When Logan finished my song, he remained for several silent seconds. I heard nothing but my own shaky breath.
Then he said, “That’s all.”
And disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-three
Megan sat with me the next day in the courtroom, in the back row, away from the Keeleys.
“I’ll be so glad when this is over.” She fanned herself with the magenta flyer for Logan’s “Passing On” party. “Mickey’s a total mess. I wish his parents hadn’t dragged out everyone’s pain with this trial. Greedy little mofos.”
“It’s not about the money.” I dabbed my runny nose with a ragged tissue. “Gina says they want to make sure it never happens again.” I looked at the clock. Two minutes to nine.
“Right. They’ll change the world with one lawsuit. Record companies will all become saintly and nonprofit and stop destroying the lives of starry-eyed dumb shits like Logan.”
“He’s not dumb. He had good grades.”
“Being smart doesn’t make someone undumb.”
I sighed, too tired for one of Megan’s rants. I’d stayed awake most of the night after Logan left, wondering whether to call him back to my side. To make matters worse, the courtroom was overheated today, increasing my exhaustion.
The bailiff entered, and we all stood for the judge. With my bad knee, by the time I stood, everyone else was sitting down.
Before my aunt took her seat, she turned to find me. I gave her a weak thumbs-up. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see her opponent, Harriet Stone, but I knew the defense attorney would be wearing a more muted color today. I hoped her arrogance would be similarly toned down.
The first witness for the defense was the toxicologist who worked for the medical examiner’s office. His tests showed that the quantity and purity of cocaine in Logan’s system wasn’t enough to kill a healthy young man on its own. Even if he’d snorted the entire sample the A and R rep had given him, he should’ve experienced only a quick, intense high.
Problem was, Logan had a crap-load of alcohol in his system at the time, and the combination had triggered sudden cardiac death through ventricular fibrillation—Logan’s “worms in the chest.”
Gina cross-examined the witness, pointing out the obvious fact that without the drug, Logan would still be alive. “Isn’t it true that any amount of cocaine, when mixed with alcohol, can be deadly?”
“It has been fatal in some cases,” the toxicologist said, “especially if the user has an undiagnosed cardiac condition. But the man who gave him the substance couldn’t have expected—”
“Doctor, I’m not asking you to read a drug dealer’s mind. I’m asking if cocaine mixed with alcohol can trigger sudden cardiac death. Yes or no.”
The doctor hesitated. “Yes.”
I sagged in my seat, wishing I could box up that testimony and send it back in a time machine as a seventeenth birthday present for Logan. Such a small slice of knowledge could have saved his life.
After a few more witnesses for the defense, we took a quick lunch break; then the trial resumed at two o’clock.
When everyone was seated, someone dimmed the lights. The BlackBox indicator glowed red above the rear door.
Next to the witness stand, two kids sat back-to-back with a blue light next to each. The witnesses would switch off from question to question, each of them answering for Logan in turn.
One of them was a slim African-American boy of about fifteen; the other, a little blond girl who looked about ten years old, though she must have been at least fourteen, since that was the minimum age for this work. They both seemed scared, and I felt a tug of sympathy.
The judge nodded to the bailiff, who hit another switch on the wall. The BlackBox lights winked out.
Logan appeared on the witness stand, summoned by the clear quartz disc. Out of place in his unbuttoned shirt and baggy skate shorts, he scanned the courtroom, astonished.
Megan leaned close and whispered, “The diva in him is totally loving this.”
I tried to smile. She had no idea what was at stake. I leaned over the armrest into the aisle so Logan could see me.
When our eyes met, the rest of the room seemed to darken. It felt like a spotlight was shining down on each of us. My chest hurt, just as it had when he’d sung to me last night.
I wrapped my arms around my waist. Please end this, Logan. Please nail this case so you can leave.
Harriet Stone walked up to the witness stand. She spoke softly to the kids, then hit the switch under the boy’s blue light, making it glow. Finally she faced Logan, though she couldn’t see him.
“Please state your name for the record.”
“Logan Patrick Keeley.”
The boy repeated what he’d just said. Stone asked basic questions like Logan’s age and hometown, which he answered with an edge of boredom in his voice. After each response from the translator, the kid who hadn’t translated would nod to confirm.
Finally the lawyer progressed to the matter at hand. “Please tell us how you became personally acquainted with Warrant Records.”
“The A and R rep called us,” Logan said. “A friend of his had seen one of our shows in September.”
“When you say ‘our shows,’ you’re referring to the band the Keeley Brothers, correct?”
“Yeah. So he comes to our gig at the community center on my birthday. And since we totally kicked ass—” He stopped and spoke to the girl, whose turn it was to translate. “You can say ‘kicked butt’ if you want.”
Megan laughed. She was the only one.
The girl recited Logan’s words, and then he continued:
“So afterwards the rep comes up and introduces himself. Says he’s dying to sign us right away.” Logan waited for the girl to catch up. “But Warrant wasn’t our first choice, and besides, we promised our folks that we wouldn’t sign anything without their permission.” He beamed at his parents, as if expecting them to praise him. I guess they didn’t respond as he’d hoped, because his expression darkened for a moment.
“Anyway, I saw the rep offer the drugs to Mickey, who got so pissed—um, so angry that he told him to, um …” Logan seemed to fumble for a synonym for “fuck off.” “Well, he said he wasn’t interested.”
“What about you?” Stone asked. “Were you interested?”
“I was interested in a contract. So I wanted the guy to like me, right?” He waited for the translation, this time by the boy, whose nervousness seemed to be fading. “My parents always taught me that part of making friends is accepting hospitality. It makes people feel good when they can do things for you.”
“Are you saying you accepted the cocaine to make the defendant’s representative happy?”
“Exactly. I never planned to try it. I’ve seen enough burned-out musicians. I even stopped smoking pot to save my singing voice. No drugs for me, uh-uh.”
I mirrored Megan’s yeah, right glance. No drugs, other than enough alcohol to drown a whale.
After the translation, Stone stepped right up to Logan’s box. “Then why did you take the cocaine?”
Logan kept his focus on the lawyer. “It was supposed to be our night. It was my birthday, but I wanted it to be about us.” He pounded his fist into the side of his leg without a sound. “And then I messed up. Big-time. I guess I lost track of how many beers I’d had.” After the boy repeated his words, Logan added, “Liquid Stupid was made for me.”
Stone began to pace. “Your girlfriend testified yesterday that the alcohol made you incapable of sexual intercourse. Why didn’t you just wait until another night?”
“I was afraid.” He shut his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again they burned straight at me. “Afraid of losing her.”
My mouth fell open. Logan, losing me? What kind of bizarro universe had he been dwelling in that night?
“I’d let her down before, see. I wanted to make it up to her.” He paused, and I heard the same words out of the mouth of the boy. “She was the most important t
hing in the world to me. She still is. But she was losing faith.”
I shook my head slowly, even though I knew he was right. I’d had so many doubts.
“I couldn’t blame her for it. All I ever talked about was playing music and being famous.” He squirmed while the translator caught up. “I wanted to show her that none of that mattered compared to being with her. I would’ve given it all up, Aura, I swear.”
My jaw trembled so hard, my teeth started to chatter. “No,” I said in a whisper that verged on a squeak.
“It was the happiest night of my life.” Logan gestured to his outfit. “Proof, right?”
After checking with the judge, Stone asked the girl translator to describe Logan’s clothes, which became part of the official record.
Then the attorney spoke to Logan. “Do you testify that you knew what you were doing when you ingested the cocaine, that you understood the risks involved?”
My aunt shot to her feet. “Objection.”
“Overruled.” The judge gave her an odd look. “The witness will answer the question.”
“But the witness is in no position—”
“I said, I’ll allow it.” He nodded in Logan’s general direction. “Please respond.”
“Honestly?” Logan shrugged. “I didn’t know it could kill me. If I’d ever heard that, I forgot it a long time ago. But I knew it was dangerous.”
“Then why take the risk?” Stone asked.
Logan turned his head to look at me. “Because she was worth it.”
A buzz shot through the courtroom when the translator finished the statement. I covered my face, wanting to drag my skin off with my fingernails. Logan’s death really was my fault, and now with every word, he was losing the case and sealing his eternal, BlackBoxed fate.
“Thank you,” the lawyer said. “No further questions.”
I uncovered my eyes and watched Gina approach the witness stand.
“Logan, you say that being with Ms. Salvatore that night was worth the risk. The risk of what?”
“Becoming a coke addict, mostly. In the long run.”
“What did you think the drug would do to you that night?”
“Maybe give me a nosebleed. And insomnia, which was sort of the point.” Logan tilted his chin, thinking. “I knew it could make me dizzy and sweaty.” He held up a finger. “Oh, and horny.”
The girl giggled as she recited the last part.
“Did it ever enter your mind,” Gina asked, “that taking this drug would result in your death?”
“No!” Logan’s brow creased into several violet lines. “Why would I want to die? I had a great family, I had a future doing what I loved, I had the best girlfriend in the world. And it was my birthday, for God’s sake.” His voice choked with anger. “I had everything, and I lost it.”
I clutched my hands together so hard, my sprained wrist sent shocks of pain up my arm. Logan, please don’t shade out.
Gina stepped closer to the witness box. “But as a ghost, you can have certain experiences. You can haunt.”
“Haunting, yeah. So much fun. If I want to be with my family, it means watching them cry. It means knowing that I put those tears in their eyes.” He looked at me across the courtroom. “As for Aura, I hung out with her after I died, and even though she made me happy, it killed me not to touch her, it killed me to know we had no future. And now, because I died, I’ve lost her.” He waited for the boy to translate, then addressed the jury. “I can’t touch, but I can still feel. And I tell you, if this were my life … I wouldn’t want to live.”
The courtroom was frozen in silence, listening to the translator’s halting recitation. My heart felt like it would leak its lifeblood if I looked at Logan another second.
“So did I know I could die?” he said. “Absolutely not. With all I had, with all I could’ve had—” He gazed at me for what felt like an eternity. “Why would I ever take that chance?”
As the jury deliberated, I stared at the BlackBox indicator light, glowing red again. Logan had left the room, and so had his translators, who were probably enjoying a couple of pizzas and ice-cream sundaes. That had always been my post-trial ritual. I never wanted to speak for a ghost again, now that I knew firsthand the pain that lay behind a case.
“Aura.”
Mr. Keeley was standing in the center of the aisle next to my seat. He’d spoken quietly, not in his usual booming voice.
I scooted over to give him room to sit. He grunted as he eased his burly frame into the seat, and I worried about his heart. The stress of the case, on top of losing his son, must have had his cardiologist on red alert. I remembered last New Year’s Eve, sitting in the hospital with the rest of the Keeleys, waiting to see if Logan’s father would survive his first heart attack at the age of fifty.
Mr. Keeley used a handkerchief to wipe the sheen of sweat from his ruddy face. “I don’t know what to say, other than I’m sorry.”
My throat thickened. “That’s plenty.”
“I wanted to say it right, but I don’t know how.” He sat perfectly still, as if one wrong move would collapse him.
“I guess that makes two of—”
“I don’t blame you for what happened.”
“Uh, thanks.” I noticed he didn’t say “we” didn’t blame me, thereby not including Logan’s mom. “I don’t blame you, either.”
He flashed me a shocked look, then smiled in a way that reminded me so much of Logan that I couldn’t help but return it. It hit me that Logan would never have Mr. Keeley’s thick silver hair, or the laugh lines at the corners of his blue eyes.
“Touché.” Mr. Keeley smoothed the creases of his trousers, relaxing a bit. “I miss him. I’d give anything to speak to Logan directly. Or even indirectly. He won’t talk to us anymore, or at least Dylan won’t tell us what he says.”
“That might be for the best.”
“I know Logan’s angry with me,” he said in a low voice. “But he’ll see, all this pain will be worth it if we win.”
“And then what?”
“Then Logan will move on.” He folded his hands. “And maybe, one day, so will we.”
I stared at the scuffed-up rubber knob at the bottom of my crutch and thought of everything that had happened since Logan’s death. “Mr. Keeley, one day we’re all going to move on, even if he doesn’t.”
Nodding slowly, he sat back in the seat, eyes fixed on the red BlackBox light. “That’s what worries me the most.”
Megan came back down the aisle from visiting Mickey. She stopped when she saw Mr. Keeley. “Oh. I thought you went to the men’s room. No, don’t get up!” she added as he stood to leave.
He motioned for her to sit. “I should get back to Kathleen and the kids.” He patted Megan’s shoulder. “Please, the next time you come over, bring Aura with you.”
She watched him shamble toward the front of the courtroom, then slid past me as I moved back into the seat beside the aisle. “I just talked to Mickey,” she said. “Mr. Keeley and Siobhan think they won, but Mickey and his mom are sure they’ve lost.”
“What about Dylan?”
“He didn’t say.” She sat with a sigh. “He looks almost as freaked as you.”
Of course. Dylan knew that if the Keeleys didn’t win, and Logan couldn’t pass on, the Obsidians would lock Logan up forever.
I slumped down in the seat so I could rest the back of my head. The fear was sucking all the oxygen from my brain.
A hand smoothed my hair. It was Aunt Gina, who had just re-entered the courtroom through the rear doors.
I sat up straighter. “Did they do it?”
She nodded. “Logan’s subpoena tag was taken off. He’s a free man.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “He needs so much to be at peace. If we lose this case, I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.”
A door in the front corner of the courtroom opened, and the jury began to file back in after less than an hour’s deliberation. Gina squeezed my arm, then hurried to her table
.
My muscles wound themselves into double and triple knots as the court proceeded through its final formalities. By the time the defendant stood to receive the decision, I was on the verge of a full body cramp.
The foreman opened the envelope.
Liable.
As in, guilty.
Logan was free.
I sank forward, head in my arms, and wept. As the courtroom erupted with shouts of wonder and jubilation, Megan wrapped her arms around my back and rocked me, the way she had when Logan died.
It was over, almost. Logan would escape this world, escape everyone who wanted a piece of him. And we would all begin to heal.
Chapter Twenty-four
Logan zoomed up to me the moment I hobbled through the door of the packed and raucous Green Derby pub.
“We did it!” He enveloped me in a violet-bright hug. “Dylan told me you were amazing on that witness stand.” Then he whispered, “And now they won’t put me in a boring little box for the next sixty years.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t even joke about that. I was so scared.”
“Me too. Talk about a fate worse than death. But it’s over now, and time to party.” He waved to Megan as she came through the door. “Hey, they’re selling five-dollar pitchers of Harp.”
“My aunt is here,” I told him, “so I better stick to soda.”
Megan pushed over to us. “Logan, look at you, all bright and shiny.”
“Do I look different?” He straightened his shirt. “I feel different. Here, we saved you guys seats up front with my family.” We moved toward the other end of the bar, the crowd parting for my crutches.
“How do you feel different?” I asked him.
“Like something is calling me.” His voice sounded older and deeper than before. “I just hope—” He cut himself off and scratched the back of his head. “I hope it’s something good.”
His image shone almost painfully bright, despite the flickering lamps on the walls and tables of the pub. Seeing him like this, it was hard to believe he had ever shaded. “I’m sure it’ll be good,” I told him.
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