Shine

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  I tensed. Had Logan withheld some hurtful secret from me? He hated having anyone be mad at him.

  “It’s not about you.” Dylan chomped the last bite of crust. “It’s about shades.”

  The word alone made me nervous. “What about them?”

  “He said, and I quote, ‘Shades can do whatever the fuck they want.’ ”

  My entire body turned to ice. “What does that mean?”

  “They can’t change into ghosts on their own. But other than that they go where they want and do what they want.”

  “What about BlackBox?”

  “He said for shades, BlackBox is like red is for regular ghosts—it hurts, but they can ignore it if they want to be somewhere bad enough.”

  “Wow.” This was new. Shades weren’t common enough yet to be thoroughly studied. Pre-Shifters couldn’t detect them, and post-Shifters couldn’t be around them without passing out or throwing up. “That’s pretty scary.”

  “I know, right? But there’s a good side, too, Logan says—I mean, he said. Shades aren’t just mindless, crazy-ass monsters. They’re people, like ghosts are. Shades can think.” He popped a piece of pepperoni into his mouth. “Shades can choose.”

  I looked at my window, where dark violet curtains blocked the evening sun’s glare. Logan had streaked through that window as a shade before turning back into a ghost. “He told me he stayed away from post-Shifters once he realized he made them sick.”

  “It wasn’t easy, though. You know how he was. Attention was like food. Plus, he said that when he first turned into a shade, he thought being around people would help him feel human. But watching them puke or pass out just made it worse. He got more and more pissed.” Dylan hung his head, and a lock of straight brown hair flopped over one eye. “He said, ‘The more I hurt people, the more I wanted to hurt people.’ ”

  My stomach grew heavy with sorrow for Logan’s suffering. “Why didn’t he tell me this before? Why didn’t he trust me?”

  “Cuz he knew you’d get upset. It was hard enough for him to tell me. But we gotta deal with shades, Aura. This is like inside info on the enemy. Logan was helping us protect ourselves.”

  True. I’d only encountered a few shades in my life, and hoped to never see another. But if they could be reasoned with . . .

  “Should we tell the DMP?” I asked Dylan. “I don’t trust them.”

  “Neither did Logan. He knew if the DMP found out the truth, they’d lock up every ghost that was even a little bit shady. Logan would’ve been the first.”

  “So he waited to tell us so he could save himself.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  “No. The thought of Logan in one of those little boxes makes me sick.” I blotted the pizza sauce stain on my white shirt. “I’m glad he’s free.”

  “Me too. I think he’s okay.” He started a second slice of pizza. “So what’s up with Zachary? Did they let him go? Is he back home now?”

  I hadn’t planned to tell anyone but Megan that my boyfriend was in DMP detention. Between Logan’s jealousy and his own, Dylan had never been a fan of Zachary.

  “It was a misunderstanding. He and his parents went home Monday.”

  “Back to Scotland?”

  I didn’t meet his eyes. “Yep.”

  “Good.” He looked around my room, maybe searching for pictures of Zachary. I had none up yet, since we’d been going out for less than a week, a period that included a plane crash and a harrowing escape through the mountains.

  Mountains that contained Area 3A, where Zachary was now trapped, maybe in pain, maybe unconscious. Maybe dead.

  “No,” I said, trying to talk myself back to sanity. They wouldn’t take him all the way up there just to kill him. Would they?

  “No what?” Dylan asked. “Oh, you mean, no, it’s not good that he’s gone back to Scotland.” He shrugged and looked away. “I get it.”

  I switched my mind from boy issues and pondered what Logan had said about shades. If they could choose their actions, then they could be reasoned with. They could be persuaded.

  They could be used as weapons.

  “Oh God,” I said. “We can’t ever tell the DMP. They’ll try to use shades against post-Shifters. They could make the shades attack us if we don’t do what they want.”

  “But they’d need other post-Shifters to tell the shades to attack.” He stopped chewing. “Shit, they keep talking about a DMP draft. They might make us work for them, starting with you.”

  His words rang odd. “What do you mean, starting with me?” I’d never told Dylan I was the First.

  He froze. “Whoops.”

  “What did Logan tell you?”

  “Just that you were the first person born after the Shift and Zachary was the last person born before. And that you both had special powers to go with it.” He folded the edge of his paper plate. “And that you switch powers when you hook up.”

  My head felt like it would burst into flames. “Why would he tell you all this?”

  “I guess he thought I could look out for you after he was gone. Since Zachary’s all the way in Scotland.”

  Elbows on my knees, I pressed my fists to my temples, my anger at Logan battling my need for honesty. Now that Dylan knew everything Megan knew, why not tell him the truth? Maybe he could help, or at least listen to me.

  “Zachary’s not in Scotland,” I whispered. “The DMP has him at some hellhole called 3A, where they tried to take us last week.”

  Dylan let out a low whistle. “They took him after the plane crash? Why?”

  “Because they found out he met with Logan at the airport. By now they know he’s a walking BlackBox. I’m scared I’ll never see him again. Just like—” My voice broke, and it felt like the rest of me would break, too, if someone didn’t hold me together.

  Dylan crawled around the pizza box. “Come here.”

  “No.”

  “I swear to God I won’t try anything.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I swear on Logan’s grave.”

  I gave up and let him pull me against him, realizing only now that he smelled sort of like Logan.

  Gone was the grasping touch that had marked our encounter on Dylan’s bedroom floor. Now his grip was solid, his hands motionless on my back, just as I needed them. My skin felt bristly, like it was made of thousands of shards of glass, connected by a weak glue. One stroke would send me flying apart.

  “I’m sorry, Dylan.” My tears dampened his T-shirt collar. “This isn’t fair to you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Letting you comfort me when we’re not—when I don’t—”

  “Jesus, Aura, with all the shit you’ve had to deal with, I’d be a dick if I got mad at you for wanting a hug.” He shifted his chin against my hair. “I used to think, maybe when Zachary left, I’d have a shot with you. But then in the cemetery, when I saw how destroyed you were about the plane crash, I decided no way I’d even think about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if Zachary had died, I didn’t want to be what he was for you after Logan died. I couldn’t deal with the waiting. Zachary was like a freaking superhero. Captain Patience or something.”

  I laughed and wiped away a tear. “I wish I had his patience. All I want to do is pull a commando raid and bust him out.”

  “That would be awesome.” Dylan went still. “Wait. That would be awesome.”

  “What?”

  “Commando raid.” He let go and sat cross-legged facing me. “Maybe not bust him out, because we’d need some serious weapons for that. But we could go there and see what kinda security they’ve got.” He bounced his palms off his bare knees like a kid. “And then maybe you could send him a coded message that tells him how and when to break out. Then we go pick him up and bring him here. Or no—to the embassy, right? That’s where people in the movies go when they get in trouble in other countries.”

  It did sound like the plot of an action movie—a bad one.
Or a good action movie with a bad ending. “There’s no way that would work.”

  “How do you know? Maybe there’s hardly any security because they’re way the hell out in the woods.”

  “I don’t even know where it is. Zach and I escaped before we got there.”

  “But you drove back from that area with Becca. I bet if we looked at a map we could figure it out. Then we tool around the back roads until we find it. Or not. But at least we try.”

  I remembered the general store/gas station/pizza place where we’d waited for Becca to pick us up, and the name of a nearby town. Maybe that would be enough.

  “Come on, Aura. We could all go—Mickey and Megan, Siobhan and Connor. They’d love it.” He tapped his fist against the bed frame, chanting, “Road. Trip. Road. Trip. Road. Trip.”

  It sounded ridiculous, but it made my heart glow with hope. Besides, I craved my friends’ support now more than ever.

  “Let’s do it,” I said.

  “Yes! We should go Fourth of July weekend—I bet there won’t be as many guards working on a holiday. We’ll tell my parents we’re going to our house at Deep Creek Lake instead of Ocean City like we planned.”

  I’d completely forgotten about my beach trip with the Keeleys. Two weeks ago one of my biggest dilemmas had been whether to pack the Cute Bikini or the Hot Bikini.

  “3A might be just a couple hours from Deep Creek Lake. So we could do recon, then stay at your family’s house to plan our next move.”

  “Now you’re talking.” He gave me a high five.

  I felt giddy with the possibilities. “This is insane.”

  “Not as insane as sitting here freaking out. And we won’t do anything illegal.” He shrugged. “Unless we have to, to save the day.”

  I pulled the pizza box closer to snag a second piece. “Why do you want to do this? You don’t even know Zachary.”

  “I know you. And . . .” He dragged the word out into several syllables. “I want to stop seeing you so bummed. Megan and all them do, too.”

  I smiled at him around the pizza, the first food I’d been able to taste in days. For the first time since the crash, I felt something besides rage and despair.

  Gina and Ian and even Simon would explode if they knew what Dylan and I were plotting. But their caution and prudence had produced zero results so far. Zachary was alone in a sea of DMP agents who cared nothing for his kind heart or his brave soul. When he finally was released (I made myself think when, not if), he might never be the same.

  After Dylan left, I went to my bookshelf and pulled everything from the top level—my SAT prep books, my assigned summer-reading novels, my pom-pom-waving Johns Hopkins stuffed jaybird.

  In their place I lined up the mix CDs Logan had made for me, then the scrapbook full of photos and ticket stubs for concerts and movies we’d gone to together, then the bootleg DVDs of Keeley Brothers concerts.

  I went to my dresser to pull out the final item—my worn green Keeley Brothers T-shirt. I refolded it so that the skull-and-crossbonesand-shamrock logo faced up, then placed it at the front of the shelf, as the shrine’s centerpiece.

  I remembered the day the first shipment of Keeley Brothers T-shirts arrived at Logan’s house. He was so eager, he accidentally sliced open his hand with the box cutter. The wound needed stitches, but Logan insisted on seeing the shirts before going to the emergency room. He even used one to stanch the bleeding.

  Now, atop my own Keeley Brothers shirt, I laid the limp white rose from his grave.

  “I miss you, Logan.” I touched my fingers to my lips, then the forehead of the Keeley Brothers skull. “I miss you so much.”

  Missing Logan was an emptiness, an ache so dull and deep, it was a permanent part of me. I would never truly get over his death, but someday I would find peace.

  Missing Zachary, on the other hand, was a searing knife in the gut. I burned to save him from the horrible fates I imagined, and the need to be in his arms again set my skin ablaze.

  One boy was gone forever. The other was gone now.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The following night, Ian called to tell me that Eowyn was in a new safe house, but he wouldn’t give me her phone number. I decided not to push it, knowing how stressed out he was, but I vowed not to give up. I couldn’t wait forever to read the rest of my mother’s journal.

  I put on my favorite Irish folk music and sat on the bed with my laptop to record the parts of the journal I remembered. Maybe I could pursue a clue buried in those details.

  My mother wrote that she’d gone to Newgrange at the winter solstice to feel close to my father, a friend of the family who’d taken care of her the first time she had cancer. Her disease was in remission, so her motto was “Life is short.” Plus, she apparently had a massive crush on Anthony, even as he was having an affair with my (married) aunt Gina. Though the Newgrange solstice itself was a mystical, uplifting experience, afterward she felt depressed and bitter over Anthony’s death.

  A few nights later, he appeared to her in Ireland as a ghost. They fell in love, and on the night of the spring equinox, he regained his body long enough for them to conceive me. Then he passed on for good. When Mom found out she was pregnant, she was understandably freaked.

  I hit save, sat back against my headboard, and pondered what Gina had told me a few days ago, about my dad being a history professor at Saint Joseph’s University.

  “Duh!” I smacked my forehead, then opened a web browser and typed his name and the college into a search engine.

  Bingo. He was no longer listed on the university’s faculty page—having been dead for almost twenty years—but he was listed as author of several academic papers. I scrolled down the list. His area of study seemed to be the Moroccan Crisis and the First World War.

  “Hmm. That’s random.”

  So why had he gone on that summer tour with students to Ireland? I thought of Ridgewood teachers begging our parents to chaperone school field trips. Maybe one of my father’s colleagues had asked him to go along to Ireland as a favor.

  The current faculty directory showed when each member had started teaching at Saint Joe’s. I made a list of history professors who would’ve been there at the same time as my father. Then, using the academic journal database my aunt’s law firm paid big bucks for, I ran a search on each of them.

  One name came up as an ancient Ireland scholar: Daniel McClellan. “Doesn’t get any more Irish than that,” I murmured as I printed a list of McClellan’s papers. They weren’t online, but the Johns Hopkins University library carried the academic journals that contained them.

  I considered calling Professor McClellan. If he’d traveled with my father, he probably knew him well. I was hungry for everyday details: Did the students like my dad? Was he always on time for class? Did he drink coffee, tea, or gallons of Diet Coke?

  But how would I explain my interest? “Hi, I’m the daughter of a guy you used to work with. I was born two years after he died. Is that weird?”

  With a sigh, I shut my laptop and set it aside. Instinctively my hand reached for the photo of Zachary on my nightstand, one I’d just framed today.

  It was from last Saturday, our big date day. He’d been crouching by the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, looking pensive as he watched the ducks. I’d sneaked away to the opposite side of the pool so I could take his photo.

  Realizing I was no longer next to him, Zachary had peered from side to side with amusement. The picture had captured his eyes lighting up at the sight of me.

  I traced his silhouettes, both real and reflected, grateful to have this one perfect image.

  I hit play on the Frightened Rabbit EP I’d bought at the record store with Nicola. These three songs were raw sadness and strength—an exact mirror of my feelings.

  I hugged the photo and closed my eyes. My belly warmed as I imagined Zachary crooning these lyrics so full of longing. I’d never had the guts to ask him to sing to me. He would’ve thought I was comparing him to Logan.


  But I wouldn’t have. Zachary wasn’t a replacement for my first love. He was my third half, as odd as that sounded. With him gone, I felt—not incomplete, exactly. More like unfinished. Like there was something I was meant to be and do and discover. Without Zachary, that something would always be out of reach.

  This thing between him and me had become Us, an entity to be kept alive at all costs. Tonight all I could do was shut out the world and imagine his arms around me.

  But tomorrow, I would find another key to saving Us.

  I sat in the JHU library, knees pulled to my chest to keep warm in the overly air-conditioned reading room. Four empty cubicles lined one side of the tiny space, but instead I sat at a table where I could see the sole entrance. Paranoid? Maybe.

  Copies of Daniel McClellan’s journal articles were spread before me. I’d highlighted his thoughts and scribbled my own notes in the margins of several pages.

  One article speculated on the dual purpose of the Irish megaliths and cairns that marked the solstices and equinoxes. The Stone Age people who’d built them wanted to measure time for practical reasons. Obviously they needed to know when to plant and harvest crops. But the timing might have also had spiritual meaning, McClellan said.

  It is significant that these megaliths capture the light at

  sunrise or sunset. Among the Celtic peoples, and indeed

  among many cultures, dawn and twilight are considered

  magical times of in-between, when anything is possible.

  The solstices and equinoxes also embody that “in-betweenness.”

  For one moment, it’s neither autumn nor winter,

  spring nor summer. It’s the borderlands.

  I gnawed the end of my blue ballpoint pen, contemplating.

  The borderlands. Kind of like me and Zachary, on either side of the Shift. Together, we became the In-Between. With just a kiss, I took on his “red power” to repel ghosts, and in exchange, he became like a post-Shifter, able to see ghosts.