THE MISFIT: CHAPTER TWO For the next three days Logan did pretty much nothing. It was decided in the principal’s office that Logan would be suspended for three days and would have to pay the medical bills for the fat boy. Logan knew he broke the boy’s finger, but it turned out that Logan broke the little bastard’s nose too. “Wow,” Logan said to himself lying in bed, thinking about the day before. He was halfway through his first day of suspension and he wasn’t enjoying it as much as he thought he would. There was absolutely nothing to do in the little town. There had been fights in Miami. In fact there were probably more than Logan could count. And they were good fights too, not the easy wastes of time like the one the day before. It was hardly worthy of being called a fight. The only reason Logan recognized it as a fight was because of the fact that he was always very proud of any fight that he won. And he was embarrassed of any fight that he lost, which didn’t occur often. But Logan had discovered something very important in the few fights he had lost. Or even just a good fight where his opponent ruffed him up a good bit. It seemed that through getting his butt kicked Logan would dramatically gain muscle mass, speed, and agility. By now Logan was getting to the point where it seemed everyone else was moving in slow motion. Especially when he was in a fight. Because of this Logan almost could not loose to the same person twice. For the next few hours Logan just laid there remembering Miami. “Miami was a lot better than this place,” Logan thought to himself. “In Miami I had friends, there was always something to do, and I had a girl,” Yes Logan even had a girl. “It would have been over soon,” he added. Logan was like any other guy. As nice as any girl could be, he only wanted one thing. Her body. And getting “it,” was the only real goal he had in mind for their relationship. Logan was given many chances to get “it,” too, but something held him back, something that made him different. Logan had a tail, and he was very embarrassed about it. No one else had a tail, so why did he? He hadn’t had a tail most of his life. It just grew in when he hit puberty shortly after his twelfth birthday. It was about three feet long and had short, brown fur all over it. It couldn’t do much. Like most tailed animals he could move it up and down, and side to side. He could wrap it around things and pick them up if they weren’t too heavy. But mostly he kept it wrapped around his waist where it felt the most comfortable. “Ah Miami,” Logan thought to himself to end his time reminiscing. Logan rolled over onto his stomach to get a better look at the clock on the wall. It was 3:30. Everyone was out of school and would probably be hanging out in town. “I guess I should take a shower now,” Logan thought to himself. “I think I’ll go in town and see what everyone’s doing,” Logan was hoping to meet a few people in the boring little town that actually made sense. Or maybe he’d see a hot girl. Or, even better than that, maybe he’d see Eddie. The thought of a good fight excited him. Logan then got up from his bed and walked to the upstairs bathroom, which happened to be two doors down from his bedroom. The entire upstairs of his parent’s sub-mansion was pretty much his. At the end of the hallway was a large room where he watched television, played his guitar, and more commonly worked out. At one end of the room was his television enclosed in a large, wooden entertainment center. Stationed all around the room were five speakers, which made up his surround sound system. At the other end, strait across from the television, was a couch. In one corner was a weight bench, and right beside it sat a treadmill. And directly in the middle of the room hung a large, red punching bag, which sometimes blocked the view of the television, but he didn’t care. At the other end of the hallway was Logan’s bedroom. The room wasn’t very big, but he didn’t mind. He only used it to sleep in anyway. It was about half as long as it was wide with only two major objects in it. His bed, and his dresser. The bed sat on the left side of the room beside a huge, domed out window with a ledge to sit on as you used it to observe the outside world. On the other side of the room was a blank wall with his dresser in the corner facing towards the wall with the door. In the hallway were two other rooms, both on the left side if you were coming out of Logan’s room. In the first door was a guest bedroom, which was small and plain with nothing in it but a bed. In the second door was the bathroom. Across from the two rooms sat a large staircase that lead to the downstairs. Logan walked into the bathroom dressed in black cotton boxer shorts with a red towel over his shoulder and his tail wrapped around his waist. He shut the door behind him and hung his towel on the towel rack to his left. On his right was a sink with a large mirror hanging over it. Strait in front of him was the toilet, and to the right of it, the shower. Logan took the few steps to the shower, turned on the water, set it to warm, and pulled the knob on the faucet to allow the water to pass through the showerhead. He then removed his shorts and stepped in pulling the shower curtain across the rod after he was in. As Logan began to wash his long, black, spiky hair he couldn’t help but to let more thoughts of Miami wander back into his mind. He once again went over the events of the last thirteen years. He once again reminisced about his friends, girlfriends, and especially his fights. Logan was beginning to feel homesick with all these thoughts of Miami. “Miami…home?” he could barely put the words together in his mind. Then “it” hit. A feeling. A terrible feeling that Logan had felt so often throughout his childhood. Although Logan had lived in Miami for most of his life, and despite the fact that he had really enjoyed his life there, he could not call it home. For as long as Logan could remember he had always felt a longing, an urge, to be somewhere else. He felt as if he could call no place on the Earth home. Like he simply did not belong, and for that he was a misfit. And as he thought about it Logan realized that the same could be said for Idaho, or any other place he would go. Logan put his previous thoughts behind him as he started to shampoo his tail and new thoughts emerged. Thoughts about his tail. Thoughts like “Where did it come from? Why doesn’t anyone else have one?” and “Why did it suddenly grow out when I never had one before?” Thoughts Logan had often in the last year or so. Logan spent a few more minutes in the shower and stepped out, forcing every distraction that had previously entered his mind out. He had only one goal now, finding that kung fu punk and beating his brains out. Logan dried himself, put his boxer shorts back on, instinctively wrapped his tail around his waist, and walked back to his bedroom. He went over to his dresser and from the third of four drawers pulled out a pair of faded blue jeans. The pants were baggy and slightly tattered from where the bottoms of the legs hung down past his shoes. From the top drawer he produced a gray Metallica t-shirt and put it on, hiding his tail from plain view. Logan also grabbed from the bottom drawer a pair of long, white socks and walked over to his bed. He then sat down and put them on, pulling them to their full height just below his knees. Beside his now covered feet sat his boots. He grabbed them and began the painstaking process of putting them on. Logan placed his left foot in the correct boot and pushed with all his might to get his foot completely in. It wasn’t that the boots were too small, they were just tight in the ankle area and it was hard for Logan to get his foot past that part of the boot. He then began the lacing process. To get the boots on or off they had to be unlaced about halfway and then they had to be re-laced after you had them on. After all this was done Logan walked out of his bedroom and headed for the downstairs portion of the house, almost stopping to go back and get his “jewelry”. He then reasoned that since he was just going to be fighting anyway it really didn’t matter if he wore it or not. Upon reaching the downstairs Logan realized that no one was home. This meant that he had no one to drive him to town. “Oh well,” he thought. “I’ll jog. It’s not that far,” The long haired boy walked into the u-shaped kitchen, found a pencil and notepad, and proceeded to write his parents a note, letting them know where he went. Logan placed the note in the refrigerator on top of one of his father’s cans of Bud-Light where he knew his father would see it. “Well I guess I should go now,” Logan said to himself before walking out his front door. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * It took him about ten minutes to jog the half mile between his home and the town. He was slightly winded and his feet ached a little from jogging in the boots. It didn’t matter though; he still had more than enough in him to take care of that Bruce Lee wanna be bastard. Logan took a look around. The trail he had taken put him right in the middle of Fourth Avenue. He looked in both directions and saw nothing but houses. He then decided to walk around and see what else the town had to offer. After working his way up side streets and passing numerous shops and houses, Logan made his way up to Second Avenue. On this street were more shops, a bank, and a grocery store. Logan hadn’t seen anyone of interest so far. “He’s around here somewhere,” he thought to himself. He started toward the grocery store for no apparent reason. When he arrived Logan noticed that there was no parking in front of the store so he walked around to the back. “Ah, just like I thought,” he said to himself as he spotted the parking lot. In Miami if the kids didn’t feel like wandering the streets, they would find a store that they liked and hang out in the parking lot in front of it. And as Logan had guessed the kids in Idaho did the same. At the other end of the lot was a locally owned music store, and sitting on a car in front of it was none other than Eddie Saiyer himself. The boy was sitting on a blue Mustang surrounded by his friends, which mostly consisted of preps. He was wearing almost the same exact clothes that he wore that day at school except now his shirt was orange and said Old Navy on it in yellow letters. Eddie was laughing hard signaling that someone had told a joke. “I think I’ll go see what’s so funny,” Logan said to himself. Eddie noticed the boy with the oddly spiky hair immediately and stopped laughing. “Hey buddy,” he called sarcastically. Logan kept walking with that same confident stride Eddie had used to challenge him at school. Logan zeroed in on his foe and continued walking towards him until they were face to face. “I’m not your buddy,” Logan said with a stone cold tone in his voice. “ Well, I’m here. We gonna do this?” “It’s your funeral,” Eddie said with a smirk on his face. Logan once again shinned his evil grin of pleasure that he got every time he was about to fight. He truly loved it.