I thought we were going to have sex, but he couldn’t get it to work. He wanted to. It was his idea. But it wouldn’t get hard. I rubbed it and put it in my mouth for a little while when he asked me to, even though the last time I tried this it made me gag.
“What’s wrong with it?” I said. I wasn’t trying to sound mean, but I guess it came out that way. I didn’t understand what the problem was. It always worked before.
By this point, we were both naked. Two candles sputtered in the corner. After Dani had left, I’d given him a fast sponge bath, but he was already completely filthy again and his eyes were almost swallowed up by charcoal-colored pockets of wrinkled skin. If they sunk any deeper into his head, they’d disappear. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept more than a few minutes at a time. The little room seemed to smell even worse than it did before, but I thought maybe Dani’s visit had made me more aware of it. I made a note to buy some Febreze the next day at the Piggly Wiggly. But this was a stink I wasn’t even sure Febreze could fix.
“Nothing’s wrong with it!” he yelled. He took it into his hand and shook it at me. “Something’s wrong with me. With you.”
“Shhh,” I said. “My mom’s still awake.” I pulled my T-shirt on. Something black was smeared on the sleeve.
“I don’t care if she is,” he said. “I’m getting out of here tomorrow. Even if I have to go naked.” He shook his dick at me again. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time.”
“About the clothes, for one.”
“No, that’s true,” I said, but this sounded like a lie even to my own ears. My voice came out flat and unconvincing.
“Right,” he said, folding his sweat-shiny arms across his chest.
Out in the kitchen, my mom shouted, “Like hell I will, Hayes!”
I shifted my attention to her phone conversation, so when Logan spoke again, it made me jump a little. He sounded levelheaded and clear. “What ever happened with all that? That mess with the boyfriend? That’s who she’s talking to, right?”
I didn’t think he’d been keeping track of this. But of course he could hear Mom’s voice as clear as I could. I’d noticed many years ago it was easier to hear the rest of the house from back here than it was to hear the attic from the rest of the house. He’d probably heard more about Hayes than I had with all that time on his hands and nothing to do but listen to my mom and make whacked-out cartoon strips on the wall.
“Yeah, probably.”
“She don’t seem to sleep much, or else she can do it in front of the TV. I never could sleep with people talking like that. The only time I can close my eyes is when she’s off at work.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie. You got to believe that.”
“I don’t got to believe anything. My brain ain’t doing what I’d like. I don’t know.” Logan tapped each of my toes three times. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I know you’ve been outside, so you know I’m not lying about your car.”
“What?” he said, trying to act all innocent, but I could tell he was surprised.
“A girl at school told me on the bus this morning she saw you running around naked in the yard the other day. Lucky for us, everyone thinks she’s full of it. I can’t believe you did that. This whole time I’ve been trying to protect you. You think it’s easy, hiding you like this? Well, it ain’t. I’d get in a lot of fucking trouble if anyone found out. As it is, people are getting suspicious.”
“Ah ha,” he said, making his fake-crazy face again. It wasn’t even close to funny this time. Just scary. “Ha, ha, ha.”
“Do you want to go to jail?”
“I’m in jail!” he near about shouted.
“Quiet,” I said, “hush.”
Logan stopped making faces. He cocked his head and looked at me. “Okay,” he said. “Then let’s figure a way for me to get out of here if you’re so worried about getting into trouble.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“When your mom’s gone, I sleep all the time ’cause it’s dark. But only for about five minutes at a time because I have these dreams you wouldn’t believe, and then since it’s dark, the dreams just kind of slip into my awake time. Everything’s getting mixed up.” His eyes were red and shiny, like they’d been coated with a thick layer of varnish and had yet to dry.
“Fine. Leave tomorrow.”
“Leave tomorrow. Leave tomorrow,” he screeched in a piss-poor imitation of my voice. “You say that every Goddamned day. What if I left right now?” He crab-walked toward the door.
“You take one step out of this house and I’ll call the police.” I waved the card Officer Watkins gave me. “Three-eight-three, four-four-four-three. Here, take it, I memorized it already.”
Logan held the card up to the flickering candlelight and peered at it for a good, long while before saying anything. “You wouldn’t do that.”
“Go ahead and see.”
“I’ll tell them you’ve been keeping me prisoner, that you stole my clothes.”
“Yeah?” I said, squeezing my hands into fists. The nails dug into my palms. “Yeah?” Something sizzled inside my head. My anger glowed inside me like a lightbulb filament. “And I’ll say you overpowered me and then forced me to have sex. That you climbed in through the window and raped me.”
“Bullshit,” he said, but it got him to thinking. I could see it in his eyes.
I stared at him.
“So, okay, now I see where we are. I get it.” Except he didn’t. He didn’t get it at all. His voice cracked. “I liked you. The most. What the hell happened?”
I saw I’d broken something between us. I thumbed my eyes to keep from crying.
“I’m sorry, Logan. I didn’t mean that. It just came out. I swear.”
“Sure,” he said, “whatever.”
“I mean it. I do love you. I do.” And I did. When I said it, I did.
“Maybe,” he said, “but that’s the first time I’ve heard you say it. And it don’t change nothing.”
He turned away and picked up a crayon. I touched him on the shoulder, but he shrugged me off. After that, I saw there wouldn’t be any more talking. At least not that night. I crawled back out into my room.
“You can’t watch me all the time,” he said.
After I climbed out of the storage space that night, I moved my dresser into the closet. I didn’t push it all the way against the door. I wanted him to be able to breathe, after all, and escape in case of emergency, but there was no way he was getting out of there tonight without me hearing him. Anger made me shiver. Whenever things got tough, I was the first thing people dropped. Just like with Dani, my mom, my dad. And now him. If he really tried to leave tomorrow, I knew just what I’d do. I’d go to the school nurse and sham a bad case of PMS. They always let you leave for that. Then I would call the police with an anonymous tip from her office when she went to tell the front office, so the police couldn’t track my cell phone. And then I’d come home in time to wave and smile as they dragged little Logan off. Yeah, that’s what I’d do. But even as I pictured all this in my mind, step by step by step, I knew I’d never do it. Plus, I remembered: tomorrow was Saturday.