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Logan glances surreptitiously into his rearview mirror and sees Mac still shaking in Veronica’s arms. Veronica is staring vacantly off into space as she absently pats Mac’s shoulder. Mac is still wearing the shirt and board shorts that came out of his closet.
He wonders briefly where Beav- Cassidy stashed the clothes and the sheets. What would Logan have done with them if he were…a psychotic, abused, helpless…He chokes off that line of thought before it can go any further.
Unfortunately, this means he can no longer avoid thinking about the deafening silence in the car. He’s pretty sure that Veronica hasn’t mentioned her father since that scream on the roof. Actually, she hasn’t said a word since they detoured to avoid the police perimeter around the fallen chunks of airplane. She just keeps patting Mac’s shoulder.
He understands. It’s not as if he’s unfamiliar with this kind of pain. But still, over and over again, he finds himself just about to open his mouth to ask if she’s okay. He’s not quite that dumb though. Probably.
His hands are trembling; he’s gripping the wheel too hard. Okay. Deep breath. Logan thinks he remembers where Mac lives, but he’s not quite sure. He looks into the rearview again, and decides not to ask. He’ll find it. He remembers picking Veronica up there once or twice last summer. He can do this.
Right. And he’s about to miss the exit. He swerves across four lanes of traffic at a sharp diagonal. Once on the off ramp, he looks back to see if the girls are okay. They don’t seem to have noticed.
More than anything, Logan wants to fill up the silence (Are you okay? Did I take the right exit? Is there anything I can do? Tragedy is the grist in the mill of life? Are you okay?) but he knows that he can’t say anything. It would be phenomenally moronic. He knows this.
He thinks he was supposed to make a left at this light, but he’s gone straight past it now. He tries to remember if he can take the turn at the next light instead, or does he need to turn around –
He looks back again. Mac doesn’t know Veronica’s dad is dead. Or maybe she does. Maybe Veronica told her while he stepped outside the room to send the hotel guy to look for something in his closet that a girl could fit into. Maybe she knows now that her boyfriend is a rapist. That he crashed the bus. That he took a backwards swan dive off a skyscraper.
Maybe she knows Logan didn’t (couldn’t? wouldn’t?) stop him.
He didn’t even scream. Really, it had been elegant. That’s sick, Logan tells himself. But still. The way he stepped back into it and let himself go in one smooth motion. Trusting. Like death was an old friend. Someone you could always count on.
Logan wonders about what it’s like to be scraped off cement.
Did every bone in his body break? Did his skull smash? Did his brain leak out his ears when he hit the pavement? Was he listening to the wind whistling past him as he fell? They say it’s the fall that kills you. But how does anyone ever know that? What basis does anyone have for that information? It’s not like Beav- Cassidy can tell them now.
He must have made another wrong turn. He should probably turn around, but he’s not sure he even remembers the way back, and anyway, Logan hates retracing his steps. Hates starting over. Wait. This intersection looks familiar. Maybe if he turns onto Florida Street –
Standing on that roof, Beaver still looked like the same little kid that he taught to play Soul Caliber.
Veronica’s not crying at all. That can’t be normal, right? But Logan knows they’ve left normal behind a few exits back. And he’s driving, so it must be his fault somehow.
****
After no more than five wrong turns, Logan manages to park them in front of Mac’s house. The lights aren’t on. They’re going to have to wake people up. And won’t that be fun for everyone. Logan’s looking forward to it. Really.
He gets out and opens the door to the backseat, since the girls still aren’t moving.
“Veronica,” he says, his voice cracking. “We’re here.”
She looks up at him through the open door. Without replying, she shakes Mac gently, and starts to nudge her out of the car. Logan helps Mac out from the other side.
Veronica swings her legs out, but then just sits there, head down, as if she doesn’t have the strength to make it any further. Logan clears his throat. He doesn’t want to let Veronica out of his sight. He’s figured out what happens when he does that and none of it’s good. But –
“You don’t have to get up, Veronica,” he says, one hand steadying Mac. “Why don’t you stay there and rest? I’ll be right back.”
She shakes her head, and gets up. He is embarrassed at how relieved he is not to have to leave her alone. They escort Mac up to her front door, one on either side.
The house is dark. Logan rings the doorbell; once, twice. A few seconds go by and then he leans on it a third time, hard. He waits for Veronica to yell at him, but instead they all just stand there, as Logan keeps ringing the bell till lights go on throughout the house.
Finally someone opens the door. It’s a little blonde woman, tousled, obviously woken from sleep, tying a robe shut. “What the hell is going on–” she starts to say, and then gasps, “Cindy!” as she recognizes her tear stained daughter.
She takes Mac in her arms. “Sweetie? What happened?”
It becomes rapidly obvious that neither Mac nor Veronica can answer. It’s up to him then. Shit. “Uh…Mrs. Mackenzie…the grad party. It…there was some…Cassidy Casablancas killed himself.” Way to avoid conveying any actual pertinent information like murder, rape, bus crashes, plane crashes – Logan feels his stomach churning.
“No!” Mrs. Mackenzie exclaims, and holds her daughter tighter. “Sweetie, are you okay?” As Mac starts to cry again, Logan thinks that the question sounds even dumber out loud than it did inside his head. He’s glad he managed to keep his mouth shut for maybe the first time in his life.
Mrs. Mackenzie thanks them before taking Mac into the house.
Now it’s just Logan and Veronica again. And the silence.
They walk to the car. She is moving woodenly beside him, and he wishes he could take her in his arms and hold her so tightly that nothing could ever hurt her again. But that didn’t work out so well the last time either.
He opens the door for her and guides her into the seat, watches her fumble blindly for the seatbelt. He finds it for her and straps her in.
****
They are almost back to Veronica’s house. She still hasn’t said a word. She looks as if she died a few days ago, only nobody got around to telling her yet.
He parks in front of the complex, and tries not to think about all the other times they have sat there and kissed. Or fought. Or been shot at. He gets out of the car and opens Veronica’s door for her. She steps out, and starts walking up to her apartment. He slams the door, and falls in next to her.
“Thank you,” she says mechanically, and he wishes for the silence back again, because the numbness in her voice is killing him. “You don’t have to stay. I’ll be okay.”
Right. He’s going to leave her alone. Here. And they’re all lining up for figure skates in hell. “I’m coming in, Veronica.”
They walk inside, and Veronica stands in the living room. She’s looking around as if it’s someplace she’s never been before.
“Hey,” he starts, reaching out for her. “It’s okay….you can cry, baby…it’s okay.” And she’s in his arms again.
****
Logan’s shirt is soaked through with Veronica’s tears. He is sitting on her couch now. She is lying on him. Her breathing has evened. He thinks she might finally be asleep. She has taken 222 breaths. He knows this because he has been counting.
This is the same couch that Veronica broke up with him on. Where Veronica’s dad came in and threw him out of the house and told him never to come back. Well, he’s back now. Take that, Mr. Mars. Except he can’t. Because he’s dead. Kind of puts a damper on that animosity. Especially when all he can see are those kind eyes looking back at him after he destroyed those tapes – letting Aaron walk on Lilly’s murder. What kind of a world was this where people like Aaron could be sitting in the Princess Suite at the Neptune Grand while Keith Mars fell from the sky in flames?
He wonders what Aaron will think when he finds out that his son plans to spend his money supporting one Veronica Mars. Not that Logan really cares. She’s going to need help with everything. A place to live. Expenses. Food. Car. College. Phone bill. Credit cards. He tries to work out how he’s going to convince Veronica to go along with this. Maybe if he throws in a pony?
Logan looks down at Veronica’s tear-stained face and promises her father that he will take care of her. Even if she doesn’t want to let him. Which she won’t. But he’s here. He’ll find a way. It occurs to him that he’s had a pretty bad track record so far, taking care of this girl. Or any girl, really. Lilly. Hannah. Veronica. He’s trouble after all.
He wishes for a moment that he could have a time machine. Logan has wished this off and on for pretty much his entire life. But this time he really means it. He wants to go back and talk to himself. Well, maybe also give himself a good kick in the ass. But most importantly, he wants to tell himself a few things, among which would be: this thing you’re all broken up about? Lilly’s murder? Yeah. This will be your easiest tragedy. Because you have a list now. Stop being a jackass.
Of course if he did go back and do that, he’d probably get a punch in the face. But what Logan 1.0 doesn’t know is that it’s been an extremely bad year, and he is about to get his ass handed to him. Maybe he could also shoot his former self in the head and save everyone a lot of pain and agony, and possibly also cause a time-space paradox that would destroy the universe.
But, no. Mr. Mars would still be dead. Beav – Cassidy would still be a psychopath. And then there’d be no one to take care of Veronica.
She’s going to be in pain tomorrow if she spends the night like this.
He picks her up and carries her into her bedroom, covers her up with a blanket. She doesn’t stir. Her room doesn’t look that different from when they were twelve, even though that was a different house. She still has that same silvery-white comforter. The same pink sheets.
He leaves her door open, and goes back to sit on the couch.
He lets his eyes drift shut and thinks for a moment he can smell Lilly’s perfume. Calvin Klein Eternity. If only the Echolls family had never moved to Neptune. Or if Aaron had died somewhere along the way. Lilly would still be alive. They could have broken up like normal people. By now they might even be friends. Logan, you dumbass, she whispers in his ear, laughing, we could never have been normal. He knows this is true. She would have laughed at him falling so hard for Veronica. Either that or told him that if he hurt her best friend, he’d live to regret it. Or maybe just castrated him. She never believed in romance. He’s not in love with her anymore. But he still misses her.
He is very, very tired of people he loves dying. He is sure Veronica is even more so.
But it’ll be okay, he tells Lilly. This one time, he won’t fuck it up. I know that, silly, she says, as he feels himself falling into sleep.
****
The light coming through the windows wakes him up. He looks at his cell-phone and discovers that it is 7:30 in the morning. For the first time in weeks, he has fallen asleep without the aid of alcohol. Of course he’s only slept about four and a half hours, so he’s not sure that’s saying very much.
He gets up and looks in Veronica’s room. She is still sleeping.
Okay. What can he do now? He needs to do something. Something that will make Veronica feel better. Something…normal. Something that ordinary people do, so she’ll see that her life hasn’t been totally destroyed, even if it has.
He has to do something. Has to fix it somehow.
Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.
He paces the living room, and then his eyes light on the kitchen cabinets. Breakfast. He’ll make breakfast. She has to eat sometime.
Of course, Logan’s knowledge of the construction of breakfast cuisine is pretty much limited to (occasionally) putting his own pop-tart in the toaster, but how hard can it be? He’s watched Iron Chef. He can read.
Okay. What should he make? He walks into the kitchen and looks in the refrigerator, which seems pretty bare, all things considered. He’s not really sure that a jar of pickles and some ricotta cheese will combine well. There’s some milk though. But they seem to be out of cereal.
In the freezer, he sees several pints of ice cream, but that’s not really a normal breakfast. There behind the ice cream – there’s….a dead rat in a ziplock?!?!
Do they eat those? Are they that poor, seriously? That’s not possible, is it? He would have known that, wouldn’t he? Maybe it’s a delicacy? Maybe Veronica really likes them and never mentioned it for obvious reasons. Because that’s pretty strange, and kind of disgusting. But if that’s what she wants…?
Logan thinks about cooking one for her, but realizes that it’s too weird, and he would have no idea where to start. Would he put it in the oven? Would he have to skin it? Biology project? Veronica didn’t take bio. He doesn’t know. He’ll just have to ask her later, and then figure out what to do about it.
He’s beginning to wonder if his breakfast idea was flawed, but he’s not ready to give up yet. He approaches the freezer again with some trepidation, and then he hits the jackpot. Bacon. Can’t get more ordinary then that. He pulls it out of the freezer.
He starts opening cabinets and finds several cans of beans, a box of granola bars, and some tomato sauce. And then up on a top shelf, that he’s pretty sure Veronica would need a ladder to reach, he finds a box labeled Bisquick. He pulls it down, and it seems to be a pancake mix. Or a waffle mix, depending. Pancakes and bacon. He’s got this covered.
****
A half hour later, Logan is eying a hot, sputtering pan, on which he has just thrown some water. The drops are supposed to ‘dance and disappear’. It looks like the water is bubbling away, and the pan is sputtering. He’s not sure it counts as ‘dancing’, but it’s probably close enough. He looks at his mixture of Bisquick and milk. He was supposed to do this on a griddle or a skillet, but he’s not sure what either of those are exactly, and they’re called pan-cakes for a reason, right? There also weren’t any eggs in the house, so he decided to skip that step. His pancakes have never tasted particularly egg-like, so they probably weren’t that important.
Okay, now he’s supposed to take a spoonful of this mix and put it in the griddle or skillet, and “cook till edges are dry. Turn; cook until golden.” Okay. He pours some of the mixture into the pan and somehow it’s not staying in a little pancake shape, but instead sort of pouring all over the pan. There’s some bubbling going on. Maybe if he waits, it’ll solidify back together.
****
“Brian’s Diner. How can I help you?”
“Yeah, can you send me over a couple of orders of pancakes?”
“Sir, we don’t deliver…”
“Make the pancakes. Get in a car. Drive them over. It’s $200 if you get it here in 15 minutes.”
****
Logan meets the guy at the door, and hands him the money. It actually took him twenty-three minutes, but whatever. He takes the Styrofoam container and puts the pancakes on a plate. Okay. So he failed at making pancakes. His very first try at taking care of Veronica, and he’s been reduced to throwing fistfuls of cash at the diner guy.
This is a bad sign. He looks at the bacon. The bacon will redeem him. He will defeat it.
He reads the instructions on the packet. This doesn’t require any ingredients. Just a pan. You peel the bacon off, and then you put it in a hot pan. It cooks. Surely he can do this.
He runs into a small snag. The bacon is still frozen stuck together. However, Logan is pretty irritable by this point, so taking the butcher knife and hacking it apart is actually sort of therapeutic. He manages to get it into things that sort of resemble strips.
Okay. He takes out another pan, and puts it on the stove. He lays the strips of bacon in it.
Logan is both surprised and relieved to see that they actually start to cook, and it smells like…bacon.
He has done something right.
Except then Veronica rushes into the room.
“Daddy?” she cries. And then she sees it’s just him. Her face crumbles, and he wants to die. He just wanted to make her breakfast, and it was the wrongest thing ever.
He holds her close, and says how sorry he is, over and over. He is so sorry. He just wanted to help. He just wants to tell her he loves her, and he’ll do anything, anything at all.
And then a door opens, and Keith Mars steps out into the hall.
“Is that breakfast I smell?”
****
Logan slips out the door in the middle of Mr. Mars’ explanation. He heads over to his car and gets in. He has never been so happy to not be needed in his life.
He pulls out of his parking spot, and starts back to the Neptune Grand.
The sun is shining. Logan reaches into the glove box for his sunglasses. Before putting them on, he looks into the rearview.
For a second he thinks he sees Lilly in the backseat. Their eyes meet. You’re lucky I’m not the jealous kind, she says. He lifts an eyebrow and she laughs.
He smiles back and puts on his sunglasses. It’s a good day.