Shift

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  I closed my eyes and let the drum machine’s driving beat and the singer’s dreamy monotone soak my brain. They were loud, for sure, but not angry. Frustrated, maybe, even defeated.

  “I’m definitely getting a copy.” They seemed like the kind of band I’d listen to alone, letting the earbuds trap the noise inside my head. I’d crank up the volume until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.

  “They’re Mickey’s new favorite band.” A slow, ponderous song began, thumping out of the speakers and turning the sunny morning’s mood as gray as fog. Megan lowered the volume with a few taps of her green-lacquered nails, then pulled a stick of gum from the pack on the dashboard shelf. “But I’m not sure he should be listening to this stuff right now. He’s broody enough as it is. You saw him last Saturday at Black Weeds, just sitting at the bar, not dancing, barely looking at the band. Definitely not looking at me.” Her voice curdled with hurt, reciting the details of their latest fight.

  I frowned as I checked my makeup in the visor mirror, and not just because of the puffiness under my dark brown eyes. Megan’s words reminded me of the pain Logan had brought his family. More than any of us, his older brother, Mickey, blamed himself for Logan’s death, which had dumped him into a giant vat of self-hatred that threatened to drown Megan, too.

  Then after Logan shaded and disappeared, it got worse for all the Keeleys. Not only had their son and brother fallen into what they considered hell—which, according to Logan, turned out to be correct—the entire tragedy had happened in public.

  Megan interrupted herself to ask me, “You’re coming to the gig tomorrow night, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.” So she wouldn’t see my smile, I looked out the passenger window at a hawk perched on our school’s wrought-iron fence. I was dying to blurt out the news that would turn everyone’s life right side up again: Logan was back.

  But until Aunt Gina made sure Logan was safe, I couldn’t tell Megan, because she’d tell Mickey, whose sudden happiness would make everyone suspicious. The Keeleys would find out tomorrow night anyway, after Mickey and Siobhan’s acoustic show at the Green Derby.

  Gina was probably at the courthouse right now, asking a judge for Logan’s order of protection against the Department of Metaphysical Purity. That way, the DMP agents—or “dumpers” as we often called them—couldn’t touch him unless he was close to shading, and even then they’d have to get a warrant.

  Megan took a sip from her Lollapalooza water bottle as we pulled into a parking space. “Listen to me, I’m practically hoarse from bitching about Mickey. You must be sick of it.”

  I gave her a sympathetic look. “Probably not as sick of it as you are.”

  I started to get out of the car, but a horn blasted before my door was open an inch.

  “Bitch alert,” I said as a sleek black BMW convertible glided into the space beside us. Becca Goldman glared past me from the driver’s seat.

  A surge of loathing gave me the courage to get out of the car instead of cowering like I wanted to.

  “Put a leash on your friend, McConnell,” Becca snapped at Megan, ignoring me. “Next time I won’t honk, and you’ll be missing a door.”

  “Try it, and you’ll be missing a tooth.” Megan cracked her gum in Becca’s direction.

  “Hmph.” Becca tossed her long sable hair in a motion straight out of a shampoo commercial. Then she strutted down the walkway toward the school, followed by her three minions, Hailey Fletcher, Chelsea Barton, and Rachel Howard (Megan and I joked that Becca required her friends to have names with the same number of syllables as hers).

  Maybe two minions was more accurate, I thought, as Rachel hung back instead of following the other girls. She was a senior, like them, but we’d been friends since I moved to our Charles Village neighborhood when I was two.

  “Hey,” she said, falling into stride with Megan and me. “I heard you and Zach are going out tonight.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Do us all a huge favor and hook up with him? Becca thinks she still has a shot. Maybe she’ll find another obsession if you mark your territory.” When Megan and I laughed, she said, “Okay, that sounds totally vile. But you know what I mean.”

  I nodded, but the thought of having dinner with Zachary, much less, um, marking him, made me too nervous to answer.

  Besides, I had to figure out how I felt about Logan. My gut clenched at the memory of his hands, his body—his real, solid weight—against me. This morning when I woke I’d almost thought it was a dream, until I found Logan pacing my living room like a stray tomcat.

  We approached the Ridgewood front courtyard, where the sunlight bounced off the water burbling in the fountain. The area was full, as usual, since our school was totally BlackBoxed to keep out ghosts. Unfortunately, the thin layers of charged obsidian in the walls also blocked cell phone signals.

  At the courtyard, Rachel returned to Becca’s entourage, and Megan and I went to join our friends near the fountain.

  Zachary stood facing away from us at the center of the small crowd, which seemed to be passing an object around as he told them a story. As usual, he was curbing his native Glasgow accent enough to be understood. But not enough to curb the hotness.

  “I stayed on the right side the entire way this time,” he said. “It was a bloody miracle.” His remark was met with laughter and a round of what looked like mock applause.

  Jenna Michaels spotted us as we approached. “Aura, Zach has a surprise for you.”

  He started at the sound of my name, then grabbed a small card out of Christopher’s hand and slid it into the back pocket of his own jeans.

  Zachary turned to me, green eyes clouded with worry, a frown erasing his usual dimples. “Let’s talk for a second, aye?” He led me to the side of the courtyard, where we sat at one end of the slate-topped stone wall.

  I wondered what was wrong, and if it involved the DMP again. The agency had followed me ever since they’d figured out I was the first person born after the Shift. And Zachary? He was the last person born before.

  But it was no coincidence we’d found each other. Zachary’s dad, Ian, was an agent for the DMP’s British counterpart, MI-X. Exactly a year before our winter solstice births, Ian and my mother each visited Ireland’s Newgrange passage tomb (an ancient megalith like Stonehenge, but older and cooler). Something cosmically huge happened the morning they were there, something that led to the Shift itself a year later. Zachary and I swore we’d be the first to know what it was.

  He curled one leg onto the wall to face me straight on. “You know how you were going to fetch me at six to have dinner before the reception?” He scratched the back of his neck and the soft dark waves of hair that brushed it. “There’s a bit of a change in plans.”

  I should have been relieved. Now that Logan was back in my life, I needed time to sort out my feelings for him and Zachary. Still, my stomach sank with disappointment.

  Zachary placed a white laminated card on the wall between us. “Instead, I’ll fetch you at six.”

  I grabbed his driver’s license. “You passed?”

  “No, I gave up and had a false one made. See, it says I’m twenty-five, so I’ll save on car insurance, too.”

  I examined the birthday on the license—same date and year as mine. I laughed at his joke anyway. “Congratulations!”

  “And our dinner destination is now a surprise, since I am in total control of our travels.”

  “Ooh. What should I wear?”

  “I dunno.” He regarded me from under long, dark lashes. “Something stunning?”

  I twisted the strap of my book bag with sweaty fingers. “So is this a real date now?”

  His face turned serious. “Do you want it to be?”

  As I met his gaze of cautious hope, my own desire and fear arm-wrestled for my answer. It ended in a draw, so I waffled.

  “Didn’t your dad say the DMP would freak out?” The First and the Last, the agency called me and Zachary. They tried to keep us
apart so we couldn’t—I don’t know, rupture the space-time continuum or whatever. MI-X was a lot less paranoid.

  “Since when do you care what the DMP thinks?” Zachary asked.

  “I care if they start chasing us again like they did back in December on our first date. Our last date.”

  “Our only date.” He took his license back and slipped it into his wallet. “It wasn’t all bad, was it?”

  My face heated at the memory of our one long kiss. “No. It wasn’t.”

  “Besides, my father’s doing a good job keeping them out of our lives. We’ll be fine, so long as we don’t do anything reckless, like dance naked in the street.”

  The heat spread to my neck, which I started rubbing. How could I go out with Zachary after all that had happened last night? Then again, he’d be leaving when school was out in June. He’d waited patiently for almost three months while I mourned Logan’s shading, and now, just when I’d been ready to move on with my life, Logan had reappeared. Did that mean I had to keep denying my chance to be with Zachary?

  “If anything,” he said, “I think the DMP is losing interest in you, since there’s been no sign of—you know.”

  I knew who he meant. “Actually,” I whispered, unable to look at him, “Logan’s back.”

  Zachary’s breath caught, and he leaned closer. “As a shade or a ghost?”

  “A ghost.”

  He went completely still and silent. I imagined the scientist in him thinking, This is bloody incredible / it’s never been done before / must theorize and investigate and solve this mystery.

  Meanwhile, the guy in him was thinking, That fucking bastard.

  “Why now?” he said with a mix of amazement and annoyance.

  “I don’t know. Logan said that last night was the first time he could hear my voice.” I picked at a loose slate chip on the wall beside my knee. “He said it was torture.”

  “Who knows about this?”

  “Aunt Gina. I don’t trust anyone else yet.”

  His voice softened. “But you trust me?”

  I wanted to tell him the rest, but definitely not while we sat here in front of our friends and enemies.

  “I thought together we could figure this out. Any ghost weirdness might have something to do with the Shift.”

  “Especially if you’re involved.” He nudged my knee with the toe of his sneaker. “And if you’re involved, I’m involved.”

  A grateful smile warmed my face. I couldn’t tell if he meant we were linked because of our births, our research project, or something much more. Whatever the connection, he was on my side, despite Logan’s reappearance.

  But would he still feel that way after he knew the whole, impossible truth? I hoped I had the guts to find out.

  Zachary came to my house at 5:59.

  Peeking through the blinds of my bedroom window, I watched him stride down the sidewalk, his steps swift and fluid with athletic grace. He twirled his key ring around his fingers, consciously unselfconscious. Maybe he knew I was watching him. I turned to Logan.

  “I gotta go.”

  He was sitting on my bed, arms crossed tight over his chest, as if he were literally trying to contain himself. “Thanks for not asking me to zip you up.”

  This was a whole new realm of awkward. I clicked on my MP3 player, nestled in its docking station. “My pre-exam playlist. Four hours of de-stress songs.” A haunting acoustic tune trickled out of the speakers.

  Logan breathed in deep through his nose—not that he needed to breathe, but the simulation seemed to calm him.

  I tucked my phone into my tiny black silk purse. “Aunt Gina says she’ll come up and say the rosary a few times.”

  “That’s nice of her.”

  Gina and Logan were a lot more Catholic than I was. I didn’t know any post-Shifters who followed organized religion faithfully. We knew too much about death and the afterlife to fit into any set of unchanging, centuries-old belief systems.

  From the living room below, I heard Gina exclaim, “Well, look at you!” I couldn’t hear Zachary’s response, since unlike my aunt, he was using his inside voice.

  I quickly put on my necklace, a garnet pendant my grandmom had given me that once belonged to my mother. As the silver chain slithered over my neck, I realized I had worn it for Homecoming—my last big date with Logan before he died.

  I opened the bedroom door, then paused. “I’ll be home by midnight.”

  “Whatever. I’m not your dad.” Logan cringed a little. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—you know what I mean.”

  “It’s okay.” I wasn’t sensitive about losing my father, since I’d never known him. Only my mother knew who he was, and she’d taken that knowledge to the grave when I was three.

  As I crossed the threshold, Logan said, “Who is this playing?”

  “Great Lake Swimmers. You like it?”

  “It’s pretty.” He smiled at me. “Have a good time.”

  “Thank you.” The music was definitely working, I thought as I started to shut the door.

  “Don’t get laid,” he added.

  I pretended not to hear.

  When I arrived downstairs, Zachary was standing in the living room, sporting an ivory dress shirt and a dark green tie with light green flecks that brought out his eyes.

  Eyes that devoured my approach like I was a Popsicle on a hot summer day. Damn.

  “Special occasion?” Aunt Gina asked him, smiling so hard I thought her jaw would cramp. “You two are awfully dressed up for a trip to the museum.”

  “Aura agreed to a date,” Zachary said, “so that makes it special. Unusual, at least.”

  “Well, with any luck, it won’t be special for long.” She cleared her throat and swept aside her blond bangs. “Unusual, I mean. It won’t be unusual for long.” She grabbed my wrap off the dining room chair. “Maybe you should go before I make more of an idiot of myself.”

  “Oh, you couldn’t do that.” I kissed her cheek. “Bye!”

  I was at the door before realizing Zachary wasn’t right behind me. I turned, then followed his incredulous gaze into the dining room.

  On the end of the buffet, in a bud vase, sat a dried rose, one of six red roses Zachary had given me in December. The only one I hadn’t given back. Evidence of how much he meant to me, even after all these weeks of waiting for Logan.

  I hoped the feeling was still mutual. Now that my vigil was over, I was ready to think about moving on. Slowly.

  Outside on my row home’s covered porch, I tried to put on my wrap against the chilly breeze, but it got tangled around my arm and the strap of my purse.

  “Here.” Zachary rescued the wrap, then, facing me straight on, draped it over my shoulders. His fingers brushed my upper arms as he drew it forward. “Is this right?”

  I gazed up at his face, golden on one side from the porch light, and silver on the other from the fading dusk. “Uh-huh,” I stammered, then remembered to close my mouth.

  “You, er . . .” Zachary let go of the wrap and took half a step back. “You look pure gorgeous.” Then he leaned in and softly kissed my cheek.

  Before I could mumble a feeble, “Thanks, you too,” he offered me his arm. As we descended the porch stairs, I held the railing with my other hand to steady myself. Maybe it’s too cold—and my head’s too swimmy—for these strappy heels. But the shoes were a perfect match for my black-and-white knee-length crinkle dress, the one I’d been saving for—well, this.

  As we moved toward the low iron gate separating our front path from the sidewalk, I resisted the urge to look back at my bedroom window. Just imagining Logan’s violet glow behind the closed blinds was bad enough.

  Zachary had found a primo spot on my street only half a block up, and his parallel parking job wasn’t too tragic. Not that parking a Mini Cooper took a lot of finesse.

  “Cute car,” I said.

  “It’s no’ cute, it’s cool.” He opened the hunter green door. “My dad says it makes him feel like James Bond.”r />
  “It does kind of look like—oh!” I yelped when the front seat turned out to be lower than I’d expected. Hiding my grimace of embarrassment, I pulled my wrap out of the way so Zachary could close the door. As he rounded the front, I fastened my seat belt, noting the oversize speedometer and backlit armrests.

  To my surprise, Zachary’s long legs had no trouble fitting under the dash. He flashed me a quick smile as he put on his own seat belt.

  “Definitely cute,” I said under my breath.

  “Sorry?”

  “Nothing. Just admiring the”—I flailed my hand in his general direction—“the dials.”

  “Don’t look.” He shielded the screen of the GPS with his right hand as he thumbed in the address. “It’s a surprise.”

  A female computerized voice came from the GPS speaker. “Empiece al sur en St. Paul Street.”

  “You realize it’s set on Spanish,” I told him.

  “Sí.” He checked his side-view mirror, then the rearview, then the side-view again, before pulling onto the street.

  “Isn’t it hard enough to drive without translating?”

  “It works opposite sides of my brain.”

  I slammed my hand on the dash. “Red means stop!”

  “Right.” He stomped on the brake pedal, barely halting before the intersection. “That’s universal.”

  Since he seemed to have trouble simultaneously speaking and driving, I kept quiet until the GPS voice told him to “Vire a la izquierda.”

  At the next stoplight I said, “Megan uses the English guy’s voice for her GPS. She says it has more authority.”

  Zachary snorted. “The last thing this Scotsman wants is some stuffy old Sassenach telling him where to go. You Yanks have too much love for your former oppressors.”

  “It’s because of Monty Python. And probably the world wars.”

  His only response was a grunt, so I shut up again. He seemed nervous enough for both of us, so I felt calm as a sleeping cat.

  Until we reached our destination in Little Italy.

  “Chiapparelli’s?” I ran my fingers over the chain of my garnet necklace and looked at the blue awnings flapping in the breeze.