“Wow, it’s not that late—you might still be able to apply for fall semester at some of the state schools.” I stopped when I realized Zachary didn’t seem happy about this development. And honestly, I was disappointed, too. “Don’t you want to come here? I thought you liked it.”
“I loved America. It’s what I wanted for so long, to live there and to be with you. And now I can.”
I noticed he used the past tense: It’s what I wanted. Maybe he didn’t want that anymore. Maybe going home made him realize that Scotland was where he belonged, at least for now. The opposite of the way I’d felt returning to America.
“What about your dad? And your mom, doesn’t she need your help?”
The corners of his eyes drooped. “Aye, it would be hard, for all of us.” He set his hands on the desk and met my gaze. “But Aura, I’ll come if you ask.”
I shook my head. “I can’t ask you—”
“Don’t answer now. Take the weekend, or longer, and decide what you want for yourself. Then we’ll decide what we want for us.”
Us. That entity we’d created, the one that craved a life of its own, the one that could only be nurtured by each of us equally. If Zachary or I—or both—put ourselves before the other, that Us would wither, until we were just another couple who met, fell in love, and grew apart. We’d be ordinary. And after all we’d been through, all we’d overcome to stay together and alive, we were anything but ordinary.
“I’ll think about it,” I told him. “But there’s something I need to know.” I went to my dresser, opened my blue star-shaped keepsake box, and withdrew something that had lain there for almost exactly a year.
I sat before the computer again. “If you can apply for a student visa, you can get a tourist one, right? So you could come for a short visit?”
A slow smile spread across his face. “Aye, I could.”
I unfurled the note he’d given me at dinner on our second date, the date that had ended in disaster. I held it up to the camera:
Want to go to the prom? (With me?)
Chapter Forty-Two
Solstice is just a promise. But it’s a promise kept. Light always returns. Unlike people.
My mother was wrong. People do return. My dad did, if only for a while. Even though he hadn’t promised.
And I returned to Zachary. Because I promised, and because I wanted to.
A week after graduation, on the summer solstice, it seemed like all my extended family came to Philadelphia International Airport to see me off to Scotland.
Megan and Dylan made the trip up from Baltimore. They were still recovering from Senior Week at Ocean City, where they’d finally admitted that they liked each other. Like, like-liked each other. They both swore it was going to be a summer fling and nothing more, that they would amicably break up the day she left for Cornell. I was skeptical.
At the security gate, Megan hugged me so hard I thought my eyeballs would pop out of my skull.
“When we visit in August,” she said, “you better have your usual kick-ass summer tan. Scotland better not deprive you of your natural hotness.”
Dylan gave me a less lung-crushing embrace, then handed me a manila envelope. “This is for you to read on the plane. Or at the snack bar at the gate, whatever.”
I peeked inside the envelope, and the black spiral notebook I saw made my heart plummet.
Logan’s Fame Journal, Volume 1. The thoughts he’d started writing the night before he died. Dylan had let me read it last May, right before we made out on his floor.
“Um, thanks?”
“I know, you’re thinking, world’s most inappropriate parting gift. But you haven’t read all of it.”
His words confused me, but that was nothing new.
Gina touched my shoulder. “Hon, you better go through security now.” Her eyes were wet, and when she blinked, they overflowed. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her face. “Was that the tenth or eleven thousandth tear I’ve cried over this?”
“Eleven millionth,” I said, hugging her.
“I feel like I’ve barely started.” She rocked me back and forth. “You know I am proud of you, right? You’ve been so brave. I’m even proud of you for leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re never afraid to explore.”
I hugged her tighter, holding back my confession that I was afraid. Afraid I’d get lost in a new city, afraid I’d fail all my classes, afraid I’d never learn to speak Scots. Afraid to look like an American idiot.
But not afraid enough to keep me from going.
“Thank you. I better hurry up and hug everyone else. There’s a ton of them.”
I went down the line, embracing cousins and aunts and uncles and in-laws, some I barely recognized. Grandmom tried to stuff more cookies into my carry-on.
With one final squeeze for Gina, I was off.
On the other side of the security gate, my dinner destination was obvious. Though Zachary had told me there was a Philly cheesesteak place in Glasgow’s West End, I had to get one last experience of the real thing.
I settled into the food-court booth with my meal, then opened Logan’s notebook.
There was a new entry, in Dylan’s handwriting, from a year ago:
June 22
Hey, Aura. It’s Logan. I know you probably wondered what the hell I’ve been doing these last two days since the concert. Friday night and Saturday I cruised around Dublin, then Disney World, then Ocean City.
Sunday, today, I went back to the room I died in. Kinda freaked out the girl living there now. But she was nice enough to call Dylan for me so we could hang out for a few hours, and he could write this down for me.
Anyway, before I find you and pass on, I’m hoping to track down Bagpipes—I mean, Zachary, ha!—at the airport. You’ll probably kiss him good-bye a disgusting amount, so he’ll be able to see me. I want to ask him a favor: If he ever gets to Ireland, with or without you, to tie a bright blue shoelace, like the ones from my Vans, on the faerie tree at the Hill of Tara. (I wanted my ashes scattered there, remember? But Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me.)
So if you see him do it, he probably won’t tell you why, and he won’t tell you the wish he’s making while he does it. I’ll ask him to keep it between us guys.
Aw, screw it, maybe he can keep a secret, but I can’t. I’m gonna ask him to wish this: “Let Aura find peace, but not the boring, heavenly kind of peace that I have now. Let her have the crazy, burning peace that comes from following her heart.”
Or some less cheesy version of that. Man, Dylan writes way too slow! Time for me to go now and find That Guy, then you. See you soon.
I love you,
Logan
I closed the notebook, first pressing the pages hard together, then pulling it close to my chest, my eyes squeezed shut.
“Thank you, Logan,” I whispered, not caring if anyone saw me speaking to the air. “Nowhere you are could ever be boring.”
Later, sitting at my flight’s gate, I played “Yank or Brit” in my head, wondering how people would peg me in six months when Zachary and I flew back to the States for winter break.
Thick puffy rain clouds rolled in. I sighed, hoping our flight wouldn’t be delayed by a storm or hit turbulence—not after I’d eaten that huge cheesesteak.
With the evening sun obscured, the terminal darkened enough to see a handful of ghosts wandering around. Across from me, a thirty-something mother of two watched her young son giggle and squeal at the antics of an unusually friendly ghost. I couldn’t hear what the spirit was saying, but from her posture and tone of voice, during her life she’d been either a kindergarten teacher or a birthday-party clown.
As the ghost led the little boy in a clapping song, I looked at his baby sister sitting on their mom’s lap. I expected her little face to fill with rapture. Infants generally love ghosts, until they’re taught they’re supposed to be afraid.
But the baby watched only her brother as he stomped and clapped in time to the g
host’s tune. Then the little girl’s gaze skimmed over the ghost and on to the passenger sitting across from her, an elderly woman in a bright pink polka-dotted dress.
The ghost moved closer to the baby and tried to get her attention, to no avail. She cooed at the Polka Dot Lady, who waved and smiled back.
Clearly perplexed, the ghost stood directly in front of the infant. “And what’s your name, princess?”
The little boy giggled. “Her name’s Angela, but she can’t see you, silly!” He covered his mouth, then kicked up his left foot. “My shoe has a red light, like fire trucks!”
Baby Angela stared straight through the ghost.
“Oh my God.” I shut my mouth and checked to see if anyone had heard.
“It’s true,” said a voice beside me. I turned to see a girl about my age. Her faded blue T-shirt had a white logo, INTERNATIONAL SCOTTISH DANCING COMPETITION, with last year’s date.
“What’s true?” I asked her.
“I work at a day care center in Upper Darby after school. They don’t have BlackBox there except in the bathrooms, so ghosts come around all the time.” She leaned closer. “None of the babies six months or younger can see ghosts. Isn’t that wild?”
“Six months?” My face flushed, and I clasped my hands in my lap to hide their sudden trembling. It’d been six months since the winter solstice. Six months since Zachary and I had stood inside Newgrange and watched the sun turn red, black, violet, and white.
“It’s totally bizarre,” the girl said.
“Have you told anyone?”
She shook her head. “I only noticed last week. I was kinda afraid to tell anyone in case they thought I was insane.”
“Why are you telling me?”
Her brow creased. “You’re Aura, right? You stopped the draft?”
“Kinda.” After the revelations I’d unearthed, Congress had repealed the DMP selective service program. I still couldn’t get used to being recognized by random strangers, even though it happened only once every few weeks. “Not by myself.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve been dying to tell someone, so it might as well be you.”
The airline agent spoke into the microphone, calling the first zone to board the plane. The girl beside me picked up her bag.
“I’m in the last row, next to the bathroom. This is gonna suck so bad.”
I felt like I should shake her hand or hug her. Instead I just said, “Good luck at this year’s competition.”
She looked down at her T-shirt, then up at me, pleased. “Thanks! Good luck with your boyfriend. I’ve seen pictures. He’s made of hot.”
“I know. I mean, thanks.”
She laughed as she dragged her carry-on away, and I realized I hadn’t even gotten her name.
I barely slept on the overnight flight, and not just because this time I was flying coach instead of first class. The dancer’s words and the image of that oblivious baby and the frustrated ghost pinged around my brain.
We’d done it. Zachary and I had ended the Shift by being at Newgrange at winter solstice sunrise. We’d ended it the way his dad and my mom had started it nineteen years before.
We’d ended it not as we’d expected and hoped—by causing all the ghosts to suddenly disappear. But in a new way. No one born now would ever see ghosts, while the rest of us post-Shifters still would, probably for the rest of our lives.
Solstice magic had happened again. Our magic.
Because I am weird, I worried Zachary would greet me in Glasgow with a bouquet of red roses with no yellow. Of course I wanted him to love me now and forever with an insatiable, mind-blowing, sheet-melting passion, the way I loved him.
But I wanted to be his friend, too. Now and forever.
So when I saw him at the airport meeting point and he was holding a bouquet of red roses with one bright yellow rose at its center . . .
I knew I was home. For good.
“Aura.” Zachary swept me into his arms, which felt stronger than ever. And when we kissed, I remembered every moment together—at the castle, at the Warrenpoint hotel. Even my prom night, when yeah, he wore the kilt.
He carefully set me on my feet, then took my suitcase handle. “I’ve arranged for a sunny day, but we should hurry. It’ll be gone in an hour. Of course, it’ll be back again another hour after that. And so on.”
I laughed as I took the flowers, having heard of the famous four-seasons-in-one-day nature of Glaswegian weather. “At least it’ll be light for more than twenty minutes now, right?”
“It’s only light until about midnight.” When I blanched, he kissed me again and said, “Don’t worry, we’ve blackout curtains in our bedroom so ye can sleep.”
Our bedroom. The words sent a tingle down my spine. As a foreign student I would’ve had to pay for room and board, so Zachary and I had decided to get our own apartment. It was close to school and only a five-minute bus ride to his house, so he could visit his parents every day and help his dad. When classes started in the fall, we’d be sharing the apartment with two other students, but for the summer, it was all ours.
I couldn’t wait to get there.
“Can we pick up something to celebrate with?” I asked him as we went outside into the warm but delightfully non-oppressive summer air.
“What are we celebrating, besides the rest of our lives?”
I’d planned to wait until we were alone at home to tell him about the end of the Shift, of how we’d done the impossible once again. Of all the magic and mysteries that lay ahead of us, hiding in dark places in the earth and sky, even as we lived in the light.
But I couldn’t wait. Not one more minute. I stopped and set the roses atop my carry-on.
Zachary’s eyes danced with wonder and anticipation. “Well, what is it?”
I stepped into his arms, under the glow of the high northern sun. “I have good news.”
Author’s Note
After three years studying the astounding ancient megaliths of Ireland, I felt it important to keep the details of Newgrange, Dowth, and the Hill of Tara true to life, even when it was inconvenient. In the places I’ve changed the layout, such as the basin’s being in the wrong chamber at Dowth, Aura notes it as such.
The legends of the Tuatha dé Danann are real, but as far as I know, no cult like the Children of the Sun exists. But it seems like it should.
The Glasgow church-turned-pub where Martin works is the Òran Mór, Scottish Gaelic for “big song” or “great melody of life.” In reality it’s exactly as described in the book (though memory may have failed me on a few very minor details). The upstairs auditorium isn’t open to the public, but the pub itself is marvelous. If you go, do try the full Scottish breakfast, and tell Siobhan I said hi.
Acknowledgments
The story of Shine could’ve taken many different paths. Many thanks to my beta readers and critique partners for helping me find the right one: Rob Staeger, Cecilia Ready, Patrice Michelle, and Deborah Blake. Special thanks to authors Frankie Diane Mallis and Christine Johnson, who read multiple drafts and should be canonized for it; to Sya Bruce, who helped Zach and his friends become better Scots; to author Kate Milford, who came up with the MI-X motto; and to Melissa Hermann, who did my online fact-checking so I wouldn’t get distracted for hours by the shiny Internetz.
Music is the perpetual savior of my sanity. In this book, Glasgow indie band Frightened Rabbit was there for me in the darkest moments, when I thought it would never work. Every day was better for their being a part of it. Cheers, lads.
Thanks to Clare Tuffy and Sharon Downey from Ireland’s Office of Public Works, and especially our Newgrange guide, Sinead Morrison, for answering my rather odd what-if questions. Thanks to Fraser McFarlane, our splendid Glasgow tour guide, and his wife, Heather Harris McFarlane. We will return for Kiltwalk 2013—see, it’s here in writing!
Thanks to the fine folks at Simon Pulse for their tireless work and endless enthusiasm for the Shade trilogy: Bethany Buck, Mara Anastas, Jenni
fer Klonsky, Guillian Helm, Jessica Handelman, Russell Gordon, Katherine Devendorf, Anna McKean, Paul Crichton, Lucille Rettino, Carolyn Swerdloff, Dawn Ryan, Valerie Shea, Adam Smith, Kaitlin Severini, Christina Solazzo, and Lauren Forte; thank you to photographer Monica Stevenson for the beautiful new covers; plus a shout north of the border to Michelle Blackwell, and across the pond to Kathryn McKenna and Gail Hallett.
Mentioning my agent and editor in acknowledgments is a bit like signing a Christmas card to my mom. How do I say “AAAAHHHH I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! YOU ROCK!!1!!1! in a new and creative way? To Ginger Clark and Annette Pollert—there are no words to describe the support and caring you’ve shown in bringing Shine to its final form. Maybe next time I’ll find the words.
And because I promised, but not just because I promised, millions of thanks to the readers who make up Team Kilt, especially founders Jennifer Strand and Amy Oelkers, who built and run the Shade series fan site KiltandKeeley.com; and “executive officer” Karen Alderman. These three wonderful ladies also read Shine in its last stage, when I was most paranoid about it.
So in no particular order, the magnificent Team Kilt (“NFF!”): Melissa Fonseca, Jennifer Duffey, Brooke “Team Logan’s Empress” Goldetsky, Christie Taylor, Christine Danek, Tabitha Williams, Alicia Ester, Annette Stone, Susan Jakubowski, Anna Heinemann, Jen Stewart, Melissa Garner Mitchell, Jessica Corra, Julie Jones, Jackie Burris, Tracy Hudson, Heather Burke, Nerissa Luna, Cyndi Martin, Cyndi Tefft, Deanne Dekle, Brittany Howard, Sandra Werbunat, Christy Bennett, Ashe Terry, Heather Elia, Pavlina, Kelly Lyman, Nicole Baldwin, Mel Boulrice, Courtney M. Heitman, Yiling Ni, Emily Pazienza, Kimberly Callegan, Julianna Helms, Deena Graves, Alyssa Anne, Ginger at GReads, Miri Epstein, Megan Kyser, Lindsey Redding, Somer, Tara Gonzalez, Ana L. Arroyave, Melissa Layton, Sarah Hardie, Jen Watson, Jena M. Freeth, Christy Khamphilay, Ashley Morrison, Dayna Pearce, Ida “TeamKilt’s Crazymember” Bosita, Jaime Arnold, Kimberly Brasher, Brandi Gardner, Ashly Ferguson, Bailey Hewitt, Michele Blanchard, Kris Viers Armstead, Zeinab Zmurrod, Tabitha Qualls, Carli Bandeira, Lisa Sperry, Leilani Lopez, Becky Boyer, Lindsay Cox, Gabriella Turner, Christina Escalante, Meghan Raine, Heather Harris McFarlane, Fraser McFarlane, Michelle Molenderas Santiago, Mary Quiggle-Pickering, Megan Zaiser, Suzanne Rauch, Rachel Isom, Jessica Arb, Diana Chao, Johanna Reinberger, Raychelle Smith, Michelle Nadeau, Jessica Woodward, Bailey Purvis, Renee Combs, Ashley Lauren, Lucy D. Briand, Tara at Fiction Folio, Erin Stout, Cegluna, Kristin P. Jones, Heather Rosdol, Louisse Ang, Jessica Ware, Tori Reul, Stacey Canova, Amanda Wolfbauer, Panagiota Kalogeroudis, Ashley Nicole McKinsey, Patricia Mendoza, Aeriell Choquette, Tristan Bruce, JoAnne The Fairytale Nerd, Cassandra Pendino, Lisa Hoag, Daisy de Bruin, Scott Romanski, Jacinda and Jasmine at The Reading Housewives, Heidi Stegmann, Lynn Marie Spinks, Tamara Bašić, Amy Stewart, Samantha Stoner, Bethany Larson, Christine Ko, Angela at Reading Angel, Edesa Y., Claire Wong, Melanie Stang, Marissa Odom, Lynsey Newton, Ariel Boeger, Barbara Walker, Samantha Heck, Shell Bryce, Jana Oliver, Jenn Martin, JoAnne Claudio, Kat Chamsay, Meredith from Mint Tea and a Good Book, Kelsey Jones, Rachel Clark, Nikki Oldenburg, Amy Pittel, Miss Jessica S., Frankie Diane Mallis, Shannon Condie, Sarah Mäkelä, Paola Martinez Parente, Jen Kovacs, Maria Laura Alvarez, Smash Attack, Nikki Ulmer, Lauren Goff, Wen Yan, Kendra McCormick, Janae Haygood, Laura Young, Michelle Coffey, Wendy Adams, Misty Evans, Artemis Gray, Paris Hansen, Bobby-Jo Boxall, Rachel Patrick, Jennifer Sanders, Kasey Hilyard, Suzanne Waligora, Tina Ljujic, Britney Wyatt, Beth Hickey, Jazmin Naomi Labrada, Lindsi Coleman, John F. Gardner, Sharon Mostyn, Lona Queen, Caroline Kimsey, Kara Lang Guminski, Casse Narome, Melissa Gibson, Grace Smith, Kailia Sage, and Kasey Paradis.
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