Cold Kiss (22 page)

She’s silent for a long time, remembering, I think, and the sadness on her face hurts. But I’m not going to let that stop me. If she wants honesty, then she can go first.

“Is it why Dad left? Or is that why you stopped, I don’t know, being so open about what we are?”

She sighs and narrows her eyes at me. “This is not the conversation we need to have right now. You screwed up, and I’m not taking the responsibility for it, and I’m not letting you change the subject.”

I scrub my hands over my face, trying to push down the need to shout, to throw something. “But that’s what you always say! So when can we talk about it? This is
my
life, Mom.”

She bites her bottom lip before she speaks again, and I can see the angry white teeth marks in it pinking up. “Your dad had really good reasons for leaving.”

I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, but it wasn’t that. Good reasons? What does that even mean?

“Good? Good enough to leave and never call again? To act like Robin and I don’t even exist?”

Mom tilts her head back, as if the answer is written on the ceiling. “It’s complicated, Wren.”

I bet it is, but I still want to
know
. It’s a huge piece of my life that’s been covered up with a sheet, sitting in the middle of the room all these years while we were expected to ignore it.

“Was it you?” What I really want to say is,
Tell me it wasn’t me
. But I can’t make my mouth form those words.

Mom doesn’t try to mask the hurt in her voice. “No, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t you girls, either. And if you think I haven’t missed him every day since he left, if you think I don’t still love him, you’re wrong.”

For a second, all I can see is Danny’s face, dozens of them, superimposed on each other: Danny laughing, Danny with his bottom lip between his teeth as he draws, Danny leaning forward to kiss me, Danny pale and cold and still. I get it, or I think I do, but it doesn’t help.

I can see my dad’s face, too, as he leaned close to read to me before bed. When I close my eyes, I can feel the bony set of his shoulders when he lifted me up for a ride, and breathe in the dark, smoky scent of his shirts.

Whoever decided that love should hurt sucks.

It’s been silent for too long, and I watch as Mom wipes a tear off her cheek. Whoever decided that life should hurt sucks even more.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I hate that she’s been carrying this around for so long, but so have I. “I don’t get it. How can there be a good reason never to talk to your kids again? How can you still love him after that?”

It’s a stupid question. I still love him, or what I remember of him. It’s the foundation of what I feel for him, even if I’ve painted over it with rage and betrayal and confusion.

“You’re going to have to ask him to explain it, I think,” Mom says carefully, and turns her head to face me again. Nothing is hidden—for the first time in a long time, everything she’s feeling is right there in her eyes. “And I can help you, when you’re ready.”

For a moment, my ears ring with pounding blood just like they did when Ryan told me Danny was dead. It’s too unbelievable, too strange, words that make sense on their own but not strung into that sentence.

“Help me?” My voice breaks a little, and I sit up straight, blinking at her. “You know where he is?”

She doesn’t even try to soften the blow. “I do. Well, I know how to get in touch with him, to be more precise.”

“All this time?” I struggle to my feet, walking off the tingling thrills of energy coursing through me. “All these years, and you never said anything? What the hell, Mom?”

“Wren.”

“No, Mom!” I won’t cry, I
won’t
. I’m too angry anyway, an icy blue in my veins, crackling and brittle. “All these years I thought he hated us! I thought we weren’t good enough! And you’ve been talking to him?”

“Come here.” I didn’t even hear her get up, but Mom is suddenly beside me, taking my hands in hers and turning me to face the fire. “Do it, let it go. It’s not good to let it build up, believe me.”

I’m not sure what she means at first, but then she uncurls my clenched fingers and spreads my hands out. I’m not even thinking when I close my eyes and just let it come, the way she said, and a moment later the fire hisses furiously as icicles plunge into the flames.

It’s exactly the opposite of what happened that day in the basement after Danny’s funeral, and I can see that she knows it. For a minute I can’t speak—the relief is so sweet, all that rage fired off into the heart of the fire. When Mom puts her arm around my shoulder, I don’t protest. The mad is still there, but it’s only simmering now, distant, in another room where I can’t really feel its heat.

“It’s not exactly like what you’re imagining,” she says, and leads me to the sofa, where she sits beside me and pulls my head onto her shoulder. “I’ve kept him updated about you and your sister, because he wants to know. He loves you both, but he felt that it was better for you to be without him. He did what he did out of love, Wren. Regardless of fairy tales, love doesn’t always mean a happy ending.”

I bury my face against her, but it’s not my dad I’m thinking of. I’m picturing Danny as I left him on Gabriel’s bed, frozen in place, still slightly dirty from his midnight wandering, his lips blue and thin, so different from the warm, lush mouth that I used to kiss.

If I love him, the right thing to do is to let him go. And hope that wherever he goes, he doesn’t remember that I didn’t love him enough to leave him in peace in the first place.

There might not be a happy ending for me, but I’m going to give one to Danny. I just hope it’s not too late.

SUNDAY MORNING FEELS LIKE A STRANGE dream. Mari slept over, so there are four of us at the breakfast table, and watching Mari and Mom laugh together as they make waffles is a little surreal after all the times I wished for the exact same thing. Robin is sort of baffled, since she doesn’t remember them this way at all, elbowing each other and goofing around, acting like sisters instead of stiff, uncomfortable strangers, but I can tell she’s happy about it, too.

It’s not perfect, of course. But when I went to bed last night, I stopped in the hall outside Mom’s room, and I could still hear them talking.

“It’s not something you can ignore,” Mari had said, so softly I could barely hear it, not that I should have been pressed up against the wall beside the door eavesdropping in the first place. “Sam knows that, too.”

Sam
. My dad.

Mom’s answer was nothing more than a vague murmur, too low for me to understand, and I wondered if they were talking about our power.

Whatever it was, I went to sleep that night thinking that Mom hadn’t really let go of the man she loved, either. Maybe we weren’t so different, after all. I wanted to let that comfort me, but Monday night loomed over everything else, a dark, distinct point on the horizon.

It’s hard to shake the shadow of it, even sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of fresh waffles drowning in butter and syrup in front of me. But I make the effort, hanging around to make up for my disappearing act, and Robin’s gratitude bubbles over in funny ways, sweetening the orange juice in my glass and gleaming on the basket of tiny baby pumpkins Mom brought, shinier and deeper in color all of a sudden.

For once, Mom says, “Pretty,” when she spots them, and runs a finger over the fat one on top of the basket. Robin blushes, and at the counter, Aunt Mari smiles over her coffee mug.

I want to hold on to all of it, but I have to check on Danny, and Mom doesn’t stop me, even though I don’t say where I’m going. I’m a little surprised, but she just follows me to the front door and lays her cheek against mine. Robin and Aunt Mari are settled on the sofa watching a movie while Mari brushes Robin’s hair.

“Home by dinner,” Mom says. “And school tomorrow, no question. We’ll deal with consequences later.”

It’s more than I could have asked for, even if cutting school isn’t really a big deal in my head. Not compared with everything else I’ve done.

It hurts that I’ll never be able to tell her what happened. At least not anytime soon.

It’s hard enough for me, when I get to Gabriel’s, to see Danny still lying on Gabriel’s bed, in the same position. Nothing can be that still for so long. Nothing living, anyway.

I lie beside him on the bed, fitting myself up against the cool, motionless length of him. My hand rests over his heart, but I don’t expect to feel the thump of it there anymore.

And then I start talking. It’s natural—talking is what we used to do, endlessly, on the phone, walking home from school or the café, curled up together on the sofa. I don’t think he can hear me, but it doesn’t matter. There are things I want to say, and I don’t want to hide anything from him anymore.

“Becker misses you,” I tell him. The words are muffled because my mouth is pressed against his chest. “He feels so guilty, Danny. And he’s so messed up now. I go to see him sometimes, and so does Ryan. He misses you, too. We went to see Becker together once, but it was too weird. There was this big empty place where you were supposed to be instead.”

I only pause to brush at the tears on my cheek. They’re making a wet spot on Danny’s T-shirt. “I thought I was doing the right thing, you know? Well, maybe not. But I wanted it so much. I just wante
you
. I missed you. I still miss you, so much. It’s not fair.”

I can’t say anything after that, because I’m crying too hard, but after a little while I layer another spell on top of the one that’s keeping him there on the bed, still and silent. A minute later, Gabriel pushes the door open a few inches, and I look up with my cheeks still wet.

“Everything okay?”

I just stare at him until he backs away. I mean, I know it’s a lot to ask, having the girl you like cuddling her undead boyfriend in your room, but if Danny had woken up raging and dangerous, I’m pretty sure Gabriel would have heard the commotion.

I know I should have a little more sympathy for him, and when I finally get up and go into the living room, I remind myself how generous he’s been. He looks awful, with his tired eyes focused so carefully on me, and for a minute I want to curl up with him. Let him lay me down on the sofa and hold me, let everything pour out into the worn fabric of his Rutgers T-shirt and let him smooth me out with his hands.

But there’s not a lot left. I’m so hollow inside that I barely do more than nod when I leave, and all night, sitting up with the spell books and working on what I have to do, I have to push both faces out of my mind, Danny’s and Gabriel’s.

I’m up so late that I’m almost late for school on Monday, and Gabriel sits on the bench next to me in the principal’s office during homeroom. I’m trying as hard as I can to close myself off, because I can’t be sure he won’t peek inside to see what I’m feeling, no matter what he says about respecting boundaries.

“Detention, you think? Or a day’s suspension?” His voice is low and a little rough.

I don’t even look at him, although I can’t help seeing the sharp angle of his jaw out of the corner of my eye. “No clue.”

Judging by his frustrated huff, he’s not happy with that answer. And I’m ashamed of myself, because I don’t want to hurt him, but I can’t keep arguing the same things over and over.

Except he won’t let them go.

Case in point: “I know you don’t want to talk about this, but—”

“So stop bringing it up,” I hiss, glancing up from under my lashes when the secretary looks at us sternly.

“You don’t understand how dangerous this could be,” Gabriel says, even lower now, leaning sideways and crowding into my space.

“And you don’t understand that it’s not your problem.” I shift as far away from him as I can, and he stiffens.

“What happened, Wren? What did I do?”

The door to the principal’s office opens, and the secretary says, “You can go in now.”

Which means I don’t have to say,
You made me want you, and I don’t trust myself not to screw that up, too,
which is the only truth that matters.

We get off with a warning, which I’m grateful for since I need to be home after school finishing the spell. I expect the day to drag, but I’m so preoccupied with catching up in my classes that it’s lunchtime before I know it. The instinct to go hide in the library is pretty strong, but I can’t do that. If I’m going to make things right with Jess and Darcia, I have to actually talk to them.

I’m not expecting Jess to be waiting outside the cafeteria doors, though. I choke back a flicker of startled power that threatens to explode out of me, and only clutch my books tighter to my chest as I walk up to her.

“I tried calling. And texting.”

She flips her hair over her shoulder, all casual and cool, but she’s not actually looking me in the eye. “Yeah, well. So did I. On Friday.”

I hate this. I’ve known Jess since I was eight, and I don’t want to lose her. I don’t think I realized until recently how close I’ve come.

“I can only say I’m sorry, Jess.” I take a step closer. “And I am. I can’t … I can’t really explain what happened, but the thing is, I can’t really be sorry about that part. I want us to be friends, I always want us to be friends, but we’re not kids anymore. Some stuff is going to be private. And … I guess I want you to respect that, even if I don’t deserve it.”

I’m nearly breathless, because it all comes out in a rush, but at least I said it. Someone jostles me as they push by in the crowd entering the cafeteria, but I don’t move. I’m watching Jess, and I’m not going anywhere until she says something.

As long as she doesn’t simply walk away.

Her expression shifts, as fluid as running water, but she finally meets my gaze. “How are secrets okay if we’re friends?”

My chin goes up, just an inch. I hate being shorter than anyone but fourth graders. “Are you really standing there telling me I know everything about you? Seriously?”