“Just wanted to let you know things didn’t work out with my job,” Logan said, “so I’m looking for a new one. I stopped over at the library to get some help with my resume, but I’ll be around all week. If I get lucky, I might need to leave at some point for an interview. If that happens, Ashleigh will be in charge until I get back.”
Tyler nodded and kept playing.
Logan knew his brother was paying attention. Tyler had so much musical talent that he could play guitar while carrying on a conversation without missing a note. Although world-class musicians hadn’t examined Tyler’s abilities, Logan presumed that his brother’s aptitude to hear musical notes and play them perfectly ten minutes later qualified him as a prodigy.
Of course, Tyler’s grades suffered as he barely passed his classes, since they couldn’t sustain his attention. His total disinterest in educational endeavors and a low-key response to teachers that attempted to engage him intellectually earned him many friends, although he rarely hung out with them after school since his musical endeavors captivated him.
Logan admired his brother’s dedication to his passion, but he worried that Tyler’s intellectual and social skills would set him back when it came to dealing with life outside of his musical aspirations. For that reason, Logan helped Tyler with his homework every day. Keeping him engaged was excruciating and exhausting, but Logan couldn’t bear to let his brother fail in everything but music, so he took the time and energy needed to ensure that Tyler wouldn’t one day become a recluse with no ability to care for himself.
“Did you eat dinner?” Logan asked.
“Yep.” Tyler nodded at the paper plate on the floor that held a banana peel, an apple core, a couple of baby carrots, the stalks of broccoli and cauliflower, a handful of almonds, and a container of yogurt. A couple of days ago, he explained that he needed such a healthy dose of food to “help his brain muscles grow.”
“All right, carry on, private,” Logan said, saluting his brother because Tyler had discussed potentially going into the armed forces when he turned eighteen. “Bedtime in an hour.”
“Whatevs.”
Logan felt in his jeans pocket for his phone, only to recall that he’d left it in the inner pocket of his winter coat. He went down the stairs, retrieved it, and poked his head into the kitchen. “Bedtime in an hour.”
Ashleigh slammed her pencil on the table and gave him an annoyed glare. “I’m not four.”
“Oh, yeah,” Logan said, acting dumbfounded. “Forgot about that.” It now occurred to him that he always responded to her negativity by trying to aggravate her. It was childish. But it truly hurt when she attacked him, and he didn’t want to become a doormat and unintentionally persuade her to lose respect for him.
“You’re such a dork,” she said, returning to her homework.
“Make sure you eat, okay?” he said in a serious tone.
Ashleigh grabbed a fork, stabbed the burrito, lifted it off her plate, and led it to her mouth. She took a bite, looked up at him with a droll expression, and in a muffled voice, she said, “Satisfied?”
Logan gave her a thumbs up and went into the family room to make sure his siblings hadn’t left any lights or the flat screen on, and thankfully, they hadn’t. The fireplace, with four red stockings, was set between a black leather sofa on one side and a loveseat and recliner on the other. The fiber optic Christmas tree was decked out with way too many ornaments. Logan would have preferred to remove some, but the entire family worked on it, and he liked the memory and meaning behind it. He turned around and headed back to the kitchen.
Just before he exited it, he said to Ashleigh, “Love you,” and started for the stairs again.
“Hate you,” she responded.
But Logan heard the smile in her voice, and that tiny shred of fondness made all the difference to him. When it came to his siblings, he didn’t expect hugs or any grand gestures. He just needed to know they liked and appreciated him. Experience had taught Logan that in most cases, when it came to hormonal changes and peer pressure, the teenage years were worse for girls than guys. For that reason, he cut her a lot of slack, way more than he’d let Tyler get away with, but still not enough to let her disrespect him, that is, when they weren’t being sarcastic.
When he reached the top floor, the streetlamp shined through Tyler’s windows, spread across his room, and splayed across the hallway. Logan passed through it, went into his room, and shut the door on a cramped yet comfortable refuge from family life.
He’d set up an old-school tube television on a stand against the wall beside his work desk, where he kept his desktop computer and wooden chair with a seat cushion. Otherwise, there was barely enough room on the floor beside his skimpy closet to fit his iron plates, dumbbells, and the curling bar he used to lift weights, but not much else.
He lay onto his bed, pulled out his phone, and checked his email. None of the employers he’d contacted earlier had gotten back to him. No phone calls either. It might take some time to hear back from them.
With nothing else on the job front, Logan’s thoughts turned to Eloise. He wished he’d gotten her number or email address. He lambasted himself over the mistake. She was way too interesting to forget about.
In high school, Eloise had helped an awkward student who got embarrassed because he had no idea how to approach a lab assignment in biology class. She’d told off the star cheerleader in school because she’d heckled someone who wore the same clothes twice in the same week. When the popular girl turned her verbal onslaught onto Eloise, the latter just laughed at her and then walked away with her head held high. There were a handful of other stories about her that made Logan find her intriguing as hell, and…
Logan happened to glance at his door and saw a shadow of two feet standing outside it.
But he hadn’t heard either Ashleigh or Tyler make their way across the warped floorboard. He now recalled both of them saying goodnight to him – he checked his phone – twenty minutes ago.
“Something wrong?” he asked, unsure which of his siblings stood there.
There was no answer.
As a horror film fanatic, Tyler liked to mimic the scary scenes from those creepy movies, a genre that Logan didn’t particularly enjoy. His little brother had probably taken the opportunity to put a fright into him. “You’re hysterical, Tyler. Go to bed.”
The shadow didn’t move.
With a sigh, Logan hopped off his bed, annoyed that his brother goofed around this late. He wasn’t too concerned that his siblings stayed up late, he just wanted them both in their rooms, so he wouldn’t have to worry about them.
Logan opened the door and looked into the hallway.
It was empty.
If Tyler or Ashleigh had stood behind his door, the slightest amount of pressure on the ground would have caused it to groan. Only it hadn’t. Besides, Tyler wouldn’t have had enough time to turn, bolt into his room, and scuttle across his bedroom floor without Logan hearing his feet pounding against the ground.
The same could be said of Ashleigh, if she’d been the one trying to pull one on him. After all, the wooden flooring was squeaky in many places on both floors as well as the staircase.
Logan stood in the hall and listened. He didn’t hear a sound. Usually, Tyler, too impatient to let a joke play out, would have already begun laughing. Not this time. Logan presumed his mind had been playing tricks on him, so he went back into his room and shut the door.
He got back to his bed and stretched out. His gaze veered back to the door.
The shadow stood in the same exact spot.
Without warning, to give the joker no time to dart away from the door, Logan shot up from his bed, lunged across the room, and whipped open the door. No more than three seconds had passed since he’d jumped off his bed.
No one was there.
2
Unsure how either of his siblings had managed to stand in front of his door one moment and dash back into their bedrooms without eliciting a sound, Log
an smiled as he concluded that Tyler had somehow moved swiftly enough not to make a noise. Then he realized where his brother must have hidden. He pivoted and opened the closet door.
He stared at four shelves filled with toiletries for the entire family.
Puzzled, Logan rotated and looked into Tyler’s room, but his brother wasn’t inside it, so he stepped in the spots that wouldn’t resonate as though avoiding landmines instead of the squeaky flooring and crossed the hall. When he reached the spot outside Ashleigh’s room, he glanced in before retracting his head again so they couldn’t see them.
Ashleigh lay on her bed flipping through a magazine and chewing gum while Tyler sat on the ground across from her, scrolling through her phone.
“You better not be looking at anything bad,” said Ashleigh.
“I’m looking at cats. You know, in case we get one.”
“We’re not going to get a cat,” she said.
“Why not?” Tyler asked.
“Can’t afford it.”
“Why not?”
“Not enough money.”
“Why not?”
“Ashleigh let out a loud sigh. “If you’re going to be a dick, gimme my phone back.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve got a dick, so how can I be a dick? That’s like, what do you call it, you’re bullying me because I’m a man.”
“It’s called sexism, but I wasn’t being sexist. Besides, you’re a boy, not a man.”
“And you’re my older sister. You’re supposed to stick up for me, not call me a dick.”
“Screw you,” she said with the sound of laughter in her voice.
“Ewww. That’s really gross, Ash. Isn’t that against the law? Besides, won’t God kill you if you do stuff He put in the Ten Commandments?”
“You’re damn right it’s gross, but wait, is incest one of the Ten Commandments? That would be weird, but pretty appropriate. Quick, gimme my phone.” A second later: “Aw shit.” Her voice was strained, as if she were breathing through her mouth. “Did you just squeeze one out?”
Tyler giggled. “Farts are fun.”
“They’re so not funny. There’s nothing funny about something that smells like you laid a thick one on the floor.”
From around the door, Logan stuffed his mouth into the crook of his elbow to avoid laughing and alerting them to his presence. Since they hadn’t mentioned pranking him, Logan figured they probably gave up on getting a rise out of him. He rarely eavesdropped on them, but if their conversations were similar to this one, he might decide to do it more often. He decided to stick around to learn what else they talked about in private. Since they had tried to scare him, Logan didn’t feel the least bit bad for listening in.
“If you’re going to hit the room with your personal brand of perfume,” Ashleigh said, “do it in your own bedroom.” The sound of spray splitting the air revealed that Ashleigh had hit the trigger on a can of air freshener.
“It’s cologne, not perfume. Besides, farts are my best friends. Sort of like this one.” A noise reminiscent of someone undoing the zipper on their jeans reverberated through the room until there was a crack like someone snapped both ends of a belt.
Bedsprings bounced. “Do it again, Ty. Go ahead, do it, and I swear, I’ll—”
“They’re not as gross as your badge.”
“Huh?”
“Your badge. The one the blood spurts out of. Donnie Wexler said his sister bleeds from her badge like she cut herself and the blood keeps drip-drip-dripping, and you can’t stop it unless you stick a towel up there to soak it all up. But you better not use our bath towels. That would be really sick.”
“It’s not a towel, Ty,” she said in an understanding, even gentle tone. “We use something called a tampon. And it’s not a badge. Your friend, Donnie, meant to call it a vadge, which is slang for vagina.”
Logan smiled as his sister calmly told Tyler all about it without sounding awkward. For all her cussing and attitude, he was really proud of her to not admonish their little brother but teach him something their mother would have otherwise handled. He didn’t enjoy it when Ashleigh got bitchy with him, but if she treated their younger brother with that much thoughtfulness, Tyler might grow up reasonably well-adjusted, and Logan couldn’t ask for much more than that.
“But aren’t you jealous?” asked Tyler. “That you can’t fiddle with it? Or do you? Do you put stuff in there?”
“Only if I was a drug dealer.” She chuckled. “And I’m not, so don’t ask.”
“Well,” he said, “I’m trying to grow my you know what to become a real man.”
“How’s that going for you?”
“Not great. I’m talking to it, you know, stuff like, ‘Hey, little man, wake up. Get big!’”
“That’s not exactly how it works, Ty.”
“I’ve tried lifting Logan’s weights. Nope, doesn’t work. They say milk’s good for that sort of thing, to make you grow, but nope, it’s not working either.”
“You know what works best?” she asked. “Let nature do it for you. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to. And you won’t even have to think about it.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” The floor squeaked as Tyler got to his feet. “Thanks, Ash.”
“You bet, Ty. Goodnight.”
“Night.” His brother’s footsteps started toward the hall.
Logan spun around, touched down on each spot of the flooring that didn’t creak, and hurried back to his room without a sound. He shut the door again, returned to his bed, and spun back around to stare at the space under the door.
Two dark shadows, belonging to Tyler’s legs as he made his way into his bedroom, flashed and then vanished. A few seconds later, the light in the hallway disappeared as the curtains in his bedroom slid along its rod and shut together, blocking the streetlight from entering the house.
So if Tyler hadn’t been messing with him, Logan assumed that the streetlight had shined onto something in Tyler’s room that appeared outside of his door as two feet. But that didn’t seem to make much sense. The shadow would have had to curl around the corner. But with no other explanation, Logan had to presume that he’d hit upon the right explanation.
Relieved that he wouldn’t have another disruption before he shut his eyes for the night, Logan got back in bed and snapped his lids shut. But he couldn’t stop avoiding the truth: he didn’t have a job. He hadn’t loved his position at the pizza joint. It fulfilled its purpose. It gave him cash to pay for gas, insurance, and maintenance on his truck, as well as clothes, snacks, some personal hygiene items, and his entertainment needs. All told, he got more self-satisfaction from being employed than actually doing the job, but working also helped pay some of his tuition and school books at Southern Illinois University, where he took online courses and hoped to eventually earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture.
He’d gotten interested in that career path while taking an intro course during freshman year in high school and since then spent a lot of his free time coming up with new designs of homes that wouldn’t inhibit overall cost for those on a limited income since he lived that lifestyle. He’d even recently begun visiting restaurants as well as small shops and stores in hopes of widening his horizons, since not every entrepreneur could afford a spacious business environment.
Right now, he needed to focus on the present, not the future, which led him to think about his responsibility over the upcoming week: keeping an eye on his siblings. If their daily life on an ordinary basis served as a precursor of what to expect, he could look forward to shouting matches, silent treatments, sarcasm, apologies, laughter, and maybe even a deep conversation or two. Hopefully, the next seven days wouldn’t sway from those parameters.
On second thought, now that Ashleigh and Tyler were on winter break, they’d be around more often, which might add up to twice as much drama as during a regular school week. Logan decided not to let that get to him and instead promised to listen to his siblings and be as fair as possible.
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br /> In the hallway right outside his bedroom door, the floorboards squeaked.
Logan examined the spot under his door. As he expected, there weren’t any shadows. In other words, Tyler must’ve gone to the bathroom.
The same spot squealed again like someone had been standing one-legged, only to place their other foot on the ground. Maybe Tyler hadn’t visited the bathroom. Maybe he planned to drive Logan nuts by standing outside his bedroom and making the floor whine every few seconds.
Logan grinned at his brother’s sneakiness, but he didn’t plan to give Tyler any extra attention. Otherwise, he might get drawn into a tricky conversation like the one Ashleigh had handled admirably a short while ago. With enough time by himself, Tyler would get the idea that he couldn’t persuade Logan to get up and chat, so he’d inevitably return to bed.
Logan’s phone chirped, alerting him to a new voicemail. It seems he’d forgotten to unmute it after leaving the library. He played the message.
“Why did you leave before I had a chance to talk with you this morning?” asked his mother, her voice coming quickly in an accusatory tone. “I told you it was imperative that we talk before I left.”
Not important. Imperative. Logan’s shoulders clenched at the urgency in her tone. He pressed pause on the screen. He recalled her wanting to speak with him, and yes, she seemed more than a little determined, but not shaken up. His mother never exuded the least bit of desperation. He supposed it stemmed from a need to act like she was in control of everything, so that her children had nothing to worry about. But her words belied that assumption. Logan felt bad for forgetting and letting her down. He returned his attention to the phone.
“I’ve tried calling you a few times on my way to the airport.” She took in a heap of air and exhaled loudly. “I left my phone in my luggage and only retrieved it now that I’m on the ship. I already told you it’s difficult to talk while we’re on this cruise, so I’m really disappointed that you hadn’t taken this more seriously.”
Once more, Logan’s nerves dug into his skin, making him feel antsy. He hated letting his mother down. She had enough to worry about, especially since he’d overlooked the priority she seemed to place on them talking before she left. Of course, he understood why.
The Descendants Page 2
