The S.P.E.

Chapter 1

The very first time we met, I hated him. And for a long time, that didn't really change. Logan Barry Bush, named by idiots, first made himself my enemy by stealing my ears. We were walking home by the steps and he got all up in my face for just being a kid. Like I was going to let some teenage jerk tell me what to do? I barely listened to my parents; I wasn't about to take his crap. But then, quicker than I realized, he snatched my ears right off my head.

To say that I didn't take it well would be an understatement. In the end, I had some biker gang friends threaten his ears with a knife. The most elegant or rational response? Probably not. But nobody has ever accused Louise Beatrice Belcher of elegance or rationality. The previous days I had stalked him, following his every movement, and despite my better judgement I found myself admiring his style. He certainly didn't care what people thought about him, not really. He pretended to act all cool, but in reality, he actually just was cool. He had a pet lizard named Godzilla. He had a pinball machine. He skateboarded. His parents didn't even care if he didn't come home for dinner, plus he didn't have a curfew! Nine-year-old me was impressed through my angry focus.

He returned my ears, of course. The biker threat accomplished that much. But this first meeting set the tone for the next twenty years of our relationship. In retrospect I realized that my biker friend Critter wasn't lying when he said that he wouldn't hurt Logan. And now that I'm older I'm glad he was so principled. At the time I thought he was just trying to cover his ass, sure that he actually would have hurt my bully. And if you had asked me back then if I wanted Logan hurt, the answer would have been an emphatic yes. It's best that the adults in my life knew how to deal with my specific brand of crazy. I was a vengeful little brat, that's for sure. And that didn't change for many years, either.

The second time I encountered Logan Bush, we were shanghaied into a mother bonding seminar by our overbearing moms. This time we, unfortunately, had to work together. It chafed me to have to give him props but he did have a few good ideas. It chafed even more to admit that my respect for his devious mind grew. My young brain didn't really find the whole "boy crush" thing acceptable, but had I known then what I know now, I would have been much more nervous at being locked in a closet with Logan. But, again, I was nine. At the time it was simply annoying.

We colluded to escape to the laser tag place next door. And the time we spent playing before it was crashed by our moms was the first hint of the type of friends we could be. Young as I was, I still knew that he was a good friend. I wasn't ready to let him, nor was he, but the potential was there. This was also the moment I learned his full name- Logan Barry Bush. The distinct joy I felt when I heard his full name called out still leaves a smile on my face. What were they thinking?!

The next time we spent any real time together was one of the worst times of my childhood. Dad let Cynthia Bush, Logan's succubus of a mother, con him into hiring Logan to work at the restaurant for a plot in the community garden. Dad spent a blissful twelve days planting vegetables and herbs and tending the soil, then coming home and waxing eloquently about the smell of the dirt and the color of the stalks until we were all ready to lock him outside. The worst part was that while he was out with his plants, he let Logan sit around my family's restaurant and shoot the shit with his friends and claim he was so overworked while his mother pounded away on her laptop, taking up table space and doing her son's homework. Dad wasn't having to listen to Cynthia order cup after cup of hot water for her tea or watch Logan's version of "mopping" which consisted of him pushing dirty water around the floor because he lived with maids his whole life and never learned how to do anything for himself. Dad was elsewhere, leaving me to deal with the consequences. Then Tina tried to teach Logan the ropes while Gene began to look up to Logan as a teenage role-model, even though he feared him a little, and my safe place was turned upside down. My siblings were just letting this happen. The only solace in that insanity was my mother. She, too, hated the Bush family, making her the only acceptable family member to talk to.

Gene went so far as to say the most heinous thing I thought I could ever hear when this all happened. He said Logan and I would meet again in twenty years and get married. Later that night I attempted to smother him in his sleep, but Dad caught me. He warned me to back off the murder attempts or I would regret it. The pressure became too much; It took another desperate act from me to get things back to normal.

I think it was around this point that I began to associate desperate measures and huge overreactions with Logan. When he was in my life I just had to go big or go home when it came to making people hear me. I'm never going to say my parents were at fault for how I turned out because they did their best to rein me in. They had two other kids and a struggling business, and I am a handful, still to this day. I'm smart enough and self-aware to know that I started walking down that road of making mistakes about Logan when I fired him. He was so pissed- Cynthia too- that the moment was so juicy sweet for nine-year-old me. The satisfaction I felt was a rush I hadn't yet felt. So, from thereon in, I treated Logan pretty terribly. Even when I didn't mean to, I somehow still treated him like crap.

For example, the next time we saw each other after I gleefully canned him from the restaurant was what has come to be known as "the cantaloupe incident." Gene and I had been left home alone while Tina was in detention and Mom and Dad had to go to their accountant's. We found the motherload of all disgusting things- a rotten cantaloupe- in the fridge and what else were two kids supposed to do with something like that except toss it down onto the street? Unfortunately for us, and him, Logan was just cutting down the back alley.

SPLAT.

The carnage was glorious. For a brief moment I felt remorse, but again that look of shock, disgust, and rage on Logan's smug face sent me into uproarious laughter. And then when he began to really attempt to scare us, my damn pride took over. I couldn't apologize and admit I had done wrong. It was all his fault for cutting down the alley, I told myself. He had no business being there anyway. Damn my pride. It got me into many scrapes before and after this event. In the end, Logan did his thing and hunted us down as we tried to escape his, rather justifiable if I can say so now, wrath. Then Gene took the fall for me, proving himself both a great protector and of the strongest stomachs. Logan left my life, for the most part, for the next two years. We saw each other around but gave each other a wide berth. He avoided our restaurant. I avoided the high school and his house. Any other places were free zones and we didn't make eye contact if we saw each other.

That worked until I was eleven and the night of the fire.