The Archived Read Online Free PDF

they do that?” I ask.
    “Kill a Keeper? Steal a key? Both.” You cough, a racking, wet sound. “It’s not easy.”
     You cough again, and I want to do something to help; but the one time I offered you
     water, you growled that water wouldn’t fix a damn thing unless I meant to drown you
     with it. So now we pretend the cough isn’t there, punctuating your lectures.
    “But,” you say, recovering, “if a History does get out, you have to track them down,
     and fast. Reading surfaces has to be second nature. This gift is not a game, Kenzie.
     It’s not a magic trick. We read the past for one reason, and one alone. To hunt.”
    I know what my gift is for, but it doesn’t stop me from sifting through every framed
     photo, every random slip of paper, every piece of sentimental junk Mom chose, hoping
     for even a whisper, a hint of a memory of Ben. And it doesn’t matter anyway because
     they’re all useless. By the time I get to the stupid art camp cup, I’m desperate.
     I pick it up, and my heart flutters when I feel the subtle hum against my fingertips,
     like a promise; but when I close my eyes—even when I reach past the hum—there’s nothing
     but pattern and light, blurred beyond readability.
    I want to pitch the cup as hard as I can against the wall, add another scratch. I’m
     actually about to throw it when a piece of black plastic catches my eye, and I realize
     I’ve missed something. I let the cup fall back on the bed and retrieve a pair of battered
     glasses pinned beneath the trophy and the bear.
    My heart skips. The glasses are black, thick-rimmed, just frames, no lenses, and they’re
     the only thing here that’s really his. Ben used to put them on when he wanted to be taken seriously. He’d make us call
     him Professor Bishop, even though that was Dad’s name, and Dad never wore glasses.
     I try to picture Ben wearing them. Try to remember the exact color of his eyes behind
     the frames, the way he smiled just before he put them on.
    And I can’t.
    My chest aches as I wrap my fingers around the silly black frames. And then, just
     as I’m about to set the glasses aside, I feel it, faint and far away and yet right
     there in my palm. A soft hum, like a bell trailing off. The tone is feather-light,
     but it’s there, and I close my eyes, take a slow, steadying breath, and reach for
     the thread of memory. It’s too thin and it keeps slipping through my fingers, but
     finally I catch it. The dark shifts behind my eyes and lightens into gray, and the
     gray twists from a flat shade into shapes, and from shapes into an image.
    There’s not even enough memory to make a full scene, only a kind of jagged picture,
     the details all smeared away. But it doesn’t matter, because Ben is there—well, a
     Ben-like shape—standing in front of a Dad-like shape with the glasses perched on his
     nose and his chin thrust out as he looks up and tries not to smile because he thinks
     that only frowns are taken seriously, and there’s just enough time for the smudged
     line of his mouth to waver and crack into a grin before the memory falters and dissolves
     back into gray, and gray darkens to black.
    My heart hammers in my ears as I clutch the glasses. I don’t have to rewind, guide
     the memory back to the start, because there’s only one sad set of images looping inside
     these plastic frames; and sure enough, a moment later the darkness wobbles into gray,
     and it starts again. I let the stilted memory of Ben loop five times—each time hoping
     it will sharpen, hoping it will grow into a scene instead of a few smudged moments—before
     I finally force myself to let go, force myself to blink, and it’s gone and I’m back
     in a box-filled bedroom, cradling my dead brother’s glasses.
    My hands are shaking, and I can’t tell if it’s from anger or sadness or fear. Fear
     that I’m losing him, bit by bit. Not just his face—that started to fade right away—but
     the marks he made on the