Snake Boy

~ Chapter Eleven ~

Logan really hated when Remus made sense.

The younger of the twins had cornered him during the lunch period the day before with what he dubbed an 'innocent question.'

There was no such thing with that boy. Logan highly doubted he understood the meaning of innocent at all.

"Fine. What do you want to know?" He'd snapped. "I swear if it is something lewd about myself, Dorrian, or some combination of the two, I absolutely will punch you. I don't care if I get detention for it."

Remus just grinned in that weird way he always did, then dropped the biggest bomb.

"Who do you think did that to Dorrian?"

Logan was dumbfounded. That wasn't at all what he had been expecting.

"Excuse me?"

"Aw c'mon, Logie-"

"Don't call me that."

"You think he was just born that way? It's genetically impossible in pretty much any capacity. Somebody out there's got an even sicker mind than I do, and I kinda applaud them for it."

He was right, of course, and it was kind of driving Logan insane.

"Mr. Sanders?"

Virgil's older brother looked up from his desk as the rest of Logan's AP Biology class filed out of the room. "What's up, Logan? Once your classmates are out you can call me Thomas."

Logan fiddled with his pen, screwing and unscrewing the back piece over and over. How should he word this? He couldn't just come out with it, even though he doubted Thomas would be upset with him for it.

"I have... a hypothetical query."

Thomas snorted and reached into a desk drawer for a pad of vibrant green slips of paper. "I'll write you a hall pass."

Logan managed a thin smile and leaned against the front of the student desk that was behind him. He was finding it very hard to keep his attention directly on Thomas.

"So what's this hypothetical question, Logan? Are we talking statistics, anomalies, what did you find?" Thomas slid the hall pass around the desk and leaned back in his chair. "I'll try to answer it as best as I can."

"I... well I suppose it could be considered an anomaly." Logan nodded to himself. "But it could possibly involve statistics as well. If there were a human that were to have certain... animalistic features, is there any probability that those features are genetic in any way?"

When he glanced up from his pen, Thomas was watching at him evenly.

"Perhaps a boy with half his body covered in scales?" 

Logan swallowed. "That would be an apt example, yes."

"There was no way for that boy to have been born that way, Logan. I could prove multiple ways that he had been experimented on, most likely as a very young child. Unfortunately, that circus seems to be very good at getting rid of people who try to call them out for their treatment of him."

"Okay." That confirmed what Remus had said at least. But it left Logan with more questions that he wasn't sure how to answer.

"How is he?"

He jumped and looked at Thomas again. "What?"

Thomas smiled a little. "I'm quicker than I might seem, Logan. The boy in the circus disappears after a break-in on the same night my little brother locks his bedroom door for the first time in years, then the local aspiring ophiologist asks a question that would directly pertain to the boy who disappeared. Dots weren't too hard to connect."

When Logan just stared at him, Thomas stood up and motioned to follow him.

They walked into his office and Thomas closed the door most of the way. "As long as we keep our voices down, there shouldn't be any problems. So how is he?"

"Healthier, now that he's eating decently." Logan admitted with a sigh of defeat. "He knows how to write, and how to sign. He's very smart, and he picked up a lot of things- as many as he could while he was stuck in that filthy cage anyway.

"I'm worried about him, Thomas." He looked up at his friend's brother. This was Thomas right now, not Mr. Sanders. "He can't live in my parents' basement with me forever, and I don't want to hide him in an apartment for his whole life either. He wants to be in the world, learn more things and meet people. I don't know what to do. I didn't think much farther than freeing him."

"Do your parents know?" Thomas asked quietly.

Logan shook his head. "I'm afraid to tell them... I may have committed a felony, I doubt they will be happy about it."

"Aww, your Pop would get it for sure. And I doubt your Dad will be mad at you." Thomas chuckled. "You should start by telling them. Then you have- I assume my brother and your other friends are behind you with this?"

"They helped me break him out."

"Right. So you'd have," Thomas counted on his fingers for a second. "Seven people on your side with it then."

Logan did a quick mental count, then nodded. "I suppose that would be correct... thank you, Thomas."

"No problem, kid."

He started to leave, but Thomas called after him a moment later. "Hey Logan?"

"Yes?"

"What's his name?"

Logan paused, then smiled a little bit. "His name is Dorrian. He picked it himself."

Thomas grinned. "It's a great name. I'd love to meet him sometime... and I'm not encouraging that you look into it, but there's probably a paper trail of some sort out there for him, if you search. He can't have just come from nowhere."

Logan nodded, taking the comment in. "I'll keep that in mind... have a nice day, Mr. Sanders."

Thomas chuckled and waved him off. "You too. Don't forget to take that hall pass."

Snagging the little paper off of Thomas's desk, Logan made his way to his next class. He handed the slip to his teacher and took his seat.

"Where were you?" Virgil whispered when he had a moment to lean over the aisle.

Logan quickly scribbled an answer on his notebook and showed it to him.

'Asked your brother about Dorrian... I've had this itch in my mind that he couldn't be like that naturally, and Remus was starting to poke at it too. I had to confirm that it wasn't normal.'

Virgil nodded and slouched in his seat. "I bet you could find out where he came from if you wanted to."

'That's what Thomas said too.'