Shade (3 page)

A future I already hated.

Ooh, that’s a new one.”

Megan pointed across the school courtyard at the tall, lean man’s violet outline. In the sunshine he would never have been visible, but heavy clouds made the afternoon look like evening.

The ghost circled the fountain, stopping every few feet to peer into the water.

“No, that’s ex-Jared,” I told Megan. “He graduated from Ridgewood nine years ago. Died in the war.”

“What’s he looking for in the fountain?”

“Go ask him.”

“No way.”

“He’s not mean or anything. But if he starts in about his uncle Fred, change the subject. Unless you want to see your lunch again.”

Megan grimaced as a pair of seniors walked right through ex-Jared.

“I hate that,” she whispered. “I can’t wait till we’re seniors and everyone will be like us.”

“Except the teachers. And the janitors. And the librarian and the secretaries.” My butt hurt on the iron bench, so I uncrossed my legs and recrossed them the other way. “Face it, when everyone is like us, we’ll be old.”

She frowned and twisted the emerald pendant Mickey had given her for her sixteenth birthday. “So how much are you dreading this assembly?”

“Let’s just say I’d rather take the PSATs again than hear some government worker bee tell us how we can serve our country by locking up ghosts.”

I jabbed my thumb at the trio of white vans pulling into the school parking lot. Each bore the logo of the federal Department of Metaphysical Purity.

Megan said, “I heard the DMP has a special forces unit, the Obsidians. They’re like Navy SEALs. They’re the ones who, you know, take care of the shades.” She made a slashing motion across her throat.

“Aunt Gina would kill me if I did anything remotely anti-ghost.” Back before the Shift, Gina was one of the few people who could see and hear the dead. Now she can’t, but she still has a thing for them.

Megan bit the cuticle of her thumb. “Still, I bet the uniforms are cool.”

The phone in my hand buzzed. Logan had just texted
I LOVE YOU
—so
cute how he never abbreviated it. It had been more than a year since his family moved out to Baltimore County, but I still missed him like crazy during the school day.

The sun broke through the clouds, warming the top of my head and dimming the screen. Ex-Jared faded in the full light of day.

As he disappeared, my eyes refocused on a boy I’d never seen before, chatting with my history teacher, Mrs. Richards, across the courtyard.

“Who’s that?”

Megan gasped and grabbed my arm. “Scottish exchange student. In my homeroom.”

“But it’s the middle of October. I thought exchange students came at the beginning of the year.”

“The more important question is, who did we exchange him for, and can Scotland keep them?”

I nudged her side with my elbow. “Aw, I’m telling Mickey.”

“Go ahead.” Megan pulled her sunglasses from her bag. “This clearly falls under our Look-Don’t-Touch policy.” She put on her shades. “Speaking of looking, he’s staring at you.”

The boy stood alone now, hands on his hips, examining me. A breeze blew a splash of dark bangs across his forehead, and his posture made his faded blue T-shirt stretch across his broad chest.

I stared back, and he tilted his head as if surprised. Guys are like ghosts that way—when they check you out, they expect you to glance away all meek and flirty-girly. Yeah, right.

Despite the chilly air, he wore long khaki shorts and a pair of sandals. Sandals on feet that were now walking straight toward us.

Megan grabbed my wrist under the open binder on my lap. “Here he comes,” she said, as if I could’ve missed it.

He stopped in front of us and nodded at Megan, who dug her nails into my arm. Then he turned the purest green eyes to mine. “Excuse me. Are you really Aura?”

I didn’t notice the “really,” because my ears had heated at the sound of my name spoken that way, his tongue curled around the
r
like it was a piece of candy.

“What?” I said eloquently.

“Aura,” he repeated, pronouncing it
Ooora
(again with tongue curl). “That’s you, aye?”
You
like a female sheep. Wow, it’s true what they say about Scottish accents.

“Um. Yeah, I’m—” I couldn’t speak my name without sounding lame and American. “That’s me.” I cleared my throat. “Why?”

“Mrs. Richards said you were studying ancient astronomy for your thesis.”

“Uh-huh.” Too bad I’m an idiot savant, emphasis
not
on the savant. “Sort of.”

He shook his head, a dark wave of hair lashing his left cheek. “Incredible.”

Another
r
, but his skepticism broke through my haze. “Why, because girls can’t be astronomers?”

“Of course they can, but the girls I know who like science aren’t—” He cut himself off and looked away, dragging a hand through his hair. “I just met her,” he muttered to himself. “I’ll no’ say
that
.”

“Cut the crap,” Megan said. “Zachary Moore, this is Aura Salvatore, and yes, she’s into science even though she’s pretty. Shocker. Get over
it.” She turned to me. “Show him how you can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

I rested my elbow on the back of the bench and inspected Zachary in what I hoped was a casual way. “You don’t look much like a science geek either,” I told him.

He lifted one brow while twitching a corner of his mouth. I realized how my words sounded—that I thought he was pretty too.

Unfortunately, I did. Not that it was a matter of opinion, except maybe to the legally blind.

“Where’s your kilt?” I asked him.

Zachary looked over my head, and I got the feeling he was trying not to roll his eyes. Then he moved closer, put his hand on the back of the bench near my shoulder, and leaned deep inside my personal space. “How about this,” he said in a low voice, “you don’t ask me about haggis and bagpipes, and I won’t ask you about garlic and
Goodfellas
.”

Megan laughed out loud. My fingers tightened on the edge of the bench to keep from hitting him. Not that he didn’t have a point.

“Okay, no stereotypes,” I said. “Deal.”

“So do you have a kilt?” Megan asked him. When I glared at her, she said, “What? He only said
you
couldn’t ask.” She looked at him. “So do you?”

Straightening up, Zachary rubbed the back of his neck and smirked. “I might, I might.”

God, he was gorgeous. And Scottish. But maybe kind of an ass.

I cleared my throat again. “So what do you want?”

“Oh.” He shifted his books under his other arm. “Mrs. Richards said you needed help with your thesis.”

My mouth dropped open.

Megan snorted. “Uh-oh.”

“I don’t need help with anything,” I told him.

“But everyone else has a partner for—”

“Everyone else is researching easy topics like the French Revolution or the Boer Wars. I’m working on—” I pulled my binder to my chest. “Something important.”

“Megaliths,” he offered. “Like Stonehenge. I know a bit about them.”

I frowned. No way his “knowledge” would have anything to do with the answers I was seeking. I’d specifically told Mrs. Richards I wanted to do my research alone. Any partner would think I was crazy for investigating whether the megaliths were connected to the Shift.

“Are you a Droid?” Megan asked him. “Like the ones who built it?”

Zachary’s cheeks dimpled as if he was trying not to laugh. “You mean a Druid. No, I’m afraid not.”

“Besides,” I told her, “Druids didn’t build Stonehenge. It’s way older than them. They just say they built it so they can have their little festivals there. It’s total bullshit.”

Megan cocked her head at Zachary. “Sure you’re man enough to work with this girl?”

“She’ll tell me if I’m not.” He winked at her, and I felt weirdly jealous.

Megan shaded her eyes to peer up at the clock tower. “Aura, assembly’s in ten, and I gotta pee like crazy. Save you a seat?”

“Thanks.”

She sent me a sly glance over her shoulder as she walked away. Zachary took her spot beside me.

“So what do you know about megaliths?” I asked him. Ugh, I had to clear my throat
again
. I probably sounded like a pack-a-day smoker.

“Well, before I moved here last week? I never lived more than an hour’s drive from standing stones.”

The back of my neck tingled at the thought. “Wow. In Scotland?” I realized how stupid that sounded, but he saved me.

“Right, and Ireland, Wales, England. Other places I’ve lived.”

“Are the stone rings—you know, creepy?”

“You mean magical?”

I nodded, encouraged by his serious face. “Do you ever get used to it? Is it ever like seeing, I don’t know, a garbage truck?”

“A garbage truck?”

“Ordinary. Or do the stones have all this weird energy zinging off them?”

“It depends.” Zachary pulled one foot onto the bench and rested his elbow on his bent knee.

“Depends?” I tried not to check out his cute ankle peeking through his sandal. (What kind of dork notices ankles?) His face was just as distracting, so I focused on an imaginary point over his left shoulder. “Depends on what?”

“Their arrangement. The time of day. The weather. At sunrise or just before a thunderstorm, they almost look alive. Like they’re waiting for something to happen, you know?” Zachary rubbed his chin, then spread his fingers as he looked at me through his thick, dark lashes. “But mostly it depends on your mood.”

My neck warmed at the way his lips puckered with the
oo
sound, and then the way his tongue tagged the
d
. This was Bad with a capital Hell No. Logan was the only guy who’d ever made me feel like this, like I had a caffeine overdose and a second-degree sunburn.
Get a grip, Aura. It’s just the accent.

“Have you never seen any, then?” he asked me.

“Just pictures.” I twisted the zipper at the end of my jacket sleeve. “I’ve never been out of the country, except to Italy for my great-grandmother’s funeral.”

“Oh, you should go someday. Especially since the stones are so important to you.”

A sudden chill flowed over me, like I’d been stripped naked. “They’re not important to me.”

“Then why did you pick this topic?”

“I just think they’re cool, okay?” I slapped my binder shut. “And I don’t need help studying them.”

“Mrs. Richards said you’d say that. She also said to tell you that you have no choice.” He whipped out his phone like he was drawing a weapon. “Give me your number. How’s Sunday?”

I didn’t hide my groan of dismay, but exchanged my information for his and opened the calendar app on my phone. “Sunday I have my first meeting with my adviser at College Park.” For our theses, we were required to have expert guidance from someone outside our school.

“Brilliant. I’ll go with you. Pick me up at noon? I can’t drive here yet, and this city’s public transport is crap.”

I hesitated, wondering if I should be alone in a car with this strange guy. I decided to check him out with Mrs. Richards. If he
seemed the least bit serial killer-ish, I’d ask for a new partner.

“You’re just here to help,” I said. “I’ve already started this project, and I know where I want it to go.”

“And where’s that, Aura?” Zachary met my glare with a cool gaze. “What do you hope you’ll find?”

“That is not your business.” I stood and snatched up my bag before he could see the flush on my face.

“You’ll need my address to pick me up.”

“Give it to me at the assembly.” I stalked toward the double doors under the peaked stone archway. “We’ll be late.”

“I’m no’ going to the assembly.”

I stopped and looked at him. “I thought you were a junior.”

“I am, but I was born pre-Shift.” He slid off the bench, his long legs unfolding in a fluid motion. “Only by a minute, though,” he said as he passed me.

My bag slid out of my hand and thudded onto the pavement. Zachary kept walking.

I sat in the auditorium, clutching my seat’s armrests, as the DMP agents—or “dumpers,” as we call them—led what should have been the most boring lecture of my life.

The blonde in the stark white uniform pointed her remote at a laptop on the projector, taking us to the second PowerPoint slide. Then she continued her spiel.

“As far as we can tell,” she said, “the Shift took place during that year’s winter solstice. December twenty-first, oh-eight-fifty Universal Time. That would be three fifty a.m. local time.”

I glanced at Megan beside me, slouched in her seat, jacket shrugged up to her ears. She was one of the few people who knew that
that
was the moment of my birth.

Somebody had to be first, right? Why not me? And somebody else had to be last, before the Shift. Zachary. There were probably hundreds of others around the world born during our minutes. It’s not like I was the first-first, or he was the last-last.

Still, what were the chances we’d meet here? We’re not exactly on top of an alleged mystical vortex like Stonehenge or Sedona, Arizona. This is Baltimore. Home of steamed crabs and big hair. Even Edgar Allan Poe’s ghost never hung out here, and he died right down on Fayette Street.

A folded piece of paper jabbed my arm. I took Megan’s note. (Low-tech, I know, but the BlackBox screws with electronic signals, so texting and cell phone calls inside school are pretty much out.)

What’s up, Pup?

I wrote,
Zachary was born one minute before me,
and passed it back.

Megan scribbled,
LIAR!!

She meant him, not me. But why would he say that unless it were true, and/or he knew when I was born and wanted to mess with my head?

Could there be a deeper answer, something that would unlock the mystery of who (and why) I was?

I smoothed out the wrinkles near the seams of my faded jeans, trying to calm my careening imagination. Zachary probably didn’t know anything about me. The fact that he looked like he could star in a James Bond Jr. film just made him seem more exotic than the average guy.

The agent switched off the projector, darkening the screen. She sat on the edge of the table and leaned forward, as if she were about to tell us a secret. More like give the closing sales pitch.