Shift (34 page)

“Is Logan really gone?” Megan asked. “I thought he had to turn back into a ghost first.”

“I thought so, too.”

“I know where the trapdoor leads,” Dylan said. “If he’s still human and he went through it, maybe we’ll catch him.”

We rushed behind the curtain. Mickey stepped out, looking just like Logan.

“I saw him.” Mickey released a beautiful smile, one I hadn’t seen in months. He looked at Siobhan. “Did you see him?”

She nodded, then threw her arms around Mickey. The twins hugged and wept.

I spoke quietly to Megan. “Mickey should get onstage so people
can start to believe it was really him.” I cringed at the sound of Corey’s drum kit falling over. “Soon.”

“Yup,” she said. “Definitely man-behind-the-curtain time.”

Dylan nudged me. “Come on, before the dumpers get here and block everything off.”

The two of us pushed past the remnants of sets left over from the last play, until we found the opening for the three-foot-high tunnel leading to the trapdoor. The tunnel itself was lined with blue running lights.

And it was empty.

Dylan and I stared at the darkness.

“You think Logan’s really gone?” he said. “He did do the glowy thing. Or was that just the special effects?”

“I couldn’t tell. I was so close, the light blinded me. Doesn’t it seem like we should know?”

“You mean, feel his absence in our hearts or some shit like that?”

“Exactly.” I held out the piece of broken fret board. “Here. I’m sorry we kept Logan’s secret from you and Siobhan. It seemed safer this way.”

“Yeah.” Dylan took the shard of wood, cracked it in half, and handed me back the bigger piece. “I bet once the DMP gets ahold of us, the less we know, the better.”

A
m I in major trouble?”

Gina tucked her bag tighter under her arm as she marched me down the hallway of Logan’s high school. “If I weren’t so grateful to see you alive, you’d be grounded until you collect Social Security.”

“Sorry.” We walked by the main entrance to the auditorium. Two hours after Logan’s passing on, it was as empty as the rest of the school. The DMP and local police had cleared out the crowd, including the media, who by now had spread word of the “Miracle or Magic Trick?” to the world.

“This was not what we discussed,” Gina said. “I thought the idea was for Logan to sing, and then pass on to celebrate the solstice. But then you bring Mickey onstage as a stand-in, and now people wonder
if Logan really came back to life. It’s chaos. Our clients won’t want help passing on anymore—they’ll want their lives back.”

I stopped at a water fountain. “Only the crazy people will believe it actually happened.”

“It’s the crazy people I worry about.” She came closer and spoke in a low voice. “How did you pull off that trick? When did Mickey and Logan switch places?”

I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of the clean shirt she’d brought me, gathering my thoughts. “Before the last song he did as a ghost. That was actually Mickey onstage, but we used special lights to make him look violet.”

Her voice turned flat and angry. “Now it’s my job to make sure the DMP believes that line of bull.”

“It’s not bull.”

“Don’t lie to me, Aura!” She shook her finger in my face. “I’m not only your godmother, I’m your lawyer. For your own protection, you need to tell me everything.”

She was wrong. My silence would protect me much better than the truth ever could.

Even the DMP seemed to agree. The last thing they wanted was ghosts begging to be brought back to life, as Gina had suggested. So Nicola Hughes—who had spent the last two days trying to get me and Zachary released from a place we’d never arrived at—had helped us refine our story.

The debriefing after the concert had included me, Dylan, Megan, Mickey, Siobhan, and the members of Tabloid Decoys. The official
story included the “magic trick” and ended with Logan passing on in the presence of close family. Family who were not yet available to speak to the media.

“All you need to know,” I said, “is that Logan’s gone for good, so he won’t need legal protection anymore.” My voice threatened to break as I thought of our last few moments, when our hands had touched for the final time. “He won’t need anything anymore.”

Gina put her arm around me as we continued down the hall, slower now. “I know it’s not easy letting them go, even when they’ve stayed too long.”

I frowned. To me, Logan had stayed just long enough. I now faced a true life-after-Logan, a life I was finally ready for. That didn’t mean his departure didn’t feel like having one of my limbs ripped off.

“Speaking of ghosts.” I fidgeted with the comfortingly frayed belt loop of my jeans. “That guy you were in love with, the one who died and haunted you. What was his name?”

Her face pinched as she checked to make sure we were alone.

“Sorry if it’s a bad time,” I added.

“No, hon. With Logan leaving, I understand why you’d ask about him.” She spoke in almost a whisper. “His name was Anthony.”

My chest thrummed. “What was he like?”

She gave a little laugh. “He was kind and sensitive and smart. A little bookish, but also sort of a jock. Very stubborn. He never laughed at his own jokes, but he laughed at everyone else’s.” She rubbed her chin, showing a slight smile. “Let’s see, what else? He ate, slept, and breathed the Eagles and Phillies. He preferred French pastries to Italian, much to your grandmother’s disapproval.”

I hesitated before asking for the answer I needed most. “You said my mom knew him.”

Her smile widened on one side, making her look wistful. “That’s when I fell in love with him. The first time she had cancer, before you were born, he drove her to all her appointments. He brought her food. He argued with the insurance companies for her. He was like her guardian angel.”

“So he was a friend of the family before you, um, were with him.”

“That’s right.” Her forehead creased, and I wondered if she was lingering on a memory, or trying to recall one just out of her mind’s grasp.

Maybe my father hadn’t been involved with my mom and aunt at the same time. Maybe when he was alive, he’d brought my mother nothing but comfort—though after his death, he’d brought her nothing but torment.

Thanks to what my mother had left behind, Zachary and I knew more truth than anyone alive, but we still didn’t have all the answers. Yet.

We reached the front lobby, where a giant glass trophy case displayed the school’s victories in everything from baseball to chess. Beside it was a smaller glass case built into the wall, of an entirely different sort.

“Oh my God.” Gina put a hand to her long silver chain necklace. “That’s beautiful.”

Behind the glass lay a memorial for the students who’d never graduated. Not because they’d dropped out or started college a year early, but because they were dead.

Though he’d died eight months ago, Logan’s wasn’t even the most recent photo.

“I wonder how many of them are ghosts,” Gina said. “Such a shame.”

I remembered the idea I’d had by the river—that the Shine had reopened the world of the living to the suddenly dead. And that in response, the Shift had given the dead a way to find their peace. The Shift gave them us.

“It would’ve been more of a shame if Logan had never been a ghost,” I told her. “This way he got a second chance.”

“You mean a third chance.” She patted my shoulder. “Are you trying to say being a ghost is a blessing?”

I thought of what Logan and I had shared last fall, and the way his face had looked tonight onstage, as a ghost and as a human. Some of the best days of his life were after his death.

I kissed my fingertip and pressed it to the glass in front of his photo. “For him it was.”

I didn’t have to go far to find Zachary. In the bus lane outside the school’s front entrance, he stood with his parents next to a black sedan with tinted windows. Ian was off to one side, talking to one of the DMP agents who had debriefed me. Fiona spoke to Zachary as he leaned against the car, taking the weight off his hurt ankle. In the strobe of red-and-blue patrol car lights, I could see his jaw set in stubbornness.

When he caught sight of me, he set down his foot without a wince and moved in my direction.

His mother called his name, and Gina called mine. But we didn’t stop until we were in each other’s arms. For a long moment we barely breathed, much less spoke.

Finally he loosened his grasp to examine my face. “What did they do to you?”

“Asked questions. Mickey and I told them how the trick worked.” Instead of winking, I squeezed his elbow. “I have to go to DMP headquarters on Monday for more grilling. But at least Gina’ll be with me.”

“What will you tell them?” He added in a whisper, “About your mother.”

“Nothing. Hopefully, I’ll bore the crap out of them and they’ll let me go. For now.” After all the trouble they’d gone to in capturing me, no way they’d give up on finding my secrets. “What about you?”

He dropped his arms but took my hands. “Not so lucky. The dumpers didn’t like what I told the media about being illegally detained. They want me to leave the country.”

I gasped. “You’re being deported?”

“Not officially. By the time Immigration can draw up paperwork, I’ll be gone anyway. But I’ll be on a watch list, so it’ll be harder to get a visa to come back.”

I wrapped my arms around his waist. “Then I’ll have to come to you.”

“Promise?”

“Gina can only legally ground me until I’m eighteen.”

Zachary stroked my hair. “Six months and a day.”

“Besides,” I said into his T-shirt so no one would hear, “I need to see Eowyn’s copy of my mother’s journal.”

“True, it might not be safe for me to send it to you by post or e-mail.” He put a hand to my chin, tilting it up. “But forgive me if it’s not the first thing I show you when you arrive.”

He kissed me then, because he could. I was free to be red, free to be his. Free to live, at last.

In a gesture of extreme mercy, Gina deferred my grounding until after Zachary left the country, so he and I spent Saturday catching up on everything we should’ve done sooner. Touristy stuff like the Air and Space Museum, and romantic stuff like a dinner cruise on the Inner Harbor.

We even went back to our sky-mapping field Saturday night, one last time. Without our sky maps.

Late Sunday afternoon, I drove the Moores down to BWI Airport, dropping them off to check in, then parking in the garage across from the terminal.

When I joined them at the end of the international terminal’s long security line, I saw that the airline had loaned Ian a wheelchair so he wouldn’t have to stand while they waited. His hair had thinned even more from the chemo, and his suit hung slightly loose on his once-muscular frame. But his green eyes still gleamed when he made a joke or gazed at Fiona.

Ian’s renewed perkiness was partly due to his oncologist’s rosier
prognosis. The chemotherapy was buying him a few more months, and he was now expected to see the New Year. I hoped I would see him again, too, in this year and the next.

The security line moved way too fast, and before I knew it, the Moores stood a hundred feet from the boarding pass checkpoint. Time to say good-bye.

Zachary tugged me several feet away from the line. “I need to give you one thing before I go.” He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer (his mother had insisted he dress up for the flight like a proper man), then withdrew a fat white envelope. “No, wait. Two things.”

He kissed me as if we were the only two people in the airport, possibly the entire county. The terminal’s noise faded as my mind heard nothing but our breath and the music stuck in my head—the music we’d listened to last night under the stars.

Zachary’s face stayed near mine as he slipped the envelope into my hand. “Don’t open this in front of me.”

“Okay.” I ran my finger along the seal, seriously tempted. “So we’ll video-chat tomorrow after you get in?”

“Even if I’m completely shattered from the flight. But it’ll be early for you, maybe five a.m.”

“I don’t care.”

“Zachary, it’s time!” his mother called.

He waved to her, then turned back to me. “We’ll be together again soon, aye?”

“Aye,” I whispered.

And with a sweet, fast kiss, he was gone.

Slowly I turned and headed down the long, polished hallway toward the main terminal. Halfway to the exit, I opened the envelope. Inside was a glossy brochure and three sheets of paper stapled together. My heartbeat surged.

Ballyrock Castle, County Meath, Ireland.

The first sheet was an e-mail printout addressed to Zachary.

Re: Your reservation!

This confirms your reservation and receipt of one night’s deposit at Ballyrock Castle for the following dates:

20–24 December

The second sheet was a round-trip ticket in my name, from BWI to Dublin, departing December 19 and arriving the morning of December 20.

The third sheet was in Zachary’s handwriting.

Aura,

Please say you’ll come.

Zachary

P.S. Note the date I made the reservation.

I flipped back to the first page. March 30. Easter. The night I came to his apartment, the night we found out his dad had cancer. All along, he never gave up on us.

My new phone vibrated with a text message from Zachary. The DMP had returned the phones they’d taken from us, but we assumed they were bugged. So on Saturday we’d each bought a new one—red, of course—just for our own private communication.

I’M THROUGH SECURITY. SO YES OR NO
?

I replied as I walked toward the exit:
YES. 6 MONTHS = TOO LONG TO WAIT.

His reply: 6
MONTHS MINUS 1 DAY
.

Me:
OH. NO PROBLEM THEN
.

Him:
I LOVE YOU
.

Me:
SAVING THAT IN MY IN-BOX
.