Shade

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  He whispered against my mouth. “Wait for me, Aura.”

  As soon as he was gone, I shut the door and locked it. Then I sat on the bed, crossing my arms over my chest.

  Now what? I felt kind of silly sitting there in my bra. I wondered if I should get dressed again. Or maybe undressed, wait for him under the covers. No, he probably wanted to help with that. Besides, then he wouldn’t see my matching underwear.

  So I paced, rubbing my arms to keep warm, and every time I passed the nightstand I looked at that half cup of Liquid Stupid. On the tenth lap I picked it up and took a swallow.

  It burned everywhere—my nose, throat, chest.

  When I finally stopped coughing and gagging, I heard shouts coming from the hallway. I muted the stereo and listened for Logan’s voice in the crowd.

  Instead, I heard his name, shrieked by Siobhan, followed by the word “defibrillator.”

  “Oh God.” I grabbed my shirt and cami from the floor and yanked them both over my head in one movement. My face was lost inside as I tried to find the right hole and not shove my skull through a sleeve.

  My head popped through, and I screamed.

  Logan was standing at the foot of his bed, his shirt open and his hair rumpled, just as he’d been a few minutes before.

  But now he was violet.

  Chapter Four

  I tried to say Logan’s name. Nothing came out but a squeak, and then the tears flooded my eyes, blurring his image so that he looked like any other ghost.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I did something stupid.”

  “No!” I ran through the mirage. Had to find the real Logan.

  The door was locked. My cold, sweaty fingers slipped over the slick brass switch.

  “It’s too late,” he said behind me.

  I unlocked the door and jerked it open.

  In the hallway outside the bathroom, Mickey was screaming at someone lying on the floor.

  I stopped at the threshold. That wasn’t the real Logan either. It didn’t matter that the feet were wearing his blue-and-black-checkered Vans, or that the chest Siobhan was compressing bore the AURA tattoo.

  “Goddammit!” Mickey crumpled his hands in his jet-black hair. “Don’t leave us. Don’t you dare leave us.”

  Siobhan paused in her compressions, keeping her hands on the motionless chest. “Breathe now.”

  “Come on, Logan.” Pinching the body’s nose, Mickey bent over and breathed twice into its mouth.

  I took a shaky step forward, then another, then stopped and grasped the railing overlooking the foyer. One more step and I would crumble into a hundred million pieces.

  At the other end of the hall, Dylan burst out of the master bedroom, clutching the portable defibrillator against his chest. “I got it! Where do we—” He saw me and slid to a halt, almost falling backward on the plush carpet. He uttered an incoherent noise as the defibrillator fell from his hands.

  Siobhan and Mickey looked up at him, then back at me. Their eyes bulged wild, confused, while Dylan’s bore enough pain for the three of them.

  Slowly, so I wouldn’t shatter, I turned and looked over my shoulder. Logan’s ghost stood there, staring at his former body. He lifted his gaze to meet his younger brother’s. “I’m sorry,” he croaked. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Dylan, come on!” Mickey waved his arm. “Bring it over before it’s too late!”

  “It’s too late,” Logan and Dylan said.

  “Oh God.” Siobhan sank back on her heels. “You can see him? He’s here? He’s a—”

  “No!” Mickey folded his hands on the body’s chest and started pumping, counting under his breath. “Siobhan, breathe.”

  She moaned, then bent over and brought her mouth to the lifeless lips. After two breaths, she stroked what used to be Logan’s hair. “Come back. Please come back.”

  “I can’t,” Logan whispered behind me, his voice twisted in pain. “Aura, tell her. Make them stop.”

  I crammed my hands over my ears and sank to my knees. This isn’t happening. The Liquid Stupid is making me hallucinate. Logan and I are going to wake up and laugh about this, and then we’re going to kill Brian.

  I rocked back and forth, hoping the motion would knock me out of the nightmare.

  “Aura, come on,” Logan pleaded. “I can’t watch this.”

  I shook my head. Not happening. Not happening.

  NOT.

  HAPPENING.

  Then came the screams.

  The foyer below was filling with the other partygoers, many of them staring and pointing at Logan’s ghost. Some were crying, and some were pulling phones out of their pockets.

  “Siobhan, breathe!” Mickey seized his sister’s shoulders. “Don’t you dare give up. We were supposed to take care of him!”

  The stairs thumped with rapid footsteps. Megan stopped on the landing when she saw Logan’s body at the top. “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t say it.” Mickey turned his tear-streaked face to her. “Don’t say it. Don’t say he’s dead.”

  Megan’s hand trembled as it pointed at Logan’s ghost. “But he’s—”

  “Don’t say it!” Mickey wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Don’t say it.” He went back to doing CPR, shutting out the world with his muttered count.

  Siobhan buried her face in her knees, swaying and sobbing. Dylan stood there staring at Logan, slack jawed, like he’d never seen a ghost before. The cord of the fallen defibrillator still dangled from his fingertips.

  I dug my nails into the carpet, to keep the earth from slipping out from under me.

  Megan crept up the rest of the stairs. “What’s that on the bathroom sink?”

  “Shut up,” Mickey growled.

  She shouted, “Logan, what the hell were you thinking?”

  He raised his hands. “It was an accident. I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” Logan reached to touch me, then pulled back. “Tell them what I just said.”

  I repeated his words with a nearly numb tongue, then said, “Kill yourself with what, Logan?”

  He spoke to Mickey and Siobhan. “I know you turned yours down, and so did I. But when he offered again later, I—I didn’t want to piss him off. I was just trying to be nice. I swear I was gonna flush it, but when we got home, people were in all the bathrooms, so I just stuck it in my drawer.”

  “Stuck what in your drawer?” I was yelling now, but Logan stayed silent while Dylan repeated what he said in a halting voice.

  Siobhan covered her face with her arms. “But Logan, why did you take it?” she shrilled.

  “Because I was drunk and stupid, okay? I was trying to wake myself up so I wouldn’t pass out on—” He glanced my way, then curled his arms over his chest. “Never mind.”

  Dylan recited Logan’s words slowly, as he realized their implications.

  All three siblings turned to look at me with the eyes of judge, jury, and executioner. The house had fallen silent as the screams below became sobs. Someone had switched off the music.

  When Megan drew me into a tight hug, I clung to her with arms I could barely feel. One piece of my body after another seemed to be following Logan into the cold, dark oblivion.

  Then she whispered, “Your shirt’s inside out and backwards.”

  I slipped my hand between us to touch the front of my neck. The tag was sticking out, telling the world the whole story of Logan’s death, a story I didn’t understand.

  I lurched to my feet.

  “Aura, don’t!” Logan called, but no one else tried to stop me as I stumbled to the bathroom. Gripping the doorjamb, I peered inside.

  No blood stained the white tile floor or pale blue walls. The only thing out of place was a fallen hand towel. The monogrammed letter K winked up at me in silver thread.

  But on the shiny marble sink, one line of white powder said it all.

  “You’re such. A fucking. Idiot!”

  Mickey was shaking Logan’s body by the shoulders. The head lolled to the side on a rubbe
ry neck.

  “How could you do this to us?” he shrieked. “How could you do this to Mom and Dad?”

  Logan’s ghost watched Mickey’s meltdown with wide round eyes. “I didn’t mean to. Swear to God. Please don’t—”

  “Stupid. Asshole!” Mickey’s mouth twisted in a silent howl. He pressed his forehead to his brother’s chest, then his arms snaked around the limp body until he clutched it in an embrace. “Why?”

  Siobhan kept sobbing. Dylan kept staring. I just tried to keep breathing.

  Megan went to the railing and said, “Everybody go home. Now.”

  I felt four tight walls emerge within me, thick and soft as cotton, muting the noise and pain. Safe in my cocoon, and knowing it wouldn’t last, I turned to comfort Logan.

  But he was gone.

  The paramedics made everyone but Mickey sit downstairs in the living room, out of sight but not quite out of earshot.

  On the other side of the wide, empty space where an hour ago I had danced with Logan, Siobhan sat curled up in Connor’s arms, her tears staining his maroon T-shirt. Connor stroked her back and stared at the floor, which was still strewn with beer cups.

  Brian paced beneath the wide archway leading to the dining room, crumpling his baseball cap in his hands, then unfolding it and putting it back on his head.

  Instinct told me to keep my mouth shut instead of screaming at him. It felt like my fault, anyway, not Brian’s. If I hadn’t yelled at Logan for drinking the Liquid Stupid, he’d still be alive. Maybe passed out or puking up his guts, but definitely not lying on the carpet upstairs surrounded by EMTs murmuring words like “synergy” and “ventricular fibrillation.”

  “Synergy,” Megan scoffed as she rubbed my cold hands between hers. “I haven’t heard that word since fifth grade. What’s the point of teaching a bunch of ten-year-olds not to mix cocaine and alcohol? We forgot all about it by the time we turned eleven, much less seventeen.”

  “Oh God.” My own heart felt like it would twitch and halt. “Logan died on his birthday.”

  “No, no, no.” Her voice pitched up, like she was chiding a dog. “Look, it’s already Saturday.” She pointed at the grandfather clock in the corner.

  One fifteen.

  “Isn’t there a song about one fifteen on a Saturday night?” Megan asked, obviously trying to distract me.

  “Ten fifteen. By the Cure.” My lungs seized in a sob. Even music would hurt now without Logan. Music, food, texting, shopping, the Inner Harbor, the Ocean City boardwalk. I wanted to move far away, take someone else’s past and future. It would hurt too much to be me now.

  Megan crammed another tissue into my hands just as Aunt Gina walked through the front door.

  Gina looked up the stairs at the paramedics, police, and what used to be Logan. Her face remained still, like she had rehearsed this moment to stay calm. But the underside of her jaw twitched as she swallowed.

  Gina turned to the living room. “Oh, sweetheart.” She hurried over, and I realized she’d been waiting up for me. Her makeup was still on, and her short blond waves hadn’t been combed out.

  Somehow I managed to stand so she could hug me. “I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered. “You have no idea.”

  She held me tight for several seconds, murmuring words I couldn’t make out. I wanted to beg her to take me home, but she still had a job to do.

  Gina kissed my cheek. “I’ll be right back.” She strode into the foyer and hustled up the stairs. As if from a distance, I heard her ask in her lawyer voice, “Who’s the officer in charge?”

  “No, it’s not an emergency.” Sitting in the corner armchair, Dylan spit his words into the phone receiver. “I’m calling at one a.m. because I have a tummyache and I want my mommy.” He paused. “Well, you’re, like, the fourth person I’ve talked to, and everyone asks the same thing, so obviously I do need to get sarcastic. Tell them to call home. Now.” Dylan hung up. “It’s such bullshit we can’t get Mom and Dad.”

  “They don’t have cell towers in the middle of the ocean,” Megan pointed out.

  “Call Aunt Jean,” Siobhan said, sniffling. “Or Aunt Rosemary. They’ll know what to do.”

  “No way.” Dylan clasped the phone to his chest. “Mom and Dad should find out first. And the cops won’t call anyone, since you and Mickey are eighteen. You’re taking care of us.” He flinched. “Of me, I mean.”

  Siobhan moaned, burying her face in Connor’s chest. Dylan sank deeper in the chair and covered his face with the end of a Halloween throw blanket. Its black and orange tassels fluttered as he breathed out a heavy sigh.

  “Does anyone want a drink?”

  We all stared at Brian, who shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “I don’t mean—jeez, I meant like soda or something.”

  “I’ll help you.” Megan gave me a worried glance and followed Brian toward the kitchen.

  I sat back on the sofa. My hand slid over something cold and wet. I lifted it to see a brown-yellow stain on the creamy beige cushion. Spilled Guinness, no doubt. My cheeks flamed at the memory of Logan’s last several drinks.

  I excused myself with a mumble, then slunk away to the downstairs bathroom.

  Locking the door, I left the light off before remembering that, like all bathrooms, it would be BlackBoxed. That’s why Logan wasn’t in here. If he was a ghost, he’d come back to me, right?

  I splashed cold water on my face until my contact lenses stung from the smeared eyeliner. I dried my face and hands, avoiding the mirror. One glimpse would start me sobbing again.

  I opened the bathroom door and stepped into the foyer. From above my head came the noise of a heavy zipper.

  I looked up the stairs, then wished I hadn’t.

  The paramedics had placed Logan’s body onto a stretcher. One of them was sealing a long, greenish black bag.

  I imagined the last glimpse of Logan, his bleached-blond hair, disappearing inside. My knees turned liquid, and I let out a little cry.

  He can’t breathe in there.

  “Aura.” My aunt waved her hand over the banister as if to shoo me. “Sweetie, you shouldn’t see this. Go wait in one of the other rooms.”

  I wanted to launch myself up the stairs, rip open the bag, and cling to the only part of Logan I could still touch. I wanted to scream at the paramedics not to take him. Not yet.

  Instead I ran into the den and slammed the door.

  Light from the street filtered through the sheer curtains, glowing silver on the desk and bookshelves, and the globe that Mr. Keeley had insisted on buying, even though it was outdated by the time it arrived.

  But it was dark enough for ghosts. “Logan,” I whispered. “Don’t let me remember that. I want to see you the way you are now. Please come back.”

  Nothing to hear but the pulse pounding in my temples. Nothing to see but ambulance headlights sweeping across the window.

  Nothing to feel but alone.

  Chapter Five

  In my dream, Logan was red.

  So red and so deep, I could see him in full sunshine. We lay on the beach, facing each other, with no towels between our bodies and the sand.

  “You look like blood,” I teased him.

  He laughed, his mouth a dark chasm. “That’s because I’m made of blood.”

  He stroked my face. His fingertips were warm and way too soft. He wasn’t solid like a person, or air like a ghost. He was liquid—liquid that now dripped from my cheek and chin.

  “Don’t,” I told him.

  “What are you afraid of ?” Logan drew his hand over the strap of my bikini and down my arm, leaving a glistening scarlet trail. “I won’t hurt you. I just need to touch you again.” His slippery-slick hand took mine. “Don’t you want to touch me, Aura?”

  I let out a whimper that verged on a moan. “You know I do.” To prove it, I reached forward. My hand plunged into Logan’s chest.

  His limbs spasmed, and he threw back his head. “Not there!”

  Something pulsed in my
grip. It was like shoving my hand against a Jacuzzi nozzle. Then the current reversed, sucking me in.

  “I can’t let go!” My heels kicked at the sand, trying to gain traction. “Logan!”

  His liquid fingers clutched my shoulders. My body slipped forward as if sliding down a steep hill.

  Behind me, someone pulled. Someone as strong and solid as the earth itself.

  But it wasn’t enough. Caught in gravity’s grasp, I crashed into Logan’s body of blood.

  My eyes opened. Flailing my arm, I rolled over, expecting to see Aunt Gina standing over my bed after shaking me awake.

  “Sweetheart?”

  Her voice came from the doorway, not my bedside.

  “It’s almost noon.” Gina entered and sat next to me, then brushed the sweaty bangs off my forehead. “Can I get you some soup?”

  Warm liquid. Entering my body. Through my mouth.

  I lunged over Gina’s lap and barfed into the trash can.

  “I guess not,” she murmured as she pulled back my hair.

  When I stopped retching—which didn’t take long, since there was nothing in my stomach—she handed me a tissue. I was already sick of tissues.

  Gina picked up the pukey trash can. “I’ll bring you some soda.” The house phone rang, and she hurried out before I could plead, “No liquids!”

  A few minutes later the doorbell sounded. I had the urge to run, or at least hide, but my limbs felt like rubber.

  Soon there was a soft knock on my bedroom door. Megan shambled in, carrying a plate of saltines and a fizzing glass of ginger ale.

  “I thought about calling first,” she said, “but I was afraid you’d tell me not to come. So I just came.”

  “Thanks.” I sat up to take the crackers. The stoneware plate was cool and solid. “Put that drink where I can’t see it, okay?”

  Without questioning, Megan set the glass on my desk, then opened my calculus book and set it on its edge, as if the ginger ale were getting changed behind one of those old-fashioned dressing screens.

  “How’s Mickey?” I asked her.

  “Horrible.” She slouched over from the desk and sank onto the edge of the bed. “They finally got hold of Mr. and Mrs. Keeley on the cruise. They’re flying back tonight when the ship stops in the Caymans.” She rubbed her chapped nose. “A couple of aunts are already at the house, which pisses Mickey off. He says he can take care of the family until their folks come back, but of course he can’t.”