Willow

2

Logan lay on her bed with her knees bent, souls of her feet flat on the mattress. She clutched the silver cross necklace around her neck in her left hand. The necklace wasn't hers, it, like her wallet and her leather jacket, was her father's. It meant a lot to her, in spite of her lack of religious belief. How could she believe in someone who was supposed to love her but had made her life so miserable, taken away the one person who understood her? Her other hand held the small crumpled piece of paper with the phone number on it. Logan's black cat, Jinx, lay curled up on her side, eyes closed, paws and tail tucked neatly under her body, radiating her warmth onto her owner's bones, purring softly. Her laptop was open on the bed beside her, a photograph of Taylor Swift on the screen.

Logan didn't understand why this blonde girl was stuck in her head. No one had ever gotten under her skin like this before after only one conversation. She hadn't cared enough about other people for this to happen. It puzzled her. She was supposed to be working on an essay on Charles Dickens' writing for a class in college but she couldn't focus. It wasn't that Charles Dickens' work and writing style wasn't fascinating, it was, Logan just preferred other authors like Toni Morrison, George Orwell and L.P. Hartley and she had made it her life's goal to read all of their work before she died. But in that moment with her essay, her mind kept wandering to the blonde girl that had returned her wallet which now sat on her bedside table next to her lamp and a glass of water. She'd been trying to write the end of her essay for nearly four hours, so long that the sun had now set, heavy rain falling from the clouds that had formed, battering off her window, and Logan sat in the darkness of her bedroom with the screen of her laptop illuminating her face.

Logan's room was pretty basic. Mismatched furniture, a metal framed bed with an old uncomfortable mattress, chest of plastic see through drawers, giving anyone who entered a look at her underwear, and a desk in the corner of the room where her school things were strewn across the wooden surface. The swivel office chair beside the desk was uncomfortable and it squeaked when she moved on it, her fathers jacket hanging over the back of it. The floor was cold laminate wood and Logan always wore socks to stop her feet from freezing, especially in the winter when the heating tended to break down. The walls were pretty plain, white painted with only a single poster of Logan's favourite band Paramore - if you weren't a fan, you wouldn't know it was them, the poster was the cover for their single 'Monster' from the Transformers: Dark of the Moon Movie, which Logan hadn't seen, she wasn't really a movie person - right slap bang in the centre of the wall on the door side, directly across from the small window which barely opened and looked out onto a brick wall. Not much of a view. Logan didn't mind, she didn't really have time to look out of the window, not with all of her college work she had to do, and yet, here she was, unable to focus on her work because of someone she barely knew.

The redhead could hear her roommate, Byron, playing old rock music from the sixties in the living room and could smell his weed in her room despite the fresh air coming in from her open window and her closed bedroom door. The smell made her head hurt and reminded her of her older brother, Max, someone she didn't want to think about. She focused her eyes on the photograph of Taylor on her computer screen, blocking out the noise and smell. The hand that held the piece of paper travelled to her forehead and she traced the fading red mark on her forehead, the red mark left by the blonde singer.

Logan lowered her hand and studied the phone number before reaching out for her phone. She unlocked the old blackberry and began to type in the number, hesitating for a moment as she stared at the digits on the screen. She hit the dial button and lifted the phone to her ear. It rang once, twice, three times before Taylor's voice filled her ears.

"Hey, you've reached Taylor, I can't come to the phone right now, but you can leave a message after the beep and I'll get back to you."

The beep followed and Logan's eyes went wide. She ended the call and threw the phone away as though it was heating up and about to burst into flames. It landed on the mattress beside her foot. Eyes wide, heart pounding in her ears, Logan stared at the phone as thought it was some cursed object, whipping her foot away. Her mouth felt dry and her palms were sweating. She didn't understand this sudden rush of anxiety that had washed over her.