The Rules They Broke

Chapter 6: Elijah Alleviates

ELIJAH 

"Hello?"

Elijah smiled through the phone on hearing his little brother's voice. "Hey, Logan. What's up?"

With Logan, there were no greetings and no pleasantries. "I'm running out of food and I can't get the motivation to go to the grocery store. My roommates went home for the weekend so I can't even ask them to go."

Elijah resisted the urge to tell him to come home, where he would undoubtedly have enough food. "That's rough."

"Tell me about it. There's not even any more Nutella in the jar. I'm having to live off of just peanut butter."

"No jelly?"

"Fraser finished it all for some cake he made three days ago. What're you making today?"

Elijah laughed. "You never talk to me about anything but food."

"It's the central core of my existence! How could I not?"

"You want me to tell you about Olivia instead?"

Logan's end suddenly went silent. Their gentle bantering came to a sudden halt.

"Logan?" Elijah asked tentatively. He hoped mentioning their sister hadn't made Logan hang up on him. "You there?"

After five slow seconds, his muted voice came through. "I'm here."

"Do you want me to, or do you not want me to?"

There was another silence, but not so long as the first. In a forced carelessness to his voice, Logan said, "It doesn't matter."

But Elijah knew it mattered to him, so he said, "Well, if it's all the same to you, I guess I'll just tell you. It's definitely not what I expected. I know she feels awkward being here, and I feel awkward as hell trying to talk to her about anything. Blake seems to be doing fine with her though. They watched a horror movie yesterday."

Elijah could hear the slight smile in Logan's voice when he said, "Did they? He finally got the little sibling he's wanted to scare all these years."

Elijah laughed. "His plan failed. She's not too scared of them. Fell asleep during it, actually."

"That bad, huh? Blake must have picked something really awful. Know what it was?"

"I only caught the end of it. Everything was on fire."

"Hm. Haven't seen that one yet. Sounds like your typical horror ending, though."

There was a small silence during which Elijah couldn't stop thinking about atomic bombs and mushroom clouds. Why had Blake put that idea into his mind?

No. Elijah was lying to himself. 

He had had that idea all along.

So he didn't say anything else to Logan about what she was like. If he did, he might never come home. And Elijah always wanted his brother to come home, no matter what mushroom clouds lingered afterwards.

"You ready to see her?"

"Does she remember any of us?" Answering questions he didn't want to answer with his own questions. Typical Logan.

"Not really. She hasn't told me if she does remember anything, but I doubt it."

"That's good." His voice grew a little hard. "Otherwise, she would remember Dad."

Elijah hadn't really thought of that. "You're right. It's probably better this way."

"I know it's better this way."