Cold Kiss

feedback. But with you…” He stops, tilts his head again, and the weight of his gaze is so heavy, pinning me to my seat. “It’s different. Louder, more intense. It’s energy, and I know what it means, because my grandmother was like you.”
    “Like me?” My voice sounds far away, thin and small.
    “The power you have.” He leans closer, whispering now. “What you can do.”
    And there it is, cards on the table. I swallow hard, imagining him saying something awful next, something that can’t be taken back. Something like plain old witchcraft. I don’t think of it like that, not even when I do think about people burning me at the stake. It sounds wrong, bad. Dangerous.
    And what’s more dangerous than bringing the dead to life? the voice in my head whispers, too sweet, like sugar icing on a poison cookie.
    “And why did you think I would be happy you could sense that?” I whisper back. My arms are folded so tightly across my chest, the muscles are beginning to twitch, and I can almost see the flare of panic snapping in the air around me, hot blue fingers pointing the way to run.
    “Because I’m different, too.” He sounds so urgent, so honest. “How do you think people feel when they realize I know what they’re feeling, if not what they’re thinking exactly? When I can reach in and find the memory of them wetting their sleeping bag at a sleepover in third grade? Or getting blown off by the guy they like? Or seeing the creepy uncle who touched them the wrong way?”
    “But they don’t have to know,” I hiss at him. “You just don’t tell them, and that’s the end of it. If anyone catches me…” I let the words trail off, hanging there in the sour air of the cafeteria between us, heavy enough to crash.
    He doesn’t even blink, and his gaze is so steady, so calm, I let it soothe me a little. “I’m not going to say anything, I promise. And we don’t … I mean, it’s not like I’m holding it over your head. It just surprised me. It was cool to find someone else who was sort of like me.”
    “Freaks of a feather, you mean?” I say, raising an eyebrow, and he rolls his eyes.
    “You’re really a glass-half-empty person, aren’t you?”
    “For now I just want to keep my glass to myself,” I tell him, but I’m smiling. I can’t help it. He looks relieved, like he just stopped short of falling off a cliff.
    Or driving his car into a tree, that same voice in my head whispers, and with a bang, it all comes back. Danny’s still in Mrs. Petrelli’s garage loft, and I’m still the only thing he has in the world.
    I haven’t even eaten my yogurt or my sandwich, but I push my tray across the table to Gabriel. I’m not hungry anymore.
    “Save it for later,” he says, and hands me back the sandwich. “Dorsey’s class will probably be better with a snack.”
    I snort, but I stuff it in my bag. The period’s almost over anyway, and Gabriel grabs my tray when we stand up. I let him, and I let him walk out of the cafeteria with me, too. It’s not a big deal—we’re just walking together, not even touching.
    Except when we go through the double doors into the hallway, there’s Jess, sitting on the window ledge that overlooks the courtyard. David Starger is sitting next to her like the adoring puppy he is when she’s around, and Alicia Ferris is venting about something to do with the yearbook—she’s the photographer this year, which means that every other page will feature pictures of her.
    Jess doesn’t look happy. She looks shocked. Even worse, she looks betrayed.
    And despite the way my heart sinks, for just a second I feel like telling her to get used to it.
    By the time I get to World Lit, all I can think about is damage control. Jess might be a lost cause, but Darcia doesn’t deserve to be hurt, not any more than she already has been, anyway. And I know Jess will have told her I was with Gabriel at lunch, when I haven’t even been eating with her.
    I used to be the one Jess came to when someone had done something outrageous or horrible, like Melissa Schine sleeping with Geoff Dormer before he’d even broken up with Sophie Mathis, or Sketch Harris trashing the music room piano one day when he’d gotten some bad coke.
    Jess’s sense of justice is pretty bulletproof. For her, there are certain rules everyone is supposed to follow, and they’re all unbreakable.
    According to Jess’s code, I’m pretty sure someone who’s still grieving over her dead boyfriend isn’t