Zachary slid a piece of paper in front of me. I held it up to the flashlight, which had a red-painted lens to protect our night vision.
It was a website printout, listing the exact minutes of the last several solstices and equinoxes. Zachary had highlighted the two most recent in orange.
December 21: 10:14 p.m.
March 21: 12:05 a.m.
“Was he with you then?” Zachary asked.
I nodded, stunned into muteness. Zachary’s theory seemed true. Last Thursday night, Logan had come through my window as a shade, then turned to a ghost, then become human. All at the time of the equinox.
If it happened once, it could happen again, on the summer solstice. Theoretically.
“I’ll draw.” Zachary unfolded the portfolio in front of him. “You find the stars.”
I located the first half-dozen constellations while he sketched out the celestial equator and the ecliptic, the course that the zodiac, the sun, and the planets traveled—sort of a superhighway in the sky.
“Leo’s a new one this time.” I leaned across him to point to the eastern edge of the star map. “So the brightest star, Alpha Leo, is—”
“Regulus,” he said. “The Lion’s Heart. It’s actually a triple star.”
I checked the constellation book for Beta Leo, the second-brightest star in the constellation. “Next is—”
“Denebola, in the tail. Got it.”
I thumped the book down in front of me. “Well, you seem to know it all, as usual, so I’ll just wait in the car, where it’s half a degree above freezing.”
“Go on, then, if it’s that bad.”
So much for clearing the air. He wouldn’t even take my bait to pick a fight.
Would we be like this until the end of the year? All week in school, I’d bolted every time we came near each other. But sitting with him now in the dark, watching his fingertips trace precise arcs across the paper, and seeing the familiar angles of his face in the flashlight’s deep red glow, made me want to do the exact opposite of running away.
He set the pencil in the center of the portfolio. “I’m sorry I was so harsh with you the other night.”
I clenched my jaw to stop my teeth chattering, from the cold and from surprise. “I deserved it.”
“You were honest with me.”
“Lying always makes things worse.”
“That doesn’t stop people from doing it.”
“So you forgive me?” I asked.
“There’s nought to forgive. You’re not my girlfriend. You can do what you want with whoever you want.”
I want you. But to tell him that now, after admitting I’d almost had sex with my temporarily reanimated sort-of-ex-boyfriend, seemed really inappropriate.
It was the truth, though. And if I had the guts to confess what happened with Logan, I could find the courage to ask Zachary to the prom. Even though he’d probably say no.
“Becca said yes, by the way.”
My insides turned as cold as the air around me. “To the prom?”
“She says she likes Italian food, so if you could recommend a restaurant . . .” He glanced at me. “Besides the one we went to.”
My mouth opened, but the only word I could think of was NO.
He picked up the pencil. “Never mind, I’ll look it up.”
“If you want traditional,” I rushed out, “go to Da Mimmo’s. But Becca probably likes cutting-edge fusion-y food, so maybe take her to Milan on Eastern Avenue.”
“Thanks very much.” His voice was void of anticipation, like he was planning a business meeting. “I want it to be nice. It’s her last prom and probably my only one, if my dad and I go back to the UK in June.”
One word cut through the sirens screeching in my head. “What do you mean, ‘if’?”
“His assignment could get extended.” Zachary looked at me from the corner of his eye. “You and your boyfriend are making a lot of work for him.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Dad’s never happier than when he’s working himself to death.” Zachary massaged his wrist. “I think he’s close to something big. It must keep him up at night, because he’s knackered all day.”
He went back to sketching lines, which I noticed were unusually shaky.
I slapped the constellation book shut. “Logan’s not my boyfriend.”
He stopped drawing but didn’t look up. “What is he, then?”
“I don’t know. But since that night, he hasn’t stayed in my room. It’s not like it was between us back in the fall, before he turned shade.”
“Except for that small bit on the equinox.”
“Yes, except for that! I was happy to see him, okay? I thought I’d lost him forever—again—and then there he was. What would you have done in my place?”
Zachary stared at the edge of the blanket and the dull brown grass that looked pink from the red flashlight. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Right, because you don’t know what it’s like to lose someone.”
“I’ve lost someone.”
His sudden confession took me by surprise. “You never told me that.”
“It’s not the same. She didn’t die, she went to Malta.”
Because of his accent or his emphasis, I was confused, until I remembered that Malta was a place. “Is that in Africa?”
“It’s in the Mediterranean, but it might as well be on Mars.”
“Why?”
He pressed his lips together before speaking. “Suzanne’s parents were both MI-X. They wanted to be stationed together, of course, so they didn’t have much choice in where to go. When their project in the UK ended, they left for their next assignment, in Malta. And took her with them.” He turned the pencil end over end. “We e-mailed and video-chatted for a while, and then . . . she stopped.”
I wanted to throttle this Suzanne person for putting that shadow of hurt in his voice. “How long were you together?”
“Eight months, three weeks, and a day. A day and a half.”
I didn’t mention that it was a shorter relationship than mine and Logan’s. If Zachary was measuring the time in half days, she must have meant a lot to him.
“My point is,” he said, “if Suzanne had appeared in my room a few months after she left, even after I met you, I probably would’ve done what you did. And she’s not even dead.”
All along, he’d been so patient about me and Logan. It wasn’t because he was a saint—it was because he understood. “You really do get it.”
“I get it. That doesn’t make it easier to hear about you in bed with him.” He started drawing again, his lines heavy. “It was bad enough when he was a ghost and he couldn’t touch you, and I thought, ‘If I wait long enough, she’ll come round,’ and so I waited and waited, but I waited one day too many, didn’t I?” The pencil tip snapped against the paper. “Bugger!” Zachary hurled the pencil into the wheat field.
We sat silent as his curse echoed against the distant hills, then faded. My blood raced from his outburst. Maybe we were finally getting somewhere.
“Sorry,” he said at last.
“That was our only pencil.”
Zachary made another guttural sound, then picked up the flashlight and tromped off into the field.
The loss of his nearby heat made me want to follow him, but instead I pulled my knees to my chest to keep warm—or at least alive.
For five minutes I watched him wander, scanning the rough surface with the flashlight, whose faint red glow reached only a few feet in front of him.
Finally he stopped, picked something up, then came back, his steps as deliberate as they’d been on the way out.
“Did you find it?”
“I found this.” He knelt in front of me. “Put out your hand.”
I kept my fingers clasped around my shins. “What is it?”
“Never mind.” He put the item in his pocket. “If you don’t trust me—”
“Hey.” I grabbed the front of his jacket. “I
trust you more than anyone in the world.”
Zachary’s gaze dropped to my hand, then rose, burning, into my eyes. “So what are we doing?”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.” I pulled him to kiss me.
Though my aim was slightly off, and our lips were cold and chapped, I knew in an instant that this was right. Zachary fit me, like the answer to an equation I’d forgotten how to solve.
His groan of relief told me he felt it, too. He slid his arms around my back, and I pressed against him—as much as my parka would allow—wanting to sink into his warmth. I wanted this perfect rightness never to end.
Which of course it did. He broke the kiss, holding my face in his hands. “What do we do?”
My teeth chattered. “Go make out where it’s warm?”
“I don’t mean right now.” Zachary glanced over at the car. “Though that’s no’ a bad idea.” He shook his head. “We’d be too comfortable.”
“Not possible.”
“We have to think.”
“Do we?”
“I asked Becca to the prom.”
“So un-ask her.”
“I can’t un-ask her.”
“You un-asked me.”
“You deserved it.” He cut off my protest. “You did. Hush.” Zachary kissed me again, with even more passion and less precision.
I tore off my gloves and slipped my hands inside his leather jacket, the zipper’s teeth scraping my skin like icy fangs. The prom seemed a million years away.
His lips left mine again, but only to shift to the edge of my jaw. “Should’ve given you another chance,” he said, his breath coming hard, “talked to you again before I called her.”
“You gave me way too many chances. You should’ve just done this.”
He murmured in agreement, moving his mouth to my neck, right below my ear. His fingers threaded through my hair, tingling my scalp. I shivered in a full-on body quake.
Zachary pulled away. “Are we completely mental? It’s freezing out.”
We left everything behind and ran for the car.
It was warmer there, but more awkward, with the emergency brake between us.
“Why’d we get in the front?” I asked him.
“The back’s worse.” He peered into the rear seat. “We’ve never put a living creature there, only briefcases and such.”
I had to admit, it seemed about as roomy as my gym locker.
Zachary touched my cheek. “We have a wee problem.”
“How wee?”
“We can’t be like this in public until after the prom.”
“I know.” I sat back in the passenger seat with a heavy sigh. “It would be sleazy, not to mention suicidal.” Stealing the soon-to-be prom queen’s date would get me killed—socially, if not literally. “So what’s the deal with you and Becca?”
“We’re just friends.”
“Does she know that?”
“I’ll make it clear. What about you and Logan?”
“Just friends.”
“Does he know that?”
“I’ll make it clear,” I said, matching his cadence, if not his accent.
He didn’t laugh. “No more bedroom visits?”
“Only when I’m fully dressed.”
Zachary tightened his lips, considering.
“What’s in your pocket?” I asked him. When he raised an eyebrow, I added, “The thing you picked up in the field.”
“Oh, this?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal disc. “A message.”
“It’s a bottle cap.”
“It’s from one of those fancy iced teas with quotes on the back of the lid. People pay extra for the wisdom.”
“People like the guy who plowed that field. He needed some no-littering wisdom. What does it say?”
He flipped the lid over onto the back of his other hand, like in a coin toss. “Oh. Wrong brand, I guess.”
There were no words under the lid, just a black-and-white spiral. “Can I keep it anyway?”
He folded it between my palms. “It’s yours.”
I kissed him again, relieved that nothing was stopping me. Soon the warmth of his mouth made the rest of the world feel that much more frigid, and I shivered harder than ever.
He pulled my coat tighter around me. “I can’t wait to snog when it’s forty degrees.”
“That’s not much of a diff—”
“Celsius.”
I did a rough calculation. “That’s hot enough for bathing suits.”
He let his gaze wander downward. “What’s your bikini look like?”
“I haven’t bought this summer’s yet. Ooh, before you go back to Scotland, I’ll take you to Ocean City.” No, I’d been there with Logan a hundred times. “Or Rehoboth.”
“Anywhere would be brilliant. Now back to the bikini.”
My shiver turned my laugh into a goofy giggle. “You have a request?”
“I was thinking, red’s a fantastic color on you. Besides, I can’t stay by your side every minute. Wouldn’t want ghosts to chat you up while I’m fetching us french fries.”
His words were casual, but the tension in his fingers told me he was thinking of Logan, as I was.
“Maybe we could try Dewey Beach,” I said. “I want to go with you somewhere I’ve never been before.”
By the way he pulled me closer, nestling my head against his shoulder, Zachary told me he understood what I was really saying.
“I promise,” he said, “I will take you somewhere new.”
Before I’d even tossed my book bag on my bed, Logan appeared there, sitting with legs stretched out, like he’d never left.
“How’d it go?”
“Fine.” I let my hair drape down so he wouldn’t see the flush of my cheeks. “It was freezing. I’m dying to get into my sweats and flannels.” I pulled a pair of pajama pants from my drawer. “Can you go somewhere else while I change?”
“Your aunt doesn’t know I’m here.”
“I know you’re here.”
Logan drummed his fingers on the bedspread, looking petulant. “Back in ten.”
After dressing for bed—no sexy silk nightshirt this time—I went to the bathroom, took out my contacts, and scrubbed my face so that all my skin would glow the same.
Logan was waiting when I got back to my room. “Hey, Nicola scored me a City Paper interview today. Her post-Shifter intern set it up.”
I put on my glasses. “Be careful who you talk to.”
“I know. The article’s running next week—might even make the cover. I told the reporter I was looking for band members. Since we haven’t set up my new e-mail yet, I gave them your contact info.”
Sighing, I went to my desk and opened my laptop. “Let’s set you up now.”
Logan came toward me. “It’ll have to be one of those free e-mail providers since I don’t—ow!” He put his hand over his face, as if shading his eyes from me.
“What’s wrong?”
He slowly lowered his hand, his violet outline snapping black. “I feel weird. You feel weird.”
“No, I don’t.” That was a lie. Being here with Logan after making out with Zachary? I’d never felt weirder.
“Are you wearing that obsidian necklace Gina gave you?”
I touched my neck, though I knew it wasn’t there. “I gave it to Megan.”
“Maybe it’s your laptop.”
“It never gave you problems before.”
“I’d never been a shade before.” He backed up, near my closet. “Maybe I’m more sensitive now.”
“You were fine here all weekend.” Gripping the sides of my chair, I watched him brighten to violet again. Then I turned back to the computer, relieved. “What do you want as your username?”
“How about ‘Logansghost’?”
A quick search. “It’s taken.”
“Wow. You think it’s a fan?”
I kicked my heel against the chair leg, releasing my irritation. “Think of something else.�
�
“How about ‘Logansghost’ followed by the numbers of next year?”
Another try. “That works. Why next year, not this one?”
“Class of. It’s when I would’ve graduated.”
My eyes drooped at the corners with all-too-familiar sorrow. Logan was annoying, but he was still dead.
“I’ll need a fan page, too.” He wavered in the corner of my vision. “Can you call Cheryl Titus at City Paper and have them print the new e-mail address? That way no one’ll bother you. Except me.”
My fingertip scraped the white L on the black key. “What do you want as your password?”
“How about ‘iloveaura’?”
I shut my eyes. “It should have at least one special character and number to keep from getting hacked.”
“How about ‘aura=#1hot’?”
“How about something you can tell Dylan without embarrassing all of us?”
He paced in front of the closet door. “Let’s do . . . ‘live’ . . . numbers four six . . . slash . . . numbers two zero.”
I typed LIVE46/20. “Was this part of your locker combination?”
“The number four is for the word ‘for.’ Six-twenty is June twentieth, the summer solstice.” He paused. “Only eighty-six days left, Aura.”
I wished I didn’t already know that.
Logan stepped closer, then drew in a hiss. “Ow. Jesus, what is that?”
“What’s what?”
“You look red.” He squinted at me. “Just part of you. Stand up.”
I did as he asked, fighting the urge to flee the room. Logan inched closer, then swiped a hand in front of my body, like a wand-wielding airport security guard.
“It’s your head,” he said. “Did you get red highlights?”
“Caramel, like usual. And that was three weeks ago. Nothing’s changed since last night. It must be you.”
He put a hand to his head. “Yeah. Look, I gotta go.”
“Fine.” I tried not to sound too relieved. “Good night.”
When he was gone, I turned on my overhead light and examined myself in the mirror behind my closet door.
Same hair, full of static from the dry night and my parka hood. I pulled aside the long dark waves to see if my neck looked nibbled on. Not at all.
Same brown eyes, cradled by what seemed like permanent bags. But these days, the swelling came from calculus-related sleep deprivation, not from crying.
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