Shade

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “Won’t they pay for your college?”

  “That makes me even more suspicious. If it was such a great job, the government wouldn’t have to bribe us.”

  “It’s not bribery. It’s paying for something they think is important. Like teachers in poor neighborhoods.”

  “I guess.” I swished a French fry through a puddle of ketchup. “Megan’s brother John made a deal where the government would pay off some of his med school loans if he’d be a doctor in Nowhere, North Dakota.” Or maybe it was South Dakota. All I knew was that he said there was only one bar in the whole town, and in the winter some people left their cars running all night to keep the engines from freezing.

  A cold breeze came up, as if I’d conjured it with my thoughts. I shivered so hard, the coffee splashed out of the little hole in the lid.

  Zachary unzipped his dark brown leather jacket. “Here, take this.”

  “No, you’ll freeze.”

  “Don’t insult my rugged heritage.” He shook out the coat and scooted over to me. “I’d be a real walloper if I let you shiver.”

  My eyebrows popped up. “A real what?”

  “Never mind.” He draped the coat over my shoulders. I trembled again from the sudden heat. “Put your arms in. Don’t make me dress you like a wean.”

  I couldn’t even ask what a “wean” was, because my brain was stuck on the scent of the warm leather. The jacket’s collar came up around my chin. Was that how his neck smelled?

  “Thanks.” I cleared my throat. “I’ll dress warmer next time.”

  “Me too.” He tugged the cuff down over my wrist, his finger brushing the back of my hand. “Just in case.”

  I tried to focus on the star chart in front of me instead of the boy to my right. When Logan died, I’d stopped noticing Zachary’s hotness, as if all my senses had switched off. Now that Logan was back (sort of), I’d become Little Miss Ho-Bag again.

  “Um.” I turned on the flashlight, casting a red glow over the book in my lap. “It says here to start by marking north, and not to cheat with a compass.”

  “Yeah, the way you do that is—”

  “I know that much.” I pointed to the Big Dipper and followed the last two stars to find the North Star, Polaris.

  The pad was clipped to the board, which was good, because the wind was picking up. I suppressed another shiver—I did not want Zachary taking off any more clothes on my account.

  We marked the other three directions, then found the celestial equator and the ecliptic, which laid out the approximate path of the zodiac, the sun, and the planets. Eowyn had given us lists of constellations to find and draw each month. After I did the first two, I let Zachary take over while I finished the gooey remains of my cheese-steak.

  Over the next hour, we took turns eating and drinking and filling out the map. As our eyes grew adjusted to the dark, more stars became visible, which would’ve been annoying had it not been so utterly gorgeous. No garish sunset could compare to this pure, still brilliance.

  “We don’t have to put every star on the map,” Zachary reminded me as he christened the grass with his soda’s leftover ice. “Just the brightest ones.”

  “I know.” I added another tiny point of light that didn’t seem to belong to any constellation. “But I’m hoping if we make this insanely full of stars, we won’t have to do it again.”

  “It’s no’ that bad, is it? Freezing our bums off to create something completely pointless?”

  I laughed. It wasn’t that bad to spend time with Zachary. The level of not-badness was almost scary.

  “I’ll survive. I hope Eowyn lets us move forward with our research next month.”

  “With your research, you mean.” Zachary stuffed his empty cup in the fast-food bag. “Which you still haven’t told me much about.”

  “I did tell you.” I spoke forcefully to cover up my vagueness. “It’s on megaliths.”

  “What about them?”

  “I don’t know yet. I have to read more before I can figure out the questions, much less the answers.”

  “Maybe I can help.”

  I straightened my posture and massaged my neck, which was stiff from looking at the sky. “I’ll let you know.”

  “I’m your partner, remember. Not your bloody assistant.” He took the pencil out of my hand. “And as your partner, I say we stop for the night, while you can still feel your fingers.”

  I put my nearly numb hands in my (his) jacket pockets before he could offer to warm them for me. “Fine. We can finish labeling the stars before our meeting next month.”

  As we packed up our stuff, Orion rose over the horizon, which meant it was getting really late.

  “It’s funny,” I told Zachary. “I always heard that stars were different colors. That Betelgeuse was a red giant and Rigel was a blue giant. But I’ve never actually seen the colors before.” I zipped up the bag of supplies and set it on the folded portfolio.

  “You don’t get out of the city much, do you?”

  “Not at night.” I hugged my knees to my chest to keep warm, not wanting to leave quite yet. “I don’t usually like the dark.”

  “I can understand why.”

  We were whispering now, because even the crickets had gone to bed. “I haven’t seen a single ghost all night.” Except Logan, I added mentally.

  “That’s not true. Look at the Milky Way.” Zachary leaned back on one hand and swept his other over his head. “Some of those stars are already dead. In the thousands of years it takes their light to reach us, they could’ve exploded or burned out.”

  I gazed up at the long, blurry stretch of silver that could’ve been mistaken for a high cloud. “So we’re seeing them the way they were, not the way they are now.”

  We sat for a few more minutes in silence, and I began to understand why Eowyn was making us do this exercise. Three thousand years ago, people probably couldn’t imagine the birth and death of stars. Those points of light were constant, dependable, eternal. Must have been comforting.

  We packed up my car and drove home, under a sky full of ghosts.

  Chapter Ten

  Aunt Gina was already in bed when I got in at eleven o’clock. She’d left a note propped up against the coffeemaker.

  Long day ahead tomorrow, so I turned in early.

  Poke your head in my room when you get home, okay?

  Love, Gina.

  I tiptoed up the creaky wooden stairs, brushing my fingertips against the frames of my mother’s photos—her first day of kindergarten near the bottom step, her high school graduation in the middle; and the third one at the top, a month before she died, with me in her lap in front of the Christmas tree.

  In every photo, her eyes glinted with good-natured defiance. Gina said that Mom had never let rules get in the way of having fun. Until now, I’d assumed this was a bad thing.

  I snuck past Gina’s room and into my bedroom before pulling the sheets from the bag.

  The label on the package said, WASH PRIOR TO FIRST USE. I wondered why, until I unzipped it. The sheets were stiff and scratchy and smelled like the plastic casing. I calculated how long it would take to wash and dry them. Too long.

  Stopping to think about it made me—well, stop to think.

  How could I sleep on these sheets with Logan, when Zachary had not only picked them out, but helped pay for them? It felt almost like cheating. But on which guy?

  A soft knock came at my door, and I shoved the sheets and bag under my bed. “Come in.”

  Gina cracked the door open. “Hi, hon, how was it?”

  “Cold. But we got it done.”

  “It was chilly tonight.” She leaned on the doorjamb, her green silk robe hanging loose around her fleece pajamas. “You should bring this boy by so I can meet him.”

  “It’s not like that. Zachary’s just a friend.”

  “A friend you’re sitting alone with in a dark field. I need to meet him.”

  “He only serial-killed me a little bit, I swear.”
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  She chuckled. “You seem better since the funeral yesterday.”

  “Yeah.” I sat on the bed and took off my shoes. “Closure, you know.” My voice sounded too casual—I suck at lying even worse than drawing.

  “Aura.” Gina’s voice was the opposite of casual. “Have you seen Logan since the wake? Are you spending time with him?”

  I pulled off my sock and examined it for holes. “I’ve run into him. But you know Logan, he never stays in one place for long.”

  Gina came to sit beside me. I held my breath as the heel of her embroidered slipper brushed the shopping bag handle under the bed.

  “Sweetie,” she said, which meant a lecture was coming. “I know it’s hard. You thought you’d lost Logan forever, and then suddenly here he is again. It’s confusing and agonizing and thrilling. It makes it very hard to accept reality.”

  “Uh-huh.” I let my bracelet fall to the floor, pretending to accidentally drop it. When I bent to pick it up, I pushed the shopping bag with the sheets farther under the bed.

  “But Aura, Logan is dead.” She emphasized the last word. “He doesn’t belong here.”

  Then I don’t belong here, I thought, realizing how crazy that sounded, even in my head.

  “You need to help him understand that,” she continued, “so that he can move on.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to?”

  “He will.” She smoothed down her springy blond bangs. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he’s very angry. At himself, but also at the people who enabled this.”

  I enabled this.

  Aunt Gina dropped her hands in her lap, as if they were suddenly too heavy to hold up. “The Keeleys have asked me to file a wrongful death suit against Warrant Records.”

  I felt my guts shrivel. “Logan will have to testify.” My head flashed hot as the worst part hit me. “About what happened right before he died!”

  “Yes, and you’ll need to be one of the witnesses.”

  “Are you kidding?” I sprang off the bed. “Do you have any clue what kind of story will come out? People are already gossiping about me and Logan.”

  “And this will give you a chance to set the record straight. To tell the truth.”

  “The truth is just as bad as the rumors.” I clasped my hands together. “Please don’t do this to us. I know you’re worried you won’t be able to afford my college, but—”

  “You think this is about money?” She stood and wrapped her robe tight around herself. “This is about justice. That’s more important than a few nasty rumors that everyone will forget the moment some celebrity gets a hangnail.”

  “Oh, so I’m selfish because I don’t want our private life splashed all over the world?”

  “If you’re not thinking about the big picture, then yes, you are being selfish. You’re forgetting what’s at stake here.”

  “Yeah, millions of dollars.”

  “No. Logan’s eternal soul.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes at her crusade. “He’ll pass on when he’s ready.”

  “What if he can’t?” Gina shook a coral-painted fingertip at me. “What if he becomes a shade?”

  “He wouldn’t.” My voice cracked with the desire to believe my own words. “Logan’s a good guy.”

  “Plenty of good ghosts turn bad. They get bitter, watching the world go on without them. You know that better than I do.”

  I looked past her at my bed, remembering the day Logan lay there with me. The afternoon sun had slanted through the blinds, glowing golden against his bare skin. The light had seemed so much a part of him, I’d imagined it shining from within his body and streaming out the window instead of in.

  No one was further from shade than Logan.

  “I’m filing tomorrow,” Gina said, “and we’ll see when the courts can put it on the docket. It could be months.” She came over and gripped my hand in her cool, soft one. “If we win, Logan will move on. He’ll be at peace.”

  “And what if you lose?”

  “Then it’s up to him. But at least we’ll have done everything we could.” She let go of me and went to the door. “If you think about it, you’ll realize what’s right.”

  When she was gone, I changed my sheets at top speed. Wherever they came from, whoever had chosen them, their color was all that mattered. If Logan’s time with me was limited, then I couldn’t waste a single night without him by my side.

  I picked out a deep purple button-down silk nightshirt that fell to the top of my thighs. It was something I usually wore in summer, not on a cold night like tonight. Logan’s voice would keep me warm.

  I went to the bathroom, where I washed my face, took out my contacts, and brushed my hair for several minutes. Logan couldn’t touch it, but I wanted it to look soft. I even shaved my legs.

  My footsteps slowed as I returned to my room. What if he forgot? What if the world had distracted him?

  I stopped at the threshold, where my door stood slightly ajar. Holding my breath, I pushed it open.

  Logan was sitting on the edge of my bed.

  “Hi.” He stood quickly as I moved inside the room. “Did you think I’d forget?”

  I shut the door behind me. “Do I look worried?” I whispered.

  “You look as nervous as I feel.”

  I went to the window, partly to hide my smile. If Logan could feel, he could live, sort of.

  I lowered the blinds to block out the light from the street. In the total darkness, the details of Logan’s features shone bright.

  “I’m glad you came,” I told him, hoping he grasped the force of my understatement.

  “This is gonna be great.” Logan reclined on the bed, though the mattress didn’t compress with any weight. “Like when we were kids, remember? When we’d all camp out in our basement and pretend we were in the mountains?”

  I hurried over to the other side of the bed, almost skipping in my giddiness. “Didn’t we play ‘doctor’ for the first time on one of those camping trips?”

  Logan laughed. “Yeah, that was before I found out about girl cooties.”

  I slipped under the covers next to him. He rolled onto his side to face me.

  “Nice sheets,” he said, and before he could see my guilt, his gaze traveled down the front of my shirt. “Nice outfit, too.”

  I felt suddenly shy. “Thanks.”

  “How was your sky gazing?”

  “I wasn’t sky gazing.” I faked a playful punch. “I was working.”

  “Did he make you see stars?”

  I suppressed a cackle. “Don’t be a dick. And don’t make me laugh, or Gina’ll hear.”

  “Sorry.” Logan bent his arm and rested his cheek on it. “I’ll do the talking, so you don’t get in trouble.”

  I nodded, swallowing a squeak of excitement. Logan was here. In my bed. He could talk the whole night about guitar strings and amp brands, for all I cared. I just wanted to hear his voice.

  The lines of his face smoothed solemn. “I’m so sorry about Friday night. Not just for dying, but for getting so wasted we couldn’t make love. It’s like that Dead Kennedys song, ‘Too Drunk to Fuck.’ That’s been running through my head all day.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t ask for it to be played at the funeral luncheon.”

  He snorted. “What’d you think of my picks?”

  “It was a kick-ass mix. Except for ‘The Parting Glass.’”

  “Hey, that’s a traditional Irish funeral song.”

  “And drinking song,” I snapped back. “Considering it was alcohol that killed you—”

  “The cocaine killed me.”

  “It probably wouldn’t have if you weren’t so drunk. That’s what the paramedics said. It was the interaction that made your heart go haywire.”

  “Oh. Wow.”

  I closed my eyes and held back a groan. Logan had made a mistake that had taken his life, and all he could say was “Wow”?

  “Dylan told me Mom and Dad are suing the record company.”

 
“I know.” I kept my eyes shut, worried I would reveal my own hopes and fears.

  “I can’t get up on that stand and tell them everything. I don’t care about my own reputation—I’m dead, after all—but you have to deal with the people who’ll talk shit about you.”

  “My aunt said it would help you move on.”

  “I’ll decide when I move on.” Logan’s voice snapped like a firecracker. “I don’t have to listen to anyone now. I can do what I want.”

  As long as what he wanted didn’t involve touching anything, or going anywhere he’d never been before.

  “Hey, did you get to see my corpse?”

  I opened my eyes. “I wish I hadn’t.”

  “Was I still splotchy? I thought they could fix that.”

  “No, your color was fine.”

  “So how did I look?”

  “You looked handsome.”

  His lip curled. “Handsome?”

  “Yeah.” I giggled. “Like a handsome shoe salesman.”

  “Aww, man.” He rolled onto his back and covered his face. “They put me in that dark blue suit, didn’t they?”

  “That wasn’t the worst part.” I pushed out the words. “They dyed your hair.”

  Logan jerked to face me. “Like what Mickey did to his hair?”

  “I don’t know whose idea it was.”

  “I’ll ask Dylan. If it was Mickey, I’ll kill him.”

  “Just let it go. He’s mad enough at himself as it is. So’s Siobhan.”

  “No.” Logan pounded a fist against the mattress and uttered a groan that wasn’t quite human. “It’s not their fault, and it’s not your fault. I’ll make it up to all of you. Somehow.”

  The words caught in my throat, the words I knew my aunt wanted me to speak. That the only way he could make things right was to move on, set his soul to rest.

  But the thought of losing him again, this time forever, smothered all the words. I started to cry.

  “Aura, please don’t.” Logan reached for my cheek. “Jeez, I can’t even comfort you anymore. I’m so fucking helpless.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am.” His whisper grew sharp and urgent. “I’m out there on the streets at night, and I see folks in some serious shit. Homeless people dying in alleys, hookers getting the crap beaten out of them, ten-year-olds dealing crack. And that’s not even in the really bad neighborhoods, since I can’t go into those.” He swept his hand toward the window. “You see this on the news, and you forget about it, because really, what can any of us do, and we all have our own problems, right? But there was so much I could’ve done, compared to now. I could’ve made a difference.”