Free A More Deserving Blackness by Angela Wolbert Page B

his fingers biting into the flesh of my forearm.  His face is unmistakably angry and I lurch back but his grip only tightens, refusing to release me.  My breathing hitches in fear.
                  “What is that?”
                  I shake my head, not really an answer, but my heart is hammering in my chest and it feels like someone is pushing down over my mouth and nose, stealing away the air.  Logan’s eyes are dark and glaring at me and inexplicably, utterly pissed.
                  “Was it Dylan?  Did Dylan hurt you?”
                  I shake my head slightly, just enough.
                  “Someone else?”
                  Shocked, staring at him.
                  “Did someone hurt you?”
                  We’re frozen like that, his hand holding my arm up by my shoulder, his eyes boring into me, teeth gritted, and though I know there are other students walking past I don’t see any of them, don’t see anything but Logan.  Something in his eyes shifts as he realizes I’m not going to answer and he visibly works to control the burst of anger, his fingers loosening, slipping down to tuck against the palm of my hand.  It is clammy and cold. 
                  Logan’s eyes are gentler now, almost like it never happened, but something still hangs, haunted and heavy in them.  He scoops up both my hands, presses them against the center of his chest for a moment, all without looking directly at me, and then he’s gone. 
                  As Logan walks away, I see Eric standing with a group of his friends I recognize from lunch.  He gives me an odd sort of stunned, dismayed look before I turn and leave, frustrated and completely baffled.
                  But I know there’s no way in hell Logan is driving me home from school that afternoon, no matter how much I might want him to.
     
                  I hear little of what is said during first period, unable to shake the image of the rage in Logan’s eyes.  After that night in the car, it was unsettling to see that display of emotion directed at me, and it should’ve frightened me, past that initial shock.  Should have.  But it didn’t.  I wasn’t afraid of Logan.  Not at all.  Mostly I was just afraid of the way he’d turned and walked away, afraid that meant he’d changed his mind about me.  It was startling to realize how much that upset me after so little time.
                  Although I never put much effort into my schoolwork, not anymore, I find it difficult to focus the rest of the day.  At lunch I grab my V8 and scan for Logan, but I already know he doesn’t share the same lunch period.  I would’ve noticed him.
                  I sit next to Erik at the usual table, unable to catch his gaze before I lower into the seat; just one more hazard of not speaking.  I look up from popping the cap off my drink to find several of the girls staring at me, although Erik is noticeably looking anywhere but.  Though I’m used to the stares, I’d hadn’t been on the receiving end of this much attention since the first days of school.  I shift uncomfortably in my seat.
                  “Is that . . . Logan Brenner’s jacket?”
                  I blink at her, the jacket suddenly burning where I’d draped it across my lap when I’d sat down.  From the way she’d asked it, the girl with the pixie-cut – Chloe, I think - already knows the answer.  And from the way Erik suddenly freezes like a statue in the seat next to me, he does too.
                  Oh.  Right.  Here was the reason for that odd look in the hall.
                  “It is,” says another girl with a skinny black ponytail; Andrea.  She’s nodding like it was all part of some script.  “He wears it all the time.”
                  Chloe smirks at