Old Orchard

Carla

"Ready?" I ask Annabelle while she buckles her seat belt, picks Frasier up off the pavement, and puts him in her lap. I had been objecting all morning of her bringing him with us. Since bringing him back from Maine, he had been attached to her side. I think Annabelle was worried that Frasier would not be home when we came back from Maine if she left him.

"Yes," she says, sliding on her sunglasses while I put the car into drive.

The drive was approximately 24 hours, but we would be stopping at a few hotels along the way, so it would not be such a trek. We loaded up my RAV4 since it was bigger than Annabelle's Camry. My dad always jokes around with us since we all have Toyota vehicles that we could be on one of those commercials where each of us shows which Toyota model we like best and matches us better.

"Are you pretty excited about the Broadway show?" She asks me after I pull out of the driveway.

"To be honest, I am just excited we will be able to see New York City," I say with some excitement. It has been nice lately looking forward to seeing New York City. My Grams would always say how amazing NYC was. I would start imagining it during my free time, and it did help occupy my thoughts from Logan. This has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl. I had been dreaming of NYC since I was ten.

Ending up in Tinley Park, Illinois, we decide to grab a bite around dinner time. We are able to sit outside at a local wing's joint while Frasier is tied up next to us.

Annabelle looks like a nervous wreck when she has to put him on his leash ten feet away from us. "Why can't we just get fast food?" She whines while walking over to the patio outside of the restaurant. My sister was known for falling hard for different things. Frasier was one of them. Ever since we had been little girls, my sister would ask if we could get a dog every year. Always asking on our birthdays, and my parents had never caved. She still did not realize by our seventeenth birthday that they would say no. She asked if we could adopt the mastiff at our local humane shelter. "Good luck," I said, chuckling at her knowing the final answer would be no like all the times in the past.

I click my iPhone off as our waiter comes up to the table, "I'm Joe, and I will be your server tonight. Is there anything I can get you guys to drink?"

Not even thinking, I tell Joe I want a screwdriver, orange juice, and vodka.

I glance at Annabelle, who looks as she may have a minor stroke, and I know her mind must be running wild. She was the one who did the high school party scene while she tried to drag me along to them. Every time I would say no, I knew a designated driver was all she wanted.

"Can I see some ID?" Joe says, smirking; he thinks he is calling my bluff. I slip him my ID, and he smiles at me, saying, "April Jensen, nice to meet you." He looks over at Annabelle, who still looks confused but regains her thoughts quickly and tells him she will just have water. Before I can grab my ID, she picks it up, and she inspects it looking up at letting me know she wants details.

"Don't act so surprised by this," I say, getting annoyed by her.

"How and when?" is all she says, shaking her head.

"Well, you know how I was tutoring?" She shakes her head since I have been tutoring students since Freshman year. "I ended up being paired with Logan, and he got me one."

"Logan, as in I'm too cool, and I smoke weed and pot? That Logan," she asks with a sneer. Logan had been a new student at the end of our junior year, and rumors of why he came to our school were that he got kicked out of his old school for fighting and weed possession. Of course, my sister would just believe these rumors instead of finding out for herself that these were all false.

"Yes, that Logan - he does not smoke weed or pot; he moved to our school because his dad died, and his mom wanted to move and be closer to her parents," I say. I know my voice is taking on defending him even though I should not be defending him. He is not mine anymore to defend. I should be mad and want to say horrible things about him, but that night when he changed everything – there was something there in his eyes. It was like his eyes were void of any feelings, and it was not what I was used to when it came to Logan's eyes. He sometimes had this tortured soul thing going on or enlightenment, but he was never void of emotions. Never like that last night we had our last conversation.

"Have you guys hung out or something?" she asks me while playing with the salt shaker on the table. When she looks at me, she is looking at me entirely differently. Like she is seeing me for the first time, and it feels incredible for once, being the one that surprised my sister. I had wanted to tell Annabelle everything the past few months about him but never did and eventually started to push my sister away from me.

"I tutored him. We went to a few movies together and a concert." I shrugged, acting like it was not a big deal even though most of my senior year weekends were spent with him. This news does not bode well with my sister since she says what three times, adding euphemism on the last one. Getting more annoyed, I say, "Good grief, Annabelle, I do not need to run everything by you! We barely talked during the last year of school, so of course, this is all surprising for you."

When her silence sinks in, all I can do is think about Logan and how I had thought he had been my one and only. I had never been much for romance and hated all romance movies and novels. On the other hand, my sister adored any romance novel, show, or film. If it had romance in it, my sister was a fan. Since the start of high school, her favorite author had been the one and only Nicholas Sparks – there was always romance no matter who or what died. My sister had cried over many of his books, but the most remembered one was when the woman's Great Dane was killed. A few months after Shooter, Craig's dog had died, she had read this book. "Why would he do that?" my sister screamed from her room, which was followed by a thud a few seconds later.

Running across the hall, I had found my sister sitting in her reading sack and her newest Nicholas Spark's book on the opposite side of the room, leaning up on the wall. "What was that?" I ask, already knowing the thud I heard was her book hitting the wall.

"How could he kill him?" She asked and burst into tears. Mumbling through tears, she lets me know the storyline which after I sit for a few seconds, realizing that she is crying over a book. I walk back to my room. My room had my bookshelves lined with high school textbooks and multiple ACT practice books, not shelves lined with nonsense romance books. My sister the following day swore left and right that she would never read another one of his books, just like the book before. She broke down a few months later and bought his next book.

She finished another one of his on the way to Illinois that had the storyline of where the main character's high school sweetheart dies, and his heart is given to her son, which ends up saving his life. His books can be morbid, but he attracts the readers somehow or another.

My text tone goes off as I glance down. I hope it is Logan texting me, but I know it will not be.