Cold Kiss

across the street. “Or, I don’t know, on the back porch?”
    “If he was inside, the whole house would be lit up, don’t you think?” He glances at me. “I mean, your dead son walks in…”
    “I know.” I rub my temples in exhaustion. I don’t want to think about the look on his mother’s face if that happens. What would it be? Horror? Relief? Joy? Confusion? All of the above?
    “Let’s go look, okay?” Gabriel’s hand in the small of my back is just enough motivation to get me across the street. We start up the driveway with our heads down, and I don’t even know what we’re looking for when Gabriel veers left across the dry grass.
    I see it then, though. Scuff marks in the grass, as if something has been dragged through it. And then footprints on the porch steps, which stop at the top before turning around again.
    “He was here,” I whisper, and I glance down the block as if I’ll see him walking away.
    “He didn’t go in,” Gabriel says, and he sounds worried. “He went … somewhere else. Come on.”
    He pulls me off the Greers’ lawn and down the block to the corner. I’m suddenly so exhausted, I sit down abruptly, landing roughly on the curb. The number of places Danny could have gone seems endless. Becker’s, Ryan’s, school, even the café…
    “Let me see,” Gabriel says, and grabs my shoulders, shaking me gently until I look up at him.
    “See what?”
    “Where he might have gone, places that mean something to him,” he says, and stares into my eyes.
    I try to relax, to open up and picture the places where Danny and I have been together, places where Danny hung out with his friends, anything. I feel the jolt when Gabriel sees the site of the accident. His fingers tighten on my shoulders as the memory of the tree flashes through my mind, the scarred trunk still scorched, pieces of the hood embedded in the bark.
    “I can take you there,” I say when he lets go. “We have to look everywhere, though. He could have gone to Ryan’s house or—”
    “Νo.”
    I blink. “What do you mean, no? Come on, Gabriel, we can’t just sit here. I can’t just sit here. Whether you want to come or not, I have to find him!”
    He takes one hand as I start to stand up, pulling me down again, and I can’t shake free. Power pumps through me, urgent and angry, an unfocused hum that needs to be released, but Gabriel says, “Shhh, listen.”
    I take a deep breath and try to relax, so his voice will cut through that awful buzz.
    “It’s after three. You need to go home.” I shake my head, ready to argue, but he keeps talking, his strong hand clenched firmly around mine. “This is bad, okay? But I can find him, or at least keep looking. I mean, it’s going to be bad enough if your mom already figured out you’re gone, but if morning rolls around and you’re not there?”
    A new wave of nausea rolls through me then. Mom. I hadn’t even thought that far ahead, hadn’t thought of anything but finding Danny and getting him back to the loft.
    Across the street a dog barks, and I nearly jump out of my skin. In the night silence, it sounds too close, and Gabriel and I stand up at the same time, moving into the shadow of a huge pine. The neighborhood is still asleep, but in the distance on Mountain Avenue I can hear the occasional car passing, and any minute kids with paper routes could start cycling up and down the streets.
    “Go home,” Gabriel says, and winds his arms around me, pulling me close. “Go home and pretend to get up for school, and when you leave, call me. I’ll keep looking.”
    I want to refuse, tell him it’s not his responsibility, that I can handle this on my own, but I can’t. I press my cheek to his chest and choke back more stupid, hateful tears. I can’t handle this on my own, and I’ve known it for weeks now.
    “I’ll make this up to you.” The words are muffled into his hoodie, but when I lift my head to kiss him, I know he heard me.
    When my alarm goes off at six thirty, I haven’t slept for even a minute. I’m so tired I feel sort of drunk, and I’m pretty sure adrenaline is the only reason I can move.
    I’m sitting on the edge of my bed when Mom opens my door and sticks her head in, the way she almost always does.
    “You up, kiddo?” She’s still in the old flannel shirt she wears to bed, and her pillow left a pink crease in one cheek.
    “Sort of,” I manage to say, and study my bare feet until she closes the door behind her.
    I rush through