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Logan follows his father out of Clemmons' office.
Suspended. Because of Veronica.
Neptune High has a strict no-drugs policy, Clemmons explained to Logan and his father. Clemmons didn’t treat students differently and despite his father’s considerable status and wealth, Logan was suspended until the end of the week.He had to tried to protest that the bong wasn’t his- and even if it was, why the hell would he keep it in his school locker?
The police officer, perhaps star-struck from meeting the Aaron Echols, nods his head in sympathy and states that since there’s no proof that the bong is used for anything other than tobacco, there will be no criminal charges. Aaron Echols smiles warmly as he shakes the officer’s hand.
“Logan is not allowed on the school premises until next Monday,” Clemmons explains, the police officer nodding along stupidly like a bobble-head toy on a shelf. “If he does come onto the school grounds, he will be trespassed. I hope you’ve learned you lesson, young man.”
His father places a thundering hand on his son’s shoulder in what, to most people, would be in a reassuring manner.
“He and I will have a talk when we get home.”
Now, Logan trails a step and half behind his father like some pathetic duckling, their footsteps echoing in the hallways of Neptune High.
Trying to keep from looking anywhere than at his father, Logan drags his eyes across the painted walls of the school, peering into the glassed-paned classroom windows as his father quickens the pace. School is still in session, and the teachers are in the fronts of the classrooms, lecturing to bored students.
Logan shoves his hands in his pockets as they walk outside the school and straight into the parking lot. His father walks straight past Logan’s car and to his own, a monstrosity of thing that weeps of wealth. Logan’s not quite sure what kind of car it is, just that it’s expensive.
His father unlocks the car and they both drag themselves into the fine Italian leather seats. Aaron puts the key in the ignition.
“Give me your keys.” His father says, holding out a hand. It looks like a claw reaching for Logan.
“Dad-,” Logan protests, but his father cuts him off.
“Now, Logan. You can get your car back when you’ve earned it back. I’ll send someone to get it from the parking lot. Seatbelt.”
Logan rolls his eyes but hands the keys over anyway. He puts on his seat belt and his father peels out of the parking lot like he’s on an episode of COPS.
“Really, Logan?” his father demands, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles are white.
“I was in a very important meeting when I received a call from your school that your idiot ass had a bong in their locker.”
“It wasn’t mine!” Logan argues, his eyes glancing to speedometer. The speed limit is 45. Logan has never been one to follow the rules of the road, but the needle is quickly approaching 70.
“Oh, were you holding it for someone then? Doing a buddy a favor?’ his father yells, voice rising. The steering wheel creaks under the pressure of his death grip.
“No! It wasn’t mine! What do you care? You’re a damn hypocrite. I’ve seen you snort more cocaine than Scarface!”
His father glances sharply at him and grits his teeth.
“That is in the privacy of our own home, Logan. I do not flaunt it for the police to see!”
“You still-,”
“You made me look like a fool!” his father roars over the engine. Logan grips the handle of the car next to window, which he has dubbed the ‘oh-shit-handle’ for situations such as these.
“A bad father! You made our entire family look bad. Imagine what the press would do if they found out Aaron Echols son is a pothead!”
“I am not a pothead!” Logan bites back.
The car reaches 90 before his father lurches them to a stop so violently, Logan is all at once thankful they are both wearing seatbelts. Logan looks out the front dash window. They’ve made it back the house in record time.
It’s almost funny. Logan smiles grimly.
In another life Aaron Echols could have been as famous as he is now for being a race car driver.
“Do you think this is funny, Logan?” his father asks, voice deadly quiet and demanding.
“In a cosmic sort of way, yeah.”
“Out.” His father demands. Logan tries as hard as he can to put as much sass and teenage insolence into his walk from the car to house as possible. He can feel his father’s hard gaze boring into the back of his head like the sight on a gun.
When they reach the living room, Logan spies his mother on the couch, looking dead to the world and snoring softly. There’s an empty wine glass on floor and a suspiciously empty looking bottle of pills on the coffee table. The massive flat screen TV that his father had bought after getting the paycheck from his fifth movie is blaring loudly.
“I was wondering why they called you.” Logan utters, not looking at his father. He pulls a decorative afghan that Duncan’s mother made them for Christmas one year off the top of the love seat and throws it across his mother.
“Your mother wasn’t feeling well.” Aaron sours out, collecting the wine glass from the floor. Logan grabs the remote from his mother’s unconscious clutch and turns the TV off.
“Sure, looks like it.” Logan says bitterly, walking toward his room. He makes it just into the kitchen when his father finally catches up with him.
“Excuse me?” his father breathes out, “What did you just say?”
Logan turns on his heels and takes a breath, pausing for a half second to decide if he should keep his mouth shut or not.
Fuck it. If you’re going to be a dick you might as well go all the way in.
“I said,” Logan declares, enunciating as dramatically as possible, talking like he’s trying to explain something simple to a child, “That it’s a shame that mom hates your guts so much she has to drug herself into a stupor to stand being married to you.”
It happens quickly.
Once second, Logan’s standing a self-satisfying smirk on his face. The next, his father’s backhand in barreling toward his face. Logan doesn’t have time to duck, and his father’s hand makes contact with his face.
It’s so sudden, so surprising that Logan gets knocked off his feet and crashes to the floor. His left cheek, just under his eye, blossoms in a sharp, stinging pain. He raises as hand to his face and feel something wet. He drags his fingers across his cheek and looks at them. It’s blood.
His must father realizes at the same time Logan does, because they both look at his left hand and spy his father’s ring on his index finger; it’s horribly gaudy piece of gold jewelry, cut with diamond and sharp black onyx. It drips a single dot of red onto the floor.
There’s a moment of quiet. Logan on the floor, hand back on his face, covering the fresh cut. Aaron standing over him, right hand over his left, covering the ring.
Aaron Echols has always been a big believer in corporal punishment. Just like his daddy, and his daddy before him. But never in the span of Logan’s entire miserable life has his father hit him in the face.
Logan flares his nostrils in an attempt to not smile. It’s like that dumb movie he was obsessed with when he was a kid, The Lion King. He had once been mesmerized by the scene when the cartoon lion’s Scar had been standing over his brother, just on the edge of a massive cliff.
Long live the king
“Logan,” his father starts, “Logan, I am so sorry-,” he moves first, fumbling for some paper towels. He rips off a few sheets and gives them to his son. Logan gets up on shaky feet and takes the proffered towels. He shoves them onto the wound, maybe pushing into the cut a little more than necessary to stop the bleeding.
“I’s fine.” Logan barks out, a simile of a grin on his face. “I just need to duck next time.”
His father violently grips his shoulder. “There will not be a next time.”
Logan swallows and his father gets aa few bandages out of the cabinet. He tosses a few to Logan, who wordlessly walks to the bathroom.
When he’s there, he locks the door behind him and turns the sink on to as hot as it will go. He yanks the paper towel off his face and studies the cut. It’s small, smaller than he had expected but he recalls hearing once in one of his father’s movies that face wounds bleed a lot.
He wets the paper towel and drags it across his face, wiping away any trace of blood from his face. The edges are angry and red, and there’s already a sickening hue to the edges that promise bruising tomorrow. Logan sniffs and places a bandage on his face.
He washes his hands in the sink, turns the water off, wipes the water away from the base of it and throws the bandage wrappings and the paper towels into the trash bin. It’s like nothing ever happened. He leaves the bathroom, and when he does, he stops in the hall to see what’s going on. He hears his mother’s soft muttering and his father’s gruff reply.
Instead of facing his mother, he beelines for the back door and toward the pool house, an area he claimed as his own the day he turned 13.
He yanks the door open and shut, throws himself on his bed. He stares up that the rotating ceiling fan, the blades moving so fast one way they seem to slow down. Or if he blinks, travel in the opposite direction.
He’s drawn out the ceiling-fan induced haze at the buzzing of his phone. His hand drifts to his pocket. He pulls it out and flips it open. It’s Duncan Kane.
Logan takes one breath, then another and answers.
“Hello gorgeous.”
“Logan? Dude, what happened?” His friend’s voice is tinny over the phone.
“Your ex-girlfriend is what happened, man,” Logan says, impressed with his ability to sound so damn carefree.
"Veronica did this?”
“She put a bong in my locker, that little sneak. I’ll get her back.”
“Logan-,” Duncan warns. He still has a soft spot for Veronica, even though her father basically destroyed his home life.
“It’s whatever man,” Logan shrugs like Duncan’s in the room with him “On the plus side getting walked into the office by the cops has done wonderful things for my street cred.”
“Come over tonight?” Duncan says suddenly, “I could use the company.”
Logan bites the inside of his cheek, briefly. He wants nothing more in the world than to go to Duncan’s house, to hang out and play video games and talk shit about school and homework and the people they don’t like, but with the bandage on his face…
“Ah, man I would by my dad’s pissed as all hell. I think he’s going to have me grounded until the end of time.”
Duncan mutters his condolences, accepting the answer, as if Logan has ever let him being grounded stop him before, and they compare notes on Weevil and the new kid, Wallace before Duncan needs to get started on his homework and hangs up.
Logan stares up the ceiling fan again, watching the blades turn and turn. He wonders, briefly, if Lilly would have anything to say this. He has to blink the image of her blonde hair from his eyes. She had thought him messing with his dad was hilarious.
This one time, when they had been broken up for one reason or another, Logan was at a party. He had been drunk off his ass and had just felt so… well, a very pretty looking boy had come up to him and one drunken spin-the-bottle game had led to another and the next day the trash-rag magazines had plastered photos of Logan kissing the guy on the front page.
It hadn’t really meant anything, he had been drunk after all. Besides, Logan wasn’t anything if not secure in his sexuality. But his father had screamed bloody murder at him while he was hunched over the toilet puking up last nights’ alcohol.
That afternoon, with Logan still nursing that violent hangover, his father had put a hand on his shoulder in front of a crowd of photographers and went on and on about loving his son no matter what. Logan, being the man that he is, had exclaimed.
“That’s great, dad! I can’t wait for you to meet my boyfriend.”
Of course, the press ate that up. Aaron Echols had merely chuckled, flashing a brilliant smile and speaking reassurances. The minute they were back home, he hadn’t even needed to tell Logan to pick a belt. Logan had just did it.
That evening, Lilly had called him, laughing like a maniac. She had seen the photos and his father’s reaction; she had thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Her cheery laughter had kept Logan focused on something over than the pain of his back. She had demanded they meet the next day and they got back together.
The press forgot all about the photo, and maybe his dad did too, but Lilly hadn’t. She had loved to cause that kind of chaos. Logan is all about causing trouble, and lord help him, Lilly was magnet.
He turns onto his side and opens his phone again, scrolling through the text messages he had gotten from his friends about the events of the day.
Now that he thinks about it, Veronica Mars is trouble. No one else besides Lilly could cause the kind of chaos she seemed to bringing with her everywhere.
He was suddenly glad he would be out of school for the week as he placed his fingertips to the bandage on his face. Veronica Mars was too smart for her own good. She was trouble. She was creative.
Logan feels better, the sting in his face a dull pain now. He flips his phone closed. Veronica Mars wants to play games? She thinks she so smart?
So is he.