Code W was for bad weather, like a tornado or hurricane. Katey glanced out the window. It was a bright and sunny day outside. Dustin sighed, rolled his eyes and opened the classroom door.
“Ok, leave your stuff at your desk and sit up against the wall. Come on, let’s go,” he ordered. The class rose and ushered themselves out into the hall while Logan and Katey brought up the rear.
Logan leaned close to Katey. “What’s going on?” he asked, his gaze a little frantic.
“It’s just a drill. Code W means there’s bad weather.”
Logan didn’t seem to be comforted at all by her explanation.
With only one small spot left along the crowded hallway, Logan and Katey squeezed in and sat down next to each other. She held her knees tight to her chest and rested her chin on them, breathing deeply through her nose.
She could feel Logan’s elbow, arm and side pressed against hers as more students pushed and shoved to get a spot. In the end, some students were forced to settle down in the middle of the hall.
Katey looked over to Logan and he had this rare look of discomfort. He was breathing heavily and fidgeting uncontrollably.
“You ok?” she asked.
Logan nodded, staring into space. “Yeah, I just have a thing about crowded spaces.”
Claustrophobia was the last thing Katey ever expected Logan to suffer from. Katey tried to scoot away from him so he could feel more comfortable, but there was little she could do when the other students jostled her back.
Dustin approached the two of them and stood close. “Stay cool, Logan,” he said to him, holding his thumbs up for encouragement.
Logan breathed through his tight lips and nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. “Yeah, yeah. I’m cool.”
“Anything I can do to help?” Katey asked, feeling helpless as Logan worked hard to calm himself.
Logan shook his head in response. “Nope, I’m cool.”
Katey shut her lips tight together and nodded, glancing up to Dustin for some assurance that Logan really was going to be okay. Dustin appeared to be more alert than just a few moments before, looking around at the students as if on guard for something.
The drill only lasted a few minutes before they were herded back into the classrooms. Katey and Logan weaved through the crowd faster than everyone else; so fast that they were the first ones in the classroom besides Dustin, who followed close at their heels.
The students sat back down in their desks and Dustin resumed preparing his lecture.
Katey wasn’t paying much attention to the lecture. She was too busy glancing over at Logan, who was furiously taking down notes as she was paraphrasing her own. Katey had never seen someone in the senior class so interested in learning.
There were so many things about Logan that puzzled and enthralled her. How could she survive the rest of the school year when such an attractive distraction sat no more than three feet from her?
Her attention snapped back to the front when Dustin threw his dry-erase marker clear across the room and hit one of the aluminum plaques hanging on the wall, making a metallic clanging sound resonate around the room. Everyone laughed as it landed on a student’s head that was sitting against the wall. Judging by the faded words on the whiteboard, Dustin must have gotten frustrated with the empty marker.
“Do you have some anger management problems there, Mr. Keith?” Logan teased with an all-knowing sort of smile.
“As a matter of fact, I don’t. Do you Logan?” Dustin retorted as he walked past Katey to pick up the marker off the floor.
“Maybe,” Logan said with a sly lilt in his voice.
Katey eyed him suspiciously as Dustin walked back over to in front of Logan’s desk, placing both his hands on the tabletop and leaning close.
“Do you turn green like the hulk?” Dustin asked.
Half of the class laughed as the teacher and Logan stared at each other. Dustin was the sort of teacher who wasn’t opposed to these sorts of detours in the lecture. It broke up the monotony just enough to keep the students’ attention.
But there was something different in this banter. It seemed like Dustin and Logan knew something much deeper and darker than anyone else could notice.
“No. Just black and furry,” Logan replied, a shadow passing over him that made her want to reach out to comfort him inexplicably.
Dustin chuckled and patted Logan on the head as if he were a startled puppy. The sight was certainly amusing to everyone, including Katey.
“Poor, poor Logan,” Mr. Keith remarked with a grin, and then turned back to the projector.
Something was up between them. They were more than just friends. Perhaps they were related somehow. They looked a lot alike now that Katey thought of it. The tilt of their eyes and the strong jawlines were nearly identical.
After Dustin wrapped up the lecture, he introduced their new upcoming project for the European Union. He asked that students couple up and pick a county to make a presentation that would be due the following week.
Katey wasn’t the best at getting partners so she just sat back and hoped that someone would come to her. No one did this time and she saw Logan didn’t have a partner either. She thought it strange how he didn’t come to her instantly.
“Ok, who doesn’t have a partner?” Dustin asked.
Katey and Logan shyly raised their hands. They glanced at each other as their teacher broke the news that they would have to be partners. Katey felt her heart pound in her chest as Logan smiled without a hint of disappointment.
When the paper passed around for them to pick a country, they agreed unanimously on the United Kingdom. The bell rang and Logan shot out the door without so much as a goodbye. It was as if he didn’t want to be seen with her. Katey rushed after him, but not before glimpsing the perturbed look on Dustin’s face. It was the same one that Darren had given Logan in first period. It puzzled her to no end.
Chapter 10
Fourth period proved to be a challenge for Katey. Ben, Mr. Myers, was busily lecturing on a topic she knew all too well. As a result, the lingering drowsiness that she’d been fighting since she woke up hit her hard. Not even the knowledge that Logan was sitting in front of her could keep her awake.
Thinking she would only rest her eyes for a moment, she laid her head upon her arms and drifted to sleep to the sound of Ben’s slightly annoyed tone. He, like Darren and Dustin, were not happy with Logan for some unspoken reason, and it shined through with brilliant colors.
Ben shouted something and Katey started awake, causing her desk to shake abruptly, knocking her calculator off the tabletop. She dove for it, but Logan was quicker and grabbed it before she had the chance to move.
His stare was calm and cool, as if he had just done nothing remarkable. Katey took her calculator from his hand and he turned back around to face the front of the class. No one else seemed astonished by his fast reflexes.
“Nice catch,” Ben commented before returning to the lesson.
Even after being jolted to attention, Katey wasn’t focused on Ben’s words. Her mind was swimming with confusion and intrigue too much to even notice that there was anyone else in the classroom but Logan and herself.
The more she studied him, the more she became convinced that there was something not quite right. His little quirks that he unwittingly displayed fascinated her. Not only was he an old soul, polite and well mannered, more so than any other teenager of their time, but there was the way he moved that made her second guess her first assumptions about him.
He wasn’t just a handsome, suave gentleman. Logan was strange, but then again, so was she. There was something else that she couldn’t put her finger on and no one else could see. Or perhaps they didn’t notice.
A very fleeting and yet, disturbing thought crossed her mind that Logan might have been strange for another reason entirely. She had thought maybe it was his upbringing or a mask he wore, just like the one she had before he shattered it that night in the graveyard. But neither of those exp
lanations seemed to fit. Katey, no matter how hard she thought and how far she stretched her imagination, couldn’t figure him out. And it was driving her mad. She thought she knew him, but now she wasn’t so sure.
The bell rang and Katey took her time getting up. She didn’t even see Logan run out the door this time and she was half glad that he left so suddenly rather than linger. She needed time to process, to think.
Katey signed in for her internship class across the bus ramp, and then came back to the main building to sit in front of her locker. She leaned her forehead against the cool metal and let her eyes roll into the back of her head as the weight of her mental anguish caught up with her. The hallway was gradually emptying the longer she sat there and let her restless mind drift.
Katey could have been at lunch like she was supposed to be, but she couldn’t bring herself to stand. Eventually a teacher would come along and scold her for not being in the lunchroom, or Lily might come looking for her.
Katey didn’t even hear Logan walk up as he squatted down next to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Katey?” his voice, so soft and gentle.
Katey tilted her head and saw Logan’s bright blue eyes staring back at her. They reminded her of a child’s blue marbles, the light dancing in them to reflect every facet of color. Katey could feel the red mark on her forehead where she had leaned against the locker, but somehow she didn’t care. His smile made her feel less insecure. “Aren’t you supposed to be at lunch?” he asked.
“Aren’t you?” she retorted teasingly.
Logan was silent for a moment, but didn’t move. Katey wondered why he was still there. When she looked up, he was still gawking at her with an interested, almost curious gaze.
“What are you looking at?” she asked with a glare.
He just cocked his head and smiled a little. It was a creepy, yet alluring smile that made the breath in her lungs quiver.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked, avoiding her question.
“Why?”
“Because it’s too late for us to walk to lunch without getting in trouble and out of the two of us, I have food.” He held up a small red lunch box. Katey wondered what was inside.
“This would interest me, because…?”
“Because I can hear your stomach growling a bit and I know you’re hungry despite that huge breakfast I made you. And I have food… Are you making the connection yet, or am I being too complicated?” he asked, waving the bag in front of her nose tauntingly.
Katey couldn’t hold back her grin, rolled her eyes and stood up, crossing her arms over her stomach. She wondered how he could hear her stomach growl when she didn’t even feel it herself.
He stood up with her and raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for an answer.
“And where are we going to eat it if not in the lunchroom?” Katey said, secretly happy that he cared whether or not sure she ate.
“Follow me,” he said and turned to walk down the hall.
***
Logan led her outside to the bus ramp and they narrowly avoided being spotted by one of the administrative staff by ducking inside a gym-like room that was used for wrestling practice. The hall was big enough to fit nearly three classrooms inside it. One entire wall was comprised of mirrors, with long rolled up foam mats stacked against its adjacent wall that reached almost all the way to the twenty-foot ceiling. Opposite from the mirrored wall was a water fountain, coke machine and stacks of extra tables and chairs, and oddly enough, an old torn up sofa.
Logan walked across the room and hopped onto the mats with an uncanny gracefulness, climbing all the way to the top roll and sitting down with his lunchbox in hand. Behind him was a set of narrow windows that allowed some daylight into the room, creating a halo affect around his upper body.
Katey cocked an eyebrow at the mountain of slick rolled up mats. “And you expect me to climb that?”
Logan grinned. “Absolutely. If you want food, that is.”
They stared at each other for a long hard moment and he patted the spot on the mat next to him.
Katey sighed and slowly, cautiously crawled up the mats, but she found it difficult to get a solid grip either with her feet or her hands. She was nearly to the top when her foot slipped out from underneath her. She squealed as she began to slide back down the mats, bumping her knees and elbows. Logan quickly reached down, grabbed her arm and pulled her up to the top roll where he sat in one fluid motion, as if she weighed little more than a stuffed doll that had fallen off the edge of the bed.
Katey scrambled up to sit next to him and then glanced down from where she came. It was only then she realized how high up she was. It’d be interesting to see if I can get down without breaking something, she thought.
Logan pulled out a sandwich from his lunch box, tore it in half and gave one half to Katey. She gingerly bit into it and tore at the thick slices of meat between the bread. It tasted strange, but unusually good.
“What kind of meat is this?” she asked him.
“Deer,” he replied nonchalantly, chewing on a mouthful.
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. It’s deer. One of my friends hunts and gives meat to my family occasionally. Do you like it?”
“Yeah, I do. I’ve never had deer before,” Katey said, then took another mouthwatering bite. It seemed strange to Katey that she was eating an animal that might have been living not far from down. She never knew deer could taste better than a hamburger.
When she looked over at Logan again, he was staring off at the wall with a calm and satisfied look on his face. He glanced at Katey out of the corner of his eye and she quickly looked away.
“Can I ask a few questions without seeming weird?” she asked.
He chuckled. “Why would your asking questions be weird?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just don’t want you to think I’m nosy, I guess.”
“I will not think you weird or nosy,” he replied with warmth. “Ask anything you like.”
“What happened at lunch yesterday?”
“Nothing. What do you mean?” he replied, giving her a quizzical look.
“It just looked like you got in trouble with Dustin or something,” she said, staring at the wall, trying her hardest not to meet his eyes for fear that her tongue would trip over her own words and she’d sound like a fool. They were sitting remarkably close to each other and her pounding heart wouldn’t let her forget it.
“Oh, that. My parents just wanted to talk to me and they were up in the front office and it took all lunch period. Were you watching me?”
“So what if I was?” Katey looked to him, turning her nose up proudly. “Where me and Lily sit, it was a few tables behind you and I couldn’t help but see you were looking a little upset before Dustin came in.”
“I was just tired from my first day of school. I’m not used to using my brain that much,” he replied.
“Your brain seems to be working fine today the way you finished that puzzle in second period.” Katey turned away, inwardly kicking herself for bringing it up.
“I’ve done those puzzles a lot.”
“So have I, but it still takes me hours to get one done sometimes.”
Logan didn’t respond to that, but changed the subject completely. “Was that your only question?”
“No,” she replied with a shake of her head, a small strand of hair falling across her cheek. “Why didn’t you stay and have breakfast with me this morning?”
“I thought I explained in the note that I needed to leave?”
“You did, but you didn’t tell me why. Did you get in trouble with your parents? I saw the way that the teachers were kind of giving you the stink-eye today and thought that had something to do with it.”
Logan laughed in his throat as he reached up and tucked the stray hairs behind her ear. The gesture sent shivers throughout her nerve endings and she shuddered, hoping he didn’t notice how his touch affected her so.
�
�I can’t lie about that. I did get into a little trouble. My family didn’t want me to stay the night with you and I went against their wishes.”
Katey looked to him with worry. “I wouldn’t want to be the reason you and your family argued or didn’t get along.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a smile.
“But I am going to worry.”
“I’m touched that you care so much. But honestly, there’s nothing to worry about. My family, we’re a tight bunch. If one person messes up, we have our fight, someone gets punished, and we move on.”
Katey blinked back the wave of envy that she had for Logan and his family. She never had what he described. Bruises fade, but hateful words and painful memories never did for her.
“You’re lucky that your family is so understanding.”
He laughed again, the sunlight dancing in his eyes. “I didn’t say they were understanding. But we do get over offenses pretty quickly.” He held up a cautionary hand. “But, I swear, you leave the milk out overnight just once and they will never let you live it down.”
Katey giggled and devoured the rest of her sandwich. She was about to ask her next question when Logan stood up on the top mat they were sitting on.
“What are you doing?” Katey asked frantically, scooting a bit away from him in case he fell to one side or the other.
He glanced from her to the floor, then in one swift motion leapt down onto the floor and rolled across the back of his shoulders to hop back up onto his feet. Katey’s jaw dropped. It had to be a good fifteen-foot drop, give or take a few.
“Wow! That was cool. Doesn’t that hurt at all?” Katey called down to him, her voice echoing against the high ceiling.
“Not if you do it right.” Logan grinned and Katey shook her head ruefully. “Would you care to dance mademoiselle?” he asked, cordially bowing and offering his hand out up to her.
Katey looked down at him, confused and puzzled at this random invitation and laughed, shaking her head in response. She grabbed his lunchbox and threw it at him playfully. He caught it anyway and tossed it to the side with a chuckle.
The Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 1) Page 13