Surprise Revelation

Surprise Revelation

****

“What do you mean, you thought?” Logan’s eyes squinting at Bonnie as he asked.

Bonnie’s eyes slowly opened up in surprise and fear. ‘Oh shit!’ she thought as she realized she had just let her guard down with Logan. Something that had never happened before. “I-mean,-you-know,-Sharon-and-the-girls-they-well-you-know-were writing-all-that-stuff-on-the-bathroom-and-”

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Slow down a bit.” Logan leaned back and lifted his hand up. “What are you talking about?”

“Mmm, Nothing!” Bonnie said a bit too quickly, “Just saying about that time you showed up in TattleRock, but-don’t-listen-to-me-that-all-Total-BS-if-you-ask-me-just-gossip-for-everyone-to-hear,” she started to ramble while she watched Logan pull out his phone, “What are you doing?”

Logan lifted a finger and watched Bonnie nervously fidget with her hair as he searched through the old articles from TattleRock. She looked cute, all nervous like that, and he was almost certain he was on the right track. He found the article, it was easy to find, one of the few with his name in the tags. There it was, that very same phrase she had used a few times already. “You’re Total BS aren’t you?” Logan asked. His eyes seemed to peer straight into her “You wrote this. You’re the reason everyone thinks I’m a player.”

Fear widened Bonnie’s eyes like saucers, and her lips trembled as she inadvertently let out her secret. She had thought she was being clever, using her own initials. Nobody would ever believe the author of the Teen section of TattleRock would be so obvious as to use their own initial to sign off.

“Why did you do that?” Logan asked, not knowing if he should be angry or just curious. ‘What else was going to happen today?’ he thought.

“I-I-I…” Bonnie’s voice trailed off for a moment. “I’m sorry Logan.” She whispered softly, her eyes dropping down to the table between them. “I needed to help Chloe.”

Logan was confused. “What does Chloe have to do with any of this?” he wondered, “What does she have to do with you painting me as a player?”

Bonnie immediately started rambling again, “I’m-sorry-Logan, I-didn’t-think-it-would-happen-I-just-wanted-to-help-Chloe-cause-Bianca-and-Dylan-and-Brandon-and-the-other-girls-were-always-picking-on-her-and-Zack-bless-his-heart-tried-to-help-but-”

Logan’s hand shot out and grabbed Bonnie’s. “Whoa! Whoa! I can’t follow you,” he said, “slow down.”

Bonnie took a deep breath and squeezed Logan’s hand before she started all over again, “I’m sorry Logan, I really am. When I wrote that, I wasn’t trying to make you look like a player or anything like that. I just wanted to help Chloe. Bianca and the other girls were always picking on her, and so were Dylan and Brandon. Zack, bless his heart, tried to help her, but… You know what can one guy do against a girl, or Dylan and Brandon as well, you know, right?”

“Yeah, but why drag me into this?” Logan asked. He was really pissed off that his reputation came from some gossip article years ago.

“Well, Chloe’s one of my best friends, and when they were picking on her, I wanted to help but I didn’t know what to do. I thought Bianca might be hooking up with Dylan, but I wasn’t sure.” Bonnie said meekly as she nervously played with her hair with her free hand, “Then I saw what Heather and Ashley were writing on the girl’s bathroom wall,”

Logan looked at her in confusion, ‘What does the girl’s bathroom have to do with any of this?’ Logan thought as he started to wonder if she wasn’t playing with him.

“Yeah, you know,” Bonnie insisted, “they were writing stuff like ‘Dylan has a small dickie’, and ‘Dylan has a small dick but Logan as a big one’, you know stuff like that. I thought you and Heather, and well, her friends too, were trying to, you know, get back at them. And I remember that you were the only one who could beat up Dylan.”

Logan’s eyes opened up as he remembered. It all started coming back to him. ‘Holy shit!’ he mumbled.

“Yeah,” Bonnie hesitantly chuckled. “I thought that if you were doing that, I could help with putting it out on the TattleRock. I mean, everyone read it so everyone would know and, and….” she trailed off and shrugged meekly at him.

Logan just looked at her, stunned by the surprise revelation. He was starting to remember it. It had even been his idea to write that on the wall. He never, ever expected it would turn out this way.

“I didn’t think it would give you a rep as a player. I just wanted to help Chloe and, and… and I didn’t know what else to do. You could take on Dylan, but Zack couldn’t,” Bonnie apologized as her fingers fidgeted within his hand. “I guess I… was wrong to do that.”

Her apology sounded so much like the story his parents had told him this morning, doing the wrong thing for the right reason when they couldn’t fix it right. He had wanted to be mad at her, but… could he? After all, she had taken his idea and blown it up so much that it had worked perfectly. ‘Too perfectly, he thought.

For quite a while, they both sat there in silence, Bonnie was thinking about what she could say to Logan and not knowing if anything would help make things better or make things worse. Logan sat there, wondering what to do with this new revelation. He wanted to blame her for his reputation, but could he, really?

“You said you posted about Heather because she wanted to show up, right?” he asked and watched her silently nod hesitantly. “But you didn’t post about me because...?” he let the words hang in the air for a moment.

“Because you didn’t seem to want people to know. It seemed like you wanted to be discreet but it was pretty easy to know who you were with.” Bonnie said, “and where.”

“Where?” Logan asked.

“You tend to go to the same places all the time.” Bonnie said, “Although you’re pretty open about where you go with Sharon, it’s different with the other girls.”

Sharon. That name stuck like a knife inside him. He didn’t want to ask about her, but he needed to know. “What do you know about Sharon?” he asked.

“Logan,” Bonnie started to say. She didn’t want to tell Logan all the dirty secrets about his girlfriend. “Maybe you should-”

“-I broke up with her,” he interrupted, “It’s over. Tell me,” he said, but it felt like a command she couldn’t refuse.

For the next hour or so, Bonnie told Logan what she knew of Sharon, and Charlie, and Heather and even what she knew of Logan himself. She even talked about herself, her friendship with Chloe and Zack and their other classmates.

And the world, as Logan knew it, took on a whole new perspective. Everything he thought he understood about high school relationships, about reputation, about what real friends were, shifted.

The silent in Millie’s now seemed to echo around them. Bonnie glanced toward the counter where her mother was probably wondering why she'd been sitting with a customer for so long.

"I should probably get back to work," she said softly, but didn't move to pull her hand away.

Logan nodded but didn't let go either. "Bonnie?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you. For telling me the truth." He paused, studying her face—the way her eyes held genuine concern, how she'd been brave enough to confess everything even though she was terrified. "And for what it's worth, I think Chloe's lucky to have a friend like you."

A small smile tugged at the corner of Bonnie's mouth. "Even if that friend accidentally made you infamous?"

"At least, now I know the whole story." Logan said.

As Bonnie finally stood to return to work, Logan felt something he hadn't experienced in a long time. Maybe it was just the day's revelations, or maybe it was the way Bonnie had looked genuinely sorry for her part in his reputation, but he found himself not wanting their conversation to end. He... felt comfortable with her.

"Hey Bonnie?" he called as she picked up her notepad.

She turned back, eyebrows raised.

"Would you maybe want to hang out sometime? When you're not working, I mean. No TattleRock stories involved."

The smile that spread across her face was worth every confusing moment of this impossible day.

"I'd like that," she said. "I'd like that a lot."

As Logan watched her walk back toward the kitchen, he realized that maybe finding out about how Sharon and Charlie had betrayed him hadn't been the worst thing that could happen today. Maybe it had been exactly what he needed to finally see past all the lies and drama to discover who people really were. And maybe, just maybe, he was ready to start fresh with people who were actually worth knowing.