Cold Kiss

into the one person I really don’t want to see.
    “Whoa, sorry,” Gabriel says, catching me with both hands on my upper arms. “I didn’t see you coming.”
    I’m positive he’s lying. “Yeah, well.” I shrug him off and start walking, but I can hear him following me, feet heavy on the sidewalk. I scan the quiet street and run across it, toward home.
    “You don’t like me,” he says as he falls into step beside me, dry leaves and grass crackling underfoot. It’s not a question.
    “I don’t know you.” It’s true, even if what he said is true, too.
    “Gabriel,” he says, and turns around to walk backward, holding out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
    “God, what is your problem?” I’m trying for casual, dismissive, but my face is already hot, and I know he can see it. “Go find some other girl to bother. Believe me, they’ll all be thrilled to have fresh meat to chew on.”
    “Not interested,” he says, and steps easily over a dead twig, still walking backward, eyes fixed on my face.
    “Not my problem,” I tell him, and try to ignore the way my heart is pounding again. I can control myself, I can, I just have to concentrate. I walk faster, trying to pass him, but he matches me step for step.
    “I can feel it, you know,” he says, and suddenly stops dead, grabbing my arm so I stumble to a halt beside him. “What’s inside you.”
    My blood is racing so hot through my veins, my skin is tight, tingling. He can’t know, no one knows, it’s not something you can see.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I manage, even though my tongue feels too thick in my mouth, huge and clumsy.
    I break into a run before I’m even conscious that my feet are moving, and all I can hear over my thudding footsteps is him calling, “Yes, you do.”
    I run right past my house, through the overgrown yard to Mrs. Petrelli’s garage. I’m sweating, panting, completely out of breath, my backpack banging against one hip, but I don’t care. I scramble up the stairs, and all I can think about is Danny holding me.
    He’s waiting, tense and blinking, standing at the edge of the makeshift bed. “Wren.”
    I don’t—can’t—say anything, I just drop my backpack with a thud on the dusty floor and walk into his arms, burying my head against his chest.
    His arms tighten around me, fingers tangling in my hair. “I heard you coming. I missed you,” he whispers, and sits down, pulling me into his lap.
    He leans his cheek on my head, runs his hands down my spine and then back up, underneath my hoodie, and it’s just like the million other times we’ve sat together like this.
    It’s what I wanted, but it’s all wrong. He’s cold and white as a bone, too hard, and when I lay my cheek against his chest, the silence is awful. I used to lie with him on the sofa in Becker’s basement, or upstairs in my bed when Mom wasn’t home, and count his heartbeats, a sturdy thump-thump I could feel beneath my palm, even through his T-shirt.
    “What’s wrong?” he says. “You’re shaking.”
    There’s no way to answer him. Not honestly, anyway. You’re wrong, I want to say. This is wrong. I was so, so wrong to think I could do this. Or hide it.
    Instead, I simply whisper, “Cold.”
    He holds me tighter, strokes my back. It doesn’t make me any warmer, but I sit there anyway until it’s dark, because he likes me there. He always seems more centered as soon as I come up to the loft. Whenever I manage to get up the stairs without him hearing me coming, he’s sprawled so loosely on the bed that he looks a little bit like a marionette whose puppeteer has tossed him aside.
    I can’t run from this. I can’t hide from him. Not in the library, not anywhere.
    What’s just as scary is that I guess I can’t hide from Gabriel, either.

CHAPTER FIVE

    PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY THEY FEEL NUMB AND empty when they lose someone.
    I feel that way now sometimes, when Danny and I are curled together on his bed in the loft. But in the days right after he died? At his funeral? I felt like I’d been stuck under a glass, so that everything inside me—rage, grief, terror—resonated louder, harder, clanging together until I could feel it in my bones.
    As we stood there beside his grave, the only sound other than the minister talking about eternal peace was Danny’s mother, sobbing. Danny’s dad had his arm around her, holding her up, but his jaw was clenched so tightly, I was pretty sure he was going to lose it any