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ANEMONE AND KEROSENE
He doesn’t leave the Grand much these days.
There’s no need. Room service keeps him fed. People visit him, eager to exploit the fruits of his emancipation without care for the gaping wounds in his heart from homelessness and grief. If school would let him write his tests from home, he’d have nothing to compel him to leave, besides the call of the waves in the early light—and her.
He drums his fingers on the steering wheel as he waits for the light to turn green, his mind drifting to the memory of the Sadie Hawkins dance. To the feel of her in his arms, the light scent of sweet vanilla filling his nostrils. The way she’d avoided direct eye contact and how he’d eagerly pursued it, searching for an answer he was maybe better off not knowing.
On nights like tonight, when the longing is too great, he leaves the suite in search of her.
He’s not a stalker. He doesn’t look for the woman. He looks for the trace of her. The negative to the still frame in his mind’s eye. He stands at Lilly’s memorial fountain and remembers their shared delight in the tribute video and Celeste’s dismay. He books an hour at the Camelot and stands inside the room where that cocky shit of a DEA Agent had lied his ass off. He leans over the rail, gazing down at the memory of a car and a woman so beautiful, it was as if the world had inverted. Sun had become ground and the light below, it had blinded him.
Tonight, he’s driving to the beach where they had a midnight picnic, because he’s a sentimental asshole who can’t let go, and his conversations with her in school this week have him hooked again. Her skin is ashen, her eyes sunken and ringed in purple. He remembers this from years ago, when she’d hop the fence to his estate and knock on his window.
Why aren’t you sleeping, Veronica? You got into Stanford. Your dreams are so close.
If it’s money, if it’s Angie Dahl screwing her out of that scholarship, he’ll pay. He’ll create a scholarship with his shitty father’s money, name it after his mother. Awarded to the only decent person in Neptune.
His mom always liked Veronica. Always wondered why he was with Lilly instead.
He makes a right turn, edging the gas higher down the single lane road winding along the coast. He needs to clear his head, to push away these thoughts. Because he’s not welcome to worry about her anymore. He’s not wanted. It’s taking everything inside of him not to text her, or show up at her apartment and call from the porch.
Let me in. I can help you sleep.
The moon is a sliver, a glint of a knife between the trees as he rounds a sharp curve. His headlights skim over a shiny silhouette and he eases back on the gas, eyes widening as he discerns a boxy trunk and the sickeningly familiar rise of tan-coloured seats. He jerks the wheel towards the shoulder, coasting up behind the vehicle jutting into the road. A thin line of smoke whispers into the night sky where front hood meets tree trunk.
Help me, it signals.
“Veronica,” he murmurs.
It’s the only Le Baron in Neptune and it stands empty, as best he can tell. Throwing the SUV into park, he is out in the cool night air, eyes searching wildly.
“Veronica?”
He circles around to the driver’s side, alarmed by the trickle of blood on the steering wheel. A thick droplet is swelling, pendulum-like as it cascades to the floorboards. But she is gone, and so is her bag.
His mind drifts to the night she found the tapes and his stomach roils. Where is his father? The trial is approaching. Has he planned something to silence her?
“VERONICA!”
He staggers down the hill, peering over the edge. It’s a fifty-foot drop to the rocky beach below. If she was disoriented, or was thrown clear… No, no, no….
Nothing.
His hands are twitching at his sides as he stumbles back to the road and reaches for his phone. Call 911? Call Keith Mars? Call Veronica?
Call Veronica, he decides, and scrolls quickly. Distantly to his right, he hears a ringing sound—and then, it stops.
“’lo?”
“Where are you?”
“I… don’t know.”
She sounds small. Scared. Logan walks down the road towards the ringing he’d heard.
“Talk to me. I found your car. I’ll find you.”
“I’m so tired… There’s a sign?”
He sees it: a hidden driveway sign, a hundred yards ahead. He breaks into a run, clutching the phone to his ear.
“I’m close, Veronica. Are you by the sign?”
“Yeah, it’s… I fell down.”
A single light casts a golden shadow, illuminating the crumpled form of a blonde leaning against a post of steel. Her head is bowed low, her hair tied back in a messy ponytail. As she glances up, his heart aches at the smear of blood across her forehead.
“Hey, I’m here.” He kneels down beside her, examining her for injuries. “What happened?”
Veronica’s head lolls towards him. “I…. I haven’t slept much but I couldn’t sleep, Logan. I couldn’t see their faces again. I couldn’t…”
“Who? Whose faces?” His hand cups her chin, tilting her face to the left.
Her right hand grips his shoulder as her eyes shimmer with tears. “The kids in the crash. They’re dead because of me. I know it.”
Oh God… Is this what has been keeping her from sleep? Guilt is a relentless houseguest. He knows it well. It moves in and consumes everything, smashes your belongings and bangs on pans while you press pillows over your ears and plead to sleep for just one single hour. It is always ready to talk, to scream, to stomp on your chest and crack your ribs with glee.
“What happened to your car?”
“I don’t know… I couldn’t sleep. They won’t leave me alone. I was heading out to the scene, but I got turned around.” Her hand pushes his away weakly. “It’s a scratch.”
“Let me help you up,” he urges.
“Can stand on my own,” she mutters.
She can’t. She tries, but she staggers sideways, her bag slapping against her hip. His arm slides around her waist, pulling her against his chest to steady her. She mumbles something unintelligible into his shirt, but lets him guide her back to the road.
Her skin is cold. How long have you been out here, Veronica? Doesn’t your dad miss you?
“Why did you leave the car?”
“Wouldn’t start. Needed a ride.”
“You didn’t call your dad?”
Veronica shakes her head vigorously. “I can’t… He worries so much. The nightmares…”
He bites his tongue. The definition of insanity, insert cliché. When you love someone, you’re there for them in good times and bad. At least, he thinks that’s how it’s supposed to go. He assumes it’s the opposite of everything his home life ever was. His mother tried, but Aaron broke her down, shoved her inside a bottle of liquor until she was too terrified to come out.
They’re back at her car, and a quick attempt at turning over the engine fails miserably. Veronica whimpers, burying her face in her hands.
“My dad’s gonna kill me.”
“He doesn’t need to know, alright?”
She smacks the hood angrily, shaking her head. “You think working at Java The Hut’s going to pay for this?”
“No, I am.” She sputters, her cheeks flushing crimson, but he waves her off. “Look, call it amends for my little stunt with the tire iron, alright? I’ll call Weevil, get him to sort it out.”
He scrolls through his contacts for Weevil’s number and shoots him a text as Veronica continues to argue about independence and self-sufficiency, but they’re incoherent ramblings. The insults barely sting. Insomnia’s really dulled her rapier wit. It’s frightening, because he’s seen her bereaved, traumatized and ostracized, and still at her fiery best.
Weevil shoots him an address for the tow and he dials Triple-A, holding up a finger to silence Veronica’s tirade.
“You’re not listening to me!” she yells.
“No, I’m not. Because you need a friend, whether you want one or not.”
“And who said I want you?” she snaps.
The air whooshes from his lungs, but he manages to spit out their location, her license plate and the destination for the tow before hanging up abruptly on the agent.
Like a starving puppy, I keep scratching at this door, and she just keeps turning me away.
Old Logan would retort, recoil and strike. A serpent prodded, defending himself as his right. But New Logan… the Logan that desperately wants to be worthy of someone like Veronica… He’s hitting pause. He’s noticing how her words are saying fuck off but she’s taken a step closer.
She wasn’t like this before you turned on her. Before Shelly’s party.
“There’s a song about getting what you want and what you need,” he tosses at her with a flippant wave towards the X-Terra. “Get in. I’ll drive you home.”
“Goddamn it.”
She yanks the passenger door open with a curse and hops in, fumbling for the handle before slamming it shut. The sound is a thunderclap, signalling a storm and he is headed straight into the eye as he slides back behind the wheel. The corners of his mouth curve upwards as he turns the engine over and he breathes in deeply.
There’s a peace in the eye of her hurricane. He’s missed it.
He takes the long way, the meandering route through residential streets. If she notices, she doesn’t call him out. Her fingers fidget with the hem of her black hoodie, picking at invisible lint.
“There’s napkins in the glove box,” he tells her. “For the cut on your head.”
“Hmm. Thanks.” She pops the compartment open, plucking a foil-wrapped square from a mess of fast-food napkins and stray straws. “Even better. Thanks, Wild Wing.”
She turns down the visor, scrutinizing her reflection as she dabs at the wound with a wet napkin. She winces as the lemon-soaked cloth touches her skin, but only briefly. Cracks in the mask seldom show for long.
Through stolen sideways glances, he watches her fight a silent war. She slumps low in the seat, head lolling against her chest. She whimpers, startles, then pushes herself erect in the chair. An image of how her car came to kiss a tree trunk is forming. She’s lucky she’s not hurt, or worse.
Help her, his mind whispers.
“I have nightmares.”
Her body tenses, but she remains silent.
“They get worse at certain times of the year. Like when Lilly… or Christmas.” He swallows hard as the scent of pears fills the air, fighting the urge to vomit. “Anyway, I won’t sleep, or I’ll drink, you know? Until I pass out cold, hoping that I won’t remember.”
“Does it work?”
“No.” He taps the brake gently, rolling to a stop at his old street. “But I still try. I’ll try anything to make them stop.”
His mother, dead, reaching for him from murky water. Lilly, her head soaked in blood, with a sad smile. His father, lording over a collection of belts while a child version of him weeps. Veronica, burning alive inside a deep freezer.
So many reasons not to close his eyes.
“The kids in the crash… They won’t leave me alone,” she confesses softly.
Her finger traces shapes on the window beside her as she stares into the inky night. A squiggle. A curve. A circle. The street is deserted, and Logan remains at the stop sign, watching her intently, struggling to understand.
“They have things they try to show me. Things they tell me. I feel like… Like they want me to go crazy.”
She leans closer, breathing softly on the window. Oh shit. It’s the road where it happened. It’s the water meeting the cliff, and X marking the spot.
“Marcos says it’s my fault they’re dead. That it was meant to silence me about Lilly.” She turns towards him, shaking her head. “She saved me, you know? I saw her that day. I missed the bus because she took me to Weevil.”
“Silence you… You think my dad did this?”
“It’s one theory…” Massaging her temples, she groaned. “I don’t know, Logan. I chased a ghost and now they’re chasing me. Because I didn’t deserve to live.”
“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that!”
“They were so young…”
Her voice cracks and he is done holding back, done playing it safe. He is the friend who showed up at her house after Lilly’s funeral and held her for two hours. He is the one who will die to protect her. The one who wronged her most, but who loves her best. His arm slips around her shoulder, as it has so many times, and to his relief, she falls against his side and weeps. Her hand fists in his shirt, twisting it taut as he strokes her hair and recites his devotional to her. He is here for her. She is safe to cry. He won’t let go. He’s sorry. He will do anything to help her.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you had been on that bus,” he whispers.
“Logan…”
“Sometimes… that’s my nightmare,” he admits.
Veronica underwater. Veronica in a bus, fists beating on the windows as she turns blue. Veronica’s eyes rolling back as her palm presses to the glass, and he watches helplessly as she fades away.
“I’m fine,” she insists, all too quickly.
She’s trying to convince herself. He knows it
“You’re not, and no one would be. And if Duncan asked you to be, it’s just one more reason he never deserved you.”
She pushes away from him and it hurts. It is an amputation. A piece of himself being stripped away.
“But you did?” she challenges.
He hits the gas, jolting the X-Terra forward with a lurch. “Maybe I didn’t, but I never asked you to be anything you’re not.”
They drive in silence through the 09 neighbourhoods and their neatly landscaped lawns, through the centre of town and past Neptune High. Veronica flinches at the sight of the school and he reaches across the console, squeezing her knee quickly. She sighs deeply, leaning against the window.
There’s so much left unsaid. So many truths hanging heavy in the air between them. He wants her to know that Hannah was a futile attempt at believing he could move on from her. He wants to know if she felt the electricity crackle along her spine as she pulled him on the floor to dance (and saved him from shouting down Gia). He wants to carve his proverbial heart from his chest, offer it to her on a platter, still beating and warm. Show her how it lives for her alone.
Logan chokes on every word like a Christmas pear. Veronica is Stanford-bound. She has ambition and dreams, and he has a desire to raze this town to its rotten foundation. He is kerosene, forever searching for a match. He only knows how to destroy.
As Veronica’s apartment complex looms ahead, she taps his arm. “You should let me out at the entrance. I don’t want my dad to know what happened.”
“Won’t he notice the lack of car?”
“I usually park around the corner. Your banana-mobile will stick out if he’s awake.”
“I prefer sunshine wagon, thank you.”
He pulls up just past the entry, knowing from memory that the Mars home will have no line of sight. Veronica yawns loudly and reaches for her bag, hesitating as she wraps the strap around her wrist.
“Um… Thank you. For stopping and giving me a ride.”
“Anytime.”
He means it. He wishes she’d just called him. Had felt she could call him, like a friend. That they were at least that.
“Text me when you get home?”
He freezes, unsure what to make of this request. It’s the kind of ask she made when they were together. But we’re not anything now… are we?
“Sure, Veronica. Try and sleep, alright?”
She forces a half-smile and nods. “Gotta be better than a car accident, right?”
The passenger door swings open and she steps out cautiously. Her head tilts back and she hums a formless tune before leaning inside the X-Terra once more.
“Logan?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you weren’t the one who wasn’t enough,” she blurts out, slamming the door and hurrying away.
I…. what? He watches her retreat, turning her words over in his mind as if toying with a Rubik’s cube. Does she mean that I’m enough for her? That if she believed she was enough for me, we could be… us?
With one sentence, she has cooled his self-hatred. She has scattered his matches, extinguished every spark—yet flown from him all the same.
He suddenly thinks of a flower in his mother’s garden, one of her favourites. Anemone, she taught him. Windflower. In Greek mythology, she’d told him with a dreamy look, the anemone was a flower born of the love of Aphrodite for her slain love, Adonis. Blood and tears giving birth to beauty.
If he is destruction and heat, Veronica is elusion and breath. It’s why they are so volatile: she can stoke the flames higher, or extinguish them with a quiet exhale.
They will never be easy, but he will never stop wanting it.
As he pulls away from the complex, Logan is the haunted one now. His mother whispers of Gods and tragedy, of fighting for what matters most.
Epic, Lynn muses as she settles into the seat beside him. The best love stories are epic…