“It depends.” Zachary pulled one foot onto the bench and rested his elbow on his bent knee.
“Depends?” I tried not to check out his cute ankle peeking through his sandal. (What kind of dork notices ankles?) His face was just as distracting, so I focused on an imaginary point over his left shoulder. “Depends on what?”
“Their arrangement. The time of day. The weather. At sunrise or just before a thunderstorm, they almost look alive. Like they’re waiting for something to happen, you know?” Zachary rubbed his chin, then spread his fingers as he looked at me through his thick, dark lashes. “But mostly it depends on your mood.”
My neck warmed at the way his lips puckered with the oo sound, and then the way his tongue tagged the d. This was Bad with a capital Hell No. Logan was the only guy who’d ever made me feel like this, like I had a caffeine overdose and a second-degree sunburn. Get a grip, Aura. It’s just the accent.
“Have you never seen any, then?” he asked me.
“Just pictures.” I twisted the zipper at the end of my jacket sleeve. “I’ve never been out of the country, except to Italy for my great-grandmother’s funeral.”
“Oh, you should go someday. Especially since the stones are so important to you.”
A sudden chill flowed over me, like I’d been stripped naked. “They’re not important to me.”
“Then why did you pick this topic?”
“I just think they’re cool, okay?” I slapped my binder shut. “And I don’t need help studying them.”
“Mrs. Richards said you’d say that. She also said to tell you that you have no choice.” He whipped out his phone like he was drawing a weapon. “Give me your number. How’s Sunday?”
I didn’t hide my groan of dismay, but exchanged my information for his and opened the calendar app on my phone. “Sunday I have my first meeting with my adviser at College Park.” For our theses, we were required to have expert guidance from someone outside our school.
“Brilliant. I’ll go with you. Pick me up at noon? I can’t drive here yet, and this city’s public transport is crap.”
I hesitated, wondering if I should be alone in a car with this strange guy. I decided to check him out with Mrs. Richards. If he seemed the least bit serial killer-ish, I’d ask for a new partner.
“You’re just here to help,” I said. “I’ve already started this project, and I know where I want it to go.”
“And where’s that, Aura?” Zachary met my glare with a cool gaze. “What do you hope you’ll find?”
“That is not your business.” I stood and snatched up my bag before he could see the flush on my face.
“You’ll need my address to pick me up.”
“Give it to me at the assembly.” I stalked toward the double doors under the peaked stone archway. “We’ll be late.”
“I’m no’ going to the assembly.”
I stopped and looked at him. “I thought you were a junior.”
“I am, but I was born pre-Shift.” He slid off the bench, his long legs unfolding in a fluid motion. “Only by a minute, though,” he said as he passed me.
My bag slid out of my hand and thudded onto the pavement. Zachary kept walking.
I sat in the auditorium, clutching my seat’s armrests, as the DMP agents—or “dumpers,” as we call them—led what should have been the most boring lecture of my life.
The blonde in the stark white uniform pointed her remote at a laptop on the projector, taking us to the second PowerPoint slide. Then she continued her spiel.
“As far as we can tell,” she said, “the Shift took place during that year’s winter solstice. December twenty-first, oh-eight-fifty Universal Time. That would be three fifty a.m. local time.”
I glanced at Megan beside me, slouched in her seat, jacket shrugged up to her ears. She was one of the few people who knew that that was the moment of my birth.
Somebody had to be first, right? Why not me? And somebody else had to be last, before the Shift. Zachary. There were probably hundreds of others around the world born during our minutes. It’s not like I was the first-first, or he was the last-last.
Still, what were the chances we’d meet here? We’re not exactly on top of an alleged mystical vortex like Stonehenge or Sedona, Arizona. This is Baltimore. Home of steamed crabs and big hair. Even Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost never hung out here, and he died right down on Fayette Street.
A folded piece of paper jabbed my arm. I took Megan’s note. (Low-tech, I know, but the BlackBox screws with electronic signals, so texting and cell phone calls inside school are pretty much out.)
What’s up, Pup?
I wrote, Zachary was born one minute before me, and passed it back.
Megan scribbled, LIAR!!
She meant him, not me. But why would he say that unless it were true, and/or he knew when I was born and wanted to mess with my head?
Could there be a deeper answer, something that would unlock the mystery of who (and why) I was?
I smoothed out the wrinkles near the seams of my faded jeans, trying to calm my careening imagination. Zachary probably didn’t know anything about me. The fact that he looked like he could star in a James Bond Jr. film just made him seem more exotic than the average guy.
The agent switched off the projector, darkening the screen. She sat on the edge of the table and leaned forward, as if she were about to tell us a secret. More like give the closing sales pitch.
“A year and a half from now,” she said, “the first class of post-Shifters will graduate. The Department of Metaphysical Purity needs you—as translators, engineers, investigators … the list goes on. With us, you could have any career track you want. And here’s the kicker: We’ll pay for your education.”
Most of my classmates sat up straighter at the mention of free college. Our families already had a mountain of debt from private-school tuition. But my aunt would rather have a whole mountain range of debt than let me be a dumper.
Megan poked my arm. She turned her notebook to show me:
YOU & ZACH = SECRET TWINS?!?
I scowled, and her eyes went wide as she realized she’d stepped into that subject. She scratched out the words and wrote in bigger letters, SORRY.
I curled my arms around my waist, feeling cold. Ex-Hazel’s words came back to me, about how I’d never lost anything important. Since I was barely three when my mother died of cancer, everyone thinks I don’t miss her. But sometimes I wish that if she had to die, she would have done it suddenly, so that at least I could’ve known her ghost. There’s so much I would’ve asked her.
And it’s not like I’d never thought about what would happen if my aunt or grandmom died and then haunted me. Part of me even wished my father’s ghost would show up one day.
Because at least then, I’d find out who he was.
Chapter Three
The Keeley Brothers’ gig was at a northwest Baltimore County community center. Not the world’s most cutting-edge venue, but it had an actual stage, and an actual backstage that led to a private exit, which would add to the mystique, Logan said. The band members could leave the building without meandering through the crowd like mere mortals.
Megan and I got dinner at the mall food court, but we only had enough appetite to split a salad and a yogurt. I was so nervous for Logan, my stomach was leaping and diving like a kitten on speed.
I sipped my iced tea and watched a woman in her twenties bring a stroller to a stop outside the window of Baby Gap. She spread her hands in frustration at the selection, and I knew what she was thinking. Ninety percent of the clothes were red this season, just as they’d been every season since we realized the dead hate that color. Unlike obsidian, it’s not foolproof, but it’s better than nothing. Megan and I never wore red to any place important, like a club or even the mall. No way we would advertise the fact that we were only sixteen.
While we ate, we talked about everything but the gig, and tried to avoid the attention of ghosts, barely visible in the shadowed corners.<
br />
They never spoke among themselves and, as far as I could tell, didn’t know that other ghosts existed. Another mystery, this one a tiny branch off the Big Question of why the Shift happened in the first place. If I knew that, I’d make it unhappen.
“So what are you giving Logan for his birthday?” Megan asked me.
I checked my purse to make sure it was shut, hiding the wrapped gift. “It’s personal.”
“I already know about the sex. What’s more personal than that?”
With me and Logan? Music. I’d bought him an autographed copy of Snow Patrol’s Eyes Open CD off of eBay, but I wanted to give it to him alone. Mickey and Megan had this thing about “sellout” bands—as soon as an artist had a Top 40 hit, they were eternally uncool. But all Logan and I cared about was how the music made us feel when we were together.
“Have you seen my baby?” a violet woman asked us. She stood so close to our table she was practically a part of it, but in the light we could barely see her shimmering outline.
“No, sorry,” we mumbled, focusing on our food.
“How do you know?” The ghost’s voice sharpened. “I haven’t even told you what he looks like.”
I set down my spoon. “Did you try your home?”
“Of course I did, but they went and moved. I know I should’ve stayed away, but I couldn’t. I made him cry just by sitting on the end of his bed.” When we didn’t react, the woman moved into our table, standing between us. “I’m his mother, how could he be scared of me? I pushed him out of the way of that car, and now he goes running to that whore for comfort. Calls her ‘Mommy’ now. Ungrateful little beast.”
“I’m sure he’s grateful,” I told her, “or he will be someday. But you’re dead. You’re not part of our world anymore. Once you deal with that, you can move on.”
Megan slurped the last of her drink, then set her cup down in the middle of the ghost. “Come on, we gotta get ready.”
The gig wasn’t for two hours, but I nodded and picked up my bag. We headed for the exit without another word for the ghost, even as she shrieked behind us, “I don’t want to move on. I want my son!”
Heads turned our way—not all of them, just the post-Shifters’. A freshman girl from my debate team gave a sympathetic wave, which helped ease the knot in my neck as I braced for the inevitable tantrum.
“Don’t you walk away from me!” the ghost snarled.
A toddler in yellow overalls burst into tears. His mom picked him up, looking exasperated at his change in mood.
“Shut up!” the ghost shrieked at the child. “You still have your mother, so—Shut! Up!”
The toddler wailed louder, and Megan and I hurried toward the bright light of the exit.
Outside, we were alone as soon as the door closed behind us. I guess the ghost never used that entrance when she was alive.
“Jesus, Aura,” Megan said. “An intervention in the food court?”
“I can’t help it sometimes.”
“It’s less cruel just to ignore them.”
“I don’t know, maybe.” One theory said that “engaging” ghosts actually made them hang out in our world longer. The longer they stayed—and stayed unhappy—the more likely they were to become shades.
But I couldn’t help imagining how it would feel to be trapped here with no body, no way to change anything. How lonely it would be for no one to hear or see you, except little kids who cried when you talked to them, or people me and Megan’s age, who just wanted to be left alone.
I looked back at the mall entrance and saw the ghost watching us from inside the darkened doorway. The mother with the screaming child walked right through her.
Megan and I got to the community center in time to change and find a spot up front. We’d missed the sound check on purpose, since it usually consisted of Mickey yelling at Logan, who would respond with silent obscene gestures (to save his voice).
Before long, the place was packed and sweaty, most people already bouncing to the recorded music on the speakers.
We boosted our butts up to sit on the edge of the stage so we could scan the crowd.
“What do recording label people look like?” I asked Megan. “They wear suits?”
“Not the indie guy, I bet,” she said. “He’ll probably look hipper than us.”
“Easy, in my case.” My aunt wouldn’t allow non-ear piercings or funky dye like the green streak in Megan’s red hair, and my clothes had designated no-rip zones.
I couldn’t hide hair or piercings, but clothes could be changed. Hence my sleeveless black Rancid T-shirt with the long diagonal razor cuts across the front and back. It looked like I’d been swiped by the claws of a twenty-foot cougar. White cami underneath, because I’m not a total skank, and besides, I wanted Logan to be the first to see the new bra.
I swung my legs, knocking together the insteps of my black pinstripe creepers. I wanted to dance, but even more, I wanted them to get that first song over with. When they nailed it, the rest of the night was heaven. When it tanked—well, let’s just say Cain and Abel had nothing on Mickey and Logan.
The recorded music faded as the house darkened. We jumped off the stage, into a throbbing mass of humans. There couldn’t have been more than a thousand people, but their roar seemed to make the walls pulse.
Brian lumbered onstage alone and casually picked up his drumsticks. He flipped one of the sticks, end over end, then rattled off a steady, superfast beat, stoking the crowd into a frenzy.
The tension in my shoulders loosened. I could tell by Brian’s rhythm that he was sober.
Connor and Siobhan came on next, taking their sweet time picking up their bass guitar and fiddle on opposite sides of the stage, while Brian broke into a serious sweat.
When they were in position, Brian hit the snare to signal them to start. Siobhan dove into the intro to the Pogues’ “Streams of Whiskey.” Connor’s tall, thin frame bobbed in time, his bass giving her melody a thrumming backdrop. The tempo was even faster than the album version, and I prayed Logan had done his tongue warm-ups.
The Keeley brothers themselves swaggered onstage, arms around each other’s shoulders, the energy between them crackling. They gave the crowd a quick fist-wave, then Mickey picked up his white Fender from its stand.
Logan leaped straight for the microphone. The first song was always vocals only—partly to calm his nerves, but also to mark his territory as the front man. He sent me a brief smirk, as if he knew I was even more scared than he was. Then he began to sing.
He clutched the mike and stared straight ahead during the rapid, tongue-twisting verses. Logan told me once that singing this song was like trying to run while tied to a car bumper—one misstep and there’s no recovering, just gravel up your nose.
But Logan let loose on the choruses, bounding across the front of the stage like his high-top Vans had springs in them, waving the crowd to sing along. With just a little less conviction, he would’ve looked like a complete asshat. But he sold it, and they bought it, lapped it up, and begged for more.
Me, I didn’t dance or even clap. My fingernails dug into the black drapery tacked to the front edge of the stage. Every muscle was frozen except my heart. It throbbed in sync with the song until I thought I’d pass out.
When it was over, Logan raised his fists to the screaming crowd, then winked at me, sharing my relief.
As he turned and knelt to pick up his gleaming black guitar, I thought I saw him cross himself—either to say, Thanks, God, for not letting me screw up or to ask forgiveness for the song choice. His parents hated when the boys “exploited the drunken Irish stereotype,” as if there were a huge selection of Celtic music not about alcohol.
But Mr. and Mrs. Keeley were currently on a cruise to Aruba. So Logan could sing what he wanted—and later, with me, do what he wanted.
“Thank you,” Logan said into the microphone, eyes gleaming at the volume of the shrieks. “Best crowd ever. Thank you.” He soaked in their attention another moment, giv
ing Mickey a chance to trade his own guitar for a mandolin. “We’re the Keeley Brothers, and this is one of ours.”
Brian counted off, and they slammed into “The Day I Sailed Away.” I forced my fingers to let go of the stage.
“They’ve got it tonight,” Megan yelled in my left ear. “Come dance!”
“I’m too nervous!” I clasped my hands behind my head and turned back to the stage, my elbows blocking out everything but Logan.
As always, he wore the wristband with the black-and-white triangles—the one I bought him last year during my pyramid obsession. In the white stage light, the wristband blurred gray as he strummed the Fender Strat with a new ferocity. His calf muscles twitched and stretched as he kept time with his heel.
Sweat streamed down my back, tickling my spine. Around me, people bounced and swayed, but I kept still, as if I could shatter the pulsing perfection by breathing too hard.
The set continued. The band was like a thundercloud of chain lightning, each musician’s energy feeding off the others’ until it felt like the stage couldn’t hold them. I thought the strings of Siobhan’s fiddle would catch fire, and for a brief second, that all three guitars were doomed to be slammed into Brian’s drum set.
But even Mickey’s brilliant solos couldn’t steal the focus from my boy. Logan’s voice switched from a growl to a scream to a seductive whisper from one song to the next. As each new tune began, his face lit up, as if it was the first time he’d heard it. He looked like he was having a religious experience, one he wanted us all to share.
Was it because the A and R guys were watching that he had such intensity? Or was it something else?
All I know is that I was ecstatically, painfully in love with him, waiting for him to slip away, leaving me with my palms singed from clutching a blue-hot star. No matter how many times his eyes found mine, or how brilliantly he smiled at me, I could still taste the bitterness on the sides of my tongue. Because he loved the crowd more than he loved any one person, even me. He always would.
After the last song, Mickey and Logan bowed together. Then Mickey shouted into the mike, “Happy birthday to my little brother!”
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