Cold Kiss

dead leaves swirl in rusty little clouds at my feet as I scuff up the sidewalk to the building. A couple of cheerleaders, seniors, are perched on the banister that lines the steps, blowing smoke rings and laughing. They ignore me, as usual, which has always been fine.
    For the first time, though, it’s tempting to turn around and focus, to pull whatever it is that’s inside me into a tight glowing ball, and blow a nasty little kiss that would knock them over. Instead, I simply step on the hot pink strap of one of their backpacks as I run up the steps.
    Inside, I head right to the 130s in the stacks. No one’s ever in this particular aisle—I guess no one really cares about metaphysics or Western philosophy anymore, if they ever did in this town. I’m still not sure who decided the paranormal should be sandwiched between them, but whatever. That’s what I need—information on the paranormal, emphasis on “para.” I always knew I wasn’t totally normal, but it’s a little weird to see it right there in print, you know?
    It always makes me wonder which part of me would pass if they gave a test.
    There’s nothing new on the shelves, and for a minute I just stand there, my backpack heavy on one shoulder and the dusty, unused smell of the books in their plastic covers strong in my nose. Across the aisle, three middle-school boys are spread out at a table, flipping through old copies of Maxim , and story time is starting in the children’s section—I can hear Mrs. Hodge shushing the kids. It’s mostly quiet and a little too warm, and so overwhelmingly ordinary I want to scream.
    How am I supposed to figure out what to do about Danny here? The books on the shelves lean more toward histories of the Salem witch trials than anything practical, except for a few books on Wicca, which have more to do with worshipping the Goddess than how to keep from shattering lightbulbs. At any rate, I have books at home that are more specific about spells and the craft, even if they don’t tell me why I can do what I do, or how to control it better.
    Or not to do certain things at all, even if the spell is right there.
    I don’t even know if there’s a word for what I am, what the women in my family are. I asked Aunt Mari about it once, about a year ago.
    “You know how electricity is just out there?” she’d said. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling as if the answers were written up there in the dingy off-white paint. “But to use it, you have to know how to harness it? That’s what this is like. What we are. What we can do. Just like some musical prodigy can play Mozart at age three or whatever, we can tap into a kind of energy that other people can’t. That’s all.”
    That’s all. Like it’s no big deal that my mother can make flowers grow, and Mari can change the color of her hair at will, and I can (almost) lift myself off the ground and set things on fire. And, you know, raise my boyfriend from the dead.
    Mari practically jumped up and down the first time she saw me make my old stuffed penguin dance, like it was this huge achievement. But I never told her when I started seriously experimenting with my power on my own. The whole subject was so off-limits, it felt like the one thing I had to hide from everyone. And I was trying things a little more complicated than making a pencil spin on my desk, or making the pale yellow daffodils hot pink.
    Once I made it rain in Robin’s bedroom, right over a pile of her dirty sweatshirts and socks. Another time I folded a piece of white lined paper into the shape of a bird and brought it to life. I was so terrified, I opened the window and let it go, once it had stopped flapping around my room in panic.
    You’d think I would have learned my lesson.
    I can’t tell Aunt Mari about Danny. I can’t tell anyone.
    Standing in the library now, I can see him in my head, setting his jaw, starting down the stairs, and my pulse kicks so hard, a loose book on the edge of the shelf hits the floor. The kids across the aisle look up at me, and I glare until they shrink down into their sweatshirts and hold up their magazines again.
    I’m not going to find anything here. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for anymore, and suddenly it’s so hot, so close, I’m starting to sweat. I stumble past the kids and the ancient reference librarian, who frowns at me from behind his thick black plastic glasses, and out the door into the shockingly cool air.
    Where I walk right