Cold Kiss Page 5

  But when I sit down, sliding Darcia’s mocha across the table toward her, I realize I have no idea what to say. I don’t know what she’s been doing since school started, if she’s still taking guitar lessons or if she ever talked her mom into letting her get a job. I don’t know what new bands she’s discovered or what boys she’s crushing on, and there are always a few, all admired from afar.

  Even when Danny was alive we spent most of our time together. Even when Jess was dating Tyler Ford or that asshole J.D. Springer, and Dar was starting to worry about getting into college. We’d started having weekly sleepovers when we were still young enough to be thrilled that Jess’s mom had made Rice Krispies Treats and when staying up past midnight was still a big deal. By the time we were in high school the only difference was that we were talking about how J.D. didn’t know that tongue in a girl’s ear wasn’t a good thing instead of which one of us was going to marry the lead singer of Fall Out Boy one day.

  I knew when Darcia got her period, and she knew the day that Jess and I tried smoking. Jess heard all about the time I threw up wine coolers on Will Zorger’s shoes, and Dar confided to us that she stole a lipstick from the drugstore downtown. Despite all that history, I suddenly have no idea what to say to her.

  I can tell it’s not any easier for her. She’s put the iPod away again, but she’s got her lit notebook open on the table like a shield, and she keeps doodling in the margin instead of looking at me. When she speaks, it’s such a surprise I almost spill my drink.

  “So you’re doing better now?” Her voice is soft, as tentative as always. “About … Danny, I mean?”

  And there it is. The reason everything is different, even if she doesn’t know just how true that is.

  “I guess?” I can’t help making it a question, because I don’t know what else to say. I can’t tell her it’s really so much worse now.

  “I’m sorry.” She swallows, looking anywhere but at me, a half-eaten cookie in her hand. “I mean, I’m not saying it’s okay now, or that you’re okay, that’s not what I meant.” Her words hang awkwardly in the warm, mocha-scented air. She looks miserable.

  “I know what you meant, Dar,” I tell her, even though I can feel the sharp edges of all the words I can’t say, jagged and painful in my throat. “I’m trying.”

  That’s the truth anyway.

  “I know you loved him,” she says, and puts down the cookie. It lies like a dusty half-moon on the plate. “How much you loved him. It’s not a question of that.”

  I blink at her. “I never thought it was.”

  “I know!” She’s flushed now, cheeks hot and pink. “I just meant…”

  “You meant it’s a question for Jess because she saw me at lunch with Gabriel.” It sounds so stupid out loud. A boy sat with me at lunch and suddenly I’m on trial. God, if either of them knew what was really going on, you could probably hear the screams in Siberia. No, in space.

  “Wren.” It’s only my name, but I can hear questions and explanations and apologies in it. I ignore it, though. I’m too angry to worry about her feelings anymore.

  “Don’t, okay?” The lights overhead flicker and buzz, but I ignore them, too. “I didn’t ask him to sit with me. I didn’t ask him to keep talking to me. I don’t know what his deal is, okay? It’s not like I’m looking for a replacement for Danny, so you can tell Jess to back off.”

  “Wren.” This time it’s pained, surprised, almost breathless, and the sound of it is a dart, quick and sharp.

  Don’t go too far, that voice in my head whispers. Hold on. You have to hold on to her, to them.

  “I don’t mean it like that.” I scrub a hand through my hair, and I know it probably looks like demented feathers now, but it doesn’t matter. “It’s just been a really hard time for me. There aren’t rules for this, you know? Do X, Y, and Z and you’ll be over it. It doesn’t work like that, Dar. And I hate that Jess is judging me for something I haven’t even done.”

  It’s a cheap shot and I know it, but it works. Her expression is startled and defensive when she glances up at me, but I can tell the person she wants to defend is me.

  “I can talk to her,” she says too fast. “She misses you, too. And we don’t know what to do, Wren. How to help. And you seemed to want to be alone, so we did that, but … well, we miss you. Jess just gets mad about it.”

  “I know.” And I do. Jess hates to be upset, especially when she feels like she can’t do anything about it. And that makes her mad. She’s been mad at me a lot the last few months.

  “If you could just talk to her…,” Darcia begins, and turns those big green-gold eyes on me. She’s so hopeful, even when everything looks crappy. I think she was supposed to be a Disney princess instead of a normal kid in a middle-class family.

  “I tried that, and she told me to go fuck myself,” I say, but there’s no heat in the words.

  “You didn’t try very hard, if she told the story right.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and I sit up a little straighter. Darcia doesn’t get tough very often, and when she does, she’s more pit bull than princess.

  And there’s that bone-deep hum again, vibrating through me, but this time nothing happens except for the way I open my mouth and speak before I can think twice. It’s not magic, it’s pure panic.

  “Come over next Friday night,” I say, and even I can hear the reckless edge to the words. “We’ll have a sleepover, just like we used to, all three of us.”

  Darcia lights up like someone plugged her in, and then it’s too late. She blinks at me and swallows hard, and God, if she starts to cry, I’m going to sink into the floor right here, but she holds it together at the last minute.

  “I’ll help you,” she promises, reaching across the table to touch my hand. “I’ll talk to Jess first, okay? But you have to call her, too.”

  “I will.” I’m nodding, barely listening as she starts planning. All I can see is Danny, sitting alone on his bed, face twisted into confusion and maybe even panic. Friday nights, or some of them anyway, are his, the one night I can stay in the loft with him if I’m creative with the lies I tell Mom.

  Mom, who thinks I’ve been with Darcia and Jess a dozen or more times since Danny died. That’ll be fun, trying to keep them away from her so she doesn’t ask any awkward questions about all the other nights I’ve allegedly been at one of their houses. And then there’s Robin, who’ll jump all over them like a lonely puppy, looking for the kind of attention they used to give her. All I need is for her to open her mouth about the times she’s caught me creeping upstairs late at night when I was supposed to be in bed hours before.

  Panic tastes a lot like metal, too bright and cold, and it freezes me in place, one hand curled around my mug and a weak smile on my face as Darcia chatters on about next week.

  I figure I should probably get used to the feeling.

  Darcia hugs me, one-armed and fierce, on the corner of Elm and Dudley where we always split up to go our own ways home. It’s nearly five now, getting darker earlier and earlier every day, and the wind lifts her hair into a tangle of dark brown corkscrews as she walks away. She’s facing backward, waving with her free hand, and I can’t help smiling.

  But the moment I turn around to head up Dudley toward home, my smile falls away. There’s Gabriel, hunched into an ancient denim jacket, waiting for me on the next corner.

  “Hey,” he says when I reach him, and he sounds so easy, so casual, like we’re best friends now, that for a second anger prickles just under my skin.

  I’m too tired to feed it, though, so I simply nod at him. He falls into step beside me, and suddenly I wonder if he can feel how confused and terrified I am about what I agreed to with Darcia.

  “On your way home?” I ask, because distracting him seems like the best option.

  “Yeah. I live up on the north end of Prospect.”

  Not far from me. Naturally. I swallow a sigh. He doesn’t seem inclined to say much more, though, so I ask the next thing that comes to mind,
“Where’d you go after school?”

  “Downtown.” He shrugs, and I realize he doesn’t even have a backpack. “Looking for a job.”

  “Oh yeah? Find anything?”

  “The guy at the bakery said he’d get back to me, and the manager at the movie theater gave me an application.” He gives me a tight smile and turns his head to let the wind blow his hair off his forehead. “It’s just me and my sister, so I could use some extra cash.”

  “Oh.” I’m not sure what else to say, and in the thinning light, his eyes are hard to read.

  “My mom died a long time ago. My dad isn’t around right now.”

  “Oh. Wow.” God, I sound like a complete idiot when I could be telling him I at least know how the second part feels.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” he says, and he smiles then, a wry and twisted grin that makes me laugh. “I mean, I know it sounds weird, but it’s a good thing. My dad being gone, anyway. I miss my mom sometimes, but she was really sick, and she’s not now, so… I think it’s harder for Olivia.”

  “She’s your sister?” We’ve slowed down, kicking idly at the muddy drifts of leaves on the sidewalk.

  “Yeah. She’s a bartender at Bar Car, that place down by the train station, and she teaches yoga at the Y some mornings.”

  I glance sideways at him, but he’s focused on the sidewalk, watching as he steps carefully in the middle of each square, avoiding the cracks.

  That sounds hard. It’s hard enough for us, with just my mom, but at least she’s an adult, even if Dad left a cold, empty space behind when he left us. I wonder how old Gabriel’s sister is, if she gave up college for this, where their dad is exactly, and suddenly Gabriel turns his head and looks at me with a sly grin.

  “Curious, huh?”

  I reel back as if he slapped me. “Not fair.”

  “Well, you’re thinking about me, so I figured it was a little bit fair.”

  “But you couldn’t know that unless you peeked.” I sound like a little kid about to have a tantrum, and I hate it, but as much as I want to ask him about his grandmother, and what he knows about people with powers like mine, I want to scream, Don’t look! even more.

  Maybe he can feel it anyway, because his grin fades and he hunches into his coat again as the wind sweeps us farther up the street. “I’m sorry. I was just teasing. Olivia’s twenty-four, and no, she never went to college. My dad is, um, another story.”

  He looks so contrite, almost shy, that I want to apologize, but I won’t. I can’t, I realize, as I watch his strange eyes darting over at my face, his hair falling forward.

  He’s just a boy. A cute boy, yeah, a really interesting boy, but just a boy. And I have a boy. I have a boyfriend, even if the rest of the world thinks he’s gone. I have a boyfriend who has nothing but me, and not even all of me, not anymore. I don’t have any business with Gabriel, here and now or any other time. And I can’t let him think I do.

  So I square my shoulders, hitch my battered JanSport up higher, and set my jaw. “I’m sorry. That sounds rough.”

  He blinks, surprised by my tone maybe, but before he can say anything I’m pointing at the sign for Edgewood, my street. My stomach twists, sick-hot, because I hate lying, pretending, and it feels like all I do anymore.

  “That’s me, and I’m late, so I’m going to run. Bye, Gabriel.”

  My Docs smack the sidewalk as I take off at a run, and if he answers, the wind carries it away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DANNY SAYS, “YOU DIDN’T MEAN IT,” AND PULLS me close. I nod, even though it doesn’t really work with my forehead pressed against his chest, and he smoothes a hand down my back. Warm, strong, almost big enough to span it with his fingers outstretched.

  Warm. Warm? I turn my head so my cheek rests against his breastbone, and there, just underneath the skin, is the sturdy clock of his heart, ticking steadily.

  “Danny…”

  But when I raise my head to look at him, it’s Gabriel, his smile a sudden flash of white. “You didn’t mean it,” he says, and I nod again, even though I’m not sure what he means.

  He smells good, faintly spicy, and he’s so warm, so warm, I can feel his blood carrying heat through him, pushing up through bone and muscle to skin.

  “You didn’t mean it,” he whispers into my hair, and I close my eyes. I didn’t. I know that much. He knows that much.

  It’s his hand stroking my back now, and I’m almost asleep when I hear the thud.

  Danny, his eyes like polished stones in the dark, huddled in the corner, his arms around his knees. Thud. His head hits the wall with a sickening wet gush. Thud.

  “You didn’t mean it,” he says, and Gabriel strokes my back. Thud.

  “Stop,” I whisper, but Gabriel won’t let me go. Blood is running down the back of Danny’s head, dripping thick and black in the dark onto his shirt. Thud.

  I open my eyes, panting, as the wall behind my bed shakes. It’s Sunday morning, and lately Robin’s been practicing headers in her bedroom, so she can bounce the soccer ball off the wall.

  I squint at the alarm clock: 10: 47. Way too late, even on a Sunday morning, to complain to Mom. I bury my head under the pillow instead, but it doesn’t help. I can feel the vibrations.

  I can see Danny’s face. Thud.

  I bang on the wall with one balled-up fist and sit up to throw back the covers. I hate Sundays.

  Sundays are the only days the salon is closed, so they used to be awesome. Sundays meant pancakes or waffles for breakfast and lingering around the table with the radio on. Sundays were when Mom cut our hair right there in the kitchen, or we convinced her to curl or braid it or put it up in elaborate knots. When we walked to the playground or went to the mall, when we made cookies on rainy afternoons or went to the matinee at the dollar theater on the south side of town. Dad’s been gone so long that Robin doesn’t remember other weekends, when the four of us went to the park or downtown for pizza, or curled up on the sofa in one big pile on winter days, watching a movie.

  I remember, but Dad’s been gone so long that the ache of missing him is dull, a vague sore spot that I know not to touch. It’s harder not to poke at the memories of Aunt Mari and Gram.

  It’s different now, anyway. We’re older, for one—even Robin isn’t into sitting around playing hairdresser anymore. She has soccer practice on Sundays in the fall and the spring, and I sometimes have shifts at Bliss. Mom uses the day to do laundry and clean the bathroom, which she doesn’t trust either of us to do right, and usually spends the afternoon sprawled on the sofa with a DVD or a book.

  Even last spring, I might have joined her, curled up to watch a cheesy movie or let her quiz me on my French vocabulary. Before Danny died, in other words. Before I had so much to hide.

  Now it’s the hardest day to get out back to see Danny—even if Mom decides to hit the supermarket, she’s never gone for more than an hour or two, and when we’re both home, I can feel the weight of her gaze on me like a physical thing.

  She’s in the kitchen when I go downstairs, and she looks up from folding clean laundry on the kitchen table when I head for the coffeemaker.

  “She’s doing it again.” I close my eyes as I lift my mug to my nose and breathe deep. If I can concentrate, the dream will fade out, disappear like the steam curling out of my mug.

  “I need a little more information than that, babe.” I can hear the smile in her voice. It’s a good day, then. I know she’s been busy at the salon, and that always makes her happy.

  “Robin. Soccer ball. Wall.” I slouch into the chair across from her and set my mug down.

  “Hey, don’t splash,” Mom says, and then cocks her head, listening. Upstairs, there’s a distant thud, thud, thud, and she sighs. “Well, it got you out of bed. I’m not sure I can complain.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Not working today?” Above the T-shirt of Robin’s she’s folding, her eyes are calm and simply curious, the same gold-flecked green as Robin’s. Mine are pl
ain brown, the color of dried mud.

  “I worked yesterday,” I tell her, and breathe in the caffeine-rich steam of my coffee again. Mom’s always up and out early on Saturdays, since that’s the salon’s busiest day. Robin usually has a game, and then spends the afternoon with Mom doing homework and answering the phone at the front desk.

  “Do you have homework to do today?”

  “Always,” I groan, and pick through the laundry when I spot my favorite shirt. “But I’m going to see Becker later.”

  Mom makes a noncommittal hmm noise, but I can feel her watching me as I finish my coffee and set the mug in the sink. I hate that she doesn’t trust me anymore, but I hate more that I know she shouldn’t. Half of what I tell her is a lie, and I never meet her eyes these days if I can help it.

  Even now, I’m wondering if I can get down Clark and over to Rosewood and to the loft before I come home. I’ve never left Danny alone for a whole day, and he was strange last night, his fingers too tight where they were twined with mine as I said good-bye.

  Thud. I can still hear it, still see his face, smooth as stone, empty, his eyes flat and unseeing. I turn around and paw blindly across the counter for the basket of fruit, anything to focus on.

  Robin bangs into the kitchen as I’m peeling a banana, soccer ball balanced in one hand and her practice bag slung over her shoulder.

  “Ooh, look, she’s risen from the dead,” she says, and I nearly choke on my banana.

  “No thanks to you,” I manage a moment later, when Mom frowns. “Soccer is an outdoor sport, genius.”

  “Whatever.” She’s got the attitude down already, I have to give her that, even if she is still twelve. “I’m the only girl on the team who can head the ball, and I have to practice.”

  I roll my eyes at her this time, even though it is sort of cool—I’ve been to a couple of her games, and she’s really good, a sturdy little streak of lightning on the field, her feet always moving. She loves sports the way I, well, don’t, and it’s pretty awesome.

  I don’t tell her that, though. Her head is big enough as it is.