The Careful Implementation of External Pressure

Case #10: Logan Bell.

Case #10: Logan Bell.
Monday/August/24/2019/ 2:07PM

Logan Bell was dedicated to being a normal teenager for as long as he could, before he inevitably got caught up in adult life and his carefree-attitude was swept away in a storm of stress and bills.

He'd been doing well, average across the board except in soccer, where he was especially good, and chemistry, where he was especially bad.

Sure, he would be the first to admit, he could be a bit of a dick, but it wasn't his fault people didn't know when to shut their mouths. It's not like he was a violent guy, or one of those weird loner kids who only glared at him when he tried to include them. He was attractive enough, to the point that he'd managed to get a steady girlfriend, and he was working on getting a part-time job to take some of the stress off his mom so that she doesn't have to scramble so much to keep the motel up and running.

He was a good kid.

That didn't stop the pitying looks, though.

"He looks so down," people would whisper from every corner of the room if he let his grin fall just an inch.

"Well, duh," other people would whisper back, as if he couldn't hear them. "You know what happened."

The worst, though, was when people were not pitying, but instead annoyed, as if his emotional baggage was weighing them down. When they- usually other guys, but there was always the occasional girl- scoffed and narrowed their eyes at him, "shouldn't he be over that by now? Its been a year, technically five."

Why couldn't they understand you don't just get over something that? He lost his best friends- his only friends- in one fowl swoop before he was even able to really comprehend what was happening.

He could still remember every detail about them with the deadly accuracy of a memory that just won't die.

The outside stuff was fuzzy, as it always was with them. Nothing but each other and Logan- no room for the outside world or its details.

It was October, he thinks, scowls a little when the thought doesn't fit quite right. Maybe November...?

Yeah, November felt right.

It was November when they bound through the doors of the motel, wrapped in each other's arms and so deeply entwined it took him a second to figure out where one of them started and the other ended.

He wasn't sure what to do, at first. His mom had only stepped out for a second to take a phone call, her hair done up neatly, the way she always wore it back then, when he had had the time and energy, told him he was big enough to man the check-in desk for that long. He wasn't expecting anyone to actually come in, let alone two kids who looked alike in a strange, non-physical way.

They stared at each other across the front desk for a long minute, twelve-year-old minds working. After a minute Logan decided that if he was old enough to give out rooms, surely they were old enough to take one, right?

His mom came back just as he was handing them a key to an open room on the first floor, and her lips pulled down in the same way they did when she caught him trying to steal the briefcase from the room of someone people only referred to as 'Agent' when he was ten. He understood his severe punishment later, but back then he cried and kicked little pebbles around in the parking lot; he just wanted to know what was in it!

He doesn't remember what his mom said to them, exactly, but their words stood out like neon text in his mind, ingrained in him.

"We're meeting someone here in a few days," they said, together. Always together.