Tracking Logan Foster

{6} My Heroine

I gave Logan all the space he needed, sitting on the other side of the cart as he took a deep breath and poured his heart out to me.

"I've never told anyone this," he began, remorse clouding his vision, "But no one has ever bothered to asked before."

After a few seconds of silence, he continued to tell me the whole story.

Logan's parents were going through financial struggles, figuring it was best to get divorced which in turn caused him to have behavioral issues. He got into so much trouble, increasing the stress of his parents and turned to alcohol as his saving grace.

During a particularly heavy drinking spree at the innocent age of thirteen, Logan's older brother, Justin, came home from college to find him passed out on the front lawn.

This is where, Logan says, things became blurry and the details as foggy as the mist covering the ground outside.

Justin had a domineering, possessive aura around him gained from graduating with a degree in business. He strode right up to Logan, yanked him off the ground by bleeding wrists, and repeatedly socked him in the jaw, screaming obscenities at him.

Justin blamed his younger brother for their parents' divorce and hated to even see his face. He had been about to throw one last punch when Logan had turned the blade he used to slit his wrists on Justin.

After that, Logan cannot remember a single thing until he is betrayed by everyone, thrown behind bars at the local juvenile detention. He had legally changed his name from Nicholas Levingston to Logan Foster in hopes that it would help him start his life over. It didn't.  

I hated to ask, but knew I had to.

"How could there have been a funeral if Justin was actually alive?" I voiced.

Logan's eyes hardened, growing darker with the night as he said, "There was no body. I was found passed out on our porch with his blood on me. They determined I must've buried him somewhere or thrown his body in the bottom of a lake. I couldn't deny it because I wasn't even sure if I was innocent."

I sucked in a harsh breath through clenched teeth at his story. Had he asked for my story, I would've told him about the times my parents took me to nature reserves, zoos, and to church.

Logan was right; I was naïve about the world around me. I was blinded by the goodness of my life to see that not everyone was as fortunate as I was, especially not Logan.

Not everything about his story was adding up, but there was nothing we could do about it. The only person who had the answers we were in need of had been hundreds of miles in the opposite direction.

"All we can do now is move forward," I said, watching the landscape flash by with each rotation of the wheels on the tracks.

"How?" His voice cracked as his head dropped into his hands. "How can I move on knowing my brother is alive when I thought I had killed him?"

I didn't know what to say to that, and kept my mouth shut.

"How can I move on knowing that my entire family hates me and split apart because of me?"

"You didn't kill your brother, though. You don't have to be ridden with guilt anymore-"

Logan's hand sliced through the air, silencing me as he cut me off, and he angrily ran his fingers through his hair. "Bullshit," he snapped, idly rubbing circles on his scarred wrists, "It's still all my fault that this has happened. And you know what?"

"What?" I just barely whispered.

He locked his eyes on mine and spoke with full honesty, "I wish I had killed him when I had the chance."

My back stiffened in his leather jacket I still wore, and my body temperature heated up.

"This isn't my life, Iris. I don't belong here. I've adopted this lifestyle of depression, fostering the pain and guilt that comes with killing someone, even if I know now that that's not the case. Nonetheless, where I belong is in Hell."

"Don't say that. Logan, you've done nothing wrong-"

Interrupting me again, he bellowed, "You don't know me! My only regret is not actually killing my brother. How can you justify that?"

I couldn't sum up an answer for him, and he took my silence as an answer, shaking his head. "You shouldn't be here with me. I'm stripping you of your innocence and you don't deserve that."

This was the one thing that I did not agree with what he had said. "No," I strongly refuted, "You've shown me a different world in which my fantasies don't exist. I cannot be ignorant my whole life."

He blew air through his nose in a snort. "See? You're already thinking like how I do. Thinking about killing someone is just as bad as actually killing them."

Logan pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one in the cramped space. Puffing out clouds of smoke, the cart was soon engulfed in the smoke, filling my nostrils as it burned all the way to my lungs.

Climbing to my feet, I reached a hand down to Logan. "Give me one," I heard myself say confidently.

Logan's eyebrows rose up his forehead, creating wrinkles as he gave me a strange look. Yet, without saying anything, he handed one to me.

Placing it between my fingers, I concentrated on Logan's hand to position it correctly as I sat down beside him. He passed me a lighter, and I fumbled as I tried to figure out how to make a flame.

"First time?" He remarked, knowingly.

I nodded. Logan dangled his cigarette between his lips as he took the lighter from me, twisted my fingers around my own cigarette until I was holding it correctly, and lit it for me.

He huffed out another plume of smoke as he pointed out, "My bad influence has rubbed off on you, yet you choose to think of it as a good thing."

"Don't worry about me," I said, staring at the cigarette between my fingers, "I won't become..." I trailed off before I could finish saying, become like you.

Nevertheless, Logan knew what I had been about to say and laughed humorlessly as his shoulder bumped into mine. He chose not to comment, instead continuing to fill his lungs with the ghost killer.

I did the same, hesitantly placing the cigarette in my mouth without a clue as to what to do next. Sucking in a breath like I had seen Logan do, smoke immediately wafted down my throat, causing me to choke.

I yanked the cigarette from my lips, hacking smoke induced coughs into my hand. Logan easily plucked the cigarette from my hand and flicked it over his shoulder where it sailed outside, landing in the snow to be put out instantaneously.

"That's enough," he said, patting my back. I froze from his voluntary contact and momentarily forgot about my coughing fit as I stared into his blackish eyes. Upon the realization of where his hand was, he pulled it back and uncomfortably tucked it in the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt.

A sense of courage, or even something else, flooded through my veins as my hand ventured into his pocket, wrapping around his much larger hand. I hadn't noticed just how cold my hands were until I felt Logan's fiery skin on mine.

He didn't make a move to hold my hand back, but also didn't try to slip out of my embrace as he stared at me with questioning eyes.

"We can do this," I whispered, correcting myself, "You can do this."

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