Cold Spell

And you’ve known her for less than a week.

“That’s creepy,” Kai says, and there’s no joke, no softness in his voice. He rises, causing Mora to sit back. She looks pleased as he takes two steps toward me, bars of thorns and briars still blocking the space between us. “What do you want? Do you need something?” he asks.

I feel anger rising in me, but it’s blocked by the thick ball of confusion and sadness that’s inflating inside my chest. I shake my head and finally say, “What are you doing?”

“I was talking to Mora about New York,” he says.

“You were kissing her.”

Kai presses his tongue to his teeth. He looks as if he’s considering lying, but finally nods. “Yes.”

I stare. There must be more. There must be more to say than “yes.”

Kai exhales. “Ginny… you’re… you’re crushing me. It’s like every time I turn around, you’re there. In my house, at the window, on the roof. I need a second to breathe, but you never give me one.”

“I didn’t know you needed that. You never told me.” Finally, my voice has some strength, some protest.

“That’s just it. I shouldn’t have to tell you. I don’t want to call you obsessed or anything, but…”

Mora snickers a little, but tries to hide it in a cough.

“You’ve got to get your own life, is what I’m saying,” Kai says, glancing at Mora knowingly. “I’m going to New York with Mora, and I think in the meantime, you should figure out something to do besides follow me around. Trust me, you’ll be happier if you get a hobby or something.”

“A hobby?” I ask, voice breaking. I shake my head, offended. Angry.

Mora reaches forward and slides her hand into Kai’s. I want him to jerk away, to shift, to look wary, but he doesn’t budge, as if he’s used to her hand finding his. “Come on, Ginny. Don’t get in his way now that his grandmother has stepped out of it.”

“I’m not in his way,” I snap at her. “We’re together. We always have been. What are you doing to him?”

“Don’t talk to her that way,” Kai says, and it stuns me to silence. “You’re acting like some jealous little kid.”

“I’m not jealous,” I say. “I’m angry. Think about this, Kai. Think about what you’re saying. This is me you’re talking to.”

“I am totally aware of who I’m talking to,” he says. “I’m talking to a lonely girl who follows me around like some lost puppy. I thought you’d eventually figure yourself out but… look at you! What would you be without me, Ginny?”

My chest is collapsing in on itself, as if I’m being punched over and over again. Mora looks at me, shakes her head, and answers Kai’s question under her breath.

“Nothing.”

“Leave,” I say, voice shaking. I’m staring at Mora, afraid to blink, afraid to move. “I need to talk to Kai. Leave.”

“Seriously?” Kai throws his arms up in frustration. “What is your deal with Mora? You hardly even know her.”

“Neither do you!” I yell, and tears slip down my cheeks. “You don’t even know her and you brought her up here, to our…”

“Our what? We found this. It’s not like you and I built this ourselves. It’s not a church or a temple; it’s just a shittily maintained rose garden,” Kai says, gesturing around as if shocked I don’t agree. He reaches down, grabs a pair of clippers, and opens the end. He places them at the base of the nearest rosebush and, before I realize he’s serious, slams the handles shut. The blade slices through the plant easily, and it hangs there, held up by its brambles but separated from its roots. “There,” Kai says. “Now it’s not our place anymore; it’s just a dead plant. Better?”

“Kai, I can’t.” I stop and inhale raggedly. “I can’t do this without you.”

“Do what?”

“This,” I say, motioning to nothing and everything, because both are true.

Kai shakes his head at me, almost pityingly, and thrusts the clippers to another rosebush and kills it instantly, as if it’s nothing. Another, and another; he moves around Mora as if he’s orbiting her. The sound of the clippers on the plants, the sliding of the metal against itself—they become louder as Kai snaps the blades with more and more intensity. In the fray, I find Mora again. She’s still and beautiful, while I am a mess of hair and tears clinging to my face. She looks happy.

I turn and run for the door.

CHAPTER SIX

When we were small, Kai and I didn’t know all the tricks of the rose garden.

The thorns snagged our clothes; the uneven floor tripped us. Once we accidentally locked ourselves up there. We were able to signal to Ms. Snyder, who was coming home with her groceries, and she agreed not to tell Grandma Dalia if we’d take out her garbage and change the cat box for six weeks. We made the deal. It was worth it.

We cleaned up the garden as best we could, though, not knowing anything about gardening. Mostly that meant we hid Capri Suns in an old toolbox, swept off the bench, and cleared a path through the overgrown bushes. It took the better part of three weeks, but we treated it like a job, going up there immediately after school and not coming down until Kai had to go to dinner. There was an unspoken rule that neither of us ever went up there alone.

We didn’t know the trick to the door. It’s big, heavy, and metal, and it has one of those mechanisms that makes it automatically shut. One day, I opened the door on the way to get my beanbag chair from downstairs so we had something new to sit on. My fingers were curved around the door frame when I saw it—a bird’s nest, wedged under an awning. Inside were three tiny, perfect blue eggs; I stared. There was something so beautiful about them, nestled together, safe from the wind. I turned my head to Kai, who was just walking up behind me, and opened my mouth to tell him about the nest. I didn’t see the door swinging back. I didn’t realize my fingers were still in the jam.

Kai shoved me, hard—I almost fell down the stairs, and he tumbled after me. I looked up just in time to see the door slam against his ankle with a resounding crunch.

He tried to pretend it didn’t hurt, but eventually, he gave in and cried. It swelled up as if there was a golf ball lodged under his skin, and the spot turned dark purple and green. I helped him limp downstairs to my apartment, where we sat in my room with a bag of frozen peas pressed against his ankle for an hour.

I asked him why he didn’t just yell at me, or pull me toward him, or let me smash my own stupid fingers. He said it was because he didn’t think about it. He just did it.

“And besides,” he said, wincing as I removed the peas to inspect the damage. “It would have broken your fingers.”

“I think it broke your ankle,” I pointed out.

“One ankle. Four fingers. It was the better choice,” he joked, though his face was tense from pain.

He didn’t go to the hospital, and he forced himself to walk on the foot rather than limp in front of his grandmother. If she had found out what happened, she’d take the garden away. She’d put a new lock on the door. She might even tear down our rosebushes. The break eventually healed, though his left foot is still turned a little funny, if you look at it closely.

He said it was worth it.

I feel as if someone has pulled out an organ. One of those that doesn’t seem essential, to the layman—not my heart or my lungs, but rather my pancreas, or my spleen, or my gallbladder. Something that doesn’t seem as if it should matter so much, until it’s gone and your body can’t figure out how to operate and your heart won’t stop beating and just give up already. I sit on my bed, trying to figure out what’s just happened. Trying to figure out