- 25 -

4.4K 213 183
                                    

Logan was quiet. It was usual that he stayed relatively calm and silent most of the time, but he was feeling unusually quiet -- and unusually pensive. He kept thinking and thinking, unsure of many truths he had previously held to be certain.

It started on the walk back to his house from Patton's on Monday. He held the tupperware containing his ration of the cookies under his arm, balanced between his hip and the crook of his elbow. Logan had nearly made it to his front door when an impulsive urge within him caused him to whip around and continue down the street.

Logan wasn't sure exactly where he was going -- he hadn't gone all the way down the street since he was a kid, for it was a dead end. He only had a foggy memory of what was down there: some sort of empty plot of grass and a number of trees.

Logan arrived at the end of the street, which was similar to how he remembered it. It ended abruptly, the old asphalt trailing off into dirt that halted in front of a thick hedge. There were thinner portions of the hedge, like thinning hair, that Logan easily could have squeezed through as a small child. Now, however it took some struggling. Logan must have really been feeling strange, for outdoor activities -- especially those involving clambering -- were generally not his thing.

The narrow passages in the hedge led out onto a shaded lawn with patchy grass. A canopy of overgrown trees, crammed together in the small fenced-in back space, created a wild-looking, almost mystical clearing. Logan saw a familiar makeshift swing hanging from the thick olive tree and nostalgia slammed down on him like a wave. Memories came flooding back; even the clearing smelled like his childhood.

Without a thought, Logan wandered to the wooden swing and sat down. He did not speak and the trees around him did not speak either. The day itself was silent too.

Logan thought about when he was a kid. He was so naïve and powerless. Maybe he came back to that swing because he recognized the same feelings in himself again. He felt powerless, out of control of himself, and definitely naïve -- like he was somehow going to make a stupid mistake.

He was quiet because world was quiet. The world was quiet without Patton. Never had Logan been so confused by silence.

Logan liked to think that the actions and words of others did not affect him -- and this was surprisingly true most of the time. However, Patton's confusing display of hesitation earlier that day -- his rushed choice to ignore something he had previously thought to tell Logan -- was... bothersome. Logan couldn't stop thinking about it. What had he wanted to say -- and why had he stopped himself? But it wasn't a question he could just answer for himself. It was a feeling of confusion and... something else. He felt sort of bad, like he wasn't a part of his own world anymore.

Logan sat on that swing for a long time, just in silence, feeling that feeling. Normally he would have distracted himself from his emotions but he didn't this time. Maybe it was because they were influencing him too much lately and he wanted to know why. One of the most knowledgeable kids in the entire school -- maybe even the entire town -- knew next to nothing about emotions. And that made him feel incompetent.

Logan didn't quite know the first step towards figuring himself out. He would have asked Patton but that option was out. So he was forced to try deducing things by himself.

At first, Logan thought he was offended and off-put by Patton's resistance because he felt himself to be superior to Patton. Logan had noted and been told by others that he tended to be a bit pretentious; with the amount of knowledge and skill he had, it was easy to feel that other people were inferior. However, the more Logan thought about it, the easier he ruled the possibility out. When Logan thought about Patton, he didn't picture an immature, unintelligent classmate; he pictured a unique and equally-knowledgeable individual -- one that, in many ways, was actually superior to Logan.

Chemistry - A Sander's Sides FanfictionWhere stories live. Discover now