Rules for Orion

chapter fourteen

Fourteen: Avery
September 2, 11:30 PM. Dwyer, VA.

My phone is pressed to my ear, papers spread under my knees and palms and all around me.
"Is this the idiot or the bitch?" I ask.
"Idiot." Logan's voice is crackly; it is storming and the cell signal is heinous.
"Mm."
"I just don't get how he got a degree," Logan says.
"He is--I think--the young one?"
"That doesn't excuse not knowing his shit. Like, he just spouts bull all the time. And I don't know how no one notices--I notice! Devi notices! I just--God, he's awful."
Logan started school on August thirtieth. I know he hates it, but I think I had underestimated just how much. Within four days, he has formed very strong opinions on all of teachers but dislikes two in particular. He has called me to talk about it, I assume, because his friends have grown sick of his complaining. I do not mind, though. I like listening to--hearing, at least--him when I am working. Kyara is hardly ever here, and Logan's voice makes the whole theater seem less empty.
Kyara is supposed to be here tonight, actually. I think she might be late.
"...Avery?"
"Yes? Yes, sorry. Working. Double-tasking. Sorry."
"S'okay." Logan is quiet for a few seconds. "What on?"
"Things."
"Can't say?"
I look down at the papers I am trying to line up under my limbs. It is a massive map of Dwyer and the surrounding areas that I have made--well, not exactly massive, but it is an overly-large map for such an overly-small town. It is divided into quarter-mile by quarter-mile squares. The math alone took me ages. The squares I have combed are crossed out. It is not many.
The other papers I have stacked up are theories and plans for how to procure and control the manuscript. My employers have failed to tell me the nature of this manuscript and what I will need to be able to take it with me--maybe it only complies 'to the worthy' or something. So I have been looking into it, and what kind of things I should be prepared for.
None of this would make sense to Logan. He would probably think I am absolutely insane.
"Can't say."
Logan sighs. "Right."
Silence.
"What did you do today," I ask, "besides hate your teachers in silence?"
Logan takes a few seconds to think of his reply. "I got my first English project assigned."
I have put a disposable tape dispenser in my mouth. I spit it out after ripping off a bit of tape. "Do tell."
Logan laughs as he says, "You'll never guess what it's on."
"I probably will not."
"Try, try."
"Huh." I crawl around the corner of the map. Slowly but steadily, it is coming together. "The Parisian catacombs?"
"Nope," Logan says. I do not mind that he did not catch my sarcasm. He continues, "Last year we read the Odyssey. We're picking up with it again."
"Ha."
"I was thinking of doing something on the sirens."
"Do not. Awful creatures. Worst part of the book."
He laughs. "What do you have against them?"
"What good is my secret vendetta if I tell you?"
Logan is still laughing, although I suspect not at my last sentence, and I feel myself smile.
Conversation dies down after a minute or so, but we both stay on the line. I keep taping the map. I do not know what Logan is doing.
"You should come over tomorrow," he says. "After school."
"No one will be there to accuse us of fornication?"
"I don't think so."
"Well, then," I say, and switch a paper around. It still does not fit with the rest. I do it again. "...Consider me booked." I heard that phrase in a television advert at a gas station.
"Who are you talking to?"
"Who was that?"
"No one," I say to Kyara. To Logan: "Odysseus. Have to go."
I hang up, and Kyara is standing at the edge of my sea of papers. I do not know how she got in without me hearing. Maybe I just was not paying attention. Maybe she is too precise for me to notice.
"Seriously," she says, and sits down. "Who were you talking to?"
I stare at her for a few seconds and say again, "No one."
"Aedui."
"I do not have to tell you."
Kyara looks incredibly annoyed. "Fair enough. Is it the boy from the café?"
Gods-curse, she is good. "Maybe."
She gives me one of those sarcastic hmph smiles and directs her attention to my papers, surveying them until her gaze stops on one. She wrinkles her nose and leans over to adjust it--it is the one I could not get right. She studies it for a few seconds before twisting it. It fits perfectly.

I am caught between looking at all the parts of Logan's house I have never seen before and paying attention to Logan himself. He smells heavily of chemicals when he opens the front door; his hair and sections of his shirt are wet.
It is actually later than I have known him to get out of school. Almost seven. But I think he has just gotten home.
He shuts the door behind me. I ask him what smells of poison.
"Chlorine," he says. "I need to take a shower." I stare. He elaborates: "Since school started, my swim schedule's different."
I am still staring. He says, " 'Cause of--because of the team."
I make myself stop staring, because if I still do not understand it will be strange.
Every room in Logan's house is small--the house itself is only half a house, really, sliced vertically--aside from the kitchen. Someone in this house massively appreciates the culinary arts, as the entire room is also spotless. It contains an island onto which Logan pulls himself to sit. I take a seat in one of the dining table's chairs.
Logan is looking at me. Looking at me and looking at me and looking at me. He stops and slides off the counter. "I still need to take a shower."
"Someone always has to."

I am looking up at the ceiling in Logan's living room. There is a light fixture up there, a big disc-shaped sun, spiderwebbed in floral spirals. If I stare at it for long enough and close my eyes, the shapes are burnt into my eyelids in bright blue-green.
The carpet underneath my body is soft and smells of chemical citrus and paper.
Logan's steps are light on the stairs; he stops on the landing. There is around twenty seconds between when he stops and when I look up at him.
"I'm gonna be honest," he says.
I look back at the light fixture. I think I might be hurting my eyes. I swallow. "As one should."
"I just wanted to say--since no one can ever really tell, I guess--I like you."
"You would not stay around me otherwise."
"No, I mean"--he stops, I assume he realizes I am teasing, and says--"you know what I mean. But--no one ever realizes with me. So I just--figured. Yeah."
And I am laughing, and laughing, and laughing, because he is just making this more difficult.
Logan laughs, too, but almost uncomfortably.
He stalls for a second more, then another, and another. He finishes coming down the stairs. He sits down on the carpet next to me. I can glance out of my peripherals and barely see his shoulder, a blurry outline of him.
I do not want to say anything, but I have to.
I would just like to establish, before I reveal what I said and you lose the little amount of respect you might have held for me, that I am seventeen. I know in the back of my mind that I am just lighting up with the idea of humanity and Logan and me, Avery, the human. Avery, the boy.
"It is mutual," I say, and instantly regret it.
I regret it.
I do not regret it, not at all.
I do not know.
I would say I only half-hate myself for it, but it is less like I am split in half and more like I have two Averys inhabiting me--or maybe, probably, one Avery and one Aedui.
Avery goes over what was just said and notices how close Logan is to me. Aedui asks me what in the gods' names I think I am doing.