Shine

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “ ‘Only mate now’? I thought you were hanging out with all your old friends.”

  “Not after what they did to Martin last week. After he came out to them.”

  “What happened? Did they hurt him?”

  “Naw, it wasn’t as if he was doing something truly shocking, like supporting the wrong football club. But the bastards said stupid things. He got angry, rightfully so, and I was caught in the middle. It was an easy choice.” Zachary frowned and drew a thumb over one dark brow. “No, not easy. But simple.”

  “That sucks.”

  “It does, because on any other day, any of us lads’d take a punch—or a bullet—for any o’ the others.”

  “So why’s Martin living with you? Did his parents kick him out?”

  “No’ officially. But they decided that now he’s seventeen and not at university, he should start paying rent. My parents said he could stay here for free.” Zachary adjusted the collar of his light-brown T-shirt, looking embarrassed. “On the condition that he cheers me up.”

  “Is he?”

  He nodded. “I can’t wait for you to come and meet him.”

  My belly warmed at the idea of visiting Zachary in Glasgow. That wasn’t part of our December itinerary, so it meant he was thinking beyond.

  “Is he home?”

  “He just got back from work at the pub, so he’ll pop round in a minute.”

  A knock came from behind him. Zachary turned his head. “Aye!”

  “A’right, mate?” A moment later a redheaded boy appeared behind Zachary’s chair. “You must be Aura.”

  His bright grin provoked one of my own, and of course the accent made my eyes glaze over. “Martin?”

  “Martin Connelly, pleased to meet ya.” He said to Zachary, “If tha’s what she looks like on a wee screen, I cannae wait tae see her in 3-D.”

  Zachary kept his eyes on me. “Not as much as I can’t wait.”

  Another knock came at the door, and I heard Fiona’s voice.

  “It’s a whole crowd,” Zachary muttered. “Come in.”

  “Oh, are you speaking with Aura?” She peeked over his other shoulder, wisps of dark hair in disarray around her face. “Hello, love. How are you?”

  “I’m great.” I tried not to show my dismay at her obvious exhaustion, and wondered why she was up at two a.m. “How are you and Mr. Moore?”

  “Ah, well.” She touched Zachary’s arm. “Can I have your help with your father for just one minute?”

  “Of course.”

  Zachary stood up, and Martin slipped into his chair. “I’ll keep Aura occupied till ya get back.” His gaze went past the camera as he watched them leave. Then his face turned suddenly serious, which didn’t seem like its natural state. “How is he, wi’ you?”

  It took a moment to understand not only Martin’s meaning, but his words. His accent was ten times stronger than Zachary’s—not surprising, since Zachary had spent the last four years in England and America.

  “Sometimes he’s normal,” I said. “Other times, he seems really distant. Is he mad at me?”

  “Aw, no, no. Never think tha’.” He put his cheek on his tightly balled fist as he leaned closer to the camera, hazel eyes burning. “It’s that fuckin’ DMP. They fuckin’ did something to him. How could anyone stand two fuckin’ months of that?”

  I stammered at the barrage of profanity. Zachary had said that the word was a verbal tic among Glasgow boys. Like a comma, he’d said.

  “Two months of what?” I asked Martin. “Do you know what they did to him?”

  “No, he willnae talk about i’. But he’s different. Fuckin’ . . . damaged, know wha’ I mean?”

  “I can tell. But you live with him, you must see more of it.”

  “True. I notice he—” Martin broke off and looked away. “I shouldnae be sayin’ it. It makes him look mental, and weak.”

  “I don’t care. He doesn’t have to be strong with me.”

  “Aye, he does. Wi’ everyone. It’s a Zachary thing.”

  “So what did you notice?”

  “Well, here’s the scene, right?” Martin spread his hands like Ls to form a frame. “We’re in the living room, watching the fitba. I get up for a beer, and let’s say I get distracted in the kitchen. Tryin’ tae sort out if I want some crisps, too, or maybe a sandwich.”

  “Okay.” I wondered where this was going.

  “If I’m gone more than a few minutes, he comes and finds me. Like a—” Martin wiped his mouth. “Like my dog used tae do.”

  My stomach went cold. “What’s he worried about?”

  “Dunno. That I left out the back door, maybe.”

  “Why would you leave?”

  “I wouldnae. He does the same to his parents. And at night before he goes to bed, he walks around the whole fuckin’ house, makes sure we’re all where we’re meant tae be.” Martin folded his arms on the desk and leaned in. “When I asked him what he was doing, he called it a ‘perimeter check.’ ”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I looked it up. It’s what soldiers do at a camp. Make sure there’s no security breaches.”

  I glanced at my dark window. Though our Charles Village neighborhood bordered on some rough areas, I’d never felt unsafe in my own home. “You think Zach’s just being protective? Or is he pretending to be protective because it’s better than being scared?”

  “Dunno.” Martin looked away, his lips forming a tight line. “But he never used tae be like this. With me and our mates, we’d be out and suddenly he’d just be like, eh, I’m fucking off home to read or whatever. Like he had to have X amount of hours on his own every day or he’d go mental.”

  “He was independent.”

  “Right! Now, he wants nae time alone. Ever. I think if it wouldn’t piss off his da, he’d sleep in my fuckin’ bed wi’ me.” His eyes widened, and he thrust out his palms. “Oh, dinnae worry, that lad is heartbreak-ingly dead straight. Not that there’s anything wrong wi’ that.”

  I laughed, though my amusement was weakened by the thought of Zachary’s restless fear. “I don’t know how to help him.”

  “Me neither. His ma said he goes to MI-X for counseling, fuckin’ post-traumatic stress.”

  “Good. He didn’t tell me that.”

  “Of course not. That’d make him imperfect, aye?”

  I’d learned more about Zachary’s true state of mind in the last minute than in a month of video chats. “Will you let me know how he’s doing? I hate to go behind his back, but could you e-mail me?”

  “Good idea. It’s for the best.” He wrote down my address and stuffed it in his front jeans pocket.

  “Sorry to hear about you and your friends.”

  “Ach, cretinous bawbags.” He rubbed his freckled cheek, just under his left eye. “I’ve new mates now, who don’t think a night of culture means watching Spanish football instead of English.”

  “New friends are great, but old ones are the best.”

  “Hmm. Sometimes old ones suck.”

  “Yeah, they can screw up pretty bad. And because they’re your friends, they think they can be mean to you without breaking up the whole gang.”

  “Right,” he said uncertainly.

  “But it’s usually worth it to give them a chance to make it up to you.” I shrugged. “Or maybe it’s better to trade them in for shiny new friends.”

  He crossed his arms and looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “You and Zach talk about me when I’m no’ here, and you and I talk about him behind his back. Time for him and me tae talk about you.”

  “Like you don’t already.”

  His mouth quirked up at the corner. “Maybe a wee bit.”

  “If you won’t make peace with those, um, bawbags for your own sake, then do it for Zach. He needs all the friends he can get.”

  “I’ll think about it. Just one question.” He gave a full, bright grin. “Does Zachary know how cute you are when you say ‘bawbags’?”

  Chapter Twenty
-Six

  I tugged my hood to keep my face drizzle-free as Dylan, Megan, and I walked up a steep, silent Annapolis street. The state capital was a mere half-hour drive from Baltimore, but we’d never visited any sections other than the busy waterfront.

  Out of all the shades I’d maybe turned back into ghosts, Latisha McKenzie was the only one who had lived nearby. In life she’d worked for a state senator, and while we couldn’t sneak into the legislature buildings, research told us there was one place the political types loved to lunch.

  Lawyers’ Mall was a small brick courtyard across from the State House. A bronze, benevolent-looking statue of Thurgood Marshall dominated the plaza, which was framed by a low brick wall, the perfect height for sitting.

  Hopefully we wouldn’t need to sit, or even stand, for very long.

  “This better be quick,” Megan said, huddled in her black hoodie. “I’m freezing.”

  Dylan checked his watch. “Oh my God, McConnell, we were here almost thirty seconds before you started bitching. You feeling okay?”

  She flipped him off, but he just smirked and pulled down the sleeve of his orange St. John’s College sweatshirt. We figured if at least one of us was wearing swag from the Annapolis institution, it’d look less suspicious for us to wander away from the touristy areas.

  I held my palm faceup—the rain had stopped. So I pulled back my hood. “Latisha McKenzie, come and—”

  “There you are, girl!”

  The thin, middle-aged woman opened her arms, long fingers waving toward herself, beckoning me. The orange streetlights couldn’t dampen her violet glory.

  I just stood there for a moment, stunned. I’d really done it. I’d cured a shade.

  Then I dashed forward into her ethereal arms, overcome with joy. She was the only ghost I’d ever “embraced” besides Logan.

  “Wow,” Dylan and Megan said together behind me.

  Ex-Latisha stepped back to look at me. “I wanted to thank you before I passed on, but I wasn’t gonna wait much longer.”

  “Already? Are you sure?” I thought of Logan’s first, unsuccessful attempt to leave this world.

  “Oh, I’m ready.” She counted off on her fingers. “Said good-bye to my grandkids, my great-niece and -nephew, and had them talk to my son and daughters for me.”

  “But today when I checked the DMP website, it said you were still a shade. Your family didn’t tell anyone you were a ghost again?”

  “Uh-uh! They know those men’d put me in one of those little boxes like that.” She snapped her fingers without sound. “But I don’t wanna push my luck. You know how little children are at keeping secrets.”

  “Excuse me.”

  I jumped, startled, and turned to see a patrolling police officer. “What are you kids doing?” he boomed.

  “Standing,” Dylan said.

  I glared at Dylan. “Sorry, officer. Are we breaking any laws?”

  “Not that I know of.” The policeman was young, blond, and well built. “From where I was standing, it looked like you were talking to a ghost.”

  Beyond him, ex-Latisha closed her eyes, and a glow ignited in the center of her body. I was glad she wasn’t bothered by the police officer.

  “We were talking to a ghost,” I told the cop. “I know it seems weird, but it’s perfectly legal.”

  “For now.” He propped his hands on his hips, as if showing off the gun in his holster. Meanwhile, ex-Latisha’s form became a gorgeous, shimmering golden-white. I pitied the cop, that he couldn’t see what was taking place just a few feet away.

  “Why don’t you run along now,” he said, “before I have to take your names and charge you with loitering?”

  “Loitering?” Megan exclaimed. “This is a public place.”

  I gestured my friends toward the road. “Guys, let’s just go.” The last thing I wanted was a report filed with my name on it, even though we were innocent. Aunt Gina would want to know why in the world we were all the way down in Annapolis.

  After crossing the street, we looked back to see the young patrol officer peering around the plaza, oblivious to the spectacle in front of him. Ex-Latisha’s glow filled the courtyard, shining off the Marshall statue and glinting even in the officer’s badge.

  We waved as she disappeared.

  Like those in a spaceship approaching light speed (according to general relativity), I felt time slow down as the autumn wore on and my trip to Ireland got closer. I took the SATs again, and scored well enough to give me courage to apply to Johns Hopkins and a couple of Ivy League schools, and of course the University of Glasgow.

  Zachary and I video-chatted at least every other night, making sure not to let our schedule lapse. He’d lost his previous girlfriend Suzanne after she moved to another country, so I wanted to reassure him I wouldn’t drift away. I sensed that beyond his inexplicable insecurity lay a deeper fear of being alone.

  Martin and I e-mailed a few times, though it felt like a betrayal. But I craved more knowledge of Zachary’s life than he was offering himself. Martin said Zachary had been having nightmares and sometimes wouldn’t fall asleep until six a.m., and then wouldn’t wake until noon.

  On October 18, which would’ve been Logan’s eighteenth birthday, I joined the Keeleys at the cemetery for a memorial service. I’d visited Logan’s grave every few weeks since he’d passed on. Sometimes I’d drop off flowers and leave quickly. Other times I’d stay for an hour and talk to Logan or listen to music or just sit, remembering.

  But on this brisk sunny day, standing here with his friends and family, I realized something: I’d spent the last year mourning Logan—sometimes with him right by my side—but I’d spent very little time reliving the night of his death. Now it all came crashing back at once, like a movie played at double-speed.

  Logan onstage, full of life and energy as he commanded the spotlight, the audience, and what seemed like every note from every instrument.

  Logan at his birthday party, draining that life out of himself with each drink he took.

  Logan in his bedroom, displaying his tattoo of my name over his heart, promising to love me no matter how famous he got, touching me as we started to undress.

  But never finished.

  Logan on the floor outside the bathroom, his ghost standing beside me, body and spirit forever parted.

  I wanted to be strong for his family on this anniversary, wanted to be the friend they needed. But tears drenched my face, and sobs racked my chest so hard, I thought my ribs would crack.

  Finally I fled to my car, parked in the same place as the night Logan had passed on. I didn’t want anyone to see me through the windows, so I sat behind it, leaning against the tire.

  That’s where Mickey found me.

  He said nothing, just reached down and offered me a hand. I stared up at him, confused. Did he want me to come back to the grave? Did he want me to leave?

  Then I saw what he held: Logan’s acoustic guitar.

  I grasped his hand, realizing too late that mine was wet with tears. Mickey didn’t flinch, though, as he pulled me to my feet.

  We walked down the cemetery lane without looking back, until we arrived at a shady arbor. A circle of crimson-leaf maples surrounded a small fountain, which was dry. Two curved marble benches flanked the empty concrete basin.

  Mickey and I sat at either end of a bench, only a few feet apart.

  “Siobhan and I finally wrote . . . this,” he said. “It’ll sound better at the reception tonight, when she adds her fiddle part. But I thought maybe you’d want . . .” Running his hand over the guitar’s curves, Mickey stared at the trumpeting cherub atop the dry fountain.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  Mickey tuned the guitar, then silenced the strings with his palm. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

  “What was stopping you before?” I worried he was going to say “being with Megan.”

  “I kept reimagining that night—not the way it was, but the way it should’ve been. And the way everyth
ing would have been on any given day if he hadn’t died.”

  “Like a parallel universe, where Logan made different choices.”

  “Yeah. Right now he should be applying to colleges and maybe thinking about signing a record contract.”

  He should be celebrating his eighteenth birthday. In our universe, Logan would remain forever seventeen.

  “You can drive yourself crazy thinking like that. Believe me, I know.”

  “And that’s the thing.” Mickey raised his blue eyes, deep like Dylan’s, not bright like Logan’s. “Once I stopped imagining that better world, I was left with nothing but this one.”

  My heart folded in on itself to see his hurt. But it was a clear, sharp pain now, not the dull sheen of despair I’d seen in his eyes for so long.

  “Anyway,” he said, “that’s when this came.”

  Mickey began to play Logan’s song, a raw, haunting tune of farewell. My tears, falling in time with the rhythm, felt as if they were squeezed out by my heartbeat.

  Wherever Logan was now, he was at peace. Our own journeys to peace would last us the rest of our lives. But I felt one certainty as surely as I felt the earth beneath my feet: This song was one of that journey’s largest steps.

  The ceremony at Logan’s grave site was followed by a reception at a local Irish pub. Mickey and Siobhan played a set of mostly traditional music on their guitar and fiddle. As the night went on, they mixed in acoustic versions of Keeley Brothers songs, which had us all cheering and weeping, sometimes simultaneously.

  Then, a few minutes before midnight, they played Logan’s song.

  Even the second time around, the lyrics and melody reached through my ears, bypassed my brain, and went straight to my heart, where they wriggled around, causing a hundred different pains.

  When the song was over, the crowd let out a deep sigh before exploding into applause. Tears were wiped and glasses were raised, and then midnight arrived.

  It was no longer Logan’s birthday, but his death day. Our minute of silence seemed to stretch into an hour as we remembered the life that had been stolen from us.

  Afterward, Mickey and Megan disappeared outside for almost half an hour. When they returned, they were smiling but not holding hands, to my surprise.