Shift (17 page)

“Aye.” As he turned away from me, I heard him whisper, “Too much.”

When Zachary and I entered his apartment, Ian was sitting in the armchair, watching a soccer game on TV.

He practically sprang out of his chair to greet me. “Aura, it’s good to see you again. Of course, in my state, it’s good to see anybody again.”

“Ian, must your humor be so grim?” A brunette woman made a tsking sound on her way out of the kitchen. “Hello, Aura. I’m Fiona, Zachary’s mum.”

As she took my hand, I could see where Zachary got his smile that felt like a hug. It lit up his mother’s smooth, fair face, reaching her vibrant green eyes.

Zachary made a beeline for the television. “How’d you find the Chelsea-Arsenal match?”

“ESPN’s gone World Cup mad,” Ian said, “so they’re priming their viewers with English Premier League play.”

“Brilliant.” Gaze glued to the screen, Zachary sank onto the couch, all life’s important questions forgotten.

I set my bag on the dining room chair and followed Fiona back to the kitchen, where she had tea already waiting for us.

She smiled at me. “Not a football fan, I assume?”

“I like lacrosse better. Soccer seems like a lot of running around for nothing.”

“It seems that way at first.” She pulled a polished wooden serving tray from a space next to the refrigerator. “But if you watch carefully, you’ll see that one side wears the other down, little by little, finding their weak points, and hopefully in the end, they triumph. It’s a game of patience.”

I frowned as I helped her arrange the china on the tray. Zachary had shown the patience of a whole realm of saints, but in the end we’d only played to a draw.

“My son seems very fond of you.”

I almost dropped a teacup. “Really?”

“Really. So what I want to know is”—she leaned against the fridge and spoke in a low voice—“why is he taking someone else to the prom?”

I looked down, running my fingers along the tray handle’s wicker grip. “Because I’m an idiot.”

Fiona laughed. “I’m certain he can claim a share of the idiocy.” She opened the silverware drawer. “I’ve met Becca, and she’s all right. She likes football, or at least pretends to convincingly enough.”

Her revelation bothered me. Maybe Becca was being a fake, but it showed she liked Zachary enough to at least feign interest in something he cared about.

Worse, Becca’d been there for him in the last few weeks, getting him through this ordeal with his father. A lot more than I’d done.

Zachary appeared at the kitchen door. “It’s halftime,” he said to me. “Let’s tell them now.”

We went into the living room, where the television had been muted but not switched off. I sat next to Zachary on the loveseat, fighting off flashbacks of our last encounter here on Easter night.
How he’d given me his hands, his mouth, his understanding.

Fiona served Ian his tea, then pulled a dining room chair close beside him. They leaned toward each other almost instinctively, and I had an unexpected pang of jealousy, wishing I could’ve seen my own parents like that.

They kept their composure as we told them about the events Eowyn had described to us at the Science Center. The only sign of distress was a tight linking of hands when we got to the part about “the Shine.”

“I can’t help but think,” Zachary said when we had finished the story, “that this light did something to you, Dad, and to Aura’s mother. Maybe it gave you this disease. She had lung cancer, too.”

“Although it was a different kind.” I pronounced it carefully. “Adenocarcinoma.”

Ian passed a hand through his hair, which had thinned on top from the chemotherapy. “I dunno if it caused that, but it might have had another effect, for the good.” He looked at Fiona, who nodded and squeezed his wrist.

“Zachary,” she said, “you know we were older than the average parents when you were born. I was thirty-eight and your father forty-one. It was because for a long time”—she shifted on her chair—“we couldn’t have children.”

“We were told in no uncertain terms,” Ian said, “we had no chance. I was—” He waved his hand, apparently unable to utter the word “sterile.”

“In any case,” Fiona said, her expression slightly pained, “the year after your father went to Newgrange, we had you.” She let out
a nervous laugh. “Oh yes, there were doubts among our friends who knew of our problems.” She pushed her silver hoop bracelet up and down her wrist. “Until you were born, and then no one could deny the resemblance.”

Zachary shifted his feet in discomfort. I dropped my gaze to the doily on the coffee table, trying not to squirm at the Moores’ attempt to talk about sex in front of their son—and the girl who wanted to do a lot more than talk about it with him.

“So.” Zachary placed his hands on his thighs and declared, “I was never meant to be born.”

“Bollocks,” Ian said. “You
were
born, so you were meant to be. Even if it took a miracle.”

“But if you hadn’t gone to Newgrange, I wouldn’t exist.”

Fiona said, “We’ll never know that for certain.”

“And you wouldn’t be dying,” Zachary told his father, “from this rare monster of a disease.”

“We’ve discussed the statistics, aye?” Ian said sternly. “It’s no’ that uncommon for men with my background, who grew up in poor neighborhoods.” He set down his tea without drinking it. “My family’s flat was probably riddled with asbestos.”

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t get it because of Newgrange.”

“No, but any rational person would blame the thing that causes ninety-nine percent of mesotheliomas.”

“I’m being perfectly rational.” Zachary’s strained tone contradicted his words. “But what Eowyn told us—”

“Listen,” Ian said. “Having cancer’s bad enough, without you trying to explain it with fairy tales.”

Hurt scrunched the corners of Zachary’s eyes. “Don’t you want answers?”

“I just want …” Ian pressed his forefingers against his brows. “I want a nap.”

Fiona put her arm around him. “Aura, please excuse us.”

“Sure. Can I do anything?”

Her sad, tender smile stabbed me with its similarity to Zachary’s. “Thank you, no.”

She walked with Ian down the hallway, ignoring his protests that he didn’t need any bloody help.

Zachary set his elbows on his knees and locked his fingers together. Staring at his father’s empty chair, he seemed so alone.

In that instant, I knew it was a giant waste of time to deny that I loved him.

“I’m sorry.” I reached to touch his shoulder, but he turned to me, eyes flashing.

“Sorry’s not enough. You’re like them. You think I’m mental.”

I pulled my hand back. “I don’t think that.”

“You believe me, then, aye?” He said it as a challenge. “Of course not.” He swiped the car keys off the coffee table. “I’ll take you home.”

On the short ride to my house, I pulled out the picture postcards I’d bought at the exhibit. The image in the Newgrange front kerbstone photo was all too clear.

I traced the vertical line that was so deeply carved into the rock, there could be no doubt that it was meant to be part of the design.

“This sounds crazy,” Zachary said when we stopped at a light, “but
maybe that line is supposed to be the Shift. The builders of Newgrange predicted it.”

I couldn’t scrub my voice of skepticism. “Five thousand years before it happened?”

“Time is irrelevant. Or it could’ve happened before, and history repeated itself. Maybe that’s why they built Newgrange in the first place.” He let his head fall back on the headrest, his eyes rimmed with fatigue. “So many questions.”

I gripped the postcard, digging its edge into the webbing between my fingers. These “questions” made me want to run to him so we could find the answers together. But the same questions made him want to run
away
from me. I sensed that the more I argued, the more he would dig in with his doom.

“Bad things may have happened because of it, Aura.”

“Good things happened because of it, too.”
You happened.

“If you got hurt, and I was to blame—” He shook his head. “No. Not for anything.”

I wondered what horrific scenarios were playing out in his head. Maybe he had gone “mental.” But I wasn’t about to abandon him to his pain.

As we reached my street, I said, “Call me if you want to talk. Or I’ll call you.”

He eased the car to a stop. “I think it’s best we don’t,” he said slowly. “To be with you, and not with you—it’s too much right now.” He lowered his chin, staring through the spokes of the steering wheel. “I’m so sorry.”

I managed a weak “okay,” then looked down to see I’d folded the postcard in half, separating the two sides of the Newgrange kerbstone. I left it behind as I got out of the car.

If Zachary was right, and that deep, straight, sure line down the middle represented the Shift, then it was a line he would never cross.

S
mile!”

I forced up the corners of my mouth as Dylan held out my corsage, still in its plastic box. Aunt Gina was hovering like a moth, her digital camera flashing every other millisecond.

Megan stood smirking on the other side of my porch, the midnight blue of her gothic corset gown absorbing the light. She elbowed Mickey.

“Dylan,” he said in a monotone, “you’re supposed to put it on her.”

“Oh.” Dylan opened the box, tearing the plastic with a crack that hurt my ears. His awkwardness clashed with the bold design of his tux, black with gray pinstripes, that made Mickey and Connor look ordinary. It fit with the dark, straight swoop of hair over his right eye. Dylan was on the verge of serious cute.

“Ooh, a dendrobium!” Gina exclaimed, then leaned in for a close-up.

Dylan pulled out the corsage’s long pin with the pearl tip. He glanced at Siobhan’s flowers, which were fastened to the single wide strap of her black mermaid-style dress.

He turned back to me, face full of confidence, then stopped when he saw how my purple gown’s satin straps crossed my chest, providing no convenient corsage landing strip.

I lifted my left hand. “Try the wrist?” He looked at the pin with confusion. “Use the strap,” I said.

“Oh! Got it.” He stretched the white silky band over my hand. Then he straightened the purple flowers so that they lay flat against my skin. “Good?”

I smiled up at him, willing us both to relax. “Perfect.”

He sent back a grin. The camera flashed.

“Finally! A nice shot of you two.” Gina elbowed her way between us and displayed the picture on her camera screen. “Sweet, isn’t it?”

My reply lodged in my throat.

Captured in pixels, Dylan’s smile looked just like Logan’s.

At the restaurant, the Keeleys sat on one side of the table, and the non-Keeleys on the other. It hurt to see the three remaining siblings all lined up, missing the brother who’d brought so much life. But when I mentally substituted Zachary for Dylan in the seat across from me, the image didn’t fit.

Logan was rehearsing with Tabloid Decoys tonight, teaching them the songs he’d written since he died. It was a slow process, since he couldn’t write down the notes or play them on the guitar. They had to transcribe them from his voice alone—not easy for a trio of
sixteen-year-old amateurs, and not as much fun for me to watch as a full-blown practice.

I tried to think of a nonemotional dinner topic besides sports and the weather. “Do you two have gigs lined up for the summer?”

Siobhan shot a deadly glance at Mickey to her left. “Our last show is in Catonsville on June fifteenth.”

“The last show?” My throat lumped at the thought of losing another Keeley tradition. “Why?”

“Because only one of us is serious about music,” Mickey said through tight lips.

Siobhan clattered her fork against her plate. “I’m serious about music, I just don’t want it to be my life. I never did.”

“That’s why we named the band the Keeley Brothers,” he said, “because we never knew whether you were staying or going.”

I exchanged a look with Dylan. Was he also wondering how many times they’d refer to Logan without using his name?

“It was because you wanted it to sound like the Clancy Brothers.” Siobhan adjusted her corsage, which had already wilted. “Music isn’t fun anymore. Why do it if we have to treat it like work? I might as well be an accountant.”

“The point is to succeed, so you never have to feed yourself by being an accountant.”

“God, Mickey, would you give up the starving artist routine? We’ve been millionaires since the settlement.”

His response was almost a growl. “I’ll starve before I spend a dime of that blood money.”

“Mom and Dad are using it for your fancy music college.”

“No they’re not,” he said. “I’m deferring enrollment. I won’t go unless I can pay for it myself.”

“What if you can’t?” I asked him.

“Then I’ll get a job and focus on my music.”

Siobhan snorted. “He’ll be a busker in a subway station.”

Mickey folded his hands together, elbows on the table, and met no one’s eyes. “I might move to Seattle.”

A hush fell. Megan stopped cutting her salad and stared across the table at Mickey. This was obviously news to her, too.

The normally quiet Connor was the first to speak. “No, dude. Seattle’s where people go to kill themselves. I read that someplace.”

Mickey gave a single nod. “I read that, too.”

Dread stole my appetite. Was Mickey thinking of ending his life, with all he had to live for?

“What about Austin?” Connor said. “Better scene, better weather.”

Mickey picked up his water, but instead of drinking it, he stared through the side of the glass. “I like rain.”

Scattered amid the sleek black limousines in the Ridgewood parking lot, the white Department of Metaphysical Purity vans looked like the losing side of a chess game.

My school’s front courtyard was swarming with ghosts, who had no doubt returned to reminisce about their own prom night, and to watch the seniors and juniors pass by in our formal wear. Their ghostly light was reflected in the water of the courtyard’s center fountain, turning it a deep violet.

Strolling down the front walk with Dylan, I scanned the crowd
of ghosts, who were waving at us like children at a parade.