Shift

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “What’s wrong?” Dylan whispered behind me. I shook my head, and he reached around to grab the phone. I knocked his hand away. “Ow!” He rubbed his wrist.

  I heard whispers that weren’t coming from the phone. The other four were staring at me, eyes filled with pity.

  Could I ever have a private heartbreak? Or would I always be the president of the public humiliation club?

  Yet I couldn’t stop listening. I waited to hear Zachary reject Becca and proclaim his feelings for me, or at least for him to realize what she’d done: turned down his earpiece volume and dialed my number so I could hear them but he couldn’t hear me. My fists clenched with the need to knock out her perfect teeth.

  Soon there were no more words between Becca and Zachary. Just noises.

  “Should I?” Megan said. I looked over to see her showing her own phone screen to Mickey.

  His brows lowered. “Do it. Boy deserves it for being an idiot.” He gave me a look of brotherly affection that I hadn’t seen on his face since before Logan died.

  Do what? I mouthed.

  A harsh rattle jarred my ear. I yanked the phone away. “What the hell?”

  “He just got a text.” Megan smirked. “A little coitus interruptus, courtesy of moi.” She enunciated the syllables with relish. “Or hopefully pre-coitus interruptus.”

  Something creaked on the other end of the phone, maybe a mattress.

  “Where are you going?” Becca said. “Don’t answer that.”

  “I’m not.” Zachary was out of breath. “I’m turning it off.”

  “No!” Becca shouted, and I knew she’d set me up.

  “What the bloody hell?” Zachary spoke into the phone. “Aura, are you there?”

  Panicking, I hung up, then dropped the phone like a hot coal. It bounced on the limo carpet at my feet, where I stared at it.

  Dylan put a hand on my back. “You okay?”

  I was too stunned to shake my head. Not only had I heard Zachary and Becca almost have sex—and I couldn’t be sure the “almost” applied—but he knew I was listening. He could check the time count on the call and see how long I’d been listening. And know what I’d heard.

  I shouldn’t have hung up. If I’d stayed quiet, he might’ve thought I’d pocket-answered his pocket dial and never heard a thing. What kind of pathetic pervert did he think I was?

  “I want to die.”

  Dylan’s hand tensed. “You don’t really mean that.”

  “Not literally. I’m not going to throw myself out of the car or anything.”

  “Good. But if you change your mind, wait till it stops, okay? So I can catch you.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. And then, I couldn’t help kissing him.

  Dylan jolted in surprise, but didn’t pull away. He kissed me back, his lips new and foreign—in a good way, like an exotic food I never knew I wanted to taste.

  “Aura—,” Megan started to whine, but Mickey cut her off.

  “Leave them alone. It’s none of our business.”

  “Yuh-huh, because we’ll have to pick up the pieces.”

  My phone rang. I ignored it. Dylan didn’t.

  He leaned forward, and if I weren’t holding on to him I would’ve spilled off the seat. He scooped up my phone and answered it.

  “What the fuck do you want?” After a pause, he said in a firm voice, “This is Dylan Keeley, the guy who would’ve killed to trade places with you until five minutes ago.” He met my eyes. “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Now why don’t you go back to screwing your prom date and let me do the same?”

  Dylan hung up the phone and pressed it into my palm. The limo erupted into applause.

  “Dylan, you rock!” Megan said as Siobhan let loose a piercing whistle. Connor and Mickey shared a “Yeah!” and a high five, like after a Ravens touchdown.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to Dylan.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t mean that part about screwing you. I just wanted to piss him off.”

  “I know.”

  “So if you want to get wasted to forget about him, which I’d totally understand, don’t worry. I won’t take off your clothes, even if you pass out.”

  I tried not to laugh. “That’s . . . really noble, Dylan.”

  “So while you’re still sorta sober—” He gave me a quick, sweet kiss.

  “Thanks.” I meant it.

  “Oh, and I really do need this.” Dylan pulled gently on the end of my tie corsage. It slowly slipped off my wrist, and my pulse quickened, as if he were undressing me. Which I guess he was, a little.

  Dylan stuffed the tie in his pocket, then put his arm around my shoulders. We settled back against the seat as Mickey cranked up the music. I finished my second beer and started a third while Dylan sipped his Coke. The city lights whizzed past as the limo raced south toward the Inner Harbor.

  “It was cool of that guy to call back,” Dylan said a few minutes later. “I never would’ve had the guts.”

  I smiled up at him, feeling strangely at home. “You’re braver than you think.”

  I woke the next morning to the distant sound of my phone ringing. I realized that last night I’d left it on top of my purse on the bathroom counter.

  Please don’t answer it. Please don’t answer it.

  “Hi, Zachary!” Gina said brightly.

  I shoved the pillow over my head, wishing I were strong enough to smother myself. But I knew that I would let go when I passed out. Still, it would give me a few minutes of relief, and maybe kill the brain cells that were holding last night’s memories. Becca and Zach. Me and Dylan. Way too much beer.

  A knock came at my door. “Guess who’s calling?” Gina said as she swept into the room.

  I put my hand out.

  Gina walked over, bare feet thumping the rug. “Are you hungry?” She put the phone in my hand. “When you’re off, I made—”

  I hung up the phone and tossed it under my bed.

  “I see.”

  I heard Gina rub the backs of her hands like she did when she was nervous. The sound of skin against skin made me press the pillow harder over my head.

  “So . . . I made blueberry muffins. The berries aren’t really in season yet, but—”

  The phone rang again.

  “I’ll just go away now,” she whispered. On her way out, the door slammed behind her.

  The monster under the bed finally stopped ringing. A minute later, a bleep told me he’d left a voice mail.

  “Go to hell,” I whispered.

  It rang again, with the tone for a calendar reminder. Which never turns itself off.

  I oozed onto the floor, hating life. Did I schedule a study meeting for the day after the prom? Was I that much of a masochistic workaholic?

  Worse: Did Zach and I have a meeting with Eowyn? My gut twisted at the thought of seeing him again one-on-one. At least at school I could hide in the crowds.

  I squeezed myself halfway under the bed to retrieve the phone.

  MOTHER’S DAY, the screen said.

  I rested my forehead on the floor, hot shame washing over me like lava. Then I shambled to my desk and pawed through my book bag until I found the small drugstore bag.

  Inside Gina’s greeting card I wrote, “They didn’t have any ‘sorry I’ve been such a bitch’ cards. They would sell really well. Anyway, I wanted you to know that I know how lucky I am to have you, even though I don’t always—okay, never—tell you, except in these cards once a year. So it’s good that they invented this holiday. I love you.”

  I pulled the second card out of the bag. Crap, it was for Grand-mom, and I’d forgotten to mail it. I whapped myself in the face with the card, then set it aside. I’d write “Belated” between “Happy” and “Mother’s Day” and mail it tomorrow.

  The third card, I left in the bag.

  I slunk down to the dining room, where Gina was sitting with her laptop and paperwork. “Shouldn’t you take the day off?” I asked her.

  “What for?” she said witho
ut looking up.

  “For this?” I handed her the card and kissed her cheek.

  “You remembered!”

  “We have two o’clock brunch reservations.” I wondered if the restaurant had a hangover special.

  Gina read the card and sniffled. “You’re so sweet.” Then she looked at my empty hands. “You have something to put in the box?”

  “Later.” I gripped the back of the dining room chair, calculating how much more sleep I could get if I went back to bed. Probably none, because I wouldn’t sleep either before or after I listened to Zachary’s voice mail.

  As if reading my mind, Gina said, “Sorry I answered your cell. I know you hate that. I figured you wouldn’t want to miss a call from Zachary.”

  “I’m not speaking to him.” I stalked out of the dining room. I never wanted to hear his voice on that phone again.

  Alone in the kitchen, I dug my nails into my palms to keep from yanking every plate from the cupboard and hurling them against the wall. After the way Zachary had been with me—in his car, on his sofa, on the dance floor—how could he want someone else so much?

  I wanted to hate him. I wanted to wipe him out of my life. I wanted to rewrite our story to make him the villain.

  I wanted it to stop hurting.

  I forced myself to breathe. I’d survived Logan’s death, so this should be easy. After that, everything should be easy.

  I poured a cup of coffee, trying to talk myself out of the pain. Zachary’s not your boyfriend, he’s never been your boyfriend, and he never will be. Not after this.

  He’d made it clear we couldn’t be together without endangering ourselves or the world or whatever. Did I really expect him to save himself for me?

  Yes. I did. I expected him to help me find a way.

  Upstairs in my room with an uneaten muffin and an undrunk cup of coffee, I sat at my desk and began to write the final Mother’s Day card.

  Dear Mom,

  How are you? Wow, it’s been quite a

  year. I bet you’re wondering

  I stopped writing.

  No. This year, meaningless platitudes weren’t going to make me feel any closer to the dead mother I couldn’t remember.

  I exchanged the blue pen for a black one and started again.

  Why didn’t Dad want us? Was he married?

  Was he a priest? Was he dead by the

  time I was born? Did he ever know I

  existed?

  My pen scrawled faster.

  I’m so pissed at you, Mom. Why didn’t you try to give me a father? Why didn’t you leave me your whole journal? Don’t I have the right to know who I am?

  I can live with a hard truth. I can’t live with this absolute nothing you’ve left behind.

  Until next year, Happy Mother’s Day.

  Love, Aura

  I put the card in the envelope, licked it, then pounded it shut along the seal, rattling the paper clips on my desk.

  As if in echo, my phone vibrated with a text message. Zachary.

  DID YOU GET MY VM? PLS REPLY.

  I trashed the message, then after a brief hesitation, dialed my voice mail.

  “Aura . . .” Zachary’s tone twisted in agony. “I don’t know what I can say that won’t make it worse.”

  “Then don’t say anything.” I erased the message, then disconnected and stared at the phone. “Shit.” I dialed voice mail again, hoping I’d accidentally hit save instead of delete.

  “There are no messages in your mailbox,” the robot lady informed me.

  I set the phone down quickly so I wouldn’t throw it through my window. Should I call him back? I wondered. No, that’s insane. How desperate am I? I needed to show him I didn’t care, and I’d never be able to do that on the phone.

  I tapped out a quick text message, which thankfully wouldn’t reflect how hard I was thumbing the keys:

  NO WORRIES! :-)

  I hit send, then wrote Mom and today’s date across the front of the card. My phone buzzed again with Zachary’s reply:

  ???

  I stared at the screen. If his voice mail was nothing but “Sorry about last night,” then why would my “No worries!” confuse him? What had I missed? Curiosity gnawed at me, but calling him back—and admitting I was so upset I’d deleted his voice mail, then pretended I’d heard it—was not an option.

  I switched off my phone, then went to my aunt’s room and slipped the card into the shoe box on her nightstand, the one that held every card and letter I’d written to my mom since her death. I vowed that one Mother’s Day I would open them all.

  But not today.

  Monday at work, Gina and her partners put the final touches on the case for George Schwartz, the ghost I’d scared off over a month ago after kissing Zachary. Since that life-shattering day (for me, at least), Mr. Schwartz and I had met twice, with no ill effects. He didn’t even seem to remember I had blasted him with red. Mostly he wanted justice.

  I wished I could have been a ghost today. My classmates had heard about the No-Pocket Pocket Dial, probably from Becca herself, who ate lunch with none other than her maybe-no-longer-exboyfriend Tyler Watson.

  Zachary was the quietest I’d ever seen him. Unlike me, he wasn’t used to scandal. He hadn’t realized that the moment he asked Becca to the prom, he’d stepped into a snake pit, one he couldn’t charm his way out of.

  When I got off work at six, I called the Keeleys’ house.

  “Hey,” Dylan said on the first ring.

  “Hey.” Sitting in the car outside my aunt’s office, I watched a mismatched pair of ghosts cross the tree-shaded street, through a small blizzard of maple seed “helicopters.” “What are you doing?”

  “Um . . . I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

  A car drove down the other side of the road, and one of the ghosts leaped out of its way. Obviously a newbie. The other ghost plodded on, letting the car pass through it.

  “Who all’s there right now?” I asked Dylan.

  “Mickey and Siobhan are out. Not together, though. My parents are out, too.”

  “But you’re there.”

  “Yeah.” His voice fell as he said the word, as if his presence put the house in a state of lameness.

  “Can I come over?”

  Dylan was red faced and panting when he answered the door.

  “Did I interrupt your workout?” I asked him.

  “No—I mean, yeah.” He wiped his forehead. “I’m done. For the rest of my life. See?” He flexed his biceps in an erratic move that made me laugh.

  We got sodas and chips and headed for the long black couch in the den. Dylan took the left middle cushion instead of sitting on the end, so I sat next to him. To avoid scaring him off, I set the chip bag between us.

  He started flipping channels, so fast I couldn’t see what was on each station before he skipped to the next. “We have some back eps of Get a Life on the DVR.”

  “You still watch that reality show? Even after Logan died?”

  “No, we just record it. Not sure why.”

  “I know how the season ends. The ghost passes on.”

  “I bet they’ll all end that way. The ghost probably has to sign a—”

  “Wait, stop. What was that?”

  He turned the channel back to a cable news station, which showed an overhead view of the DMP headquarters building in Arlington. Police cars were parked outside at odd angles, as if they’d screeched to a halt, like in the movies.

  The Breaking News caption read: GUNMAN KILLED AT DMP STANDOFF.

  Next to the shot was a photograph of a middle-aged guy with his arm around a young man in a graduation cap and gown. Under the photograph it said, STUART WEXLER, age 47.

  “You didn’t hear about this?” Dylan said.

  “No, I went to work right after school.” I’d been listening to my own music in the car—my worn-out heartache playlist—instead of the radio.

  “This dude walked into the DMP office today with a Glock, started taking hosta
ges. Couple of them got shot.” He turned up the volume. “I guess the SWAT team finally took him out.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Get this: His son was an at-risk ghost. They put him in a box last year, and this guy went nuts. He said if they didn’t let his kid go, he was going to blow up the whole building.”

  “Like that guy a couple months ago in Michigan?”

  “Yeah, except this one was bullshitting about the explosives.” Dylan waved the remote control at the TV. “That could’ve been us. Those Obsidian agents would’ve put Logan away if he hadn’t shaded.”

  “I can’t see your dad holding up a government building.”

  “Nah, it’d be Mickey and Siobhan and me. But no way I’d use a handgun. Submachine would be the way to go, probably an H&K MP5. That’s what the FBI uses for hostage rescue, so . . . I’m saying this out loud, aren’t I?”

  “Yep.”

  “You know I’d never do anything like that.”

  I nodded. “It’s always pre-Shifters’ brains that short-circuit when it comes to ghosts. We’re a lot saner than they are.”

  “We better be.”

  The news anchors mentioned the stats of the slain gunman’s son: Ryan Wexler, age twenty-three, civil engineer, killed in a construction site accident two years ago.

  “I guess Ryan’s in a box on a shelf in that building.” My insides shriveled at the thought. It could happen to Logan. It could happen to any of us after we died.

  As we watched the rest of the news report, I noticed Dylan’s fingers twitching atop his knee, the one closest to me.

  The commercial came on, and he muted the television. “You want to go upstairs?”

  Dylan’s room looked like the “in-between” shot of a home remodeling show. Thumbtacks peppered two of the bare walls, scraps of paper hanging off them, as if posters had been ripped down. One sign remained: STOOGES PARKING ONLY, ALL VIOLATORS WILL BE SLAPPED. I assumed it referred to the comedy troupe, not the classic punk band.

  The narrow shelf lining the far wall was swept clean, and so was the top of his dresser. I wondered if their contents were now in one of four storage containers stacked on the floor.