Logan’s state of mind changed a little every day, going sour like milk left out on the counter. I knew it’d gotten serious when I came home from school on Thursday and found him messing about in my bedroom. He was squatting down behind the door and poking through the dirty laundry basket. The blinds were open and anyone passing by could easily of seen him. Like my mom, for one. His lips stretched into an awful smile when he saw me. If I squinted, I could still see the cute, sweet Logan I first met, but he was doing a damn good job disguising him.
“Oh,” Logan said, “it’s just you.” He wore a pair of my faded yellow panties on his head like a hat.
“Yes,” I said, edging around him to close the blinds, “it’s me.”
“Good, yeah, good.” He whipped the panties off his head and tried to stuff them back in the basket along with one of my T-shirts before I noticed. But I noticed. “I thought it was your mom,” he said quickly, pretending to wipe some sweat off his forehead.
“Whew. That’s a relief.”
Standing there naked in my bedroom, Logan looked so completely out of place he might well of been something I’d hallucinated. This would of made more sense than the actual truth of the situation. His hair was squashed down in the front and sticking up on the side. Dirt was smeared all over his chest and legs. In the late afternoon light, you could see where his beard stubble had come in. It looked like brown mold. The skin around his eyes had turned a bruised color. I wanted to scream. For a second, I thought my head would pop and splatter the walls of my bedroom. That’s how angry I felt. I couldn’t believe he would actually leave me without saying good-bye or anything. Because that’s exactly what I thought he was getting ready to do—scrounge together an outfit from my dirty clothes and abandon me.
“You know that shirt would never fit you,” I said in a mean voice. If I used that same voice on Dani, she wouldn’t speak to me for a week. I decided to ignore the panty hat for the time being. “What are you doing?”
“I heard your mom go out the front door, so I made a quick trip to the bathroom. It weren’t the kind of thing I could do in a Coke bottle.” He swallowed hard and stared at his filthy feet. “Then I thought I’d get the next book in that Green Gable series you got me started on. I was only out here for a few minutes. I’m sorry.” He looked more than a tad scared. His mouth tightened up into that strange grimace again, and he winced like he expected me to beat him. “It’s just that …”
His face fell. I thought for a moment he might even cry. Seeing all this, I stopped being mad at him. Almost right away, truth be told. Even so, I knew I couldn’t just leave this sit. I needed to do something to punish him in case he thought about leaving me ever again. I couldn’t have that. No, sir.
“It’s just—well—it’s been thundering all day. I know you’ll think it’s stupid, but the thunder sounded like something bad. I freaked out a little bit. I couldn’t stay back there anymore. All the air was gone. I had to get out. I’m sorry, Lynn Marie.” Logan panted some and his eyes bounced around his sockets like Super Balls.
“Logan, honey, if you’ve got to go to the bathroom, you should really try and wait until I’m here.” This time I made sure to speak in a much nicer voice. Later, I realized it was the same voice I used when I talked to strange dogs. I didn’t think of this at the time, and it kind of freaked me out afterward when I did. “What if my mom’s boyfriend came in? Then you and me would of been in a world of shit. Let me tell you.”
“Your mom has a boyfriend?”
“Yeah. Hayes. He’s a real dick. There’s no telling what he would of done if he found you.” I gave him my elementary school teacher frown.
Really, if Hayes had stumbled into dirty, wild-Indian-looking Logan, he would of screamed, turned tail and run until he puked, but I didn’t tell Logan that. It was funny to think of this happening, but not that funny. If Hayes did come in and find him, I’d still be in a world of shit, as Logan had got me saying.
“Shit,” Logan said again. This was his main word these days. He used it when he was startled or angry or sad or happy. The longer he stayed in the storage space, the smaller his vocabulary seemed to get. Then his face lit up. It appeared a hopeful thought had fought its way into his brain. After poking around behind my clothes basket, he turned and smiled. “I nearly forgot. I made you something.” He handed me a tiny paper man about the length of my face made of dozens of intricate folds. Logan had even found a way to make the man appear to have curly hair. “It’s me.”
I nodded. Looking closer, I realized he’d torn a page from Anne of Green Gables. This made me none too happy, as it was one of my all-time favorite books. He saw right away what had come into my head.
“Don’t worry. I made sure to use a boring page. It’s where she’s up in her room all upset about something that happened at school the day before.”
I opened my mouth to say how we might disagree about what constituted boring, but I didn’t see the point. All manner of feelings were wrestling around in my chest. Me and Logan stood there and stared at each other. He smiled at me in a hopeful, annoying way. I tried to quick-think of some way of punishing him without him knowing that that was what I was doing. Just something to throw a scare into him, so he’d make sure and stay in the storage room unless I told him it was okay to come out.
That’s when the doorbell rang. We both shut up. Logan yanked at his earlobe as if he meant to pull it off. Something in his chest whistled when he breathed. I moved first.
“On the double, you,” I said, giving him a little shove. “Get back in there.”
Logan didn’t react for a very long set of stretchy seconds. His face turned the color of cigarette ash. I grabbed his arm and gave him a good, hard tug. Still, he wouldn’t budge. I flashed him my sternest what-the-hell look. Sweat dotted his forehead and upper lip. His eyes lost focus, like he was peering at something a football field away. I’ll admit, it frightened me some.
“Come on,” I said. “Get.”
I reached over and pinched his other earlobe. It worked to snap him out of it this time, too. I filed away my new bit of Logan lore for the next time I needed to hustle his ass someplace quick. When he finally moved, he moved fast, faster than I would have believed. Logan turned and scrambled back into that closet like a squirrel chased by a dog. He plowed through my clothes, tripping over my nice neat row of flip-flops and knocking my black cotton dress off its hanger. Oh, Logan, my overgrown, naked first grader. His ass wiggled as he crawled through the attic door. Since I was around him all the time, I sometimes forgot he was naked. But seeing him run like that, I remembered and I couldn’t help but smile.