‘There they are.’ Mum points. ‘Near the WH Smith.’
My mind grasps for what a WH Smith is. Doesn’t matter. Look for a sign that says that.
Ah. I didn’t see them at first because I was searching for a man on his feet next to a fourteen-year-old boy.
But Dad’s in a wheelchair, and Martin’s, what, seventeen? Eighteen? His birthday’s the tenth of August. (Which day is it now?) His ginger hair is darker than it was years ago, with barely a hint of orange remaining.
As I approach, Dad struggles to stand, his pale-green jumper hanging loose on his frame. Should I help him, or would that injure his pride? What if he clutches my arm too tight and I panic?
‘Sgàire.’ My father utters my Gaelic name in a surprisingly strong voice, growling SKAR-uh deep in his throat.
I put my arms around him carefully. The touch of another body feels like spikes against my chest, like I’m trapped in a medieval iron-maiden torture device.
Christ, he’s so thin. Surely he’s thinking the same of me. ‘Dad. It’s good to—’ My throat closes. ‘It’s good.’
We let go, and I turn to Martin. He shifts closer, face pinched and arms crossed, one freckled hand rubbing his jaw.
‘Mate …’ is all he says before his eyes fill with tears. And then Mum sobs, then I sob, then Dad, too. Suddenly we’re all crying in the airport, in a very un-British moment.
No one holds one another now. We just stand there, weeping, holding ourselves.
* * * *
‘Shouldn’t it seem smaller?’ I ask Martin as the two of us stand at the threshold to my bedroom. ‘Isn’t that how it works when you go back to a place you haven’t seen in a year? You’re bigger, so the house or school or whatever seems to have shrunk?’
‘Dunno, mate.’ Martin gives me an easy grin, his natural cheer having returned during the car ride home. ‘Perhaps you’re the one who’s shrunk.’
That should sting, but it doesn’t, coming from him. ‘Good point.’
I enter my room, which is just as I left it four years ago. I’ve been back here to our terrace house in Maryhill for a few days at a time during that span, but never long enough to change the decor.
Glow-in-the-dark stars cover my ceiling in meticulously constructed constellations. ‘Holy shit, I forgot about that.’
Martin laughs. ‘Some of them fell, and I didn’t know where they went, so yer ma said to leave them on yer desk.’ He points to a stack of cardboard stars, then chuckles again as he sets my nearly empty rucksack upon the bed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘A moment ago ye said “Holy shit”. Ye sound like a fuckin’ Yank.’ He says ‘fuckin’’ not with hostility but with the ready fondness of a typical Scot.
‘Do I sound American in general?’
‘A wee bit American, a wee bit English.’ He draws the blind to let in soft daylight. ‘Nae bother – it’ll wear aff soon if I’ve anything tae dae wi it.’
I hope Martin does have something to do with it. I’ve missed him.
I check the digital clock on the bedside table (8.16 a.m.) and subtract five hours. Too early to chat with Aura. When I rang her from Heathrow it was already 12.04 a.m. her time, so I doubt she’s awake.
I strip off the wretched rugby shirt the Department of Metaphysical Purity gave me as a parting gift, since all my belongings were confiscated upon my arrest. ‘Burn this, would you?’
Martin catches the shirt when I toss it to him, then looks away, no doubt disturbed by the starkness of my ribs and shoulder blades beneath my skin. I must look like a skeleton.
‘Wonder if anything in here fits.’ I switch on the lamp atop the chest of drawers, then slide one open. ‘Hah, this is ancient.’ I turn back to Martin, displaying a Franz Ferdinand tour T-shirt. ‘We were what, thirteen?’
‘Twelve, I think.’ He starts to laugh, then stops, staring at my chest. ‘Is that—’ He points slowly, as if I’m a wild bird spooked by sudden moves. ‘You’ve a scar from that day.’
That day. One afternoon when I was thirteen, the lot of us – me, Martin, Niall, Roland, Frankie, and Graham, along with Martin’s eight-year-old brother, Finn, who always tagged along – were mucking about along the canal. Finn slipped and fell in. The rest of the lads were too pished on that cheap Buckfast wine to do much but panic, so I jumped into the grey water to pull him out.
Finn had floated downstream under an iron bridge, unconscious. I held him up out of the water as best I could, my own chest gouged by an exposed nail (hence the scar). But the near-drowning took its toll on Finn’s brain, and he’s never been the same since.
Neither have I, to tell the truth. The incident gave my parents the excuse they’d been looking for to leave Glasgow. For my father it meant the promotion he’d refused for years, since it required him to work at the London headquarters of MI-X, Britain’s more competent and benevolent version of the US DMP. For my mother it meant living near her parents for the first time since marrying Dad.
And for me, it meant boarding school, where I’d meet ‘a better sort of boy’ than my lifelong mates.
‘It’s not a bad scar. Only shows up under bright light.’ I turn off the lamp, then pull the T-shirt over my head. Though the hem barely reaches the waistband of my denims, the shirt still fits in the arms and chest. Martin’s right: I’ve shrunk. ‘So how is wee Finn?’
Martin looks down, rubs the toe of one pale-blue Converse against the instep of the other. ‘He’s alive.’
Those two words have never sounded so foreboding. I know better than anyone that mere breath and pulse are insufficient. ‘Still at the psych unit in Springburn?’
‘Naw, he’s … worse. In June they moved him to a special hospital in Yorkshire. So instead of a twenty-minute bus ride, it’s four hours on the train.’ Martin runs a hand through his short waves of red hair. ‘They say he might be released one day, if he’s no longer a danger to himself and others.’
‘Is that a big if or a small if?’
The hope drops from his voice. ‘A wee if. A very wee if.’
After the accident, Finn’s doctors had said that once his brain started changing from a child’s to an adolescent’s, he’d either improve or decline. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not yer fault,’ he says quickly.
‘I know it’s not.’ I rub the scar on my chest through the shirt, for a moment wishing it were deeper, so I could feel it through the soft material. But it’s just a thin silver sliver. ‘Does he ever wish I’d let him drown?’
Martin gives me a surprised look. ‘He’s said as much, but he doesnae mean it.’ He turns for the open door. ‘’Mon, I can smell yer ma’s got breakfast ready. Nae doubt you’ve been missing black pudding.’
I follow him downstairs, listing out loud all the foods I missed while I was in 3A. But on the inside I’m thinking of Finn and his scrambled brain, stuck in an institution, perhaps forever. And I know Martin’s wrong: when his brother says he wishes I’d let him drown, he means it.
Chapter Two
After breakfast, fortified with tea and black pudding, I sit alone at my desk, the window of an encrypted chat room open on my laptop. Across the Atlantic, Aura’s waiting for my text so we can have our first private conversation in two months.
I want desperately to see her, but I know she’ll have questions. I’m already exhausted from deflecting the ones my parents asked at breakfast after Martin left:
‘Where did you disappear to in the airport before our flight in June?’ Mum wanted to know.
‘I went to the loo, then got distracted by an aeronautics exhibit.’
‘That’s what you told the FBI,’ Dad said, ‘but where did you really go?’
I couldn’t say I went to talk to a ghost, because as someone born just before the Shift, I shouldn’t see ghosts. In fact, I only see them for a short while after I kiss Aura – whose birth may have caused the Shift – during which time she takes on my ability to repel ghosts. No one knows about our power-swap
ping ability but us.
So I simply repeated, ‘I went to the loo, then got distracted by an aeronautics exhibit.’
My parents sighed. Their next question was another I can never answer:
‘Zachary, dear.’ Mum shifted the eggs on her plate with her fork. ‘I know it must be difficult to talk about, but what did the DMP do to you in 3A? Did they hurt you?’
‘Were you beaten?’ Dad asked, barely containing his rage. ‘Were you starved?’
I gave my parents the truth, knowing they’d hear it as a lie. ‘They did nothing. They just … kept me.’
After the DMP discovered my very presence was painful to ghosts – as evidenced by the apparent shrieks of one who was put into an inescapable room with me – they isolated me completely. If they ran further tests, I didn’t know about them. I knew nothing but boredom and loneliness that found no relief but madness.
Now, I gather my nerve to send Aura the text. We start with instant message, where I give her the link to our encrypted chat room. There’s an elaborate security procedure she has to undertake, so I wait, staring at my desk clock, an old brass-and-wood contraption that once belonged to my granddad. I watch closely to ensure the second hand sweeps over the clock’s face in the correct direction.
Four minutes and thirty-six seconds later, Aura’s name appears in the chat window. We flirt, reminisce, flirt some more. This is working. I’m forgetting 3A already. I can do this.
And then she writes: Can you tell me what happened while you were detained?
My hands freeze, trembling, above the keyboard. That one word, detained, has changed forever. It’s traded its casual meaning (‘Sorry I’m late. I was detained.’) for one that meant the utter annihilation of the boy I once was.
My throat tightens, and I have to gulp air to keep breathing. The world’s going all fuzzy around the edges. What’s happening to me?
My computer beeps. Zach, you there?
Am I? Where is ‘there’? Is it only one place or two?
Desperate for an answer, I look out the window. The late-morning sky is pale grey, almost white, like the ceiling of my cell. But the clouds are moving, and the sun behind them creates light and shadows. The sky is a grey that lives.
I am here.
Yes, I answer, resisting the urge to add Barely. Though I still feel dizzy, that terrifying fuzzy-world feeling has faded.
We can talk about it some other time.
I type NO! NEVER!, but then delete it and say Yes instead.
The important thing is that you’re okay now.
With that one sentence, she’s made the Atlantic Ocean seem light years across. With that one sentence, everything becomes clear: Aura expects me to be okay.
I am not okay, but I will be, and until then, I’ll fake it.
I change the subject and have us switch to video chat, where I smile (which is hard) and flatter her (which is easy, because she’s beautiful) and tell her I’d forgotten how lovely Glasgow is, that I’ll soon be off to the pubs with my friends. Like any regular guy.
Though her deep-brown eyes are bleary from the early hour, they light up when I say these things. She leans closer to the monitor, chin on her folded hands, the way she used to listen to me blether about my latest football match or complain about calculus homework.
My voice grows more animated. Yes, this is the solution: keep to easy, casual topics that have always connected us. Together, Aura and I will build a bridge between Now and the Good Then of last year. A bridge so tall I can’t see 3A from it.
Soon Aura signals that we need to discuss secret things. The video chat’s not encrypted – an issue I’ll remedy this week – so we switch back to text.
I know why they let you go, she writes. It was the State Dept and whatever, but also MI-X.
I figured. But what took them so long?
They needed leverage against the DMP.
Like what?
Like the fact that the company that makes BlackBox hired private spies to bomb Flight 346.
I reread her sentence five times, feeling as though I’ve fallen into one of those Tom Clancy novels my dad loves. But I’m no Jack What’s-his-name, and this is not a novel.
I pound out my reply. What?!!! How do you know this?
Her answer takes an eternity. Because I told them.
Those four words could be made of fire. They sear my eyes, burning straight through to my brain and lighting up every panicky synapse. My fingers trip over the keyboard:
How idyu kniw Delete.
What mawed yoi Delete
How the fucl did you finr out? Delete delete delete.
I type with a single finger, one hand steadying the other: Sorry?
I did research, and I got info from Nicola.
Nicola from DMP? You were spying?
Not spying. Investigating.
I want to strangle her (Nicola, I mean, not Aura. No, Aura as well). You could go to jail!
I did this for you.
I shove my chair from the desk and stagger to the window. Need air. Now.
Long-buried muscle memory reminds me to pound the right side of the sill twice so the window won’t stick on the way up. It opens with a loud squeak.
I put my head out, and for a moment, I forget everything but the miracle of an open window. The light rain cools my face. I close my eyes and listen to the patter of drops on leaves and pavement.
You’re free, inhale. You’re safe, exhale. You’re home.
But at what cost? How could Aura be so brave and stupid on my behalf?
I force myself back to the computer to type one spiteful sentence: I’m not worth that.
The length of her pause tells me I’ve stunned her. I want to take back the words, or better yet, send them into the past to stop her mistake.
Can I see you? she asks.
I have to go now. I slam the laptop shut.
It takes only a moment to regret this. ‘You stupid bastard,’ I whisper to myself. After what she did for me, I couldn’t even thank her. She saved my life.
But how much of my shattered self has she really saved? Pieces of me are already calling out: We’re still here. You’re still here. You’ll never really leave. They’re huddled under starched white sheets, nestled into the spotless corners where my bleary gaze so often rested, and tucked inside the bathroom cabinet, amid Kleenex and toilet tissue and Q-Tips, soft clean items that made up my only belongings.
I pick up my phone, trying to stay in the present. Aura, I’m sorry, I text. I love you.
Immediately she replies: I love you too. Are you mad?
Not at you, I tell her. Never at you.
If you need to talk …
I can’t. Not yet. Fuck me, why did I add ‘Not yet’?
When you’re ready.
I stalk out of my room, towards the stairs, intending to leave this house, to run until I collapse.
Instead I pause outside my parents’ empty bedroom. Like the one they had in Baltimore, it’s accessorised with medical equipment, tools that keep Dad alive and mobile as long as possible. We fight his mesothelioma, not for ultimate victory – it’s virtually incurable – but rather for points, like in a video game. Rewards include a night without coughing up blood, or the ability to walk stairs on his own power. Small victories are everything in this war of attrition.
The sight of his battle calms me. Mine is not the only struggle in this house. And if I can’t deploy my full arsenal of weapons for myself, I can do it for Dad. I must be strong, for his sake.
I text Aura a two-word promise: I will.
Chapter Three
Friday morning, Martin’s waiting outside to take me to my first psychiatrist’s appointment. Mum said going alone wasn’t an option, and Martin was an infinitely more acceptable choice than her or an MI-X escort. Besides, she needs to go back to her job. We all need normality.
He’s sitting on my front steps, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Starbucks. When I come out, he hands me my own cup. ‘Help
you wake.’ He looks pure knackered himself – the pub where he works only closed six hours and thirteen minutes ago.
‘Thanks.’ I sip through the small hole in the lid, then promptly spit out the brown liquid. ‘What’s this?’
‘Coffee.’
‘I was expecting tea.’
He shrugs. ‘Thought you’d’ve started drinking coffee in America. Anyway, it’s more caffeine than tea.’
‘What are you drinking?’
He curls his hands protectively around his cup. ‘Tea.’ When I hold out the coffee, he sighs and swaps with me.
I do need the caffeine, desperately. In the three nights since my return, I’ve slept a total of seven restless hours. It’s just jet lag, I tell myself – my brain’s still on Eastern Daylight Time. Also, after yesterday’s trip to the barber, it hurts a bit to put my head on the pillow, the close-cut hairs like wee needles poking my scalp.
Or perhaps it’s the fact that whenever I close my eyes in bed, no matter how tightly I swaddle myself in sheets, I feel like I’m floating away in a thousand pieces. Or perhaps it’s my fear that if I sleep, I’ll wake up in 3A and discover this is all a dream.
No, it must be the jet lag. And the hair.
I follow Martin down the street, holding my tea in one hand and using the other to shield my eyes from what seems like the brightest sunlight ever. The terrace homes around us gleam in various tones of red, brown, and white. When my dad was young, most Glasgow buildings were covered in century-old soot, before the city had them all scrubbed. Traces of black remain on the bricks and stones, but I’ve always thought the smudges added to their beauty.
Martin stops at the corner of Fergus Drive to hail a taxi.
‘We’re not taking the bus?’ I ask him as the black car pulls to the kerb beside us.
‘They’ll be too full.’
Right. Rush hour. I’d be packed in with a hundred other people. ‘You’re a genius.’
‘It was yer ma’s idea.’ He opens the taxi door for me. ‘Though it’s true I’m a genius.’
Shattered: A Shade novella Page 2