Cold Kiss

and whole, as long as I wanted.
    It didn’t last, of course. After a while, it got too hard not to let him take my hand in the hallway, or snug up behind me at my locker, his chin balanced on the top of my head as his hands snaked around my waist. After a while I wanted to share it, to show it off, to let the world see why I was smiling like a complete idiot half the time.
    It’s not like that with Gabriel.
    My phone buzzes that night, after I’ve run the last few windy blocks home, the taste of him still on my lips and my cheeks hot with shame and guilt. I know I should probably ignore it, but I don’t. I curl up under the covers instead, staring out the window as the bare branches of the tree outside scrape at the sky, and answer it.
    It’s another secret, another lie, and the worst part is that I’m lying to myself this time. Telling myself that I’m only talking to Gabriel because there’s no one else, and because he might be able to help me figure out what to do about Danny. Ignoring the rushing shiver when I remember kissing him, pretending that I don’t wish we were in the same room so I could do it again.
    “I’m falling asleep,” I whisper into the phone after an hour of talking about things that don’t matter, music and pizza and Mr. Rokozny’s horrible suits and the costumes we wore on Halloween as kids.
    “And my phone is dying,” he says. I can hear his smile.
    “Okay. Well…” I don’t know what to say then, and I don’t really want to say good-bye. The sound of his voice is an anchor, bobbing sure and steady across the crackling connection, and I want to hold on to it for as long as I can.
    “It’s okay, Wren. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I can hear him breathing, the distant rustle of fabric that means he must be in bed, too. “It’s really okay.”
    I want it to be. I want a lot of things that I’m not going to get, though, so I tell him, “It’s really not,” and click off the phone before I start to cry.

I’m pulled in every direction the next two days, stretched so tight I’m sure I’ll snap and tear. On Wednesday Madame Hobart looks like someone just drowned every kitten in the world, and apparently decides torture by the past imperfect tense is the answer to her mood. We get hit with a compare-and-contrast essay on The Stranger in World Lit, and I fail the chem lab so spectacularly I’m amazed nothing gets blown up.
    It doesn’t help that Jess is there at lunch, tossing stray vegetables from her salad onto my tray and pulling nail polishes out of her bag to hold up for my inspection. Dar’s got a playlist ready for Friday night and a plan to make double fudge brownies, and meanwhile Gabriel is watching me in the hall and in class, eyes shifting to his notebook whenever I catch him or when Jess and Dar are around.
    Mom needs me at the salon after school on Wednesday, too, because two of the girls are out sick, and she steers me between the phones and the broom and the wet mess of used towels waiting for the washer. By the time we’re in the car on the way home I have three texts from Dar, two from Jess, and six from Gabriel, and Mom raises an eyebrow as I thumb through them.
    “Missing some big party this afternoon?” she says as she pulls into the driveway. The car’s engine dies with a grunt and a wheeze, and she tilts her head to one side, waiting as I flip my phone shut.
    “Oh yeah. Rock stars, limos, crazy drugs. The usual Wednesday afternoon scene.” I’m aiming for sarcastic but I land on tired instead, and she reaches out to stroke my cheek.
    “You okay, babe?”
    I swallow as I look up at her. Her face is so familiar, the slender nose, the delicate mouth, all that thick hair the color of healthy bark, even the smell of her, clean cotton and magnolia over the faint tang of hair dye. For a second I want to admit that I’m not, that I need her to fix everything and let me sleep for about a month, and before I can stop it I’m seeing her through the sting of tears.
    “Hey.” She leans closer, runs her thumb over my cheekbone and my jaw, a whispering touch. “What’s going on?”
    I shake my head and pull away. I can’t give in. I don’t want to know what would happen if she found out about Danny. It’s too enormous to even imagine, like the whole earth going up in a ball of flame. “I’m just tired,” I say, and stuff my phone in my bag as I reach for the door handle. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
    She doesn’t believe me—I