It’s not Logan’s fault that he was brought into this mess, and you can’t blame something you broke for not running away.

“Tell me a story,” I say, except what Logan says isn’t pretend. It’s a memory we hide in plain sight.

“There once was a woman whose hair was made of plastic,” he says. “Sometimes it was blue, sometimes it was pink, and sometimes it was both.”

I’ve heard this story before, but I don’t mind because it’s one of our favorites.

“The woman didn’t know what she looked like anymore, because she couldn’t see,” Logan says. “But she was always happy when visitors came.”

The first time he told me this story, he cried and wouldn’t tell me why. It was ages before I figured out the woman was his great-granny and the plastic in her hair was because she had curlers.

It’s a dangerous game. If Mum finds out, even now, I’m scared what might happen. But it’s what we do to make things better.

As well as the woman whose hair was made of plastic, there’s the man who could bring anything to life and the lady who cried an ocean.

I think the man is Logan’s granddad and I think the lady is his mum. Every time, there are more clues, some spoken but most behind his eyes. He doesn’t often talk about that woman, but I know the story by heart.

She misses someone so much that she cries and cries until the distance between them is filled with her tears. She’s so tired from crying that she falls asleep and is carried on the ocean she made. And, when she wakes up, he’s there…the boy I stole.

I think it’s supposed to be a happy story, but it always tears me apart because I’m the reason she cries. We all are.

When Logan tells tales about his grandparents, I think about my own and wonder what might have been if they were still alive.

Their absence made our secrets so much easier to keep. Dad’s parents died before I was born, and Granny and Grandpa are just faces in photos. I knew them but not enough.

The few friends Mum and Dad still had were easy to leave behind.

I’m not sure how much Logan remembers is real. He’s been here so long, and Mum has rewritten so much of his history that his memories are a mixture of truth, make-believe, and lies.

But I’ll keep his real memories, and the boy he was before us, alive however I can.

IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII

When Mum says we’re moving, I don’t believe her, because it doesn’t make sense.