Shift (23 page)

Logan was growing disillusioned with the attention. Nobody’d ever questioned his “motives” for writing a song, but once he started speaking out on behalf of at-risk ghosts, he got more politics than he’d bargained for. He was an artist, not a crusader.

I had a question for him, sparked by his one-page journal that Dylan had shown me. A question no one had asked. “If you hadn’t died, and by some bizarre chance had not become a rock god, what would you have done?”

I expected him to say “music producer” or “sound engineer,” something that would’ve kept him close to the famous.

“Easy.” He patted my calculus book without sound. “I would’ve taught. Music, probably.”

“At a high school?”

“Or middle school. Probably not elementary—they’d fire me the first time I accidentally said ‘fuck.’”

I laughed out loud. “On your opening day? Yeah.”

His eyes literally gleamed, then faded. “Doesn’t matter, because it’ll never happen. I’ll leave college to Mickey. He can go get his PhD in Musical Twattage or whatever it is he thinks is good enough for him.”

I cocked my head. “Didn’t Dylan tell you? Mickey’s not going to college next year.”

“What? No. Why isn’t he?”

“He says he doesn’t want to spend any of your blood money.”

Logan’s face twisted. “So he’s missing college and using me as an excuse?”

“I don’t think that’s how he sees it.”

“Of course not.” Logan got off the bed and started to pace. “He probably thinks he’s being noble and superior.”

“Have you talked to him at all since you’ve been back? Through Dylan or Megan?”

“Mickey doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Maybe, but he
needs
to talk to you. Logan, I think he wants to—” I wished I could swallow the words. “I think he might hurt himself.”

Logan stopped pacing. He stopped, period.

“No,” he whispered. “He can’t do that.”

“Megan’s tried to help him, or convince him to get help, but—”

“He can’t do that! With all he has to live for? Hell, he has
life
to live for. I’d do anything to have that! Even if it sucked every single day. At least it would be life.”

He started pacing again, clutching the pale violet spikes of his hair. I noticed that despite his agitation, he showed no signs of shading—not so much as a flicker of black.

“Let’s talk to Mickey,” I said.

“Not you. I’ll find someone who doesn’t know us.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll say things I don’t want you to hear.”

“You mean like secrets?”

“No, just—things. You remember the way he’d cut me down when I was alive. Can you imagine how he’ll be after seven months of sulking, when he can’t even see my reaction?”

I had to admit, I didn’t want to be in the middle of that conflict. “I could ask one of the other translators at work.”

“Maybe.” He wiped his hands on the sides of his shirt, and the motion seemed to calm him. “Siobhan’s not so bad. I should talk to her. Will you help me?”

“Sure. That’s a good start.”

“Start?”

“You should settle things with your parents, too.”

“My parents barely admit I’m a ghost. All they care about is me passing on.”

“Because they love you. And part of them still can’t grasp the whole idea of ghosts without going totally batshit. A lot of pre-Shifters are like that. But I think we should try.”

“Fine, fine. Set it up.” He sat on the bed and rubbed his arms. “Wow, I’m more nervous about that than any interview.”

“You never know, it might be fun.”

“Fun? You’ve hung out with my parents, right?”

“Yes, and all eleven hundred times, they were fun.” I bit back my resentment at the fact that he at least
had
parents. That wasn’t the point.

I opened my bag next to the bed and slid my calc text and notebook inside.

“I guess I should let you sleep,” Logan said, but stayed where he
was. Not that he had to physically walk out the door, but he usually stood up to say good-bye. Habit, I guess.

I brought my bag to my desk to collect my laptop. “Where are you going tonight?”

“I don’t know.” He traced the stitching on my bedspread. “Aura, do you ever get tired of this world?”

I considered his question. As miserable as I’d been after he died, and after he shaded, and then after Zachary broke up with me, I’d never felt like I didn’t want to exist.

“Not really.”

“Maybe because you sleep. I think that’s why ghosts either pass on or go crazy and turn shade. It’s not the bitterness. It’s the boredom.” He set his palm on the mattress, as if it had finished a task. “Don’t freak out, but sometimes I think about staying here for years, turning solid every three months. What would I do with those seventeen minutes? Play guitar? Eat pizza?” He glanced at me. “Have rampaging rabbit sex with my best friend?”

I laughed, though I didn’t want to encourage that line of thought. At least he no longer called me his girlfriend.

“One of those times,” he said, “I think I’d take a nap.”

I went to sit beside him. “You want to rest. We all do.” I thought of the grueling emotional and academic journey this year had been. After all the angst and hard work, I felt no closer to the answers I sought—about me, about Zachary, about the Shift. “Sometimes I just want to shut off my mind. Music helps.”

“Music helps everything. Usually.”

I reached behind him and picked up the MP3 player, then set it
on my nightstand. With a few button clicks, I started my pre-exam playlist, the seventy most soothing songs I owned.

“You can rest with me,” I said.

Logan gave me a sad, grateful smile. “I’d like that.”

He lay back against the pillow, almost gingerly, like he thought he would break it, or vice versa.

“That’s where I sleep now,” I said.

“You’ve always slept on the left side.”

“I used to, but then I wanted to be away from the window.”

“Why?”

I stared at the dark brown blinds. “Because it hurt too much to watch it, every night, waiting for you to come back.”

“When I was a shade?”

I nodded. “And I couldn’t just roll over, because then I’d be looking at the empty space where you used to lie.” I pulled back the covers and slid underneath. “But you’re here now, so I should sleep on this side again. It’s closer to the clock, anyway.” I reached to set the alarm.

“Aura, sleep wherever you need.”

“I need to sleep here.” I lay down, the pillow cool beneath my head. “I need to feel normal again.”

He placed his violet hand around mine in a facsimile of touch. “I’ll do like I used to, leave once you fall asleep.”

“You can stay all night.”

“Won’t it be creepy for me to watch you sleep?”

“Then don’t watch me sleep. Just be here. Tonight, tomorrow
night, whenever you need a quiet place to rest. Leave when you want.” I curled my thumb over his. “If you want.”

“I won’t overdo it, I promise.”

I believed him. His lack of shadiness was a sign that he’d changed. The last time I could remember him losing his temper was the night we met with Zachary and Megan. Since then he’d grown sadder, more serious. In other words, more grown up.

“I have to turn over,” I said. “Your light keeps me awake.”

“Sorry, I can’t help the shine.”

As I rolled to lie on my left side, his last word echoed in my head, reminding me of what Eowyn had called the Newgrange sunrise a year before my birth. The Shine.

Which in turn reminded me of how much work Zachary and I still had to do on our project, and how much I dreaded seeing him again. I forced my mind to stay here and focus on the soft music, hoping it would carry me away.

But my eyes wouldn’t stay shut. I squirmed, my limbs searching for a comfortable configuration.

“You can’t sleep?” Logan whispered.

“It’s weird being on this side. It’s like my arm doesn’t fit.”

We switched places, and immediately I felt myself relax into the mattress.

“Better?” he said.

“Mm-hmm,” I murmured.

“Good. I love you, Aura.”

“Love you, too.”

I snuggled my face into the pillow, feeling at home again. This right-side, right-side-of-the-bed position—one of hiding and mourning—had become normal to me. Facing the window meant facing the world, something I’d thought I was ready to do.

Obviously not yet.

Z
achary and I drove separately to our next meeting with Professor Harris. I’d told him—via text message, since we weren’t speaking complete sentences to each other—that I had another stop to make on the way back from the University of Maryland. It was easier to lie in a text.

As I approached her office, I could hear him and Eowyn laughing.

“Sorry I’m late.” I sat beside Zachary in front of Eowyn’s wide cherrywood desk—after pulling the chair farther away from him. “Hope I didn’t miss anything.”

“Not at all.” Eowyn smiled at me. “Zachary was just telling me about the international soccer rivalry at home, and how if England advances in the World Cup and Scotland doesn’t, his mother will be the filling in a resentment sandwich.”

“Heh.” I unzipped my messenger bag and pulled out my project
materials, glancing at Zachary. He was eyeing the Keeley Brothers and Tabloid Decoys stickers on my notebook and folders.

“So tell me.” Eowyn folded her hands. “Why are you two falling behind schedule? Is there a research roadblock I can help with?”

“We’re fine,” I said, “just busy.”

Zachary nodded at my notebook. “Aye, busy with the rock star and his paparazzi.”

My mouth dropped open.
Ouch.

“Ooo-kay.” Eowyn sat back in her chair. “So it’s not a research roadblock, I take it.”

“Our biggest problem isn’t the ragged schedule.” Zachary muted the edge in his voice. “To be honest, we have several theories that we can’t prove. We aren’t even sure if it’s safe to report them.”

Her usual smile dissipated. “I’m sure that what I told you at the exhibit didn’t help. But that’s outside the scope of your thesis, which Mrs. Richards insists is a history paper. Your assignment is to focus on the people who built Newgrange and used it throughout the centuries. Not its hypothetical connection to other things.”

“You mean the Shift,” I said.

She looked at my right hand, which I noticed was clutching the arm of my chair so tight, the knuckles were turning white. I let go and rubbed my wrist.

Eowyn pulled a set of keys from her top desk drawer. “Let’s take a walk.”

On our way out, she closed and locked her door, checking the knob twice to make sure it didn’t turn.

As we exited the building, Eowyn’s cell phone rang. She looked at the screen. “Oh! Excuse me for a second.”

She answered the phone, leaving me and Zachary to walk beside each other in silence toward the wide grassy expanse of McKeldin Mall.

After a few yards, he spoke quietly. “Did you really listen to my voice mail?”

I startled at the suddenness of his question and the vulnerability of his voice. “Which one?”

“The one I left the morning after the prom,” he said with a touch of annoyance.

Eowyn gasped into the phone. “Are you kidding me? For a oneway ticket? Is that coach or business class?”

I turned back to Zachary. “I told you I listened to it. I said everything was fine.”

He walked backward, with an athlete’s easy grace. “What did my message say?”

“Um.” I swiped at the hair blowing across my cheek. “That you were sorry about the night before. Can’t we just move on?”

Eowyn groaned. “I don’t have an exact date yet, I’m just shopping for rates and schedules.”

Zachary kept his eyes on me, his dark hair tossed at his temples. “What else did I tell you in the voice mail?”

“That …” I sucked at improvising, and besides, he knew the right answer and I didn’t, which gave him an advantage. “Uh.”

“I knew it,” he said with a mix of triumph and anger. “You didn’t listen to it.” He faced forward again, a few paces ahead of me.

“Was it about your dad?” I shouted over the whistling breeze. “How is he?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Zachary said, “and he’s the same, thanks. But his work visa’s expiring next month, because he can’t work.”

My feet slowed, almost stumbling. “When are you leaving?”

“The twenty-second of June.”

Two days after the solstice. I would lose both him and Logan in one weekend.

“Frankly,” he said, “I don’t know whether to be mad or relieved you didn’t hear my message. I think I’m both.”

Now he was torturing me on purpose. “I accidentally deleted it, okay? I was tired that morning, and my thumb slipped and hit the wrong key.”

He shot me an
oh, please
look over his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You’ve been so helpful,” Eowyn said into the phone. “You’ll be the first I call when I set a date. Thanks again!”

She hung up as we approached the long, rectangular fountain in the center of the mall. It reminded me of the Reflecting Pool on the Mall in DC. But because the landscape here was sloped, this one incorporated several stairlike waterfalls, creating a background murmur.

Oh. Maybe she’d brought us here so no one could overhear us over the fountain and the wind. Or maybe I was paranoid.

“Aura. Zachary.” Eowyn took one of our hands in each of hers. “The time is coming soon when I must leave you.”

“Are you sick?” Zachary blurted.

She squeezed our hands and let go. “I’m fine, despite a severe lack
of sleep. I just need to leave the country. I’m in trouble. I haven’t done anything illegal, I simply need to be out of the DMP’s reach so I can continue my research in peace.” She looked at Zachary. “Your father says I’ll be safe in the UK.”

“Why is the DMP after you?” he asked.

“They think I have information that might lead them to the mysteries of the Shift.”

My muscles jolted. “Is that true?”

“Not sure. I have the documents, but I can’t read them.”

“Are they in some ancient language?” Zachary asked.

“They’re in English, but I can’t unlock them.” She pressed her lips together, as if sealing in the words. “Only Aura can.”