIs vision was starting to blur. It was getting harder to see, and his eyes physically ached from the strain. He was briefly reminded of the week he tried to go without wearing his glasses. That was in sixth grade when he was dating Debbie Crawford after he had asked her to the dance. She broke up with him the next week, so he had an excuse to ask Kendall to help him buy contacts. Neither of them knew exactly what they were doing, or what they were looking for. They settled on the monthly disposable contacts instead of the daily ones.
His eyes closed, the pain still burning behind his eyelids, he tried to remember what day it was. It was November, November something. November…thirty-first? No, November had thirty days.
It was a childish trick that he would never admit to using. Logan mentally counted off the months in his head as he ran his finger over his knuckles. Yeah, November had thirty days. Which meant he had run out of contacts. He sighed and knelt down, searching blindly for the objects that he had swept to the floor.
He couldn't see anything. It was all just a colorful blur, and it only got worse when he tried to focus his vision. He stood up and steadied himself against the counter. Grasping the doorknob, he pulled the door open and stumbled out of the bathroom, back into his bedroom.
He opened the drawer to his nightstand table and rummaged around for the vaguely familiar object. Securing his grip, he opened up the glasses case and quickly ran the cleaning rag over the lenses. His thumbnail nicked the chipped glass in the corner of the left lens and he bit his lip. Hard.
The world came into focus again as he rested the glasses on the bridge of his nose. The glasses were too tight, he hadn't thought he would use them. Logan hadn't bought a new pair since the fourth grade. That was six years ago.
He shook his head, as if to clear the memory away, and walked into the kitchen. He tried not to notice everyone's shocked faces. They sure noticed the glasses. Logan wished he was seven again, because then it wouldn't seem so immature to carelessly knock his glasses to the ground and slowly crush them with his foot. He did that once in first grade, but stopped when his teacher saw and scolded him, saying that glasses were expensive, he should be more grateful.
"Pancakes, honey?" Mrs. Knight asked, the first to recover from shock. She smiled brightly when he nodded and served him two.
It was easy to be meticulous when cutting up pancakes and therefore, easy to miss the still-stunned looks on his friends' faces. He took a bite before looking up at them all, wondering what they would ask.
"Didn't we go and buy contacts for you, Logan?" Kendall asked. "The monthly cases are supposed to last—"
"A month," Logan interjected. "I know. I probably just lost them. We can buy some tomorrow."
"Don't the glasses hurt?" Carlos inquired innocently, to which Logan mentally responded What do you think? But in reality, he said nothing and let his friend continue. "Your face is all screwed up."
"That's bad for your skin, Logan," James added, distracted but still trying to be halfway present in the conversation.
He shrugged. "I'd rather see."
"You can't see at all?" Katie asked. She probably didn't remember he had glasses in the first place. He hadn't worn them.
"Everything gets pretty blurry. But I'm fine with these." Logan answered, adding a smile in for the ten year old. Really, he wanted to get these off immediately and drive to the nearest CVS for a new set of contacts.
"You sure?" Kendall asked, eyeing him suspiciously. "Because we have a little bit of time before rehearsal to go to Rite Aid or something?"
Logan shook his head. He glanced up at the clock. The call time today was 8:00. It was currently 7:45. "We don't have enough time, Kendall. We should get going. Bye, Mrs. Knight, Katie," he called over his shoulder as he left.
Rehearsal, he mused. That would be interesting, considering he could barely see his own hands in front of him. Shakily, he pressed the down arrow for the elevator and got in. The doors closed and suddenly, he was falling fast.
—
James, Carlos and Kendall had caught the next elevator after Logan. While this wasn't the best situation, since, to them, Logan was basically blind even with the glasses, it did provide the perfect opportunity to have a secret conversation about him.
"I bought him contacts," Kendall muttered. "And I checked it too."
"He said he might have lost them," James reminded his friends as the elevator descended to the lobby.
"Yeah," Carlos amended, shrugging. "But the glasses hurt him. So we should buy him more contacts. And he looks weird without them on, anyway."
"Carlos!" the two other boys exclaimed. But the Latino was quick to defend his response.
"No, he does! It's like, he looks like he did when we were twelve. And—"
The elevator doors opened before Carlos could finish, to reveal a stumbling Logan barely making his way through the lobby. His friends intercepted right before he crashed into a frazzled looking Mrs. Duncan, who was likely off in search of her son.
"Logan, I don't think the glasses are going to work if your eyes are closed," Carlos pointed out. Logan's face was still taut with pain, his eyes squinting, barely open.
Logan blinked. "Yep. We better get to rehearsal now, guys."
As usual, he was the first to get going, however, unusually, he kept stumbling. The others raced to catch up with him to keep him from colliding with Guitar Dude's guitar, swinging loose as he walked by. Unfortunately, they weren't so lucky this time. There was a loud smack wood against bone (specifically Logan's forehead). He was knocked backward, landing on his back. Logan groaned and rubbed his forehead, disorientated.
Kendall and James lifted him to his feet.
"What are you going to do about dance rehearsal, Logan? You can barely walk," Kendall whispered to him. Logan only shrugged.
"I know the choreography."
As it turns out, it didn't matter that Logan knew the choreography. They all knew he was a bad dancer to begin with. His lack of vision did not improve his chances at successful dancing. The other boys had tried to steady him, Logan would've gotten the wind knocked out of him otherwise. But with all their efforts, they were dropping steps and messing up all on their own.
The last straw was when Logan loudly crashed into a nearby drum set.
"Logan!" Gustavo yelled, his head aggressively nodding back and forth. This wasn't good. "Dogs!"
Kelly winced at Gustavo's volume, but still looked frustrated at the boys. "What Gustavo meant is, what is going on, guys?"
The boys glanced over at Mr. X, fuming with rage, screaming a wide variety of X swear words, of which there were few. He got creative. Mr. X stared down at Logan. "Him! He is X-cruciating and X-tremely bad."
Logan felt his face heat up, and lowered it, avoiding eye contact with Gustavo and Kelly.
"Logan, when did you get glasses?" Kelly asked.
He tried to remember when he got his first pair. When he was seven, back in Texas. His mother, Joanna, had taken him with her to Costco to pick out frames. He had been complaining about his eyes hurting. They made the optometrist appointment. His eyes still burned in pain, and he was afraid to blink after all the eye drops and gels the optometrist had squirted into his eyes with that little eye dropper. He had to be restrained down on the table, he was squirming away from the eye dropper too much.
"Hortense! Stop this right now," his mother had yelled at him.
And then they were in the car again, off to Costco. He had picked out electric blue frames, not out of his own desire, but because the women helping them thought they were nice. He had worn them in the store and when they walked back out to the parking lot. Back in the car, yet again, for the drive home, he took them off but that was worse.
"Hortense, keep your glasses on. They're supposed to help you."
"But, Mommy," he complained. "They're too tight."
She didn't respond to him.
He felt the car swerve. He was slammed into the side of the car, his glasses clattering to the floor. When the car stopped moving, he reached down to grab his glasses off of the floor. "Mommy?"
He didn't get an answer. As he put the glasses on again, he noticed the new indent in the corner. He tried to rub it away. He couldn't, it was glass.
"Mommy!" he called again.
Back to the present, Logan urged himself on. Simultaneously, he couldn't let his mind wander. Not to where he had ended up after that. After the crash. Back to the present. You're sixteen years old, you're in Los Angeles. Kelly asked you a question, what was it?
"Sorry, sorry," Logan stuttered out, avoiding eye contact with his friends too. They could catch on soon enough. They knew he was approximately five seconds away from breaking. "What was the question?"
Five. Kelly's eyebrows knit together in confusion. She cleared her throat.
Four. "When did you get glasses?" she asked.
"When did you get glasses, Hortense?" his first grade teacher, Mrs. Picardulli asked him. "They're expensive, you shouldn't be throwing them on the ground like that. Your mommy paid a lot of money for those."
Three. "I was seven."
Two. Kelly nodded. "You haven't been wearing them."
"Why haven't you been wearing your glasses, Hortense?" Carlos asked him, right by his side as he bit his lip harder, debating whether or not to go up and ask Debbie Crawford out to the sixth grade dance.
"Debbie doesn't like them," he mumbled out. A surge of confidence and nerves filled him. He tapped Debbie on the shoulder. Carlos was still right up next to him, "Do you want to go to the dance with me?"
"Of course, Hortense!" Debbie giggled. "You look much better without your glasses."
One. "Debbie doesn't like them," he found himself muttering. Carlos was right there at his side. Kelly and Gustavo were trading looks, confused. The others sprung into action quickly.
"Hey, Logan," Carlos was saying, an arm wrapped around his shoulders as he was being steered out of the studio, into the hall. "It's Carlos."
Back to the present, Logan told himself. Back to the present. "Hey, Carlos."
"Are you okay, Logan?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Let's get back."
That was his plan, Logan's plan, which never came to fruition, when Kendall and James walked out of the studio into the hall right alongside them. "What?"
"We're buying you some contacts, Logan," Kendall explained. "We're coming back here right after, don't worry."
"Okay, nope, not worrying."
James laughed. "We know you're worrying, Logan, we've known you long enough."
It was obvious what they were doing, keeping him grounded by using his name in every sentence. He smiled. "Did I mention how much I love your mom, James?"
—-
As usual, Kendall and Logan got into the inevitable debate over which contacts to buy.
"It's my money, Kendall, I can choose which ones I want to buy."
Kendall smirked at him, shaking his head. He pulled out his wallet and snatched Logan's out of his hand. He safely tucked Logan's wallet into his pocket. "No, it's not. It's my money." He waved his wallet around Logan, taunting him.
When Logan reached for his own wallet back, Kendall smacked his hand away. "You'll get it back. After I pay."
He placed one case of the monthly contacts on the counter, and then a few of the daily ones. He paid quickly, and as promised, handed Logan his wallet back, who immediately walked to the restroom to pop his contacts in. Logan came back, no glasses in sight.
Kendall wasn't about to ask what he had done with the glasses, but he was pretty sure he knew what happened. It didn't matter, the glasses were broken anyway. And Kendall would make sure Logan didn't need to wear them again. He had found the perfect solution.
One monthly case of contacts. One daily disposable case. And he would pay for them, not Logan, because Logan didn't even know which contacts were the best, despite being a genius. Kendall was the problem solver.
Problem solved.