Saving Logan

The journey to Las Vegas was unremarkable. Mandy and I talked a lot. Ok, actually Mandy talked a lot and I alternated between listening and zoning out, most of the time, the latter. That was what Mandy did when she got nervous: she talked. While Mandy chattered away, I tried to beat my high score on Brick Breaker. Eventually, after exhJamesg the topics of school, James, the equestrian team (she’s an avid horseback rider), her school musical Grease (and thespian) Mandy finally turned to the subject of our little excursion.

“So… Is he seriously depressed?” she asked hesitantly.

I turned to face her. It’s hard to describe how I felt right then; it was a cross between wanting to smack her, and wanting to hug her. Actually, I mostly wanted to smack her, but I felt the fury melt off my face when I caught a glimpse of her expression. I couldn’t even blame her for babbling for the past three hours. I bet she was freaked out; for herself, for Logan, for what was gonna happen between her and James when she got back…

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it depressed… You know how he’s kind of a loner anyway?” She nodded, but opened her mouth with a frown, and I could tell that she wanted to say something, but I pressed on, “Well, lately he’s been doing it even more than usual. He doesn’t look like he’s sleeping very well either, and I haven’t seen him eat in at least a week.” I frowned; I hated seeing Logan so down. He was usually such a cheerful kid; it bothered me.

“Logan hasn’t ever been like that with me… I’ve always found him to be very open. Whenever I see him, he’s happy. And, like all growing boys he’s a big fan of food. On the weekend he usually sleeps until noon. Alex, everything you’re describing for me is the exact opposite of the Logan that I know,” she said. I could tell what she was thinking: ‘Has he really changed that much in the past few months?’

“Well, I think he’s seriously missing being a normal kid. Something about the whole film is putting him under enormous stress, and I have no idea what it is,” I concluded miserably as our plane touched down. Mandy and I glanced out the window; the time change was significant. It was only around eleven o’clock in the morning here. “You didn’t check any bags, did you?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes, “How could I? I didn’t even get to go home to pack anything.”

“Oh… Right. Well, we can go shopping later.” As we deplaned, neither of us said much, think about where we were and what was ahead of us.

We finally made it out of the airport. Mandy started walking towards a taxi stand. I grabbed her arm, “What are you doing?”

“Well how else are we supposed to get there?”

I waved my cell phone in her face. “I’m gonna call Chris. He’ll send a car for us. Our location for shooting isn’t far from here.” Mandy nodded and plopped down on a bench in front of the entrance to the airport. I pressed some buttons on my phone, locating Chris’s number and dialing it. He picked up on the third ring:

“Are you at the airport?”

“Yea, we just landed about ten minutes ago.”

“Cool, I’ll send the car right now.”

“Thanks. And Chris?”

“Yea?”

“Does Logan know we’re coming?”

“No. Should he?”

“No, don’t tell him a thing, I want it to be a surprise.”

“Sure thing Alex. See you soon.”

“Later.” As the line disconnected, I looked over at Mandy and saw that she was tracing shapes on the side of the bench with the fingertip.

“You know what really bugs me about this?” she asked suddenly, and I was surprised to hear an edge to her voice that I couldn’t identify. When she looked up at me, I realized that she as about to cry. I sat next to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “Logan hasn’t called me once since he started this stupid film,” she said with bitterness in her voice. “He’s my best friend and I know he feels like shit right now, but I hate that you had to come and get me, for Zeus’ sake! I mean, he couldn’t even bother to pick up the phone and call me himself.” She started shaking as she got angrier and angrier. “Seriously, maybe if we had stayed in touch, this wouldn’t be happening.” He voice cracked with emotion, then her persona changed completely. “That’s right, it wouldn’t be happening… Oh gods, I could’ve called him couldn’t I? I’m such an idiot. I mean, I haven’t gotten so much as a flippin’ text message in the past four months from him, and what did I do? I just sat around and assumed he was busy, couldn’t be bothered to get off my lazy ass. I mean, I’m worse than Apollo in the wintertime, seriously, what the Hades is wrong with me? Oh my gods, oh my gods, oh my gods…” And she broke. She started sobbing, horrible, gut wrenching sobs that wracked her whole body mercilessly. I pulled her closer to me and hugged her tight.

“Shh, it’s not your fault, hon. We’re gonna be fine, all of us are, shh…” I stroked her hair and cradled her until the car pulled up about fifteen minutes later. “Come on Mandy, let’s go babe.” I helped her up and opened the car door for her.

“Thanks Alex,” she whispered. I could tell she was trying to pull it together.

“No problem babe. Now come on, let’s go visit the ‘chosen one’ or whatever it is they’re calling him these days.” I saw her crack a smile at the Harry Potter reference.

“Actually,” she said, still smiling as she jumped in the backseat, “Percy isn’t the only possible child of the prophecy.”

I climbed in the car after her, “I know that silly, I’ve read the books.”

“Good, because they are quite possibly the best books ever written, and it would be a shame for you to be making the movie without knowing the major plot points.”

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When we got to set, I pulled Mandy out of the car. She was pretty darn excited, I could tell. We walked through the giant archway inscribed with a bunch of words in Ancient Greek that we couldn’t read. I gave her the general tour and along the way we ran into a bunch of people, the first being Chris Columbus our director.

“Hey Alex! And you must be Mandy, it’s so nice to meet you. I hear that you will be helping our young Mr. Lerman out of his funk,” Chris said, greeting us warmly.

“Yep, that’s why I’m here, to visit my best buds,” Mandy said smilingly.

“Well you’ll be happy to know that I’m giving you guys the next week off so that you can all do some catching up,” Chris told me with a smirk.

“Oh my gods, thank you so much!” I said, giving him a giant hug.

“Did you just say ‘oh my gods?” he asked.

“Yea.” I elbowed Mandy in the ribs and she burst into giggles, “I must just be getting into character.”

“Well, if that’s it, then it’s about time! I mean, we’ve only been filming for what? Four months?” We laughed together and Chris waved us off to go talk to some other people.

The next person we ran into by the armory was Jake Abel, otherwise known as Luke Castallan in the movie. “JAKE!!!!” Mandy screamed, running up to him.

“Mandy!!! What in Hades are you doing here?” He scooped her up in his arms as if she weighed no more than a teddy bear. “It’s so good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you too Jake. So how are you these days? Hang up your figure skates yet?” I laughed as Jake blushed to the roots of his hair. A few years back, Jake was in this movie called Go Figure, and Mandy’s never quite gotten over teasing him about it.

“Oh shut up. How’s high school? Like being fresh meat?” he asked evilly. She punched him repeatedly in the arm until he took it back. “Ok, ok, I was just kidding. Why are you here anyway?”

“Logan,” she said quietly.

“Oh, ok. Well, I think I saw him over by the Poseidon cabin,” he said, pointing helpfully in the direction of the area of set he was talking about.

“Thanks Jake. I’ll see you later, ok?”

“Later Mandy.”

I wrapped my arm around Mandy’s shoulders, “Ready to face him?” She took a deep breath and nodded. I admired the way she was handling this. Her best friend had basically ignored her for four months and here she was ready to help him in his time of need.

We strode towards the huge dock that housed the Poseidon cabin set, but before we got there, we ran into somebody dressed from the waist down in blue lycra: Brandon T. Jackson, playing Grover. “Mandy!” he jogged over to us and squeezed us tight. “How are you? I missed you so much!”

“I missed you too goat boy. Thanks for the text message this morning, by the way. It was super helpful,” she said rolling her eyes.

“Hey no prob. I knew Alex was coming to get you and I figured that you shouldn’t be too surprised.” He threw one arm over Mandy’s shoulders and one arm over mine and walked with us towards the cabin set.

“This is so beautiful,” Mandy said.

It really was. When the location scouts had set out, they wanted there to be as little moving around as possible, so while we were filming in Las Vegas for the casino scenes, we would also be filming a lot of the camp stuff in a forest that they found just south of there. When you get to the edge of the forest, the lake joins it. That’s where the Poseidon cabin set was built, on a huge dock on the lake. As we trekked towards the lake, we passed cabins and a sword fighting area: we actually used that in real life to rehearse choreography for fight scenes. Suddenly the trees thinned and the lake was visible, and leaning against the rail on the far side of the dock was a tall boy with black hair that blew gently in the wind. Logan.