Shift (29 page)

“Don’t be an idiot. If you walk now, it’ll get worse. And I can’t
carry you.” I moved the log closer to him and adjusted the height. “Besides, I’m so tired I can’t think in a straight line. And when I do, the line leads to us stuck out here for days, with me watching you die of tetanus or gangrene, or, I don’t know.” I smacked a mosquito on my arm. “Malaria.”

“I promise I won’t die,” he said with a chuckle, which faded when he saw my face. “Sorry. I can’t believe I said that.” He shut up and propped his heel on the log.

I tied his shirt around his ankle as a makeshift compression bandage. Then I sat with my back to him and his bare chest, keeping an eye out for dumpers on the far shore—as much as I could, from our secluded spot.

Zachary let out a long breath, making a cheek-puffing noise. “So what do we do now?”

After a review of our inventory, we determined that we had, in total, jackshit and sod-all.

In other words, nothing. So we moved on to the much bigger version of “What do we do now?” “Now,” as in, the rest of our lives. Knowing what we knew.

“What my mother did with my father—” The
F
-word felt strange in my mouth, connected to a real person. “You think the Shine made that possible?”

“Maybe. After all, my father and your mother couldn’t have children, not before that light filled them up at the solstice.”

“First him, then her. Making you the Last and me the First.”

“Last, First, and only. No one else was born in our minutes.”

“And we each have special powers to go with it.”

“Right.”

“So maybe it’s destiny. We were put here to do … something with ghosts.”

“Maybe.”

“So what if my mom had said no? What if she and my dad had hesitated, like Logan and I did, and there hadn’t been enough time to make me?” I hugged my knees to my chest, despite the stiffness of my damp jeans. “I never would’ve been born. No Shift, no post-Shifters. The world would’ve stayed the same, with just a few people seeing ghosts.”

“Maybe you did have to be born, or someone had to be born to your mother, to do whatever the First is supposed to do. But maybe your father didn’t have to be a ghost.” Zachary sat forward, almost touching me. “Maybe the Shift was only about ghosts because your father was one.”

“So if he’d been a plumber, the Shift would’ve been about toilets?”

“I’m only saying, you can get all tangled up in talk of destiny. Anyone wouldn’t have been born if their parents hadn’t met. Or they would be born, but to other parents.”

“But then they’d be different people.”

“Genetically. Their soul would be them.”

I’d never heard Zachary talk like this. “You believe in souls?”

“Sure.” He gestured to the sky above us. “I think they’re all queued up out there, waiting for the next person in the world to be born, and when that life begins, they hop into that body. Like a taxi stand at a railway station. They take the next available car.”

“Seems pretty random.”

“A lot less tragic than a person never existing because their parents never met or because they decided not to have children.”

I remembered what Megan had said, after our four-way meeting with Logan, something about me and Zachary being like those VIPs who don’t have to wait in line at a club, the ones the bouncers unhook the red velvet rope for.

Had we jumped the line when the club of life was temporarily closed?

“My mom said something about solstice meaning ‘sun standing still.’ And that at some exact moment, the sun stops leaving and starts returning.”

“Which might have been when she and my father stood in that light.”

“She wished that people did that, too, instead of just leaving. And then it happened—my dad came back so she could see him.” I spoke faster, before the thoughts escaped me. “Maybe that’s what the Shift is all about—giving people who died suddenly a chance to say good-bye.”

I thought of Logan’s twisty, turny road to peace and was filled with a sudden, aching sense of purpose—not just for me, but every post-Shifter.

I spun to face Zachary. “And
that’s
why me and everyone younger can see ghosts.”

He furrowed his brow. “Why?”

“It’s hard for a pre-Shifter to understand.”

“Then help me.”

“Ghosts need to pass on. Some of them do it on their own, but others might never if not for us.”

“Like your aunt’s clients, the ones you translate for.”

“Obviously,” I said, “but lots of other ghosts don’t need anything that drastic. They just need to talk, or be seen.”

“But wouldn’t it have been easier to let everyone else already
in
the world see and talk to ghosts? Why wait for all these children to be born?”

“Because we weren’t afraid of them. Babies always smile or laugh at ghosts—they think they’re pretty. They don’t know yet that they’re supposed to freak.”

He gazed at me for a long moment. “I don’t know if your theory is the least bit true, but it’s pure beautiful.”

I felt my eyes crinkle with joy. He might not understand what it meant to be a post-Shifter, but at least he appreciated it.

I twitched my shoulder in an attempt to shrug. “It just popped into my head. I’m still working out the kinks.” I remembered that we now had access to more answers than ever. “Hey, let’s reread my mom’s notes. Maybe there’s important stuff on one of the pages I skimmed.”

Zachary got up on his knees and reached into his back pockets. “Oh, no.”

My heart stopped. “Are they gone?”

“No.” He struggled to pull out the pages, and for a second I thought his panic was a joke. Then he unfolded them.

The sheets were soaked through, the blue and black ink smeared beyond recognition.

“Aura … oh God, I’m sorry.”

I grabbed the papers and pulled them apart, trying to find one entry that hadn’t been destroyed. But the journal was now a giant wad of wet pulp.

A keening noise started at the back of my throat. I smothered my mouth with my hands to keep from screaming. If I released all the anguish I felt, the DMP would be able to hear it from Pittsburgh.

Zachary wrapped his arms around me. “Aura, I’m so sorry.”

I pressed my face to his chest, the soggy pages clamped between us. My hands formed useless fists, opening and closing with the rhythm of my sobs. He stroked my hair, murmuring the word “sorry” again and again.

Finally my shudders eased into shivers. “It was all I had of my father.”

“I know. I was so stupid.”

“Not your fault. I didn’t think of it either.” My sob hitched into a hiccup as I clutched the papers, wringing out a cascade of water.

“Listen.” Zachary touched the mass of white in my hand. “Now no one will ever know but us. Agent Acker only read a few pages.”

“But we don’t know how far he got.” I turned away to wipe my face, wishing for a box of tissues. I didn’t want to get snot on my sleeve, or use some random leaf that might end up being poi-son ivy.

“Here.” Zachary started to unwrap the shirt from his ankle.

“No, you need it.”

“And you can wrap it back up after you’ve used it. Unless your tears are made of acid.”

“Feels like it.” I sniffled and wiped my face with the shirt. “I was going to destroy the journal pages anyway. But not until after I memorized them.” I blotted my eyes before they could overflow again. “Now they’re gone forever.”

“No. We’ll re-create what we can remember.”

“With what?” I started rewrapping his ankle. “We have no paper, no cell phones. We don’t even have a pen to write on our arms.”

“Come here.” He lay on his back and patted his bare shoulder. “There’s something you should see.”

I eyed him warily. Just because we probably wouldn’t destroy the world with a single kiss didn’t mean I was ready to cuddle. Part of me still ached with humiliation at the memory of his voice sighing Becca’s name.

“If you don’t believe me,” he said, “look up.”

I lifted my chin, then gasped. The moon had disappeared behind the mountain, and a section of clear, dark sky stretched out above the riverbank. It held more stars than I’d ever seen, even in the field we used at home. The Milky Way was no longer a white blur, but rather a giant arm with sinews and veins.

For the first time, a sky full of stars didn’t make me feel small. No longer a mere tapestry suspended above us, the universe felt close at hand. We were part of it.

“We’ll talk about everything we read in the journal,” Zachary said, “and write it in the stars.”

I tightened his ankle wrap with one last tug. “You’re so cheesy.”

“Yes. Play along. We’ll start from the beginning.”

I gave in and lay down on my back beside him, resting my head on his shoulder. Maybe it was the change in position, or maybe it was the warm, rich scent of his skin, but my thirst- and tear-induced headache began to ease.

“No,” I said. “Let’s start from the end.”

I
woke the next morning on my side facing the river, my head propped on Zachary’s arm. My own arm was curled beneath me, still fast asleep.

One urgent part of me had woken up, and I wished ten times harder for that box of tissues.

I sat up, pins prickling my arm as blood rushed into it. Zachary lay in the same way as the night before—on his back, bare-chested, his wrapped ankle propped on the log.

“Where you going?” He blinked at me with sleep-heavy lids, surpassing previous levels of cute by several orders of magnitude.

“Nowhere you need to follow.”

“Be careful.”

“I’ll try not to fall in.” I stood, brushed the dirt from my butt, and stomped off, hating all guys for their ease in wilderness peeing.

I climbed the hill, weaving around the underbrush, trying to find the forest’s least bug-ridden spot. If nothing else, I had to get out of Zachary’s line of sight.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped by a nonmoldy tree so I at least had a handhold. I peeled down my pants, half wishing we’d never escaped the DMP. At least in federal custody I’d have running water and toilet paper.

A few seconds later, I didn’t care about luxuries. I closed my eyes and exhaled in relief.

“Wouldn’t you rather use the outhouse?”

I yelped at the sound of the woman’s voice. By reflex I tried to stand up, but my feet slipped in the damp leaves. I was left clutching the tree trunk to keep from falling.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” A woman circled in front of me, her violet shimmer barely visible in the morning light. “Are you okay?”

It had been more than ten years since a ghost had caught me like this. Bathrooms were the first places to get BlackBoxed.

In the distance, Zachary called my name.

“No!” I shouted, yanking up my pants. “Don’t come over here!” This ghost might be the only one who could help us. If he scared her away—

He hobbled over the ridge. “Are you all right?”

The ghost let out a shriek and vanished.

Zachary came closer, his steps more cautious, maybe now that he could see I hadn’t been turned into bear breakfast.

“There was a ghost.” I finished buttoning my jeans. “She said something about an outhouse.”

His lips twitched. “Did she interrupt you?”

“Don’t you dare laugh, Red Boy. You scared her off.”

“But you didn’t.” He went full-on smirk. “Good thing I didn’t wake you with a kiss, aye?”

“Shut up and help me find this house.”

He studied the ground at his feet. “This looks like a trail leading from the water. Let’s follow it.”

We headed off, keeping the river within earshot so we wouldn’t get completely lost.

“How’s your ankle?” I asked him.

“Better. It’s a bit of a sprain, no worse.” He tugged on his shirttail. “And I can be fully dressed again.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said with a straight face.

Soon the trees thinned into a clearing, where we saw a tiny house with an even tinier outhouse.

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or more scared than ever. What if the ghost hadn’t lived alone, and her shotgun-wielding husband was still around? Maybe he had killed her.

We entered the clearing and stopped in our tracks.

“What’s that smell?” I whispered, though a deep instinct told me.

“Wait here.” Zachary walked forward with barely a limp. I followed as he crept to the edge of the house, slid against the wall like a soldier, then peered around the corner.

“Aura, don’t look.” But it was too late.

Someone had died here. A long time ago, judging by what was left of her.

I reached out to steady myself against the corner of the building. Was this the body of the ghost I’d seen?

Zachary peered through the house’s small side window. “It’s empty. Let’s go in.”

I followed, my steps as heavy as my heart. Who was this woman, living in the middle of nowhere, with no one to miss her when she died?

Inside, the one-room house was dusty but tidy. The few furnish-ings—a wooden bed, dresser, kitchen table, and nightstand—looked hand built, but competently so. I was relieved that the back window’s faded yellow curtain was drawn, so I couldn’t see the body lying in the yard.

The wall above the twin-size bed held a small gallery of family photos. I moved closer to see. There were several of a middle-aged couple and a young woman who could’ve been their daughter. Flanking them were a pair of newspaper obituary notices. William Robinson had died of brain cancer at fifty-five, and leukemia had killed Dara when she was only twenty-eight. Father and daughter had died less than a year apart.

“How sad.” I touched the central photo, of the parents dancing at their daughter’s wedding. “They look so happy here.”

Zachary read the obituaries over my shoulder. “Maybe the ghost is the mother? Fredericka?”

“I guess so.”

“We should bury what’s left of her.”

Thirsty, I turned to the sink but saw only a basin. “No running water?” I picked up an overturned bucket—thankfully clean. “I’ll get water from the river, and we can boil it. You should stay inside in case ex-Fredericka comes back to talk to me.”

He frowned but didn’t argue. “I’ll look for food.”