Cold Kiss (13 page)

“So you never knew what it meant, or how to do anything, you just figured it out on your own?” He’s on his feet now, striding past me, and for a minute I’m sure he’s going to storm out the door to confront my mother.

But he’s only pacing, too, even if his hands are balled into fists.

“It sounds bad, I know,” I begin, and he rolls his eyes.

“Bad? It sounds pretty frigging cruel, if you ask me.”

Out of nowhere, an urge to protect Mom unfurls in a wash of electricity that blues the light in the room. Gabriel shuts his mouth, but I can tell he’s not really sorry.

“You don’t know her.” My voice is carefully controlled now, even though it crackles with a leftover spark of power. “You don’t know us. And this isn’t about what she did or didn’t teach me. It was no one’s idea but mine to bring Danny back, and it’s no one’s job but mine to take care of it.”

It hurts to say that, like Danny is a bag of trash that needs to be put out on the curb. It’s still true, though.

“I’m sorry, okay?” He comes closer, slowly, and I take a deep breath, tamping down the last vibrating hum of energy inside. And when he takes my hands in his, my first instinct isn’t to run, or to lash out, it’s to hold tight. He waits for a minute, his eyes searching my face, before he speaks again. “I just want to help, Wren. You have to know this isn’t going to have a happy ending. I mean, doesn’t he ask about his family? About his friends?”

“He didn’t at first.” My voice is so small, even I can barely hear it. “At first, he was happy just to be with me. But then he started to remember things. To want things, other things.” I turn my face up to him, and I can’t hide the tears burning in my eyes. “I didn’t think about this part. I just wanted him
back.
”

“I know.” He’s so close, I can smell the night air clinging to his clothes and his hair. “I’m just afraid of what might happen now.”

“He would never hurt me.” I’m too quick to say it, and I wonder if Gabriel can tell that I don’t completely believe it anymore.

“But he can’t live up in that garage forever, Wren. You know that, right?”

“Of course I know it!” I wrestle my hand free and step back, wiping an escaped tear from one cheek with the back of my hand. “That was a last-minute thing. And I told you, I’m going to figure this out. Just … not tonight.”

“You can’t put it off, Wren.” He steps closer again, and I back up. I can’t think when he’s so near, so warm.

“Well, first I have to pass my chemistry test and get through Friday night,” I mutter.

“What’s Friday night?”

I huff out a laugh that’s mostly a sigh, and shake my head. “A sleepover. A stupid girly sleepover at my house, because my friends are ready to walk out of my life forever, and I can’t bear it if that happens, so I have to sit through some horror movie and eat popcorn and watch Jess paint her nails, okay?”

He doesn’t look convinced, but I’m not interested in making him understand. Not right now.

“Wren, let me help, okay? I could do some research. I don’t want you to go through this alone. And I really don’t want you to get hurt.”

He’s serious, and everything about the defined angles of his body is softer now. But I can’t help blurting out, “God, why do you care?”

He flinches as if I slapped him. “Isn’t it obvious? I noticed
you
before I picked up on your power, Wren.”

That shouldn’t feel as good as it does, a bright hot pulse in my chest. It doesn’t matter if Gabriel likes me, and it really doesn’t matter if I like Gabriel. There’s Danny to think about. Always Danny.

I don’t know what to say, so I stand there blinking instead, and finally Gabriel gives up and takes a step toward me again. I don’t back up this time, even though I do have to tilt my head to look him in the eye. Why are the only boys who like me always so tall?

“I saw
you,
Wren,” Gabriel says, and his voice is so soft, a feather drifting on the air, that I close my eyes to listen. “I saw this girl with these dark eyes and this crazy hair and this
fuck you
look on her face, and I wanted to talk to you.”

I laugh and open my eyes. “Wow. Smooth.”

He smirks, his mouth twisting to one side, and shrugs a little. “It’s true. You don’t look like everybody else, and that’s a good thing.”

“At least the outside and the inside match,” I say, and let myself move just a little closer. I can’t help it—my life has become a series of balls I’m trying to keep in the air, and I can’t hold on to any of them long enough.

I want to hold on to Gabriel.

My hands find his forearms, and I tangle my fingers in the worn cotton of his sleeves. Another kick of energy washes through me, warm and bright, and the air shimmers around us. I want so much, so much I can’t have, so much I’m not supposed to even think about.

But I stretch up anyway, trembling, hearing the echo of Gabriel’s voice:
I saw you. I saw you.

I never thought I wanted to be seen like that, so completely. I didn’t think it was possible, after keeping so many secrets for so long. It’s amazing how good it feels.

When I press my mouth to Gabriel’s, I can feel the shimmer, taste it, sweet, mellow gold where our lips touch, a slow-blooming heat that twines around us like vines. And it’s so bittersweet, so much like that long-ago first kiss with Danny, I break away with a jerk.

“I have to go,” I manage to get out, and then I’m scrambling, pushing away from Gabriel’s outstretched hands and the sound of his voice to grab my stuff and run.

DANNY WAS A SECRET FOR A LITTLE WHILE. Before he died, I mean. He didn’t have to be—it’s not like my mom was opposed to me having a boyfriend, even though I had to sit through the big sex talk after we got serious, which was epically awkward. I never thought I would hear my mom say “condom” so many times, although watching her unwrap one did make us both giggle, since she’d somehow managed to buy fluorescent ones.

I stopped her before she made me put it on a banana, though.

I wasn’t really worried about Jess and Darcia, either. We’d talked about boys since sixth grade, after all, starting with Bailey Sutter, who got tall before any of the other boys, and used to bump into Jess at every opportunity, which was as close to a declaration of love as you got at twelve.

Danny wasn’t the first boy I’d crushed on, but he was the first boy I couldn’t stop thinking about, the first one who made me itchy and nervous waiting for the phone to ring, the first one I wanted to climb all over, climb
inside,
take apart so I could see and touch every part of him.

I didn’t want to share him. It was a little bit like drawing a picture—I didn’t want anyone to see it until I was finally happy with it. And being with him those first few weeks was just as magical as learning what I could do had been, touching a flower and watching the color deepen, swooping the music on my iPod higher with a gesture. I was giddy with the way I could look at him across the cafeteria, find him smiling at me, and know that he was mine, that this huge thing that had happened to me was still
just
mine. No one could question it or taint it or ruin it—I could hold it, perfect and whole, as long as I wanted.

It didn’t last, of course. After a while, it got too hard not to let him take my hand in the hallway, or snug up behind me at my locker, his chin balanced on the top of my head as his hands snaked around my waist. After a while I wanted to share it, to show it off, to let the world see why I was smiling like a complete idiot half the time.

It’s not like that with Gabriel.

My phone buzzes that night, after I’ve run the last few windy blocks home, the taste of him still on my lips and my cheeks hot with shame and guilt. I know I should probably ignore it, but I don’t. I curl up under the covers instead, staring out the window as the bare branches of the tree outside scrape at the sky, and answer it.

It’s another secret, another lie, and the worst part is that I’m lying to myself this time. Telling myself that I’m only talking to Gabriel because there’s no one else, and because he might be able to help me figure out what to do about Danny. Ignoring the rushing shiver when I remember kissing him, pretending that I don’t wish we were in the same room so I could do it again.

“I’m falling asleep,” I whisper into the phone after an hour of talking about things that don’t matter, music and pizza and Mr. Rokozny’s horrible suits and the costumes we wore on Halloween as kids.

“And my phone is dying,” he says. I can hear his smile.

“Okay. Well…” I don’t know what to say then, and I don’t really want to say good-bye. The sound of his voice is an anchor, bobbing sure and steady across the crackling connection, and I want to hold on to it for as long as I can.

“It’s okay, Wren. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I can hear him breathing, the distant rustle of fabric that means he must be in bed, too. “It’s really okay.”

I want it to be. I want a lot of things that I’m not going to get, though, so I tell him, “It’s really not,” and click off the phone before I start to cry.

I’m pulled in every direction the next two days, stretched so tight I’m sure I’ll snap and tear. On Wednesday Madame Hobart looks like someone just drowned every kitten in the world, and apparently decides torture by the past imperfect tense is the answer to her mood. We get hit with a compare-and-contrast essay on
The Stranger
in World Lit, and I fail the chem lab so spectacularly I’m amazed nothing gets blown up.

It doesn’t help that Jess is there at lunch, tossing stray vegetables from her salad onto my tray and pulling nail polishes out of her bag to hold up for my inspection. Dar’s got a playlist ready for Friday night and a plan to make double fudge brownies, and meanwhile Gabriel is watching me in the hall and in class, eyes shifting to his notebook whenever I catch him or when Jess and Dar are around.

Mom needs me at the salon after school on Wednesday, too, because two of the girls are out sick, and she steers me between the phones and the broom and the wet mess of used towels waiting for the washer. By the time we’re in the car on the way home I have three texts from Dar, two from Jess, and six from Gabriel, and Mom raises an eyebrow as I thumb through them.

“Missing some big party this afternoon?” she says as she pulls into the driveway. The car’s engine dies with a grunt and a wheeze, and she tilts her head to one side, waiting as I flip my phone shut.

“Oh yeah. Rock stars, limos, crazy drugs. The usual Wednesday afternoon scene.” I’m aiming for sarcastic but I land on tired instead, and she reaches out to stroke my cheek.

“You okay, babe?”

I swallow as I look up at her. Her face is so familiar, the slender nose, the delicate mouth, all that thick hair the color of healthy bark, even the smell of her, clean cotton and magnolia over the faint tang of hair dye. For a second I want to admit that I’m not, that I need her to fix everything and let me sleep for about a month, and before I can stop it I’m seeing her through the sting of tears.

“Hey.” She leans closer, runs her thumb over my cheekbone and my jaw, a whispering touch. “What’s going on?”

I shake my head and pull away. I can’t give in. I don’t want to know what would happen if she found out about Danny. It’s too enormous to even imagine, like the whole earth going up in a ball of flame. “I’m just tired,” I say, and stuff my phone in my bag as I reach for the door handle. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

She doesn’t believe me—I can see it in her eyes—but it’s actually not far from the truth. I dreamed all night, of the tree where Becker’s car crashed, wrapping its spindly limbs around me until I couldn’t breathe, of Danny wandering into Bliss, his skin gray and torn, his eyes as dead as the stones that fell out of his pockets, and the whole café full, my mother and Jess and Gabriel and Trevor, all waiting for me to see him, turning me around to watch as he wept blood onto the counter.

My subconscious isn’t very subtle, I guess.

Thursday’s not a lot better, especially since I was up until two again, trying to convince Danny I had to go home. I’m so tired I feel brittle, and I snap at Alicia Ferris in the hall after history when she takes a picture of me picking up notebooks and my iPod and crushed packs of gum from my dropped backpack.

“Seriously?” I hiss, blinking away the flash and feeling that dangerous knife edge of anger cutting through my control. I’m crouched awkwardly with a partially unwrapped tampon in one hand and a forgotten, desiccated apple in the other.

“It’s for the yearbook,” she says, smirking, and holds up the camera to take another.

That’s it—I haven’t even thought about what I’d like to do when the power rolls up out of me in a tingling wave, and the sprinkler above Alicia’s head bursts to life. I scuttle backward, out of the line of fire, as she shrieks and drops the camera.

People up and down the hall are shouting and laughing, and within seconds Andy Petrov is in his socks, sliding along the wet floor, shaking his head like a puppy. Alicia is still stunned and soaked through, ignoring the smashed camera to peel her wet clothes away from her body. Mascara drips down her cheeks like black tears.

By the time Principal Gorder turns the corner, the sprinkler is spitting to a stop and I’m halfway down the hall to lunch. I’m not tired anymore, but I feel scooped out, empty, and beneath the satisfaction—I’ve hated Alicia since fourth grade, at least—the guilt is already rolling inside like a sour stomach.

Jess is waiting, as usual now, and I only manage a quick glance at Gabriel before I sit down at the table she’s chosen. He gives me a small smile before holding up his phone, and the brief flare of relief in my chest somehow feels worse on top of the guilt. There will be a text from him, then, and I hate how much I want to see it, how much I want school to be over so I can talk to him, instead of plotting tomorrow night’s fun with Jess.