Table of Contents
Dedication
Bridge
About Bridge/Shade, with links
Interview with Mickey and Logan
Lyrics to “Forever”
Logan’s songwriting journal
Deleted scenes from Shift
A brief “Thanks!” to readers
Copyright
Praise for “Bridge”:
“Intense and earnest…” –Kirkus
“A must read for any Shade fan.” –Bookhounds
Praise for the Shade series:
“Smith-Ready changes the world simply by changing our ability to see.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
“One of the best, most refreshingly original YA debuts I ever read.” – Book Smugglers (8 out of 10 stars)
“Not just my favorite paranormal YA ghost story, it’s my favorite ghost story ever.” – All Things Urban Fantasy
Dedication:
For Karen and Brooke,
who loved Logan as much as I.
Bridge
Everyone knows
Elvis died in the bathroom.
Thanks to the internet,
everyone knows
that I did too.
But at least I was wearing pants.
My favorite Quiksilver cargo shorts,
which I’ll wear every moment
that I stay in this world.
No laundry needed,
because ghosts never sweat
or piss
or anything.
I’m as dry as the bones
crumbling in my casket.
♪
“Must be nice,”
Aura mumbles into her pillow
when I tell her
I’m going to meet George Clooney.
That’s our code
for “the beach,”
because when lifelong Baltimoreans
say “down to the ocean,”
it sounds like,
“Danny Ocean.”
When we were kids,
our gang of friends
pretended we were in Oceans Eleven.
My big brother Mickey was Clooney,
and I was Brad Pitt.
We’d stroll down the Ocean City boardwalk,
not nearly as slick as we imagined.
Our illusion of cool would crumble
whenever Aura or anyone younger
had to dodge the dead.
“Post-Shifters,” they call themselves,
the generation who sees ghosts.
I’d be one
if I’d been born two months later.
I’m glad I wasn’t,
since ghosts can’t see each other,
not even the ghosts of post-Shifters.
It was bad enough to lose the living
without losing the dead, too.
“Senior Week trip,”
I remind Aura.
She opens her
espresso-drop eyes.
And though the morning light
washes out my violet glow,
making me invisible,
those eyes find mine.
Aura never looks through me.
She whispers, “Good luck,”
and reaches out her hand.
I cover it with my own,
wishing I could hold it.
I’d pull it to my lips,
against my cheek,
around my waist,
down my back.
Both hands
squeezing,
sliding,
stroking.
It never ends,
this desire.
Not for me.
But Aura dreams of other hands.
In her sleep
she whispers his name.
I wonder how much is hope
and how much is memory.
I don’t want to know.
Because whether she sighs for the past
or sighs for the future,
she sighs for him.
♪
“It’s sooooo hot.”
My sister, Siobhan, winds her hair
into a purple-streaked black knot,
then cranks up the car’s air conditioning.
I can’t feel the breeze,
but the rattle and hum of the compressor
sounds comfortingly normal
to this paranormal dude.
We’re stuck bumper to bumper on the
Chesapeake Bay Bridge,
just like old times.
In the driver’s seat,
Mickey turns the AC knob back down.
“It spits out hot air
when you put it on max.”
Siobhan scuffs her Skechers
against the Corolla’s frayed blue floor mat.
“When are you getting rid of
this old piece of shit?”
“When I can afford
a new piece of shit.”
She stretches her neck—
a fiddler’s habit,
but she does it when she’s stressed.
Her mouth opens, ready to shout,
“You can afford it!”
But Mickey won’t spend a penny
of what he calls my “blood money.”
The millions our folks won
from the record company,
who sold me a dream
and gave me the bullet
that took my life.
In the backseat beside me,
Siobhan’s boyfriend, Connor,
sleeps,
lips pale and slack.
“We deserved that money,” she tells Mickey,
“for what they put us through.”
“We deserve nothing.”
Mickey’s voice is as flat as the farmland
beyond the bridge.
“We were supposed to take care of him.”
(They won’t say my name.)
“Stop punishing yourself.”
Siobhan sounds too scared
to be mad,
which is saying a lot.
“Please.”
“Spend the money,” Mickey says,
“if it makes you feel better.”
Our sister’s eyes fill with tears,
and I want to kill him.
“I hate you,” she whispers to her twin.
“I hate you too,” her twin whispers back.
I want to wake Connor,
tell him to make peace.
That’s what bass players are for, right?
But he hasn’t been
our bass player
since the night I died
and killed the Keeley Brothers
forever.
As the car creeps,
and Connor sleeps,
and Siobhan weeps,
Mickey…
Mickey exists.
♪
Siobhan has to pee.
But the truck stop is new,
so I can’t follow them.
Ghosts can only go in death
to the places they went in life,
like a hamster in a Habitrail.
Mickey puts on his blinker.
“Don’t leave me.”
I lunge forward,
grab for the steering wheel,
hoping
this time I’ll touch something,
this time they’ll hear me.
This time is like all the rest.
The car turns,
and I’m left standing in the highway.
A red Jeep,
the top down,
full of blondes
already sunburned,
drives through me.
I’ll neve
r get used to that.
Screw this traffic.
I can go anywhere in an instant.
I can be Danny Ocean in three…two…
♪
A seagull shits right through me.
I wander the beach,
the sun blaring my form
into nothingness.
Invisible, I can stare all I want.
A girl with Aura’s dark wavy hair
and bronze skin
sips an iced tea,
then sets the open cup on her belly.
As she swallows,
her throat bobs,
then her tongue peeks through her lips,
gathering the moisture she missed.
Water beads on the cup,
plummets fearlessly,
like a skater on a half-pipe.
When it reaches her skin,
it joins her sweat
and travels on,
over her waist
and under the string of her
candy-striped bikini.
I could write an entire song
about the journey
of that one drop of sweat.
But I turn away.
It feels wrong to watch.
These girls are here to be seen,
but not by someone they can’t see.
So guilt keeps me from lingering.
I may be dead,
but I’m still Catholic.
I head for the boardwalk
to find someone
who can speak my words to Mickey.
I can’t use Aura
or my little brother, Dylan,
or anyone else I care about.
Only a stranger
won’t judge
me
or Mickey
for letting this keep us apart.
Only a stranger
can hold up the wall
we need between us.
Until we’re ready to tear it down.
♪
Occasionally,
sometimes,
—okay, usually—
people ignore me.
Post-Shifters pretend they can’t see
the ghosts around them.
It’s cool, I get it.
They have lives that can’t stop
every time a ghost needs help.
(And we all need help.)
They have lives.
But after 233 days of death,
I can tell the difference
between being ignored
and being invisible.
The arcade is full of shadows.
I’m standing in one now,
next to the Skee-Ball court.
But no one sees me.
I step in front of a scrawny guy
who looks fifteen or sixteen
in his oversize D.C. United jersey.
“Dude, help me out. I just need—”
He walks through me,
counting his tickets
out loud to himself.
A girl with blond pigtails
sucking a green lollipop
bends over to slip tokens into a driving game.
Her jeans shorts ride up,
giving a glimpse of pink underwear.
I step up next to the game.
“Sorry to interrupt,
but I need a huge favor.”
She plops her teeny ass
into the driver’s seat
without so much as a twitch
at my voice
or my semifamous face.
As she starts to play,
I wave my hand between her and the screen.
She holds the wheel steady,
pressing the accelerator,
sucking the lollipop,
which twists her muttered curses
into drunk-sounding slurs.
I step back.
Survey the crowd.
Try not to panic.
Above us,
a banner stretches the length of the arcade,
The BEST WEEK EVER logo
frames the words,
Congratulations, Class of—
“Damn it.”
Senior Week.
No one here is young enough to see me.
I fly through the arcade,
turning somersaults,
flailing my arms like a clown,
hoping someone brought
their little brother
or sister
or niece or nephew
or cousin.
But who would bring a kid to Senior Week?
Parents know better.
They hear the stories.
I am so screwed.
♪
The boardwalk never seemed so loud,
so bright,
so complete
as it does right now.
I’m here
but not.
They stagger through me,
drunk,
half naked,
high school behind them,
the future ahead.
Do they know how lucky they are?
Some do,
those who’ve lost a friend,
a brother,
a sister,
a boyfriend,
a girlfriend,
or even a secret fuck buddy.
But tonight they want to forget.
Those who aren’t drinking,
and some who are,
take part in Ocean City’s
“Play it Safe” activities—
free fun in the form of
midnight bowling,
rock climbing,
volleyball,
karaoke,
laser tag,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.
Things that won’t get you arrested
or pregnant
or killed.
Three girls walk straight toward me,
platform flip-flops thunking the boardwalk.
The one on the right,
with a dark ponytail and glasses,
suddenly lags behind,
pretends to focus on her
giant tub of Thrasher’s fries.
I pretend too,
stepping aside,
then,
at the last second,
I enter her path.
She swerves.
I point at her. “Ha!
I knew you could see me.”
“Go away.”
The girl keeps walking.
I zoom up to her.
“I know this is weird,
but I need your help.”
She shakes her head,
munches another fry.
“I need you to talk to my brother Mickey.
If it helps, he’s really cute—
like me, only with dark hair and a pulse—
and his girlfriend isn’t with him this week.”
She rolls her eyes, like I’m a total asshole.
(Which I am.)
“I’m scared he might kill himself.”
She stops.
♪
Mickey drifts
through our favorite cheesy gift shop,
as always
drawn to the aisle
with the religious stuff.
Candles for saints
or Hindu gods
or voodoo spirits.
Light a match,
summon the divine,
like it’s that easy.
Mickey stops,
picks up a
white
porcelain
Pietà—
that Michelangelo statue
of Mary cradling Jesus’s
thin
limp
corpse.
I tell Krista what to say
so he’ll know she’s for real,
so he’ll know I’m for real.
She doesn’t sidle.
She doesn’t shift.
She sta
lks, right up to him.
“It reminds him of you,” she says,
“the way you held him the night he died.”
The statue shatters on the floor.
Jesus’s head pops off,
shoots through my feet,
rolls under the shelf across the aisle.
Mickey brushes past Krista,
making another escape.
She grabs his wrist,
her fingers a handcuff.
“Look! I don’t have time to chase you
while you pretend you don’t want to talk to him.
So let’s just do this, okay?”
He scowls down at her.
“Who are you?”
“I’m no one.”
She lets go of his wrist.
“I think that’s the point.”
♪
The ocean’s rhythm
isn’t.
I count the seconds between waves
and realize that
they crash when they crash,
with no regular timing,
like our ex-drummer
when he was drunk.
Like my heart’s final beats,
1,000
in three minutes.
The waves’ arrhythmia
is all I hear in my brother’s silence.
We sit side by side on the pier,
our legs dangling over the edge.
He and Krista pass a cigarette
back and forth
through me.
Mickey has quit smoking
six times in two months.
I splay my fingers,
admiring how the smoke curls
Bridge: A Shade short story Page 1