Cold Kiss

picks at a loose strand on the hem of her sweater and folds her legs under her as if she’s settling in.
    I want to scream her out of the room, but I can’t. As annoying as she can be, Robin is my little sister, and she looks as lost and confused as I’ve ever seen her.
    “What’s wrong?” I sit down beside her and pull her hair off her forehead, scraping it back with my fingers shaped into a loose comb.
    “You tell me.” Her eyes are so honest, everything she feels right there for me to see. “Mom’s … being weird. Like, weirder than usual.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She was burning leaves in the backyard. Without matches. And it was all blue and purple and green.”
    Shit.
    “She stopped when I went back there, but Wren…” Robin shakes her head, and the first hint of tears makes her eyes gleam wet and bright. “I don’t get it. I mean, she won’t explain it, and you won’t explain it, and now I’m starting to…”
    Shit. I put my arm around her and pull her closer, and I can feel the power in both of us—my fury, her frustration, twined and humming hard.
    “I know,” I tell her, useless and helpless and so angry at my mother and myself, I could cry with her if it wouldn’t be so much more satisfying to scream instead.
    I’ve held tight to my memories of Dad, big and warm and smiling as he tucked me into bed or hoisted me onto his shoulders. And I’ve never let myself forget when Aunt Mari and Gram were regular fixtures in the house. Aunt Mari was always around, usually laughing with Mom, and Gram was outside with me a lot, watching me play or bent over the flower beds, coaxing tulips and daffodils open. Everything Gram planted has died since then.
    So many of those memories are just fluttering scraps I have to grab at now: Aunt Mari singing to baby Robin, trailing a hand in the air so streaks of glittery color danced to the melody. Gram bending over a pot on the stove, waving the flame higher so good smells floated into the kitchen. The three of them, Mom, Mari, and Gram, sitting around the dining room table looking at old photos, some hanging precariously in midair so everyone could see them. Dad always nearby, smiling, not exactly part of it, but content to watch.
    But Robin doesn’t remember any of that. I don’t know if it’s worse that she doesn’t, or that I do, that I know there was a time when our power wasn’t something Mom denied, and Aunt Mari and our grandmother were still a part of our lives. What I don’t know is why that changed.
    “I know it’s starting for you,” I finally say, still holding her, pressing the words into the tangled silk of her hair. “And it’s not a bad thing. It’s not, no matter how Mom acts. But there are … rules to it.”
    “How are we supposed to know what they are if Mom won’t tell us?” Robin protests, and pushes away so she can look me in the eye. “I know you can do things, I’ve seen you, and you don’t care if Mom doesn’t want you to.”
    I’m older than you is a lame thing to say, and so is pretty much everything else I can think of, especially when she’s staring at me, confused and defiant and afraid all at once. Especially when right now it feels like I would have been better off never testing the energy inside me.
    “You have to know how to use it, Robin,” I say instead. It’s weak and I hate it, because Mom could teach us both, could explain what it means and how to control it, but I’m not going to be the one to tell my little sister to start experimenting, not when my dead boyfriend is just a few blocks away.
    “But Mom could teach us!” She gets up and kicks one of my Chucks across the floor. It slides into a pile of dirty clothes and she stares at it, arms folded. She’s attempting sullen, but I know she’s trying not to cry. “And I know you guys were fighting because of it. Neither of you tell me anything.”
    “We weren’t, Binny,” I say softly. It’s almost true, anyway. “Not today.”
    “Whatever.” She shakes her hair over her shoulders and faces me, mouth set tight. “I’m just sick of it. I come home and find her making, like, magical rainbow fire in the backyard and I’m just supposed to pretend that—”
    The door swings open, cutting her off. Mom looks calm enough now, but I know she’s just trying to smooth things over for Robin.
    “I need to talk to your sister, Robin.”
    “I figured.” Robin pushes past her, and on any other day Mom would scold her for being