Page 10 of Logan

It hadn’t really been a decision. After getting away from the traffickers that had held me for four years, I took what little money I’d managed to squirrel away and bought a bus ticket for as far away as possible. My money had run out at San Francisco, and I’d never bothered to leave since then.

So, yeah, not really a decision, but I liked to think of it that way.

My hair had mostly dried in the California heat by the time I opened the door to my apartment. I shared the space with three other roommates who I rarely saw. The apartment technically only had two bedrooms, but plywood walls had been positioned down the middle of each bedroom to turn it into four spaces. I wasn’t lucky enough to get one of the spaces connected to a door, so I had to first tiptoe through my literal roommate’s space until I reached my own.

On the other side of the plywood wall, there was just enough space for a mattress, a few milk crates I’d stacked into a makeshift shelf, and a clothing rack that I’d stolen from the dumpster behind a clothing store.

The shit hole cost me way more than it was worth, but it was better than being homeless, and the ‘landlord’ didn’t ask questions so long as rent was paid on time.

Changing out of my clothes and into an old but clean pair of shorts and a T-shirt that I used for sleeping, I collapsed onto my bed. I was exhausted, but I was too twitchy to sleep. It had been a slow week before tonight, and I’d had too much time to think. Thinking meant remembering, which I didn’t want to do. If there was a way to open up my brain and scoop out all my memories from my skull like it was a pint of ice scream, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, such a procedure hadn’t been invented yet. So, I turned to the next best thing for achieving mindlessness.

Social media.

A large crack ran through the screen of my phone, but it still worked. I could barely afford any minutes, so I only used thephone in my apartment where I had access to Wi-Fi. My fingers moved automatically as I opened a familiar Instagram.

Jason Dahler. My brother.

He still looked just the same as I remembered him. Familiar blue eyes and sandy brown hair were always the first things I noticed; similar to mine but a few shades darker. There were several images, but I focused on the one where the man was facing slightly sideways so the notch in his ear, that he’d gotten when he’d mistaken a wild bobcat for a house cat and tried to pet it, was clearly visible.

I hadn’t seen Jason in person since I was fourteen, but I’d kept up to date on his life by stalking his social media pages. I never dared to interact with anything he posted, but I looked at the pictures and made a mental note of all his milestones.

He still lived in the small Maryland town where we’d been born, had gotten married a few years ago, and owned a construction business that seemed to be doing well based on the size of his house. Of course, he may have built the house himself, too. There were bags under his eyes in his latest pictures that he’d tried to cover with makeup, but overall he seemed to be doing okay.

Every time I saw that Jason was still out there in the world, living his peaceful ordinary life, a sense of relief filled my chest.

When I’d first been released, I’d briefly considered finding my way back to Maryland. The urge to return home was so strong I was nearly choking on it. However, when I tried to picture what a homecoming would look like, I could only imagine myself as the fourteen-year-old boy I’d been before I was taken. My brother wouldn’t recognize the man I was now. I wasn’t the sameperson anymore. I was barely a person at all. Most days, I felt like a ghost walking around in a human body. Someone who died nine years ago yet kept living.

No, Jason didn’t need me around. He had a happy life with a spouse, a respectable job, and a nice house with a white picket fence. That wasn’t even a metaphor. I could literally see the white picket fence around his house in some of his pictures.

Everything in Jason’s life was so proper and clean, two words which didn’t describe me. For all I knew, he’d probably forgotten about me. I was likely just a passing thought that entered his brain every now and then before disappearing just as quickly as it came.

I told myself over and over that I was staying away for his sake, but that was a lie. The real reason I’d put myself on the opposite side of the country from him was fear.

What if I did go back, and he rejected me?

That would hurt worse than anything a client had done to me in the past. I’d survived a lot of pain, but I wasn’t strong enough to survive Jason’s rejection.

Turning off my screen, the pictures of Jason’s life were replaced with my own reflection. The crack in the screen cut right across my face, scattering my image into fractured pieces.

I snorted in disgust.

Why was I being so maudlin today?

Nothing had changed. Today had been the same as yesterday and would be the same as tomorrow. There was no reason for me to be more upset now than any other time. This was my life, and I would just have to keep living it until someday I died.

End of story.

Shoving my phone under my pillow, I threw myself down on the bed and shut my eyes, determined to get at least a few hours of sleep before one of my roommates inevitably woke me up.

It seemed as though I had barely closed my eyes before I was startled awake by a loud noise.

“What the hell?”

My brain wasn’t fully awake, so it took a moment for me to realize what I was seeing.

There was someone in my room, riffling through my stuff. In their hurry they’d knocked over one of the milk crates I used as furniture, which had woken me up.

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