Cold Kiss

look up, she’s curling the ends of her hair around one finger. “Want to come over after school? We could work on the paper together.”
    For a minute, I let myself imagine it. Me and Darcia, the way we used to be, maybe Jess, too, scuffing through the leaves on the way to Darcia’s house, Jess smoking her Marlboros and Darcia readjusting her stuffed backpack every few steps. The comfortable mess of Darcia’s room, cans of diet Coke cracked open, and a half-empty bag of pretzels passed among us as Darcia organizes her homework and Jess sprawls on the bed, flipping through a magazine.
    I want it so much, my heart thuds painfully. It’s been too long since we just hung out the way we used to, and I know Darcia doesn’t understand it—even when Danny was alive, I didn’t abandon them, not completely, the way some girls do as soon as they have a boyfriend.
    But then I see Danny in my head, sitting at the top of the stairs to the loft, restless, pale, jiggling one knee, and I swallow hard. “The paper’s not due for a week,” I tell her, and turn back to my notebook just as Mrs. Garcia walks in.
    When the bell rings and Gabriel is a no-show, I’m so relieved I pretend I don’t notice Darcia’s disappointment.

CHAPTER FOUR

    JESS IS WAITING BY MY LOCKER AFTER SCHOOL, arms folded over her chest. Her dark blond hair is twisted up in a clip behind her head, and her jaw is set in a hard line. I thought I’d waited long enough to avoid her and Darcia both, but Jess is a little scary when she sets her mind to something. She pushed Billy Lanigan her first day at school when he knocked my lunch bag out of my hands, and that was third grade. Billy was twice her size.
    “Are you going through, like, some hermit phase I didn’t know about?” she says without even a simple hello. “Because it’s getting really old.”
    I twist the dial on my lock, staring straight ahead. What am I supposed to say? I’m sorry? Again?
    “I don’t remember asking what you thought of it,” I say instead. It sounds even worse out loud than it did in the millisecond before it fell out of my mouth, and Jess blinks at me.
    “What the hell is wrong with you, Wren? What did we do to you? Actually, fuck that, what did Darcia do? Because I know I never did anything to deserve getting blown off like this.”
    When I look up at her, I swallow hard. She’s furious, cheeks bright pink, eyes silvered with tears. That’s wrong on every level. Jess doesn’t cry. Jess just gets mad .
    I drop my French book in surprise, and it thuds to the floor between her sleek black boots and my purple Chucks. For a second I just stare at it—the hum is back, a confused, buzzing swarm just under my skin, and if I move, if I speak, I’m afraid of what will happen.
    “Fine,” Jess says into the silence a moment later, and huffs out something that’s too rough and ugly to be a laugh. “Whatever, Wren. Just … say something to Darcia, okay? She misses you.”
    She walks off, heels clicking angrily on the old linoleum, and for a second I’m frozen in place, staring at my French book, listening to the sound of her footsteps.
    I could follow her. I could drop my backpack on the floor and pound down the hall to catch up. I could tell her I’m sorry. I could tell her I miss her and Darcia, too. I could tell her I’m stupid and awful and I suck.
    It’s all true.
    But I can’t tell her that my dead boyfriend is living in the neighbor’s garage. I can’t tell her I’m the one who brought him back. I can’t tell her that I’m starting to wonder what’s going to happen to him, and to me. He can’t live there forever. He’s not living in the first place.
    That’s all true, too, and I feel sick suddenly, my stomach tightening up like a fist. I grabbed Danny back because I couldn’t stand to lose anything else, not when Dad was gone, and Gram was dead, and Aunt Mari was someone I had to see in secret. And now I’m losing Jess and Darcia, too.
    I slide to the floor and sit with my back up against the lockers. The floor smells like old lemon wax and dust and feet, but I sit there until Mrs. Griffith wanders by and stops to ask me what’s wrong.
    By then, Jess is long gone.
    It’s already four when I finally leave, and even though I can imagine Danny pacing back and forth—or even scarier, sitting completely still at the top of the stairs, eyes fixed on the bottom, waiting for me—I walk through town to the library.
    It’s cold and gray out, and