Cold Spell

He must have turned around and gone back home. She took a few more steps, all the way to the trellis. Yes. He’s gone back home; he’s fine. If I can walk through this, however slowly, so can he. He turned around and went home and—

A shape, a figure. It’s him, wearing a tattered coat, standing close to the edge of the building. The wind tossed his bright red hair around, and though she could see only the back of his head, she could tell he was staring at something. She shuffled toward him, but the wind changed direction and pushed her back—the harder she tried, the more ground she lost until, slipping and sliding on the ever-increasing ice, she found herself back at the door. Dalia looked down, baffled, then back to his shadowy form.

He turned, but she couldn’t see his eyes for the snow and shadow. She stared back anyway, hoping he could see hers, that he would understand the plea, the desperation, the want for him to come to her, how hard she was trying to get to him. Please, please, come inside, come out of the cold, come out before something terrible happens.

Her eyes watered; the tears were raw and sharp on her cheeks. The wind pressed against her, like hands pushing her back down the stairs, back inside, away from him. She fought against it, but it was strong, so much stronger than she was.

He turned his back to her. Reached a hand out to his side. Dalia’s eyes narrowed against the wind and stinging snow, trying to see what he was reaching for. No, not what—who. A woman all in white with hair so blonde it almost matched the snow. Was she real? She looked too perfect to be real. The snow increased; the world was becoming whiter and whiter as it piled up. Dalia grabbed the door frame to keep from being blown down the stairs. She gasped in the icy air, tried to call for him again, to scream. The woman— no, the girl, as she wasn’t much older than Dalia—glanced back toward the door, her eyes the same blue-gray as the snow-filled sky. Her lips curved ever so slightly into a gentle, elegant smile.

The girl reached out and wrapped her fingers around his hand. He jolted, as if she had shocked him, but then he stood up straight and stiff.

Dalia stopped screaming. She stopped everything, frozen by temperature, fear, and confusion. She opened her mouth to call the boy’s name once more—but just as her lips formed the word, the door slammed shut.

She never saw him again.

CHAPTER ONE

(Present Day)

The best thing about going to public school is the testing.

It’s also the worst thing, sometimes, but testing means that every week or so, we have a strange schedule. More often than not, it’s last period that gets affected—it gets extended, making it twice as long, three times as long, once four times as long as normal. I have Intro to Theater last period, which basically means I paint sets for the Advanced Theater class’s productions. That, and I watch the teacher struggle to keep an eye on the plethora of “bad” kids who got signed up for the class because they hate school too much to choose their own electives.

Which, incidentally, is the second-best thing about public school: If you’re not a genius or a future crackhead, teachers pretty much don’t notice you. That’s why it’s so easy for me to skip the end of the school day every round of standardized testing. I’m not really sure how Kai manages it, since he is a genius, but he figures it out. We don’t even have to plan it anymore—if sixth period is extended, we duck out right after the fifth period bell rings. Today is one such day. I slink around the back of the school, where he’s already waiting for me, anxious to hurry off into the early afternoon as if the city is ours.

“What takes you so long?” Kai mutters, leaning against a trailer classroom’s wall. The annoyance in his voice is betrayed by the way his eyes shine at me.

“I had to go to my locker,” I answer. “Otherwise I have to walk all the way home with my chem book.”

“Excuses, Ginny, excuses,” he says, knocking the back of my legs with his violin case, grinning as he does so. That’s where Kai’s supposed to be in last period—orchestra—but he and the orchestra teacher are more friends than student and teacher, largely due to the fact that the teacher could probably learn more from Kai than vice versa.

It’s cold, especially for October. Usually Georgia is in between summer and fall this time of year. The chill makes my nose run and my eyes water, but it also makes me feel more alive than the lazy summer heat from last month. Kai and I trudge across a bridge that’s been painted with our school colors and leads from the school’s property to a public park. The park is largely empty, save a few overweight cops on Segways and some sketchy- looking guys hanging out by the entrance. They’re the reason that Kai’s expensive violin is in a crappy-looking case: to keep anyone from knowing just how much it’s worth. Even I’m not supposed to know, really, but of course he told me.

We ignore the sidewalks and cut straight through the park, heading up a few blocks toward our building. It’s one of the few brick structures in a cityscape of steel, neon, and concrete. I turn to say something to Kai, but he suddenly grabs my hand and tugs me around a corner. He puts his arms on either side at me, palms against the concrete I’m pressed up against, as he peers past the building’s granite edge. I raise my eyebrows at him, fighting the blush that’s creeping onto my cheeks over how close we are.

“Is there a problem?” I ask.

Kai turns back to me and smiles. “Sorry,” he says. “Grandma was at the window.” He’s whispering, as if she might be able to hear us from a half a block away.

“I’d be willing to place a bet that if she catches us, it’ll somehow be my fault,” I say, and Kai laughs, his chest rising and falling against mine as he does so.

“It’s always your fault with Grandma,” he agrees. As far as Grandma Dalia is concerned, I’m the ultimate distraction in her Kai-is-a-prodigy plan. Kai says she’s always been like this—she keeps her things close, and Kai is her most valuable thing. Our apartment building itself is probably a close second—she persuaded her husband to buy it ages ago, then got it in the divorce. It can’t be torn down since it houses Atlanta’s oldest (if broken) elevator, but I don’t think she’d let a wrecking ball touch it anyhow. She loves it—though I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why. If I had the money Grandma Dalia has, I’d live somewhere—anywhere—else.

Kai hesitates, then drops his arms so I’m freed—though he doesn’t take a step back. I keep my back firmly planted against the stone wall, unwilling to disrupt the feeling rippling between us, the pull to be closer still. We watch each other, waiting for it….

The first time I kissed Kai was when we were in the vacant lot by our building. He was holding an acceptance letter to a music intensive in New York, and I was holding nothing but his hand, and then his arms, and then his cheek as we pulled in to each other and kissed for what was only moments but felt like hours. We were high on the idea of living in New York together, of the tiny coffee shops we would visit and the museums we would sneak into. We dreamed of late-night stops at street-food vendors and a handful of artistic, clever friends, the philosophical sort we’d never find in our school. It was his acceptance letter, of course, but it was our dream, our shared fantasy, and it boiled over in our minds until the only thing left to do was to kiss, to kiss as if we’d done it a million times before.

But we hadn’t—and we hadn’t even done it very often since, though every day pulls us closer together, closer to another moment when our lips will touch.

This is one of those moments. I wait, not letting my eyes waver from Kai’s, and watch the rhythm of his breath. His skin is olive, his hair dark, and it’s falling across his forehead the way it always does. I reach up to brush it aside, but Kai leans in before I can do so, letting his breath dance across my skin for a moment. I let him pull me up onto my tiptoes and press in until our lips touch. His hand is on my back, my fingers drifting down the front of his chest, and in my head a thousand fires spring up all at once.

It’s several quickened heartbeats before we release each other; Kai’s hand immediately trails along my forearm before he laces his fingers with mine. I lean close to him; he grins at me, looks around the corner…

“Coast is clear,” he says, and we come out of hiding. For a moment, I wonder if we shouldn’t hold hands, just in case his grandmother sees us—cutting class plus holding my hand? Grandma