Shift (16 page)

But at least he’d still be alive.

Z
achary and I had unfinished business.

Having missed the private opening of the ancient-astronomy exhibit due to our aborted second date, we owed our history thesis adviser, Eowyn Harris, a trip to the Maryland Science Center. She’d promised to show us something that would help with our research. Our curiosity—and our desire not to flunk World History—finally overcame our attempts to avoid each other.

I stood on my porch Saturday afternoon, two weeks before the prom, waiting for Zachary to pick me up. Gina was kneeling by the flower bed lining the front walkway, pretending to pull weeds. I knew she just wanted to snoop.

My aunt thought I’d been spending too much time playing publicist for Logan and his band. I didn’t have much choice, if I wanted to keep my secrets secret. But watching them rehearse in our basement,
hearing the crash of cymbals and wail of electric guitar echoing off the concrete walls, brought back the best parts of Logan’s life. Nothing got my pulse pumping like the steady thrum of a live bass guitar.

Well, almost nothing
, I thought, trying to shove kissing-Zachary memories into my mind’s dark closet.

“Feel free to have dinner at the Inner Harbor.” Gina deadheaded a pair of impatiens, then pushed up the sleeves of her denim work shirt. “If Zachary can get enough time off from taking care of his dad.”

“No, I’ll be back early for pizza-and-sappy-movie night.”

A familiar green Mini Cooper stopped on the street in front of the house, beeping its horn.

“Have fun!” Gina said, way too jolly.

I tried to look casual as I made my way down the front walk and through the low iron gate. I tried to make every step scream,
I am not even remotely in love with you, so there. Ha.

“Hi.” I sank into the front seat, hating how close together the car made us sit.

Zachary met my eyes briefly. “How are you?”

“Fine. How’s your dad?”

“Tired.” He put the car in gear and pulled out into the street. “He has chemotherapy every other Thursday, so by Saturday he’s completely shattered. He’ll sleep today, because the medicines that keep him from throwing up also keep him from staying awake.”

“That sucks.”

“At least it lets him rest, and gives Mum a chance to get out for a few hours. It’s hard on her.”

I noticed he no longer seemed to have trouble driving and talking at the same time. “What do you mean?” I asked him. “Besides the obvious.”

“He’s a terrible patient. Last night she tried to help him with his bath, and he was like, ‘Stop it, I’m no’ a wee bairn,’ and she was like, ‘Well, you’re certainly behaving like one. Perhaps I should set you in your pram?’”

I covered my mouth as I laughed. Then I rewound his impersonation, especially the accent he’d used for his mother. “Wait—your mom’s English?”

“No, she’s a Macdougal. Her great-grandparents moved from Scotland to England.”

“So she’s as English as I am American.”

“Exactly.”

“Which is very. So doesn’t her Sassenach accent annoy you?” I teased, exaggerating his own dialect.

He chuckled and gave me a sidelong glance that heated my cheeks. “You remembered Sassenach. Good.” The light ahead turned yellow, and Zachary hit the brake, a little too hard. The good humor faded from his face. “All this chemo would be tolerable if we knew it would save my dad, but it’s not bloody likely.”

I fidgeted with the buckle on my messenger bag. “So, how are you doing, with all this?”

He nodded, lips tight, but said nothing.

“I’m sorry.” I cleared my throat. “I should’ve called in the last couple weeks to see how you were.”

“Aye—I mean, no, I don’t blame you. I’m not angry.” He rested his
elbow on the window frame. “But I think maybe we shouldn’t avoid each other. I don’t think that’s best.”

“I agree,” I said, biting my lip to keep from smiling.

“Good.” His shoulders lowered as the tension dripped out.

I let myself relax into the soft leather seat. Zachary had admitted, in his roundabout way, that he needed me—at least during this crisis. I would be there for him as a friend, like he’d been for me after Logan died. I would stop pining for him.

Any minute now.

“It’s a lot bigger than it looks in pictures,” Zachary whispered.

Between us and the entrance to the exhibit lay a life-size replica of Newgrange’s main kerbstone, a ten-foot-long rock shaped like a giant loaf of Italian bread. The kerbstone’s carved spirals, diamonds, and squiggles made me dizzy, so I focused on the straight vertical line dividing it in half. I stroked my mom’s garnet pendant through my red sleeveless top, feeling closer to her now than ever.

Zachary and I had arrived at the museum early, but hadn’t wanted to wait for Eowyn to see the exhibit. It felt like we were on the brink of a big new clue or two. Or seven or eight.

He stepped aside, unable to resist reading the nearby informational plaque. I stared past the kerbstone, through the dark doorway to the Newgrange passage tomb exhibit.

Zachary returned. “The sign says that sunlight shines in the chamber on winter solstice for seventeen minutes.”

“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the doorway, which seemed to darken the longer I stared at it.

Zachary leaned in close. “On the equinox, how long did Logan have a body?”

“About fifteen—” I blinked hard. “Whoa. It might’ve been seventeen minutes from the time he came through my window as a shade until—” I gave a slight cough. “Until it was over.”

“Could be important,” Zachary said in a subdued voice as he faced the kerbstone. “Do you know what these carvings mean?”

I sensed he was changing the subject as much as he was being curious. “There are tons of theories. It pisses me off how archaeologists never agree on anything.” I pointed to the left side of the kerbstone. “I think this three-spiral design is only found at Newgrange. Other places in the world have one spiral, or two spirals like that one.” I indicated the area on the right side of the vertical line.

“I bet the answer’s inside.” Zachary rounded the kerbstone and ducked through the faux Newgrange entrance. I followed.

The room beyond the doorway was about fifty feet long. Its walls displayed detailed photos of Newgrange’s excavation.
Bor
ing. Maybe I didn’t want to be an archaeologist after all. Or maybe I was just dying to get to the good part, straight ahead of us—a replica of Newgrange’s central chamber. The place where my mother and Zachary’s father stood a year before we were born. The place where their lives changed forever.

As we entered, we gaped at the towering ceiling made of giant flat stones, stacked overlapping like roof shingles. In real life they would hold up hundreds of tons of rocks and dirt. This one looked like it would collapse if we breathed too hard.

Three recesses branched off the round chamber. They were more
like the size of walk-in closets than the cubbyholes I’d imagined. The ones to our left and right each contained a smooth, shallow stone basin.

A trio of tourists wandered in, their jaws dropping at the sight of the ceiling, like ours had. We edged toward the far recess so their yammering wouldn’t ruin our mood.

Zachary read another sign. “This is the only recess hit by the solstice sunrise.” He leaned forward, examining the walls. “Aura, come see!”

I squatted beside him and saw another three-spiral design carved into the side of the recess. “Wild. It actually looks like two spirals with a third one coming out of them. See how the top one leads into the bottom one, like the letter
S
?”

“Hmm.” His forehead creased into deep vertical lines as he thought. I had the worst impulse to smooth them out with my fingers. Then maybe run those same fingers through his hair, until he let go of all his worries.

I was lost in this daydream when he spoke. “Didn’t Eowyn say something about the three recesses representing father, mother, and child?”

“Yeah, but nothing in my reading backs that up. It’s probably her personal theory.”

“But that’s sort of what this looks like. The two spirals joining together, making a third.”

I tilted my head to see it from another angle. “You think it looks like sex? You are such a guy.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He glanced at me. “All right, it is what I mean. Symbolically.”

I became painfully conscious of the tiny space between us. “At least we’re coming up with theories for our paper.”

He gestured to the rock face. “Should probably leave out the pornography, aye?”

I laughed. “We’ll disguise them so Mrs. Richards thinks they’re just spirals.”

“Better write this down before we forget.” He pulled a pen and a small notepad from his back pocket. Something fell from between the pages and clattered at his feet.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly, reaching for it.

My toes tingled as I picked up the small metal circle. It was the bottle cap I’d given him. I placed it in his palm, my fingers brushing his as I let go.

“Er, you must be wondering …”

“No.” I reached into my bag and brought out the matching cap, the one he’d found in the field.

We held the spiral caps up to the design on the wall, one above the other.

“Odd, don’t you think?” he whispered.

“Odd that we found them, or odd that we kept them?”

“Found them.” He closed his fingers over his own bottle cap. “I know why I kept mine.”

I looked into his eyes, shadowed by the light from above. My own mind seemed to circle—not just right now, but every day, playing the same thoughts over and over. But like the line of the spiral, maybe now I was finally getting somewhere.

“What do you think?” said a voice behind me.

We stood and stepped back to see our adviser, Eowyn Harris, headed toward us.

“Of the exhibit,” she added.

“It’s brilliant.” Zachary had the goofy smile he often wore around her. Though twice our age, she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in person. Her long blond curls fell nearly to her waist, and her flowing periwinkle dress made her look like a flower on legs. If she weren’t so nice, I would’ve hated her.

She watched the tourists move out of the chamber. “Glad it’s not crowded. I really need to talk to you both.”

I hoped she would give us answers instead of more mysteries.

“Your father called me,” she told Zachary. “I’m so sorry about his illness.”

He looked confused. “Thanks, but why did he ring you? I didn’t know you’d even met.”

“Not in person, and this was only the second time we’ve spoken. Last summer he called me before you came to the States. He was tracking down all twenty people who were here on that day.”

Zachary and I exchanged a cautious look. Eowyn had never admitted to being at Newgrange with his father and my mother. When we’d asked her about it, she’d changed the subject. I wondered why she suddenly wanted to talk about it now.

She stared at the recess behind us. “They were standing right there when it happened. Right where you’re standing now.”

My spine prickled, like a spider had dropped down the back of my
shirt. Eowyn had always been a little, um, funky, but this was creepy talk even for her.

“When what happened?” Zachary said.

“I call it the Shine. One year before the Shift. I was over here at sunrise.” Eowyn backed up, near the left-hand recess, then pointed to the chamber door. “The light came through, thin like a laser, and stretched along the center of the floor, getting longer and longer, penetrating the chamber like—” She gave a nervous laugh. “Well, there’s a reason why they think it’s connected to fertility.”

“Told you,” Zachary whispered over my shoulder.

“Anyway.” Eowyn cleared her throat. “It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I was only sixteen, but I swore that unlocking Newgrange’s secrets would be my life’s work. And that was even before it happened.”

I fidgeted with my necklace, dying to shout,
When
what
happened?

She continued. “When the sunlight reached all the way to the spot where you’re standing, the tour guide said we could walk through it. He said that some people believe it can heal their spiritual ills, or make a wish come true.”

I looked at my feet, imagining them soaked in that magical light, and wondered what I would wish for.

“I was at the back of the line,” Eowyn said, “so I could see each person as they passed through the light. A young woman and a middle-aged man were standing together. I didn’t realize until later that they didn’t know each other.”

Zachary shifted closer to me, his hand almost brushing my arm.

Eowyn’s gaze went far away. “They passed through the sunbeam—first Ian, then Maria—barely one second after each other. Something happened to them, and no one else.” Her hands swept upward, encompassing our bodies. “They were filled with light.”

I stared at her. “Filled?”

“Like it was a part of them.” She seemed to search for the words. “Like a candle inside a jack-o’-lantern. Except this was no candle, this was—this was the sun itself.”

Zachary uttered a word I couldn’t translate.

“I had to shade my eyes, it was so bright,” she said. “My mother thought I was getting another migraine, which I was. I always did when I … saw things.”

My heart started racing. “Did anyone else see it?”

“Just me, that I know of.” She grimaced. “Please don’t think I’m crazy.”

“Did you tell my father?” Zachary asked. “Or Aura’s mother?”

“Not your dad.” She looked at me. “I told Maria right afterward, outside. Then she tracked me down a few years later. The government had been questioning her about you and the solstice. She was scared.”

“I didn’t know that.” My mind boggling, I wondered if my mom had ever shared her fears with Gina.

Eowyn said, “We corresponded off and on until she died.”

Zachary flinched at the sound of the word, then passed a hand over his forehead as if he had a sudden fever. “That light—could it have made them sick?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Her brows pinched in sympathy. “There’s much that we don’t understand.”