SHIFT

Part 2 - Your face is hard

            “Why do you smell like”—sniff, sniff, I took a whiff of Bree—“my sophomore year?”

            Bree and I had both just arrived in 1924 Chicago. I was still rather unsteady in my landings. Bree said I had good natural form, but that whomp feeling when you hit the ground in a new time and place threw me. I stepped out of the alley where we’d arrived and almost plowed headlong into a passing streetcar. She pulled me backward.

            I could have guessed the general locale of where we were based on the kid selling a stack of Chicago Tribunes and the sign in one of the storefronts decrying demon liquor. But with Bree’s handy dandy little Quantum locator thingie, it made it easy to pinpoint.

            I sniffed at Bree again. More specifically, she smelled like a mixture of Right Guard, salt water, and, well, her.

            “Your lip gloss . . .” I said.

            “Yes?” She didn’t meet my eyes.

            “It’s smudged.” I let out a mock gasp and stuck out an accusing finger. “You’ve been kissing him, haven’t you?”

            “The ‘him’ you are referring to is you, Finn. And, yes. If you must know, we were kissing.”

            “That is so not fair.”

            “How is that not fair?” She crossed her arms, and I knew I had waded into some seriously treacherous waters. Bear in mind, I had been neck-deep in actual treacherous waters with her not a week ago. But that look on her face right now had me more scared than if the ocean I swam in almost every day was filled with flesh-eating eels.

            “It’s not, uhh, fair that you’re going to get to see me twice as much as I see you,” I said.

            “You already experienced all these kisses. You’re the one who’s gotten twice the kisses. I’m just catching up.”

            Well, when she said it that way, I felt kind of . . .

            “Wait a minute,” I said. “I’m the one who had to wait for a stinking year for you to come back. You spent all of three days without me.”

            “It was a hard three days,” she said, kind of pouty-ish.

            “Hard?” My lip twitched up.

            “Hard.” And the way she lifted her eyebrow just so, I could tell that if I didn’t steer it off-course, this conversation would soon define 'hard.' It was cruising toward our first real fight as a couple. I needed to get her to take some bait and laugh.

            “You’re hard,” I said and after a pause added, “to live without.”

            “Your face is hard,” she said, and I could tell she was fighting back a laugh, “to look away from.”

            “Your mom’s face is—actually, y’know what? I’d like to back out of this banter if that’s all right. Kind of feel like the timing’s a bit too close to your mom coming out of her coma. I just don’t see this going anywhere good.”

            “A prudent call.”

            “In fact, I feel like the timing for ‘your mama’ jokes is never going to be right, again given the whole coma-induced-by-an-evil-organization thing.”

            “Agreed.” She slipped her hand in mine. “So where were we before that?”

            “Doubling up on kisses.”

            So that’s exactly what we did.

            “I’m pretty sure we didn’t both come this far simply to smooch,” she said after a thorough kissfest.

            I shrugged, but yeah. She probably had a point.

            “Anything interesting happen in this particular time?” Bree asked.

            She started to reach for her QuantCom, but I grabbed it away and snapped it shut before she could.

            “Nope. No cheating.”

            She opened her mouth to protest. I shook my head.

            “Free Shifters don’t have these things. I have to learn how to figure out what’s going on without one, and so should you.”

            “Is that a challenge?”

            “Think of it as an opportunity,” I said.

            “All right.” She gazed around at our surroundings. “I’ll play.”

            “Well, clearly, we're in Chicago.” I pointed at the newspaper. “Nineteen-twenty-four. I don’t even need to look at the date to tell you that it’s summer.”

            “Yeah, it’s hot as blark.” Bree fanned herself and took off her sweater.

            Some teenage girls wearing skirts that grazed the tops of their knees and bobbed hair that grazed the tops of their ears came down the street giggling.

            “Those are called flappers,” I said.

            “I know, I know. Roaring Twenties. Prohibition. Speakeasies. Infamous gangsters. All that jazz . . . literally.”

            “I’m impressed.”

            “Ehh, not that impressive when you consider the fact that I’ve taken about three times more history than you.”

            “So why do you think we’re here?” I asked. “It has to be something.”

             “No telling,” she said. “I’m new to this free Shifting thing, too. Could be human observation. Could be sightseeing or fact-checking. Could be we’re supposed to clean up some litter.”

            She bent down and snatched up a flyer to make her point.

            “Could be anything,” I agreed.

            “Could be—”

            Bree was interrupted by a young woman, no older than me I’d bet, who ran out of a doorway in the alley we’d just left. She barreled straight at us and grabbed me by the front of my shirt.

            “You have to help me!” she screamed. “The boss’ll think I had something to do with it, but I didn’t. I didn’t, I tell ya. I didn’t kill Gigi!”

            And then the girl collapsed at my feet.

            “Or it could be her,” said Bree.