Shattered: A Shade novella

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  ‘He does.’ I don’t remember telling her that, but my memory’s not trustworthy. ‘He’s out to dinner with his boyfriend.’

  ‘It’s two o’clock.’ She bobs her eyebrows. ‘Maybe they’re having more than dinner?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ It’s only 1.52 a.m., and this lad’s actually an ex-boyfriend, now just a friend. But Aura doesn’t need those details. ‘He’ll be home in—’ Sixty-eight minutes or less. ‘By three o’clock.’

  ‘Well, good for him,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know he was seeing anyone.’

  I’m confused. ‘Why would you know?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Speaking of food, I’ve invented a new sandwich. You’ll probably think it’s gross.’ She holds up a pair of jars. ‘Peanut butter and lemon curd.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘We ran out of jelly. Lemon curd was all we had left.’

  ‘Where’d you even find that?’

  ‘Our grocery store has a teeny tiny British section. Stuff like tea biscuits, HobNobs—’

  ‘Dark chocolate?’

  ‘Sorry, milk chocolate. Anyway, this lemon curd stuff looked good, so I bought it.’

  ‘And tragically paired it with peanut butter.’

  ‘It’s the ultimate Scottish-American mashup.’ Aura grins as she presses the jars together. ‘The new taste sensation.’

  ‘You’re adorable, ye know that?’

  ‘And you’re in a weirdly good mood. What’s up?’

  ‘This is what’s up.’ I show her my pile of sticky notes. ‘Thirty-one days until we see each other in Ireland. We’re almost three quarters of the way there.’ Seventy-three-point-five percent, to be exact.

  ‘Yay!’ She pumps her fist. ‘Still too far away, though.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ How to express this without sounding insane? ‘It’s starting to feel like it might not be just a dream.’

  ‘It’s not a dream, Zach.’ Her eyes plead with me. ‘We’ll be together again soon.’

  I do believe her. I must. But at this moment, with the way she looks tonight and the way I feel, the future’s not enough.

  ‘I know. I just really want to—’ Fuck you. ‘I want to—’ Shag you. ‘To—’ Take you against a wall until our knees give out. ‘Be with you.’

  Aura’s eyes turn heavy-lidded. ‘Me, too. I can’t wait.’ Her breathy voice makes me harder than ever. If she says no to this, I’ll need to sign off and handle things myself.

  ‘Then maybe we could – I mean, it might make the wait easier if we … talked about what we wanted to do.’ I fidget with the top button of my shirt. ‘Perhaps—’ Just say it, ya coward. ‘—naked?’

  She closes her eyes, then draws in a choking breath. Oh God, I’ve made her cry.

  ‘Aura! What’s wrong?’ I want to leap through the screen and hug her. And then lick her all over (sympathetically, of course).

  ‘I’ve waited so long for you to really look at me again. And now you want to – it almost doesn’t seem real.’ She presses her hands to her cheeks as a pair of tears squeezes out. ‘Sorry, just give me a second.’

  Perhaps I was out of line with my request for a transatlantic wank. ‘Maybe another time?’

  ‘No, now!’ She scans her bedroom. ‘The light in here’s horrible,’ she mutters. ‘Zach, I’ll call you back in five minutes. Go ahead and, um, get ready.’

  I do as Aura says. It’s a good personal policy.

  I move the laptop to the bed, then tear off my shirt and trousers. I’m about to lift the covers and crawl underneath when I realise—

  My bedroom door. It’s shut tight to keep our chat private, but as always, it’s unlocked. Martin could come home early, or my mum could walk in while I’m …

  A series of shaky steps carries me forwards until my hand’s on the doorknob. Can I do this?

  Fingers damp with cold sweat, I rotate the latch to lock it. Then I test the knob. It doesn’t budge. My pulse spikes again, and the room turns cloudy around the edges.

  Stay here stay here stay here. I tap my forehead on the doorjamb and quietly sing Aura’s favourite Frightened Rabbit song, their most hopeful tune. This trick didn’t work that night in Edinburgh – there were so many other voices around me, I couldn’t recall the melody or words.

  The fuzzy feeling slowly dissipates. I’m still here. I undo the lock and open the door a few inches.

  There. I can walk out if I want. But I’ve something to stay for, time with Aura when we can feel good together. Whispering each other’s names as we touch ourselves will be the next best thing to touching each other. After weeks of wanting nothing, I. Want. This.

  I lock the door and turn away. Somehow the world completely fails to end.

  Chapter Thirteen

  My dad is fucking impossible. He’s just sent me home from the cancer centre to fetch a different novel to read during his three-hour chemotherapy session. Apparently the book he brought has gotten dull. I told him I could download the other novel onto my phone and he could read it that way.

  ‘I’ll no pay twice for something I’m using but once,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll pay for it,’ I told him. ‘Then I’ll read it later.’

  ‘If ye want to read it, ye can have my book when I’m done. You’ve nae money to pay for it, by the way, cos you’ve nae job.’

  ‘I’ve nae job cos I’m aye taking care of you. You’re my job.’

  ‘Then do yer job. Fetch my book.’ When I just glared at him, he added, ‘I’ll give ye ten pounds.’

  So here I am home, soaking wet because it’s pure dreich again and I forgot my umbrella at the hospital.

  I find the book on the coffee table and set it by the front door, along with a new umbrella, then run upstairs to change into dry shoes and denims. The shower’s running in the hall toilet, where Martin’s singing the latest CHVRCHES song off-key at full volume. I hurry to change clothes, knowing I’ve exactly twelve minutes to get back to the bus station or I’ll have to wait another nineteen minutes for the next bus, or waste part of the tenner Dad gave me on a taxi.

  I’m tying my second shoe when my laptop dings on the desk. The lid is open, though I never leave it that way. Martin’s been using it on occasion until he can afford a new one.

  I glance at the screen as I stand up. My email’s already open in a browser tab. That’s odd, as I always close—

  My heart leaps at the sight of Aura’s name in the From line. I click on the message, but as I do, my eyes catch the subject:

  ZACHARY

  This is not my email account.

  Hey Martin,

  Thanks for the latest update. I wish there was something I could do, but he still won’t talk to me about what happened. Even asking him ‘So how are you?’ all casual-like, gets me shut down.

  But I’ll keep asking. I won’t give up on him. One day he’ll be ready to talk, and I want to be there for him when he is.

  My pulse pounds in my temples. I sink into the desk chair, knees shaking with rage.

  I’m just so glad he has you. You’re an amazing friend. Please keep taking care of him for me.

  Hugs,

  Aura

  I scroll through the message thread, my stomach getting tighter and colder with every line. They’ve been emailing for weeks, since the end of September, saying things like:

  He’s a wee bit fragile right now. More than a wee bit.

  and

  OMG I feel so sorry for him.

  and

  Sometimes when I look at Zach, I see the lad I once knew. But mostly, he’s like a ghost.

  and

  He spaces all the time during our video chats. I keep pretending not to notice. I don’t think he can handle my pity.

  The door swings open. ‘Oh!’ Martin puts a hand to his pale, bare chest and the other hand to the towel about his waist. ‘Christ, ye nearly gies a heart attack. What are you—’

  He sees what’s on the laptop screen. His lips part, but no more words come out, just a low sound of
dismay.

  ‘Why?’ My voice rumbles in my chest. ‘Why would you do this to me?’

  ‘I can explain.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’ I roar.

  ‘Just that you’ve trouble sleeping, and nightmares sometimes.’ Martin looks away. ‘And that you get nervous when you’re alone.’

  ‘God, why?’ I want to shake him. ‘Are you trying to make me look weak?’

  ‘I did it cos she deserves to hear it.’

  ‘Aye, from me! When I’m ready.’

  ‘And when will that be? When will you show her you’re not perfect?’

  ‘She knows all too fucking well. Especially now, thanks to you!’ I lurch out of the chair, which rolls back to hit the desk.

  Martin holds his ground. ‘Mate, she wants to help you, but you won’t let her. Why do you shut her out when you talk to me?’

  ‘Because you’re not the one in danger. She is.’ An awful thought occurs to me. ‘Did you tell her about the night Dad was in hospital? When we were here alone?’

  ‘Of course not! What you told me about—’ He glances towards the hall. ‘—that place, what they did to ye, I’ll take tae the grave. I swear it.’

  ‘How can I ever trust you again?’ I back away, rubbing the ridges of my brows. The skin over my skull feels stretched to the breaking point. ‘Whose idea was it to start emailing? Yours or hers?’

  ‘It—’ He runs his hand hard through his wet hair, sending water trickling over his face and neck. ‘It doesnae matter.’

  So it was Aura’s idea. I turn to the laptop, see her crisp little phrases and smiling/frowning/crying emoticons. I think of all the times over the last two months when she looked out from that screen, looked me in the eye, ‘pretending not to notice’. Holding that power over me, at a time when I’ve never felt more powerless.

  Behind me, Martin takes a step closer. ‘Mate—’

  ‘Don’t call me that!’ I sweep the laptop off the desk. It crunches on the hardwood floor and rests wide open, screen side down.

  Martin raises his voice. ‘Just calm yersel, widje? I’m sorry we went behind yer back, but it was only cos we wanted to-to—’

  ‘To solve me.’

  ‘To help you.’

  They have helped, Aura and Martin. I know that. But they also discussed me, dissected me. Conspired to fix what cannot be fixed.

  I’ve never felt so betrayed in all my life.

  There’s a shift in the air, Martin moving closer, reaching for me.

  ‘Get out of my sight,’ I snarl.

  He says nothing more, just quickly gathers his clothes from the wardrobe and retreats to the loo.

  I kneel beside the laptop and turn it over with trembling hands. The left half of Aura’s email is still visible. The right side of the screen shows a pale-green blob radiating from a crack in the centre.

  I’m lucky I only broke the display, not the processor. Still, it’ll have to be fixed by MI-X, for security reasons. My dad’s going to kill me.

  ‘Fuck.’

  I yank open my wardrobe and pull out an armful of Martin’s shirts, hangers and all. Into the hallway and over the railing they go, onto the stairs. I do the same with his trousers, then his shoes.

  I’m laden with his socks and underwear when the door to the loo opens. Martin stops on the threshold and stares at me.

  ‘What are ye doing with my stuff?’

  ‘Throwing it out.’ I hurl the clothes over the banister in a multicoloured rain of cotton. ‘Throwing you out.’

  ‘What?! You’ll chuck me like this, after all I’ve done for you?’

  ‘After all you’ve done for me? I gave you a home when you’d nowhere to go. And don’t forget I saved your wee brother. You’re welcome, by the way.’ I stomp back to my room. He follows.

  ‘Saved him? Saved him? You broke Finn, is what you did. You broke my brother!’

  I stop, hands buried in the drawer. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He died that day, Zachary. Finn died in the water and became a ghost. He saw himself violet, there under the bridge. But it hurt him to be near you, cos of yer redness or whitever you call it.’

  My jaw drops slowly. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Finn tel’ me himself. He said his ghost couldn’t leave, not if he wanted tae live. The ambulance was coming and he knew he’d still a chance. So he stayed and – and you were there, so he—’ Martin wipes his mouth, his breath coming hard and fast.

  ‘He became a shade,’ I whisper.

  ‘Aye.’ Martin knocks a fist against his temple. ‘And that’s why he’s so fucked up in the heid, I think.’ His voice breaks. ‘Cos when you saved him, mate, you destroyed him.’

  My throat closes. It feels like I’ve inhaled an ice-cold dagger, shredding my lungs with every breath. I turn away, gripping the sides of my head. Nothing has ever hurt as bad as this truth.

  I feel it all at once: the freezing canal, the nail in my chest, the unbearable weight of Finn’s body. My legs ache from keeping us afloat. My mates are shouting, but their panicky words are drowned out by the rush of water echoing off the bridge above me.

  No. I can’t be there. I will not be there.

  I open my eyes wide and lift them to the ceiling. Find something, anything, to tie yourself to Here. Find a place of peace before you shatter.

  Ah. A bright star above the far side of the bed. Arcturus. Constellation Boötes. Thirty-six-point-seven light years away.

  I broke Finn.

  Arcturus is the fourth brightest star in the northern sky. Its name means ‘Guardian of the Bear’ in Ancient Greek. Inuits call it the Old Man.

  I broke …

  Arcturus is classified a red giant. It’s the zenith star to the Hawaiian Islands. And it’s home to the Arcturan Megafreighters in my favourite novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read that book for the first time – and for the second, third, fourth, and fifth time – in this very room.

  There, a place of peace. I exhale, pushing away the last remnants of that day in the canal. I shove it up through the ceiling, into the sky where it can’t hurt me.

  Martin speaks my name in an odd voice. I turn to him. He seems to be waiting for a response to something.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, then move past him into the hall. I need to move, feel my feet on the floor. I’m Here, so everything’s alright.

  Martin repeats my ‘okay’ but adds a bewildered question mark to the end. I walk down the stairs, stepping over piles of clothes. Why did I put them there when we’ve a perfectly good laundry chute?

  At the front door I see Dad’s book and my umbrella. I need to bring those to a place. But where?

  My phone will know. Sure enough, the circled day on the calendar says Chemo, with the cancer centre address beneath it. Right. I was there today. Then I came home and … no.

  ‘Zachary?’ Martin calls from upstairs, his voice tinged with fear.

  My mind turns away. Pick up the book. Pick up the umbrella. And go.

  * * * *

  When I return to the hospital, Dad takes one look at my face and asks, ‘What’s wrong?’

  I sit beside him, hand him his novel. ‘Martin and I had a row.’

  ‘About what?’ When I don’t answer, he opens the book. ‘Awright, none of my business.’

  I remember pieces of it, and the bare facts – Martin and Aura have been emailing for weeks, and oh, by the way, I broke his brother – but I feel nothing. It’s like my ribs have turned to titanium, sealing off my heart from further damage.

  By the time Dad and I get home from his chemo session, Martin has gone to work. His packed suitcase sits in the corner of the living room.

  There’s no time to think of him or Aura or Finn now. I need to stay by my father’s side as the benevolent poison works its way through his body. Thank God for this preoccupation.

  I help him upstairs to bed and get him lying on his left side where he’s most comfortable. Then I find the track on the audiobook corresponding to the plac
e he left off at the cancer centre.

  ‘Already read this bit,’ he grumbles.

  ‘It’s the beginning of the same chapter. Consider it a wee recap.’ I head for the door. ‘I’ll make you some soup. Cock-a-leekie okay?’

  ‘Aye. Sgàire?’ When I stop and turn, his eyes drift shut. ‘Sorry I took you away.’

  ‘I don’t mind going with you to appointments.’

  ‘I mean from Scotland. Years ago. Took you from your home, your mates, your school.’

  I touch the framed photo on the wall by the door, one I made when I was eight. It shows the Duke of Wellington statue outside the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. Usually the duke’s got an orange traffic cone on his head, a duty of anonymous mischief shared by all city dwellers. But that day, the cone had been placed on his horse’s head instead. So on the matte beneath the photo I wrote, in such careful handwriting it looks like a printer’s typeface: Glaswegian Unicorn.

  ‘If it helps,’ I tell him, ‘I mostly blame Mum.’ I mean it as a joke, but it’s sorta true.

  ‘You shouldn’t. Our move had more to do with my career than with her desire to find you new mates.’

  ‘Perhaps. Anyway, if I’d stayed here, I’d never have met Aura.’

  The heavy silence fills in the rest of that thought for both of us: and I’d never have ended up in 3A.

  ‘Nonetheless.’ He clears his throat. ‘Sorry I was a bastard today.’

  I can’t take this conciliation from him. He sounds like he’s making amends on his deathbed.

  ‘Dad.’ I go and kneel at his side to speak to him at face level. ‘I like when you’re a bastard. I like when we fight. It’s normal. It’s what living people do.’ I set my hand near his. ‘Promise you’ll always be a bastard?’

  He doesn’t respond. The weight of the day has stolen him from me already. I should let him nap while I make soup, but I need an answer.

  I poke his arm. ‘Dad?’

  ‘I promise I’ll always be a bastard,’ he murmurs. ‘One condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Promise you’ll always be one too.’