The Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause

early for the young mothers and their preschoolers, but there were people anyway. Two scruffy teenage boys yanked on the swing chains and tossed the seats back and forth. Bandannas sprouted from the calves of their old blue jeans like weird, bedraggled plumage. Three swings were already wrapped all the way around the top pole. Vandalism comes to Oakwood, she thought with disgust. She hoped those rats hadn’t been chewing away at the gazebo as well.
    No use staying here. She didn’t feel like answering a round of “Hey, baby” ‘s from some jerks in cutoff denim and leather. One of them looked like he’d been in a fight. Great, she thought. Another place I can’t go. Just what I want, a bunch of heavy-metal maniacs invading my park.
    But that was unfair. Simon wore leather, and he seemed all right. She remembered him standing in front of her, his nervous fingers unable to stay still, uncomfortable as she had been so many times. Then she had felt an empathy that had drawn her to him; now she saw what he’d been toying with. She drew her hand from her pocket and looked down. It was a star—like the one that lay in her palm, the one she had found on her back steps.
    Anger and fear shook her. Nothing was sacred. Nothingat all. She couldn’t even go home. She felt violated. She had almost made him a friend. I want Mom, she thought.
    The bus showed up, as if on command, as soon as she reached the bus stop. She couldn’t turn back now. The rush-hour crowd had already thinned out, and there were plenty of seats.
    At the hospital she swept by the reception desk without checking in. It’s my right, she told herself. She’s my mother. I belong here. She tried to look like she had business to attend to.
    The elevator took forever to arrive, and when she got in, the car moved so slowly, she thought she’d scream. I suppose they don’t want to give anyone a heart attack, she thought as she scuffed nervously at the brass plaque on the floor that said OTIS . When the elevator finally stopped, her heart gave a lurch—what if Mom was sick like last time? But she got off anyway.
    She turned the corner by the nurses’ station and kept on walking. Out of the corner of her eye Zoë saw the nurse there leap to her feet, but she wasn’t going to stop for an interrogation now. She wasn’t going to be put off. She had to talk to her mother. She knew the nurse was catching up by the rustle of petticoat against crisp uniform, so she ran the last few yards and flung the door open.
    Her father looked up, startled, still clutching his wife’s hand to his chest. The nurse arrived behind her. “What’s going on?”
    â€œIt’s my daughter,” Harry Sutcliff answered, almost as if he were reminding himself.
    Our daughter, Zoë thought. She’s not dead yet.
    â€œI’m sorry,” the nurse said, “but she looked so strange. It’s okay?”
    He nodded, so she left, leaving the door ajar.
    â€œZoë, what’s wrong?” her father asked. He seemed to be grasping futilely for reasons for her to be there. Had the house exploded? Had there been an earthquake?
    He was distracted by a raspy voice from the bed. “Why aren’t you in school?” There was a quirky smile on her mother’s face, half amusement, half something more bitter.
    Her words gave him something to hold on to. “Why aren’t you in school?” he repeated at Zoë, unaware of the inane echo.
    â€œIt’s okay, Harry, really,” her mother said in that whispery rasp. “What’s a day here and there?” Tubes rattled softly as she tried to gesture gay abandon.
    Zoë saw her father struggling not to argue. He had always been strict about stuff like that. “But how many days?” He stared at Zoë accusingly. “I haven’t got room to worry about where you are every day, you know that, Zoë.”
    â€œFirst time,