Nine

I didn’t sleep the night Logan told me the news. Instead I lay awake for hours on end, staring at the dark wall across from my bed, trying to blind myself. I didn’t want to think of the consequences of him leaving. I didn’t want to be selfish because I knew this wasn’t about me. It was about him, and I had to be happy for him. It was my job.

In the morning, perhaps a bit too early and a bit too eagerly, I returned to his house. He didn’t pay me much attention at first, not that I desired it. He was up in his bedroom as usual, standing in front of a grand white sheet of canvas nailed to the wall and splattering on dark shades of crimson and brown paint. The patterns were chaotic and made no sense to me, but with every slam of brush against the page, Logan grinned.

I didn’t bother saying hello. I knew that he was well aware of my presence as I stood in the doorway, watching. But I didn’t make a sound because I knew not to disturb him. So I crossed my legs onto the floor and picked up a spare piece of untouched paper by my feet to draw my swallow. It was peaceful to watch the ink delve into the page and expand before my eyes as if the paper was drinking it up. I wondered if this was the sort of splendor that Logan saw in his art, and if it was, I couldn’t blame him for ever getting lost in it.

Before I could connect the second wing with the body, I felt arms hook under mine and lift. The unfinished bird fell from my lap before it could fly.

“You wore the blue shirt,” Logan murmured into me, “Good.”

He pressed our lips together and I could feel his hands pulling firmly at my waist. I smelled the fumes of paint all over his clothes and tasted mint on his mouth. Just as he liked me to do, I copied his motions, placing my hands plainly atop his shoulders dressed in grey fabric.

“Why do you like this shirt?” I tried to ask him.

But he told me not to talk.

Logan ushered me down onto his unmade bed and it was routine. I learned to expect this from him. For reasons I couldn’t comprehend, he liked this. It seemed to satisfy him, so I never spoke of my indifference towards it.

I felt his hand reach the neckline of my top and pull down, but before I could shiver when his usually cold fingers met skin, there was a quiet knock at the door.

He turned his head above me and I saw Noah standing in the doorway. He had changed in some way, but I couldn’t see the difference until Logan shouted at him to leave. Then I remembered. My eyes memorized the dark bruising along his cheek, visible from even my view quite a few feet away.

“I just wanted to tell you the pizza’s here,” he said quietly.

“Thank you. Now get out.”

When Noah obliged, I asked Logan what had happened to his face even though I feared his answer.

“I told him I was sorry afterwards, so it’s fine,” he sighed as he brought his mouth back down to my neck.

I wanted to tell him it wasn’t fine. I wanted to tell him that Noah was just a little boy and that he shouldn’t have done whatever he had done, but I bit my tongue. There was nothing my simple words could do. Not in that moment. They couldn’t heal Noah’s scarred porcelain skin. They couldn’t go back in time to fix a thing. My words were powerless, so I barricaded myself in my silence.

“Let’s do it tonight, Ava,” Logan muttered.

I knew what he meant. I knew it all too well. It was robotic the way I had to give him the same old response every time.

“Next time.”

I could never say no. He despised that word more than any other. Even though my usual reply made him groan and just postponed the argument for later, it worked for the time being and that’s the best I could ever hope for.

After Logan had enough, he asked me to bring the pizza upstairs, so I complied. We spent most of that day just like any other, drawing and painting in his room, kissing every so often, and eating, even though he only ever allowed me two slices. I didn’t press him on the subject of my gift. I simply let him work on his own time, figuring that once his painting was finished, he would reveal it to me.

When enough hours had elapsed for me to have a completed swallow sitting in my hand, I did something I had never done before. I reached for the colored pencils assorted into an array of different shades in one of Logan’s wooden containers. I worked with bright tints of teal, yellow, and pink, freeing my swallow to a life of color instead of my accustomed grayscale confine. I was proud of my creation. It seemed to sparkle like a kaleidoscope in my eyes, and as I held it gingerly between my fingers, I lifted my head.

“Logan, look.” I turned the page around for him to see.

He briefly glanced over before returning his attention back to shading in corners with black paint.

“Nice,” he said.

“Can I put it on the wall?”

I heard him chuckle under his breath, but otherwise he didn’t make another sound. I waited for some type of answer and got none.

I’m guessing he could feel my eyes still gazing at him because he turned again, this time with raised eyebrows.

“Wait, you’re serious?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It doesn’t fit.”

He motioned to the walls covered in artwork around him, completely dressed from corner to corner in sketches and paintings and photographs. I eyed each of them before looking down at my swallow and realized that he was right. Each one was dark. Each one was bathed in shadowy shades of navy and black and grey, sometimes burgundy and maroon, sometimes even olive and indigo. But never the vivid dyes of my swallow. She belonged in a different world than this.

But still, I felt disappointed that she would never be seen by anyone but me if I kept her hidden on my own wall. I think Logan could see that in my eyes because he sighed and told me he would take her to college with him and hang her in there. I smiled at him. I left her on his desk like he asked and hoped she would feel like she belonged there.

Mentioning college seemed to jog Logan’s memory judging by the way he suddenly set down his brush into the paint tray at his feet and wiped his hands roughly on an already stained towel.

“Almost forgot,” I heard him say.

He searched through the drawers in his wardrobe and bent over behind one of them to pull out a box. It was small enough for him to hold with one hand but big enough for me to need two. I was curious about what may lay inside it, and once he handed it to me with a smile, I was excited.

“Go ahead,” he urged, “Open it.”

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited until he was beside me to follow his direction. Once I discarded the lid and took a peek inside, I smiled knowing he had given it to me because I knew how special it had once been to him.

“I don’t need it anymore. Thought it’d serve better use here with you.”

My fingers traced along the plastic ridges and metal accents before wrapping my hand around it. It felt cold to the touch and I wondered how long it had been hidden away.

“You better use it.”

“I will,” I promised.

The camera felt heavier than I expected once I removed it from the box entirely. I never knew its weight before; he never used to let me hold it. But as I stared at it now and realized how vintage Polaroids were, I could understand why he’d always been protective of it.

“I want you to use it to see the world,” he said, “Look at me.”

I did as I was told, but looking back now I wish I hadn’t. I couldn’t yet see what was really in those eyes of his. It was all masked by the compassion so well.

“Things will be different when I’m gone,” he told me, “I know how you get. You can’t think of her anymore. Use this to go out and see what’s in front of you, not behind.”

His logic made sense. I turned into a different person whenever I let my mind wander off to my mother, if you could even call that kind of behavior constituting a person. He knew how to handle that when it happened by distracting me, usually with things that would work. I trusted him enough to accept that he must be right.

“Take pictures and send me one once a month.”

I nodded, eager to please him. He wanted the lens to be eyes looking into what would soon become of my world once his role in it became less permanent.

“What do you want them to be of?” I asked.

“Whatever makes you happy.”

I felt like being close to him again, but I didn’t say so. I didn’t want to ruin the moment should he say no. I remember him looking down at the boots below him or the drawings around him, not at me. But he kissed my hand before he rose and I took what I could get.

~~~

Once back at my father’s house, I didn’t let myself think of the limited time I had left with my sanity. It was a ticking clock I wanted to stop more than anything, but it only seemed to be getting faster with louder ticks and tinier numbers. The summer would be one of avoidance and denial; if I told myself nothing would change, it helped. So that’s what I did.

That night was a deceivingly easy one. I drifted off to sleep with the camera sitting on my side table, imagining the lens to be Logan’s eyes. They were similar. Big, dark, mysterious. A blank canvas ready to capture. I wouldn’t say it was soothing thinking of him there but rather just less lonely.

At around three in the morning, I received a message:

From: Logan
Come to the door in 2

I panicked out of my bed and wanted to type back the two letters I needed to say: no. He couldn’t come there. Not so late and not with my father so near. But the two letters were impossible. I would make him angry if I’d said them.

Downstairs, I saw his face appear in the window beside the front door and I tightened the robe around my torso enough to restrain my breath.

“What are you doing here, Logan?” I asked when I opened it.

“I just wanted to see you,” he spilled.

He looked frantic. He couldn’t stand upright or keep his leg steady no matter how hard he seemed to try.

“Are you alright?”

“Don’t fucking ask me such a stupid question, Ava. I’m fine. Let me in.”

As he neared me, I smelled something musky and rich. It was unfamiliar and I couldn’t put a source to it, but whatever it was I had never smelled it on him before.

“I can’t…”

“Why not?” he asked, leaning against the door hinge.

“My dad is asleep.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So?”

“Logan, I could get in trouble—"

“You’re a big girl, Ava. He can’t tell you what to do. That’s what I’m here for, right?”

He grinned and I tried to keep him quiet.

“Please, Logan—"

He kissed me to quiet me, if you could call what he did a kiss. I kissed back in a desperate attempt to lower his volume and not awaken my father, but when the hall behind me illuminated in light I knew I’d failed.

“What’s going on?”

My father’s voice was groggy with sleep but nonetheless loud.

By then, Logan had separated from me and stood defiantly. I turned to my father and saw the apprehension in his eyes.

“Logan just came over to say hi,” I said, “He, um, he was just leaving.”

Logan’s bemused chuckle didn’t help my attempt at resolving the situation.

“It’s late. Your brother must be wondering where you are.”

“Noah’s fine alone.”

His slurred speech caught my father’s attention immediately and I felt him stand behind me, tall and wide.

“You should go on home, Logan.”

“Mr. Reed, did you not hear me say---"

“Go home.” My father’s voice had risen enough that I was sure the neighbors were awake by then.

I kept my eyes glued to the hardwood beneath me, shielded from the looks of defiance in Logan and aggression in my father. There was a long bout of silence before I heard Logan’s feet shuffle, and before he could bid me goodbye the door was shut.

“Crazy. Showing up here in the middle of the night? Drunk or high or whatever the hell is wrong with him. Touching you like that? I’ve never seen a thing like it.”

“You don’t know him, Dad,” I muttered quietly.

“And you do? I don’t want you seeing him anymore. He’s off. I told you, I told your mother. He looks at you like you’re his property.”

“Don’t say that…”

I could feel his eyes boring holes into the top of my head as he towered over me, but he didn’t respond. I know he must have seen something he never thought he’d see in his only child: cowardice. He distanced himself from me slowly and each sound of his footstep seemed to sound louder in my mind the further he walked away from me. He didn’t say a word until he was at the top of the staircase, and when he did his voice was soft.

“You’ll see soon enough, Ava.”