Shattered: A Shade novella (11 page)

‘Tell
them what?’ he asks, tearing off a piece of bandage tape.

‘Thank
you.’ I look away, to the array of cotton items on the sink. ‘I used to count
the days with Q-Tips. When I was … in there. I’d save one every night when they
dimmed the lights, keep it in my pillowcase.’

Martin
doesn’t reply right away, just tapes my bandage. When he finally says, ‘Clever
of ye, mate,’ his voice is strained.

We
quietly clean my spilled blood off the floor and the sink – this room
looks like the scene of a homicide – then I step back into the soft
flannel trousers.

‘Now
I’m glad you prefer unlocked doors,’ he says as he puts away the bandages and
gauze. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to break this one down to save you.’

If it
were locked, he wouldn’t have known I needed saving. I wonder, would I have
known in time to save myself?

*
  
*
  
*
  
*

Back
in my room, Martin closes the door, then takes the chair at the desk. ‘Talk to
me about what happened in there.’

I eye
the door uneasily. ‘In the toilet?’

‘In that
place where they held you.’

I go
to the door and check it’s unlocked. ‘Nothing happened.’

‘Liar.’
His voice pitches up into a nonsense song. ‘Liar liar
liar
liar
LI-
ahhhh
!’

‘Stop
it.’

He
does it again, louder.

‘Shut
it, you’ll wake Mum and Dad.’ I spread my arms across the door behind me, as if
that will block the sound.

‘Then
you’d better tell me, or I’ll keep going and add a dance. You’ve seen me dance.
I’ve been certified world’s worst.’

Good,
a change in subject. ‘Not the world’s worst. Perhaps just the nation’s.’

‘I’m
to start busking in subway stations with a sign says
WILL STOP DANCING FOR FOOD
.’

My
laughter makes me a wee bit dizzy, so I move back towards the bed. ‘It’s not
that I don’t want to talk. But the people who held me, they said if I told
anyone what happened, they’ll do the same to Aura.’

‘But
couldn’t they do it to her whether you tell or not?’

I
sink onto the mattress, too exhausted for logic. ‘I can’t take the chance
they’re not bluffing. I won’t.’

‘Okay.’
Martin watches me lift my throbbing leg up onto the bed. Then he says, ‘Where
you were, did it have anything to do with you scaring away ghosts?’

I
freeze. ‘How do you know about—’ Then it hits me: an old fear has come to
pass. ‘Finn told you.’

He
nods once. ‘My brother speaks so much rubbish, I was sure it was a lie. But
then I started to wonder. After all, ye were born on the day of the Shift.’ He
picks up the stack of fallen stars from my desk. ‘Is that why you’re like
this?’

‘I
think so.’ I don’t tell him about Aura’s corresponding power to help ghosts, or
that we swap powers when we kiss.

‘Then
when you
didnae
come home with
yer
ma and da this summer, I knew something was off. I never believed you were in
prison.’ He sifts through the stars, as though looking for a specific one, then
suddenly laughs. ‘I also know why you were aye so nice to Finn. He sorted out
this secret of yours, didn’t he? When we were younger?’

‘He’s
the one told me I had this power.’

‘And
he blackmailed you? You bought him sweets and football shirts and all.’ Martin
laughs again, so hard he starts to cough. ‘What a mad wee shit he was. Still
is.’

‘Has
he told anyone else?’

‘No
one who believed him. As I said, he’s always speaking rubbish.’

‘Good.
Nobody but Aura and the DMP know I’ve this power. I try to stay away from
post-Shifters, and when I can’t avoid them, I make sure it’s in crowded
places.’

‘What
about
yer
da? Does he know?’

‘No.’
When I first returned home, I asked Dad careful questions to see what he knew
of my captivity. Apparently the DMP never told MI-X about my peculiar nature,
thus giving themselves an advantage.

Part
of me wants to tell MI-X, to level the playing field between the agencies. But
one revelation has a way of leading to others. A wall of secrets has no
superfluous bricks.

‘I
promise I won’t tell,’ Martin says, ‘if you promise me you’ll never cut
yourself again.’

I
frown at my leg, thinking of unfinished business. There’s still the
A
to come.

‘Zachary?’
he prompts, sounding like an impatient teacher.

‘I promise.’
I mean it too. ‘It won’t be easy.’

‘I
know.’ Martin gets up and points to the other side of the bed. ‘Now move over,
cos
I’m not leaving you alone after what ye just tried.’

I
hesitate. This queen-sized bed is more than big enough for us both, and God
knows it’d be a comfort not to sleep alone. But what if we accidentally touched
and I panicked? I’d hate to hurt Martin like that.

‘I’m
no giving you a choice,’ he says.

‘
Awright
,
awright
.’ I slide over,
suppressing a hiss of pain.

‘You’ve
a few minutes to prepare
yersel
mentally or whatever.
I need a piss and to brush my teeth.’ He stops at the door. ‘Why don’t you ring
Aura? It’s only, what, eleven there?’

I
look at the clock. ‘Ten thirty-six. She’d worry.’

‘Let
her worry. She loves you.’

Perhaps she’d stop loving me.

While
he’s gone, I lie here examining the pattern of stars on my ceiling. The
Pleiades need to be closer to one another. It’s been bothering me for weeks,
but I never remember during the day to fix it.

Martin’s
back in four minutes, in a pair of sleep trousers and a
Django
Django
T-shirt. He leaves the door ajar and sets his
phone on the bedside table, where he checks the notepad with my medication
schedule. ‘Says here ye were due an hour ago for
Klonopin
.’
He pronounces it carefully. ‘It’s not checked off. What’s that for, anyway?’

‘Anxiety.
Can you hand me it and the water? They’re all in the top drawer.’

He
gives me the glass, then opens the drawer and pulls out the pill bottles one by
one, squinting at their labels. ‘Fuck’s sake, Zach. These all say not to take
with alcohol. But you’ve ordered pints when we’re out.’

‘Only
one each night. Keeps me calm.’ It also makes me feel far from my body, so I’ve
never been tempted to have a second.

‘Right,
these labels don’t say, “One
Tennent’s
is plenty.”
They say “Do not
fuckin
’ consume alcohol.”’ He throws
the
Klonopin
at my chest. ‘You’re cut off, mate.’

‘Yes,
Mummy.’ I take out the pill and whip the bottle back at him, hitting him in the
elbow.

‘Prick.’

‘Tyrant.’
I swallow the pill and take a few extra sips of water to
minimise
the dry mouth that always sets in overnight.

He
switches off the lamp, then gets into bed. I edge away,
realising
I can’t wrap the covers around me, now that I’m to share them. But rather than
feeling unsettled, I feel, I
dunno
, secure. And
sleepy.

‘Why
do ye put up with me,
Màrtainn
?’ I drawl his Gaelic
name,
MARSH-teen
, like when we were
weans.

‘Cos
you’re my best mate,
ya
numpty
.’
He punches his pillow twice to fluff it, then flops down on his back. ‘And
cos
of Finn.’

‘Because
I saved his life? You’re kind to me because you think you owe me?’

‘No,
I’m kind to you
cos
I wasn’t kind to him. When he
changed, I treated him like the dickhead he’d become. I
didnae
gie
him a chance. And when they took him away, I was
like, good riddance, even though it meant the end of his life as he knew it.
Now I keep thinking, if only I’d been a better brother, perhaps things would’ve
been different. He needed me, and I wasn’t there. Or rather, I was there, being
pure awful.’

‘I’m
sorry.’

He
lets out a deep sigh. ‘So many times, Zach, so many times I wished you’d failed
that day at the canal. I wished you’d let him go.’

‘I
couldn’t.’ Under the covers, I run my thumbnail along the scar on my chest.

‘I know
ye couldn’t. Even though it hurt you.’ Martin turns his head my way, the dim
light from the hall catching his eyes. ‘
Dinnae
worry,
mate. I’ll never let ye drown.’

Chapter
Eight

Date:
19 October

Weight:
67 kg

Hours
sleep in last week: 29

Nightmares
in last week: 3

Flashbacks
in last week: 2

Panic
attacks in last week: 2

Days
since 3A: 55

Days
until Aura: 62

‘How
was Logan’s memorial last night?’ I ask Aura as soon as we sign on to our video
chat, before I can forget. My memory’s slippery these days, but I’ve found ways
to cope, thanks to my ever-present smart phone.

I’ve
even set up automatic
I love you
text
messages to Aura every day at 8.06 a.m. her time, just before she begins
school. The reminder app asks me to confirm before sending, so I do think of
her at that moment. But it always comes as a brief surprise that she and I
exist in the same world.

‘The
memorial was beautiful,’ she says, ‘and so was the reception after. Logan’s
older brother and sister played a song they wrote for him.’ She adjusts her
screen, and now with better light I can see her eyes are a bit swollen.

‘Sad,
though, aye?’

‘Yeah.’
Her gaze drops. I wish I could comfort her.

‘You
miss him, don’t you?’

‘I
miss you more.’

‘That’s
not what I asked.’

Aura brushes
her thumb across her cheekbone, though there’s no tear I can see. ‘It’s
probably hard for a pre-Shifter to understand, but it doesn’t feel to me like
he died a year ago. It feels like he died on the summer solstice when he passed
on. Dylan feels the same way.’

‘I’m
sorry.’ I should feel jealous at the mention of Dylan, Logan’s younger brother
and Aura’s junior prom date. But it seems a lifetime ago that she kissed him
– or kissed me, for that matter. Anyway, I’m too tired and numb to feel
the jagged green edge of jealousy, or even the orange-hot anger that drove me
to assault Niall. Lately my head’s all grey inside (though on good days, I can
manage ice-blue spikes of fear). ‘But I think I do understand, sort of. It
wasn’t just your boyfriend you lost when Logan died. You lost your best
friend.’

Aura’s
eyes soften. ‘Yeah. We met when we were six years old.’

‘I
know. It’s the same age I met Martin. I can’t imagine losing him. Or rather, I
can imagine it, and I do, all the time.’
Wait,
does that make me sound paranoid?
‘What I mean is, when someone’s a part of
your life for so many years, if they’re taken away, you might not be able to
recognise
your life at all.’

Aura
bites her lip and bows her head for a long moment. ‘That’s exactly it.’ She
tucks her hair behind her ear, fidgeting with the end of the long, dark lock.
Then she looks up at me. ‘It doesn’t bother you that I still, um, think about
Logan?’

Her
um
makes me translate ‘think about’ into
‘love’. But it doesn’t bother me. ‘I hope you always think about him. And if
anything ever happened to me—’

‘Nothing
will happen to you.’ She slaps her palm against her desk. ‘Ever again.’

‘But
if it did, I hope you’d think about me, too, even after you’d found someone
else.’

‘Zach,
stop. Why do you always talk like this these days?’

Do I?
‘Talk like what?’

‘All
gloomy, like you can’t see a future for us. Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’
I push my sanity-score graph paper – with its disappointingly flat curve
– farther from the monitor, though I know she can’t see it. ‘I’m fine.’

She
frowns. ‘How’s your dad, then?’

‘Also
fine.’

‘Your
mom?’

‘Fine.’

‘The
weather?’

‘Same
as usual.
Dunno
how I forgot it can rain so many days
in a row. I mean, Scotland’s famous for it, especially the west. That’s how we
make such brilliant whisky,
didje
know that? All the
rain, it’s good for the barley.’ I stop when I see her mouth set into a tight
line. ‘What’s wrong?’