The Girl: Chapter Twelve
He knew what she was afraid of, knew what sort of places and people she imagined he was delivering her to. It didn't matter what Logan told her about the school, what he promised about Xavier. With the grease-painted street, the crackle of distant and not-so-distant gunfire, the peal of car alarms unfortunate enough to be worth stealing, he couldn't blame her. His words sounded like a rosy fairytale, nice but pointless; here, even the truth tasted like a lie. Logan couldn't shake the sense that everything he wanted to do for her would vanish like the city's lights.
She started shaking again when they crossed the bridge. It must have been the farthest the girl had ever been from-from "home". Logan pointed at the water, said, "Look, Kid, ain't that pretty?"
The waves were greenish-black, blue only if you had an exceptionally powerful imagination. His sight, sharper than most, could pick out the floating masses of seaweed, sewage, plastic bags and diapers--even the brand names on some. But the girl, she--she probably couldn't see that shit. He thought it might seem nice. To her.
She was still for less than a minute, then broke into uncontrollable, gulping sobs. Logan glanced from the yellow dashes in the road to her, helplessly. He tried to touch her shoulder but she jerked out of his hold, retreating as far as the small cabin would allow. The girl put her back to him and continued to cry with a breathlessness that made even Logan's chest ache.
"Hey. Hey, Kid. There's no need for that . C'mon"
The pickup bounced over the end of the bridge, where the tar was thin and the concrete was cracked like old play-dough.Scott had offered to replace his shock absorbers, but Logan had refused. It would ruin his excuse for borrowing/stealing Scooter's personal vehicles (which he'd never admit his admiration for). But now Logan wished he had accepted.
"I--don't--want-," the girl gasped, between sobs and the roads larger bumps. Her hand pressed uselessly against the door. He'd forgotten to lock it, but she was wearing her seat belt and wasn't pulling on the handle yet. His brow crinkled at the image of her jumping out, her body striking the ground violently, rolling, strips of flesh peeling away as easily as the red of an apple.
"Stop, honey. Calm down."
Her palm struck the glass once, twice. Logan saw that her knuckles were a stark white, contrasting even the rest of her pigmentally-challenged body.
"Shit, Kid."
Then he was standing in the coarse gravel of the road's side. Trying to hold the girl's hair back and trying harder to avoid looking at whatever she was puking.
Air thick with paralyzing humidity. One of his arms curled lightly around her stomach, his fingers finding an easy place in the grooves of her ribcage as he kept her from falling into the mess. The acrid scent--which had always, bizarrely, made Logan think of the color orange--was burning a path up his nostrils.
She pushed against his knee, again and again. Go away. Don't touch me. Leave me alone. She coughed. Sputtered. And the pathetically weak shoves became a tight grip of whatever denim was loose enough to hold.
"There, there you go. You're okay. Good girl."
The girl shivered. Coughed again. And when she was still Logan eased her upright. He pulled her--carefully, didn't want either of them to step in anything--around the front of the pick up. Tears spilled from her eyes like a faucet not quite shut off.
"Sorry," she whimpered to his shirt's pocket, with an inscrutable shame.
"What for?"
Logan made her sit on the protruding fender while he fetched a few McDonalds napkins from the glove compartment--and a bottle of water, though it was hot from months of rolling around the floorboards.
The girl flinched from his hand, but accepted the napkin without any other complaint. She pressed it to her mouth, to her teeth. Replaced the flimsy cloth with a plastic rim, when Logan gave her the bottle.
"Spit," he instructed, after the girl took a sip. The girl swished the water meekly, then leaned over and did as she was told. The less-than-clean liquid was only visible fro a moment, before the parched earth absorbed it. "Again, honey. It'll help."
She obeyed, and repeated the process three more times without prompting. And when they were back inside the pickup the girl offered him a mumbled thank-you. She drank the remaining water until there was nothing left.
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They could have made it to Westchester. Gotten there a little late, perhaps, but still before the most insomniac/caffeinated residents retired. It certainly would have been no problem for Logan; his boot was used to pressing the gas pedal long after other headlights abandoned the highway.
But the girl. The girl necessitated other plans.
She'd had next to nothing to eat today--and what little had lain in her stomach was certainly there no more. Her quiet shivers now seemed those of an exhausted child's. The girl's earlier panic had burned itself out, or grown beyond the point where her mind had to temporarily shut it off, cut it from her awareness like the mind blowing agony of an amputated limb. Too much to handle.
Logan thought it might help if there was a step between squalor and the overwhelming luxury of the mansion. Something to help her cope with the transition, lest the sudden bounty decimated her starved body.
And--though this was an idea hurried through Logan's mind so he could avoid examining it--she was dirty. Wearing the same clothes as yesterday and the day before. In bad shape, ebony moons cradling. He didn't want to bring her into Xavier's like that.
He didn't want the schools resident to think he couldn't take care of his own.
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A Motel 6. Chosen because it was one of the first he saw, and because Logan wanted something clean--at least without visible roaches. But not so grand as to kick the girl into shock--that would defeat the purpose of not driving straight to the mansion.'
A quiet, wide parking lot. SUVs and battered old buicks. Parents ushering sunburnt, swimsuit-clad children inside. So different from the families in the city.Two stories, a metal rail painted in a shade of red that seemed plucked from the color wheel because it would be the least noticeable when peeled away. Not one of the most recently refurbished links in the chain, less likely to question a teen traveling alone with a grisled old man--of a breed for whom paternity would always be an accidental, unknown state and any night passed with a young female would not be spent in platonic pursuits.
He brought the girl in with him. She wasn't a pet, an animal who couldn't be trusted outside the car. And she'd spent enough time left in the dark, alone and vulnerable.
The place was almost completely booked. A comic book convention, explained the lady behind the counter, plus our holiday crowd. Packs of nerds walking around, sweaty masks contrasting oddly with their pale necks. Should certainly grease the girl's way into the mansion.
But there might be a few rooms still available, let me just check, Sir....The patter of the keyboard, the girl his broken little shadow...Yes, yes. Here we go. We have four left, Sir.
At his request-that-wasn't-a-request for double beds, the woman scoffed, laughed. Raised an eyebrow at the diminutive figure behind him. Who the hell did this guy think he was kidding? Trying a weak-ass cover like that when they were close to 100% occupancy, when she'd had such a long day and the end of her shift was nowhere in sight, when that pretty child had that kind of look in her eyes. When a customer's companion kept her arms constantly around herself, flinched at nothing--a guarantee that was almost as good as a verbal one that this pair would only be needing one bed tonight.
But it wasn't her place. It wasn't her place to let her lip curl at this man, this prick who was staring so coldly at her--his nostrils flared and a tone in his silence that said her input was less than welcome. It wasn't her place to do anything but look at the computer screen and tell him yes. Yes, we're in luck, Sir. One of our reservations cancelled and there is a double open in the three hundred hall. It'll be one fifty eight, if you would like--oh. Cash, sir? Alrighty. Thank you. I'll just go get you a key. Sir.
The hostess called out to their backs, a too-bright afterthought, as Logan was leading the girl out of the lobby.
"Check-out is at eleven A.M. Please have your things removed before housekeeping arrives."
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There was a mini-fridge, an amenity Logan hadn't expected--probably installed for the annual influx of Spiderman obsessed geeks. A collage of threatening labels, warning against taking items without paying. Frito's, peanuts, plastic-wrapped sandwiches, soda, bottled water. At least he wouldn't have to leave in search of food for her.
She hadn't spoken in awhile. Little flicks of her eyes in Logan's directions when he said something. Assessing the situation constantly--not for escape routes, no, she was beyond that kind of hope--for the best way she could prepare, numb herself against whatever she'd gotten into her head was going to happen.
The girl hadn't put up any fight on the walk to their room (easy to find, the layout of motels were painfully familiar to Logan. He could have drawn up a blueprint, if asked). But at the threshold she'd frozen, put a hand on one side of the doorway and gripped it as tight as her nonexistent fingernails would allow. Silent panic, reflexive paralysis. Her brain starting to let a little fear in, testing. Too much newness.
Logan had pressed his palm between her shoulder blades softly, wordlessly. She jumped forward, into the room and out of his way. Not frightened by the prospect of a push, but of being touched.
Two beds, both draped in a thick, vulgarly floral-patterned cover. Small desk beside the bed on the right, smaller table with a lamp and a single drawer next to the left wall's bed. The blue fridge, a closet with less than a foot of space inside, a fold-out iron and an iron connected to the wall by a chain. Mirror on the opposite wall, it's edges painted gold. Bathroom with all it's amenities; the girl was in for a pleasant surprise. He couldn't wait to show her how real plumbing was supposed to be.
"You want to shower first, Kid?" A little boy eager to show off his card collection.
The girl looked at him, and Logan guessed she heard his words differently. But she nodded, went into the bathroom quietly and shut the door behind her. The click of a lock.
He set his knapsack on the floor, took a seat on one of the beds and began to unlace his boots. He sighted, inhaled an invisible cloud of cheap detergent, sex, and lemon wood polish, the signature of inns (though two of the three were absent in the cheapest he'd frequented).
Something was nagging him, some detail buried in a pile of the ordinary, the insignificant. Logan listened to the pump of the building's pipes, the splash of the shower. The little noises the girl couldn't suppress, her clothes hitting the floor, skin rubbing against itself, water on flesh, cloth, a cap being opened. Tiny whimper. Soap's paper unwrapped. He thought about the gold paint on the mirror, a painting of angels in the lobby, a stain he'd noticed on the steps. A certain bounciness to the mattress that he assumed wasn't unique to this room--Logan pinched the bridge of his nose, shut his eyes.
He wondered--shit, yes. Yes he had. Fuck. Logan smiled without amusement. A drunk cowgirl from Arizona, who asked him if he'd ever met any movie stars and swore that she'd never done this before. Her mother would kill her if she knew. But she'd been more than willing to do things that went against her sweet Southern act.
He shook his head. Got up, fetched a coke from the fridge. Tried to stop listening to the girl's washing-sounds. He told himself that his muscles were only stiff from driving.
She was in there for hours. Two, if you want specific. Two hours and fourteen minutes. Logan counted, as he watched the ceiling fan spin around and around and around. Long past the time when a warm flow turned to liquid ice. He'd have to wait til morning for his own shower.
She might have been stalling--and that was doubtlessly a factor. But Logan knew she wasn't just sitting on the toilet seat, the shower turned on to trick him. He could hear the girl, still scrubbing and scraping at herself. Trying to clean what never would be, to her.
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When the bathroom door finally opened, she was wearing his black shirt and a pair of shorts--snatched with little attention from the unorganized stack in the pickup. Her arms looked raw in places, her palms wrinkled from the moisture. The girl stood between the beds. Hesitant, holder her elbows with her arms laced beneath her breasts. Water dripping from her hair, little puddle created in the carpet. Looking at him as if waiting for an order, a get-your-ass-over-here, a hand that would grab and pull her. The night before, when she herself had chosen to come into his bed as forgotten as the fact that he hadn't hurt her. Pouty lips and an amazingly clean scent and her mysterious skin glistening at Logan as if to tempt, or threaten.
"Get some sleep, Kid."
He switched off the lamp and stretched himself out. Struggled with the covers until he was more or less under them. Closed his eyes determinedly.
The girl moved much slower, shocked at a joke, a trick that might at any unguarded moment reveal it's punchline. She climbed onto the opposite mattress, slipped under starched sheets. Twisted so she could see the man across the room, keep an eye on him. Watched his unmoving body for a long, long time, until her sleepy vision blurred and burned, and finally allowed her cheek to fall on the pillow of the first bed she'd ever used alone.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Hi there! Never thought I'd actually get this finished today, but here I am. Apple-shaped lolly pop gripped between my teeth, just finished watching House, new Hugh Jackman screen-saver and a chapter I'm satisfied with. It's been a good night.
This chapter is dedicated to nubeblanca, an incredible who sent me a picture based on this story. (I screamed at my computer for about fifteen-twenty minutes this morning. Happy dances galore.)I was shocked at how (more or less) it came to the image in my head. It's unbelievably unbelievable and if I haven't screwed up the link-thingy, you can see it here: https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=260bc8c228&view=att&th=12b98e08416e0430&attid=0.1&disp=inline&zw
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This chapter is dedicated to nubeblanca, an incredible who sent me a picture based on this story. (I screamed at my computer for about fifteen-twenty minutes this morning. Happy dances galore.)I was shocked at how (more or less) it came to the image in my head. It's unbelievably unbelievable and if I haven't screwed up the link-thingy, you can see it here: https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=260bc8c228&view=att&th=12b98e08416e0430&attid=0.1&disp=inline&zw
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Chapter End Notes:
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Hope ya'll enjoyed chapter twelve. If so, please feel free to tap that pretty little review button.
Thank you, again, all those who have left their feedback with me so far. It is you who enable me to get from chapter to chapter without any aneurysms of frustration.
Hope ya'll enjoyed chapter twelve. If so, please feel free to tap that pretty little review button.
Thank you, again, all those who have left their feedback with me so far. It is you who enable me to get from chapter to chapter without any aneurysms of frustration.