Cold Kiss Page 2

  Sometimes when he sits up to look at me, or when I walk into my room and catch a glimpse of that picture, it’s all I can do not to scream. Scream and scream until my throat is shredded and every window shatters and the room goes up in flames.

  I’ve only set something on fire once. It was one of Danny’s T-shirts, actually, an ancient gray Clash shirt his sister scored on eBay for his birthday. I’d found it on my bedroom floor right before Ryan called, and I was twisting it in one fist by the time he told me Becker was in the hospital and Danny was dead.

  It hissed and sputtered for a second before a hot, angry tongue licked out and burned my wrist. I dropped it on the floor, and the phone with it. Ryan was still talking, a tiny, distant voice.

  I don’t remember a lot of what happened after that, but the scorch mark is still there, a sooty black circle against the faded oak. Mom’s not sure it will ever come out completely, but she never once asked me how it got there.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I WASN’T EVEN THIRTEEN YET THE FIRST TIME. It reminded me of a sneeze coming on, that tingling tension when you know it’s going to happen and you can’t stop it. But this feeling was bigger than that, a vibrating hum just beneath my skin that made me squirm all over.

  I was mad at my mother, which was pretty much a daily thing back then. She’d said no to a sleepover at Darcia’s because I hadn’t finished my social studies project, and in her words, “There’s no way I’m going to listen to you whine about it all day tomorrow, when you’re rushing to get it done.”

  Robin stuck her tongue out at me from across the kitchen table, and I made a face at her before I stood up. “Clear your place, Wren,” my mother said, not bothering to glance over her shoulder as she rinsed dishes in the sink.

  I didn’t even have a chance to mutter, “Do I ever forget?” because the humming was louder now, a hot, angry itch just beneath my skin, and then the lightbulb in the fixture over the kitchen table hissed and exploded in a white arc.

  Robin screamed and waved her arms, batting at her hair, brittle pieces of glass skittering over the table, until my mother cut through the noise. “Stop it! Just sit still.”

  I had frozen in place, my plate still in my hands, my mouth hanging open. The weird buzz had subsided, leaving behind a kind of dull sting, like the last day of a bad sunburn, but the kitchen was still crackling with electricity.

  This, I was pretty sure, was one of those Things We Didn’t Talk About. Like where our dad was or why Mom didn’t invite Aunt Mari to the house anymore.

  Or why, sometimes, even when the electric got shut off because Mom was behind on the bills, she could disappear into the basement and the lights would flare to life. Mom had broken her share of lightbulbs, and once the mirror over the bathroom sink, which cut us all in half diagonally for months before she replaced it.

  She could make other things happen, too, better things. Balloons that stayed afloat for days after Robin’s birthday party. Daffodils that budded long before anyone else’s. A fire in the fireplace that burned for hours on just a handful of newspaper and a stray twig.

  When I was really little, six or seven, and Dad had just left, I woke up crying almost every night, shrugging off nightmares like a tangled net. Mom would get into bed with me and sing, low, nonsense tunes that she said Gram had sung to her when she was a kid. And above me, the ceiling would swirl with gently sparkling lights, like summer fireflies, flickering in and out with the tune.

  Those moments were gifts, offered freely, as surprising and wonderful as unexpected gifts always are, unlike the broken mirror and, once, the smoking ruin of the backyard. But even the fairy lights and the balloons weren’t something Robin or I could ask about. The warning was always there in Mom’s eyes, a monster in the closet of a brightly lit room.

  Mom had never once mentioned it would happen to me, too, even though I knew Aunt Mari and Gram could do the same things. It seemed like one of those grown-up privileges, I guess, and not one Mom approved of anymore. But when Robin and I were little, she was totally free about it, and so were Gram and Aunt Mari.

  I remember one Christmas when Robin was really little, not even two, and Gram had taken me into the backyard with Dad. It was snowing, fat, lacy flakes swirling out of the sky, and the trees were dripping with icicles from the night before. Gram stood there wrapped in her big red coat as Dad and I caught snowflakes on our tongues, and she lit up all the icicles like Christmas lights with just a few whispered words.

  Dad had grinned, his teeth as white as the blanket of snow on the grass. “Nicely done, Rowan,” he said, and kissed her cheek. It was too cold to stay out much longer, but I held on to that moment after Dad was gone and later, when Gram died, What I couldn’t understand was what could be bad about something like that, something that was pure beauty, and why Mom never wanted to talk about it.

  Even that night when I shattered the lightbulb, and she was picking sheer slivers of glass out of Robin’s hair, she didn’t say a word. Just tightened her mouth into a hard line and told me to get the broom.

  Instead, I set my plate down on the table with a hollow thud and ran upstairs to my room.

  It’s different now. Aunt Mari has told me some of it, even though Mom would probably kill us both if she knew. But once I was old enough to walk downtown on my own, I figured nothing was stopping me from going to Aunt Mari’s apartment or meeting her at Bliss, the coffee shop where I work now. Whatever happened to change things after Dad was gone was the one thing Aunt Mari wouldn’t talk to me about, but she was happy to share what she knew about the power inside of us.

  Practice makes a big difference, too, even if I still can’t levitate on my own. But once, when Danny and I were tangled on his bed making out, I had to pull away before he noticed I was hovering over him, a half-inch of space between us everywhere but our mouths.

  Being with Danny focused whatever it was inside me, somehow, When we were together, holding hands or kissing or even just curled on the couch, that hum was much stronger, a constant pulse I could feel hot in my blood. But I never showed him what I could do. I never once hinted at it. Even without Aunt Mari’s warnings and a lifetime of my mother’s example, I knew the things I could make happen were just for me.

  Even now, Danny doesn’t know what I am, or what I can do. But then, there are a lot of things Danny doesn’t understand now.

  The fact that I go to school without him is the worst, for him anyway. He doesn’t miss classes, he just hates the fact that I can’t stay with him all day, curled up in the loft. Last week, I stopped climbing up to see him on my way to school because I couldn’t face having the same conversation over and over again.

  “Why can’t I come?” he would say, crowding me against the wall, as tall as ever, his cold hands cradling my face. “I miss you when you’re not here. I’d just sit with you, Wren, I swear. I wouldn’t get in the way. Quiet as a mouse, promise.”

  It’s so hard to say no to that voice. Danny’s always been pretty persuasive, and when he drops his voice like that, low and soft as he whispers against my cheek, I have to fight not to melt into a sloppy puddle.

  What’s worse is how much he sometimes sounds like the old Danny, the one who could make me laugh at all the wrong times, the one who could do dead-on impressions of Mrs. DiFranco intoning the morning announcements over the loudspeaker or ramble movie dialogue off the top of his head. My Danny, the one who died three months ago, is still in there, buried underneath the new one.

  The one who doesn’t want or think about anything but me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I SHOULDER MY BACKPACK AND GO OUT THE front door when I leave the house this morning, the way I always do, but I can’t help sinking down into the collar of my jacket. There’s no way Danny can see me from the one window in the garage loft, but I’m always worried that he’s watching anyway.

  I look over my shoulder a dozen times as I walk to school. As far as I know, he has to do what I tell him to do, and even when he argues about it,
which isn’t often, he’s never once actually ignored me. I’m not sure he can, but the last thing I need is to find him shambling along behind me, pale and squinting in the sharp October sun, calling my name.

  Once I’m at school, lockers slamming and kids laughing and shouting at one another down the hall, I can relax. I slide into my seat in homeroom and nod at Meg D’Angelo, who still has her iPod earbuds in. She nods back, same way she does every morning—we’ve known each other since third grade, and she’s one of those sort-of friends, someone I hang out with at school when Jess and Darcia aren’t around.

  Of course, I haven’t seen them much since Danny died in July, and while Jess has gotten angrily vocal about it over the last few weeks, Darcia just stares at me sadly across the row that separates us in World Lit and sends me cryptic texts about new songs she likes or her little brother’s soccer games.

  At least Meg doesn’t look at me like I’ve disappointed her.

  I slouch down to get my French notebook out of my backpack while Mr. Rokozny calls roll. Madame Hobart is quizzing us on the imperfect tense today, and I fell asleep watching a rerun of some reality show before I even thought about studying.

  I raise my hand silently when Mr. Rokozny calls my name, and it’s only when he pauses after Cleo Darnell’s name to say, “Gabriel DeMarnes?” that I look up.

  Twenty-two pairs of eyes are trained on the kid in the very back of the room. Even Rokozny is squinting at him from above the morning’s roll. This far into October, it’s weird to find a new kid in homeroom.

  “That’s me,” the boy says, and Audrey Diehl sits up a little straighter, head tilted in appreciation.

  He’s tall—I can tell even though he’s hunched over his desk, because his long legs stick out into the faded linoleum of the aisle. His hair is the color of clean sand, and even short it’s sort of messy. He’s all angles, planes, a geometry proof of a boy in a wrinkled yellow button-down and faded jeans, and when I drag my gaze away from the long, slender fingers splayed loose over his thigh, I blink in surprise.

  Because even with everyone in the room checking him out, he’s staring right at me.

  Gabriel DeMarnes is everywhere that day, like a bad smell. Gabriel DeMarnes and his odd gray-blue eyes, which are focused on me way too often.

  He takes the empty seat beside me in trig, dropping the battered textbook Ms. Nardini gives him on the desk with a thud. He has a notebook and a single pencil, but he doesn’t touch either one of them, Whenever he’s not pretending to listen to Ms. Nardini ramble on about ratio identity, he’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

  It makes me itchy in all the wrong ways, heart beating too fast and too hard, like a rabbit, and a dangerous electric tension humming under my skin. He’s making me nervous, which is making me angry, because he’s just a boy, a stupid new boy who doesn’t know anyone and is probably fascinated by something equally stupid, like my beat-up purple Chucks or the fading black heart Danny drew in Sharpie on the back of my left hand two days ago.

  But the sixth time I manage to turn my head and actually catch him staring, it’s obvious that he’s not looking at any of that. He’s looking at me, and somehow he’s seeing past what I’ve got on, past my hair and the trio of silver hoops in my right ear.

  Except it’s more than that. Even though I haven’t said a word to him, he looks like he’s listening to me. His head is tilted to one side, and he’s concentrating, squinting a little bit, like he’s trying to catch something he can’t quite hear, and the loose end of that coiled electricity snaps rough over my nerves.

  “What?” I hiss, and the globe at the front of the room falls off its stand with a crash.

  I swallow hard and fix my eyes on my desk as Ms. Nardini gasps in surprise. “Okay, well, that was weird,” she says with a nervous laugh. She’s pretty much fresh out of college, where she was a sorority girl if the rumors are true, and she always follows her lesson plan like she’s got a gun to her head.

  She’s still examining the globe for cracks when I sneak a glance at Gabriel.

  He’s smiling.

  By the time he walks into history during seventh period, I’m seething. That makes three classes we have together, not counting homeroom. Three hours of him watching me, head tilted, hair flopping over his forehead and hiding his cool eyes when I glance at him.

  I prop my head in my hand, doing my best to keep the furious simmer of energy inside me under control. So far the only other casualty has been a lightbulb in Madame Hobart’s French classroom, but it’s getting harder to ignore that hum. My free hand twitches into a fist on my lap, nails digging into my palm, and the sting slices through the urge to let that current roll up out of me and explode.

  If Mr. Dorsey gives homework, I have no idea what it is. I’m the first one out of the room when the bell rings.

  Darcia’s waiting when I walk into World Lit, chewing on a hank of her dark hair, her feet propped on her seat and one arm wrapped around her knees.

  “Did you finish the reading?”

  “I skimmed,” I say, and drop into my chair. If Gabriel walks into this class, I’m going to have to throw myself on Darcia to make sure she’s not hit by the shrapnel.

  She doesn’t say anything until I’ve dug my notebook out of my backpack. When I look up, she’s curling the ends of her hair around one finger. “Want to come over after school? We could work on the paper together.”

  For a minute, I let myself imagine it. Me and Darcia, the way we used to be, maybe Jess, too, scuffing through the leaves on the way to Darcia’s house, Jess smoking her Marlboros and Darcia readjusting her stuffed backpack every few steps. The comfortable mess of Darcia’s room, cans of diet Coke cracked open, and a half-empty bag of pretzels passed among us as Darcia organizes her homework and Jess sprawls on the bed, flipping through a magazine.

  I want it so much, my heart thuds painfully. It’s been too long since we just hung out the way we used to, and I know Darcia doesn’t understand it—even when Danny was alive, I didn’t abandon them, not completely, the way some girls do as soon as they have a boyfriend.

  But then I see Danny in my head, sitting at the top of the stairs to the loft, restless, pale, jiggling one knee, and I swallow hard. “The paper’s not due for a week,” I tell her, and turn back to my notebook just as Mrs. Garcia walks in.

  When the bell rings and Gabriel is a no-show, I’m so relieved I pretend I don’t notice Darcia’s disappointment.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JESS IS WAITING BY MY LOCKER AFTER SCHOOL, arms folded over her chest. Her dark blond hair is twisted up in a clip behind her head, and her jaw is set in a hard line. I thought I’d waited long enough to avoid her and Darcia both, but Jess is a little scary when she sets her mind to something. She pushed Billy Lanigan her first day at school when he knocked my lunch bag out of my hands, and that was third grade. Billy was twice her size.

  “Are you going through, like, some hermit phase I didn’t know about?” she says without even a simple hello. “Because it’s getting really old.”

  I twist the dial on my lock, staring straight ahead. What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry? Again?

  “I don’t remember asking what you thought of it,” I say instead. It sounds even worse out loud than it did in the millisecond before it fell out of my mouth, and Jess blinks at me.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Wren? What did we do to you? Actually, fuck that, what did Darcia do? Because I know I never did anything to deserve getting blown off like this.”

  When I look up at her, I swallow hard. She’s furious, cheeks bright pink, eyes silvered with tears. That’s wrong on every level. Jess doesn’t cry. Jess just gets mad.

  I drop my French book in surprise, and it thuds to the floor between her sleek black boots and my purple Chucks. For a second I just stare at it—the hum is back, a confused, buzzing swarm just under my skin, and if I move, if I speak, I’m afraid of what will happen.

  “Fine,” Jess says into the silenc
e a moment later, and huffs out something that’s too rough and ugly to be a laugh. “Whatever, Wren. Just … say something to Darcia, okay? She misses you.”

  She walks off, heels clicking angrily on the old linoleum, and for a second I’m frozen in place, staring at my French book, listening to the sound of her footsteps.

  I could follow her. I could drop my backpack on the floor and pound down the hall to catch up. I could tell her I’m sorry. I could tell her I miss her and Darcia, too. I could tell her I’m stupid and awful and I suck.

  It’s all true.

  But I can’t tell her that my dead boyfriend is living in the neighbor’s garage. I can’t tell her I’m the one who brought him back. I can’t tell her that I’m starting to wonder what’s going to happen to him, and to me. He can’t live there forever. He’s not living in the first place.

  That’s all true, too, and I feel sick suddenly, my stomach tightening up like a fist. I grabbed Danny back because I couldn’t stand to lose anything else, not when Dad was gone, and Gram was dead, and Aunt Mari was someone I had to see in secret. And now I’m losing Jess and Darcia, too.

  I slide to the floor and sit with my back up against the lockers. The floor smells like old lemon wax and dust and feet, but I sit there until Mrs. Griffith wanders by and stops to ask me what’s wrong.

  By then, Jess is long gone.

  It’s already four when I finally leave, and even though I can imagine Danny pacing back and forth—or even scarier, sitting completely still at the top of the stairs, eyes fixed on the bottom, waiting for me—I walk through town to the library.

  It’s cold and gray out, and dead leaves swirl in rusty little clouds at my feet as I scuff up the sidewalk to the building. A couple of cheerleaders, seniors, are perched on the banister that lines the steps, blowing smoke rings and laughing. They ignore me, as usual, which has always been fine.