Shade 01 - Shade
Page 15
“Then you could go anywhere you wanted. You could hide in the dark.”
“And lose any chance of going to heaven. I might not be in a hurry to leave this world, but when I do, I want to be at peace.” He slumped back in his seat. “I must be acting like a total asshole for you to think I could shade out.”
“Not with me.” I bit my lip at my impending betrayal. “With your brother. He’s worried.”
“Shit.” Logan rubbed his face hard with both hands, as if he was trying to wipe away his whole self. “I probably have been a jerk around him lately.”
“He says you make him sick. Literally.”
“Oh God,” Logan whispered.
I focused on the road so I wouldn’t see the fear on his face. The street sweepers were coming early the next morning, so I had to park around the block, near the Keeleys’ old house.
“I didn’t mean to,” Logan said. “I swear.”
His remorse dug claws into my heart. “Maybe you’re not shading. Maybe Dylan felt sick and dizzy because he was upset. Maybe he needs some antianxiety medication.”
“Great, I’m driving my little brother crazy. I am so going to hell.”
“You are not. Only dictators and stuff go to hell.”
“Dictators and shades. If being stuck here forever counts as eternal damnation.”
A grunt was my only response as I concentrated on parallel parking. Logan’s glow was destroying my night vision, so I had trouble seeing the exact position of the other cars, but I didn’t want to ask him to get out, not in his current state of mind.
When we were parked, I turned off the car but didn’t open the door.
Logan looked at me, his posture hunched. “You said I don’t make you sick, right?”
“Right.”
“So you still want me to come to bed with you?”
I looked at the dashboard clock. One hour and three minutes until our anniversary. “If I say yes, will you tell me your plan?”
“Not yet, but you’ll be the first to know.” He held out his hand, flat with fingers spread. “Spider-swear.”
I slipped my solid fingers between his ethereal ones. My skin reflected his violet glow, which for tonight, at least, was strong and steady and seemed like it would never fade.
Chapter Fourteen
The heavy rain made the cemetery dark enough to see ghosts, and there were more than I’d expected. When Aunt Gina and I pulled up behind the Keeleys’ SUV, half a dozen violet spirits lingered around the graves of their loved ones (or hated ones), but they didn’t look at us, much less approach.
Most importantly, there was no Logan.
Before we got out of the car, Gina spoke to me in a gentle voice. “I think this’ll be good for you, sweetie. Give you some closure, like you said.”
When did I said that? I pulled up the hood of my windbreaker, grabbed the flower wreath between my knees, and opened the door.
Ahead of us, Mr. Keeley retrieved a giant blue golfing umbrella from the back of the SUV, then went to the passenger door and helped his wife step out onto the wet grass. She slipped a little in her high heels. My aunt hurried over to them, her own black umbrella wobbling on her shoulder.
This cemetery was smaller, with more trees, than the one my mother was buried in outside of Philadelphia. I always visited my mom when I went up there, and tried to go alone or with someone other than Gina, so that I could cry without making my aunt feel bad, as if she weren’t a good enough substitute.
Like me, the remaining Keeley brothers and Siobhan had dressed for the weather, in jackets and rain shoes.
“I miss you.” Siobhan hugged me hard. “The house feels so empty without you and Logan.”
“I didn’t know if I was welcome.”
She kissed my temple. “Consider this an open invitation. And speaking of invitations.” She fished in her purse and brought out a folded neon green paper. “Our next gig.”
My stomach sank. How could the Keeley Brothers go on without Logan? I unfolded the flyer.
THE KEELEYS, it said, with a picture of Siobhan and Mickey. The venue was the Green Derby, a tiny Irish pub in Towson, and the date was mid-January. Right after the trial.
“We’re doing acoustic sets now,” Mickey added over her shoulder. “More traditional stuff.”
“Nothing big,” Siobhan said. “Just something to fill the time between now and college.”
“No record companies.” Mickey tugged his hood down over his face. “Never again.”
Siobhan glanced at Aunt Gina, who was several feet away, talking to Mr. and Mrs. Keeley. “Can you make it? It’s a bar, but you have a fake ID, right?”
I nodded. “I’ve been there before.” So had Logan, which meant he’d probably show up if he hadn’t passed on yet.
“We’re dedicating our first show to him.” The corners of her eyes drooped. “And probably our second show, and all the rest.”
Mickey tapped her elbow. “They’re ready.”
They headed off for the grave, and I followed, falling into step beside Dylan.
“You must have talked to Logan,” he said. “He’s been less of a dick this week.”
“Only less of one?”
“Okay, not at all. It’s been cool.”
“No more hot flashes or fainting spells?”
“Shut up,” he snorted. “You make me sound like an old lady.” He stopped and turned to me. “I’m telling you, that sick feeling was real. Logan was shading.”
“And how many shades have you seen that you can be so sure?”
“Three. You don’t forget the way they screw with your brain.”
“I know.” I’d only seen two in my life, and none until the past year. Sometimes I wondered if they’d always existed or if they’d evolved recently. In the month of November alone, four sixteen-year-olds had died in shade-related car accidents across the state.
“And then one time there was this really shady ghost,” Dylan said, “at the GameStop in the Towson mall, before it was BlackBoxed? I think he was only a kid when he died. Anyway, he was almost totally black, hardly any violet left at all.”
“What was the ghost doing?”
“That’s the funny part. He was screaming about wanting the new Nintendo 64. My friend Kyle and I were like, dude, that came out a million years ago. Which just pissed him off. So then the Obsidians showed up and detained him.”
“How did they do it?”
Dylan made an O with his hand. “They used this crystal disc thingie. I guess it was like bait.”
“The summoner. We use them in court to get the ghosts to the witness stand. It lets them go places they never went during their lives.”
He scoffed. “You mean places like a little black box?”
“Is that where they put that kid’s ghost?”
“Yeah. It was about the size of a remote control.” Dylan fidgeted with the Velcro pocket of his windbreaker, ripping it open and smoothing it closed. “He was still screaming when they loc
ked it.”
“Whoa.”
“It was pretty close.” Rip. Smooth. “I think he was about to shade all the way, and then they never could’ve caught him.” Rip. Smooth. “Afterward the Obsidian guys talked to us and let us play with some of their equipment. It was cool.”
“Cool?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s called recruitment. And I bet one day the dumpers won’t bother anymore. They’ll make us work for them whether we want to or not. Like a draft.”
“So maybe it’s better to volunteer. At least that way we get free college. And probably sweeter assignments.” Dylan wiped a rivulet of rain off the bridge of his nose. “In this Vietnam game I played once, all the draftees-that was the lowest level-got deployed to these hard-ass jungles really far from the towns where they could get hookers and stuff. But when you had enough points to re-enlist, you got more weapons and better armor.” He shoved his hands into the front pouch of his windbreaker, pulling the hood low over his forehead. “So maybe if the DMP drafts you, you end up at some crap-basket in the Middle East where you can’t have alcohol, but if you sign up, maybe you get to work where it’s air-conditioned.”
I didn’t even try to follow his pinball imagination. “Just be careful, Dylan.”
“You coming?” Mickey called to us, bellowing over the roar of rain on hundreds of granite slabs.
We waved at him. “At least Logan remembered my birthday today,” Dylan said.
“Oh! Happy birth-” I cut myself off as I realized it was anything but happy. “I’m sorry. And it’s your sixteenth, too. Have you gotten any presents?”
“Shyeah, right. No one’s even said anything.” He shrugged and turned away. “Come on.”
Grass hadn’t grown on Logan’s grave yet, so it still looked fresh, except for divots where puddles had formed over the last few rainy weeks.
The Keeleys stepped aside so I could place my heart-shaped wreath of red and white roses next to the bigger one they had just laid at his grave. The soft, spongy earth gave way easily as I pushed the thin stakes into the ground.
“I love you, Logan,” I whispered, below the rush of rain. A lock of my hair fell out from underneath my hood and was instantly soaked.
Logan’s headstone was the standard gray granite. Under his name and dates of birth and death, it simply read, FOR WHAT IS SEEN IS TEMPORARY, BUT WHAT IS UNSEEN IS ETERNAL. I remembered that same Bible verse from his funeral Mass. It made me shiver, thinking of shades.
I took a step back, into a puddle in the waterlogged grass. Cold rain seeped over the top of my right shoe.
“What does he say to you?”
I realized Mrs. Keeley was speaking to me.
I cleared my throat. “When?”
“Whenever. Dylan won’t tell us anymore.” She clasped Mr. Keeley’s arm beside her. “We think he’s holding back.”
Dylan scuffed his feet against the grass. “Mom…”
“The house is so quiet.” Mrs. Keeley shifted her black leather gloves from hand to hand. “I never realized how much Logan talked until he was gone. His grandmother always called him her little chatter-bug.” She glanced at each of her other children. “He never hid anything from us.”
“Except that tattoo,” Mr. Keeley added. He showed a hint of a smile, as if he admired Logan’s little rebellion.
“Yes, there was that.” Mrs. Keeley narrowed her eyes at him, and when she looked back at me, some of that hostility remained. “Can you tell us anything? How does he spend his time? Where does he go? Is he-” She dropped one of her gloves. “Oh.”
Mr. Keeley grunted as he tried to bend over to get the glove without smacking her with the umbrella.
“I got it.” Mickey stepped around the end of the grave and picked up the glove.
Instead of taking it from him, Mrs. Keeley grasped Mickey’s arm and tucked him close to her side. He winced at the grip on his biceps.
“This one’s muter than a mime,” she said with a nervous laugh. “I expect he’ll be joining a monastery soon and make his vow of silence official.”
Mickey’s mouth drew into a tight straight line, as if to prove her point.
“Aura,” she said, “is Logan searching for peace?”
“Um… I don’t know,” was my brilliant response.
“How can we help him find it? Besides the trial, I mean. It rips us apart to think of Logan in this purgatory.”
I wanted to scream at Mr. and Mrs. Keeley to drop the case, but at the same time I was relieved they were speaking to me again. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to upset you.”
“He never wanted to upset anyone,” Siobhan murmured. “That’s why he always upset everyone.”
Dylan snorted again, louder.
“What?” his sister snapped at him. “You think I’m full of it?”
“No, I just hate when you talk about him like he’s gone.”
“He is gone!” Siobhan said with a snarl. “To us he’s gone. He’s dead, Dylan. Logan’s dead.” She spat out the last word, then covered her mouth. “Damn it.”
Mrs. Keeley moaned as she pressed her face against her husband’s shoulder. I felt Gina’s hand on my back and leaned against it to steady myself.
Dylan kicked a clump of grass into the side of the headstone. “This rain bites. I’m going back to the car.” He stalked off.
Released from his mother’s hold, Mickey sank to a crouch. He picked up a clod of mud from the gravesite and crumbled it in his fingers, muttering words I couldn’t hear. Siobhan stifled her sobs with her cashmere scarf.
I looked across the soggy cemetery for Logan’s light. I waited to hear his voice, complaining about the inscription or claiming he’d wanted black marble, or a carved granite guitar.
But he wasn’t here. Maybe he was starting to understand that these things weren’t for him. The funeral and the headstone were for those he’d left behind-his parents and Mickey and Siobhan.
Dylan and I were somewhere in the middle, alive but connected to the dead, left behind but not abandoned. These things did nothing but mock our memories of Logan.
Because we didn’t just remember him in living color. We remembered him last night, and the night before that, in violet.
Chapter Fifteen
I feel like a chauffeur.” Megan glared in the rearview mirror at me and Logan.
“Would you rather we all sit up front?” he asked. “Then I could just hover between you guys on top of the gear shift. Or sit on your lap.”
She stomped the brake pedal. “Asshole.” I hoped she was referring to the tourist who’d just staggered across the street from one Fells Point waterfront bar to another. “Next time, Aura, you drive.”
“My aunt always needs the car at night now.”
“Working late on my case, remember?” Logan began to imitate the VH1 Behind the Music announcer. “Was it the tragic end to a skyrocketing career-or was it just the beginning?”
“Stay tuned,” I added, fluttering my fingers t
o signal the commercial break.
“Speaking of tragedy, I can’t wait to see Dork Squad again, now that the bassist is out of a coma.” He slapped the seat in a flourish that made no sound. “Remember the first time we saw them? Well, not really saw, because that shithole in Dundalk was too small and we had to stand on the sidewalk.”
“I remember.” It had been so humid that night, we could barely breathe. But we’d made out hard in the alleyway near the back door, our shirts shoved up to feel each other’s skin. Tiny bits of dirt had stuck to my back, adhered with sweat, and fallen out on my floor that night when I undressed for bed. If the show had lasted two more songs, we would’ve done it right there, right then.
I looked out the window at the Fells Point crowds, remembering all the times Logan and I had nearly had sex. There was always something that kept any given opportunity from being just right-too cramped, too rushed, too lacking in condoms. And then when we finally had a comfortable place with plenty of time-my bed, two months ago-I’d chickened out. I’d let a little pain convince me something was wrong.
Because if we were really in love, I’d thought, shouldn’t our first time be perfect? Planets aligning? Clouds sparkling? Comets exploding?
I’d been such an idiot. And Logan had died a virgin. For all I knew, so would I, because I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
Okay, I could imagine it, and did, every time Zachary spoke my name. I imagined that tongue of his curling around more than a pair of syllables.
But I could also imagine the fallout, Logan’s anger and sadness and jealousy, and knew it wouldn’t be worth it. Not for a long time.
“Nelson’s isn’t a shithole,” Megan told Logan. “Just because they sell Guinness in bottles instead of on tap.”