Cold Kiss

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