Cold Kiss

sorry you have to.”
    I let her hold me for a second, my nose buried in her hair, but then I push away. I can’t waste time now. Gabriel squeezes my hand and kisses me, but I have to give him credit—after I go into his room, he disappears. He doesn’t ask to watch me as I whisper the words to get Danny to his feet, and he doesn’t watch as I lead him out of the apartment and down the street, his steps carefully measured as he walks beside me, his hand in mine.
    This time is for me, to say good-bye to Danny. And I can’t help but be thankful that this docile, silent boy is the one beside me, because if I had to face the Danny I remember, the one I fell in love with, right now, I’m not sure I could do what I have to.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

    IT’S APRIL, AND IT’S RAINING, THE KIND OF gray, sliding, icy rain that won’t stop, until everything feels damp and clammy, even the curtains when I pull them shut against the slicked window.
    Danny is warm. His soaked jacket is downstairs on the coatrack, and even though his hair is wet against the back of his neck, even though he has to rub his chilly hands together for a few minutes to get the blood pumping into them, when I run my hands up under his shirt, his back is warm. When I rest my cheek against his chest, nuzzling into the faded cotton, he’s warm. I want to wrap myself in him. And I’m going to. Right now, this minute, I know that.
    My mom is at work, and Robin is at a weekend soccer camp upstate, and I don’t know where Danny’s mom thinks he is, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Saturday and it’s just noon, and no one is going to be looking for us for hours.
    We haven’t talked about this, not in so many words. I’m not even sure Danny knows what I’m thinking. But we’ve been edging closer to it for weeks, months, and there aren’t a lot of boundaries left between us when we’re tangled up together anymore.
    I want to erase them all, finally. I want … That’s as far as I think, really. I just want .
    “Wren?”
    My name is muffled, because I’m kissing him, but I’m also pulling him down onto the bed, unbuttoning the flannel he’s got over an old Weezer shirt. I’m about four steps ahead of him, and I need to let him catch up.
    I drag in a shaky breath and kneel beside him on the bed, running my thumb over his cheekbone. I don’t know what he can see in my eyes, but he blinks and says, “Yeah?”
    I nod. “Yeah.”
    “But I don’t, um, I don’t have—”
    “I do.” The condoms Mom bought me—and God, I am never telling him that—are in my bedside drawer. “We’re all set.”
    “Oh yeah?” He cocks an eyebrow, pulls me off balance and into his lap. “What if I say no? Ever think about that, Miss I’m All Set?”
    “I really hope you’re kidding.” I kiss his collarbone, the smooth slope of his shoulder where it arches into his neck.
    “I don’t think you have to worry,” he says, and the words tickle my ear as his tongue paints a light stripe against my cheek.
    We don’t talk after that, not really. And it’s not perfect, I mean, there aren’t, like, rainbows and fireworks and sirens going off, but it’s perfect anyway. Because it’s Danny almost toppling over when he wrestles out of his jeans, and it’s Danny laughing into the skin of my belly when I hit my head on the wall hard enough that we both hear it crack. And it’s Danny who tangles our fingers together when we’re finally there, holding on tight, watching my face, and it’s Danny who lets me touch and explore and whisper and press smiling kisses into his hair and his cheek later, after.
    I hope he remembers it the way I do. Or that he remembered it that way before I gave him memories he was never meant to have.
    He’s quiet beside me in the dark cemetery, although he does trace his name on the stone that marks the head of his grave. I don’t know how much he understands about what’s going to happen, and I don’t want to tell him. The spell I cast when he was still lying on Gabriel’s bed was written to make him mobile, but not much more. He’s awake, but he’s not, not really—the boy I loved is buried somewhere in a body that looks familiar, but isn’t really the most important part of him.
    That Danny, the one who used to chase me down the street, threatening to tickle me if I didn’t kiss him again, who used to piggyback me up and down the science hall after school as we left the building, who used to sing snatches of songs to me on