“Logan!” she exclaimed. There were tears welling in her eyes.
“You keep acting like if you just work enough, if you just avoid your family, if you go out and have fun and play tennis and keep your hair perfect and your clothes ironed, it will all go away,” he went on. “But it won’t. You’re just lying to yourself. You can’t make everything perfect, because it’s not. Dad is dead, Mom. He died. I watched him, okay? I watched him die. You can’t pretend.”
My mom was crying and I felt a tightening in my own chest. There were tears in Tanner’s eyes too, and he made a little choked sound before setting down his fork.
Logan wasn’t done. “You don’t even act like a mom anymore,” he continued. “You remember what it used to be like? Huh? Do you? You used to ask us about school. You used to joke around. You used to be fun. You used to care. But now all you care about is forgetting. You think that’s how Dad would want you to be?”
My mother was sobbing full force now, but Logan didn’t seem to notice. His face was red, and his hands were clenched into fists, like he was waiting to defend himself against some unexpected attack.
“Logan,” I began.
“And you!” he exclaimed, turning on me. “You think that by being Little Miss Perfect, you can fix everything,” he accused. “Well, you’re as stupid as she is!” He nodded in Mom’s direction. “You don’t even have a clue. You think you’re so much better than me just because you make straight As and you take care of everyone and you never cry. But you know what? That’s really screwed up.”
“What?” I choked out.
“You’re such a phony,” he spat.
“Shut up,” I whispered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, well, what are you going to tell me?” he mocked. “I mean, you seem to have all the answers, right?”
“I never said I had all the answers.”
Logan snorted. “You didn’t have to.” He pulled his napkin off his lap, balled it up, and tossed it onto the table. “Thanks for the great dinner. This has been fun.”
He got up and strode away without another word. We all watched him go, shocked into silence. Then we all looked at one another.
Tanner was the first to move. As he stood up from the table, he knocked his milk glass over with his elbow. It crashed onto the floor, shattering into a hundred little pieces. His eyes filled. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“It’s okay, honey,” my mom said, her voice pinched. “I’ll take care of it.” Tanner darted out of the room. I could hear his footsteps on the stairs, then the slamming of his bedroom door.
Silence settled over us. My mother and I looked at each other, then down at the floor, where the shards of shattered glass reflected the light.
“We’d better clean that up,” my mother said. But she didn’t move. She just kept staring at the glass, like she was wondering whether it would really be possible to ever pick up all the pieces.
chapter 17
I told Sam about the fight the next day, and he said that sometimes people don’t think before they speak, and that Logan probably hadn’t meant the things he said.
“But he did mean it,” I said as we sat across from each other at McDonald’s after school, sharing a large chocolate milk shake in alternate slurps. “And the thing was, he was right.”
“About what?” Sam asked.
“About everything,” I admitted. “I mean, all the things he said about my mom were the things I’ve been thinking. Maybe he was right about me, too.”
“Or maybe Logan was just telling you the way he sees things,” Sam said, “which doesn’t necessarily make it right.”
On Friday night, he and I went out with Brian and Jennica to the movies, and as we sat in the darkened theater, with our fingers intertwined, I thought how nice it was not to feel like a third wheel for once. I hated that I needed another person to make me feel like I belonged. But if I had to have someone at my side to help me fit, I was glad it was Sam.
On Saturday, Sam had practice for a soccer league he’d joined in town. He asked me if I wanted to come sit in the park with a few of the other girlfriends while he kicked the ball around with the guys, and I agreed instantly. It wasn’t that I wanted to spend every waking second with him or anything. It was that I was avoiding my house. It was even more silent than usual, which was weird, because Mom was actually home. Logan’s words had evidently penetrated; she had come home every night before seven, and she canceled her Saturday tennis plans to catch up on some housework. That was a first.