Free Frozen by Erin Bowman

angry about something, I don’t want to miss this opportunity.” I dramatically roll up my sleeves and cup my hands together. I blow on them without success, but a loon wails at the same exact moment. “Look at that! Perfection.”
    I expect a snide comment but it never comes. I turn and find Bree staring at the burn scars on my left forearm. They look more pronounced in the firelight: the rippled portions of skin deeper, the slight discolorations more severe. I wonder what state my arm would be in if Bo hadn’t pulled me from the flaming platform as quickly as he did. When Emma first tended to me, she said I was lucky and that the scarring wouldn’t be too drastic. Even still, my arm has never looked the same.
    Bree presses a hand to my skin like she hasn’t seen the burn before, like she didn’t spend our first night together running her palms over the scars and kissing from my fingers to my elbow.
    “I wish there had been a way to get you out of that square faster,” she says. “It kills me that this happened to you. That I let it happen.”
    “It wasn’t your fault.”
    “It feels like it was.”
    “You did an awful lot of good that day, too,” I say, thinking about how I was staring down the barrel of a rifle at Harvey moments before her rubber bullet hit me. “You saved me from pulling the trigger. I don’t know if it’s possible to repay someone for a thing like that.”
    “I didn’t do it so you’d owe me, Gray. And I didn’t do it to save you from shooting Harvey, either. I did it because it saved you. Period.”
    I feel a smile creep over my lips. “You see why thank you doesn’t seem like enough?”
    She elbows me and the loons start crying again. Bree calls back, and I try to do the same, failing to make a noise that even slightly resembles their wails.
    “This was a perfect way to end my birthday,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder.
    “We should have done something as a group, like we did for Sammy’s.”
    “No, this is better. Just you and me.”
    Yes, just the two of us, I think. Always for a few hours. Always when no one is looking. But never for an entire night.
    Bree tilts her chin toward me, offering me her lips. I hesitate and she sits back, frowning.
    “Why are you fighting this, Gray?”
    I glance at her fingers still resting on my skin.
    “Tell me,” she demands.
    It’s only now that she’s asking—willing to talk about us in the open rather than hide behind all our jokes and teasing—that the truth seems so painfully clear.
    “Because . . .” I look out to sea, terrified to say it to her face. “Because maybe we’re not right, Bree.” A wave crashes against the shore. “You and me . . . Maybe we’re too aggressive for each other. We’re either at each other’s throats or we can’t keep our hands to ourselves. We fight and yell and argue. We shove each other around. We never stop critiquing what the other is doing. It’s exhausting. And that’s not a real relationship. That’s not how it should be.”
    “Yes, it is,” she says firmly. “That’s exactly how it should be. We’re a team. We push each other. If it’s not honest and truthful and challenging, what’s the point?”
    “To find a balance, maybe? A counterweight? Someone who is the things you’re not.”
    “Like Emma?” She is staring right at me, but I’m too much of a coward to look at her. I can face Frank and Forgeries and Walls, but a girl half my size terrifies me.
    “Maybe. Or someone like her. I don’t know. It’s just that Emma helps me fight my weaknesses. She calms me. I could probably use someone like that.”
    “Emma makes you boring, Gray. She makes you safe.”
    Those words are spoken with such bitterness that I’m suddenly brave enough to look her in the eye. “What?”
    “You heard me. She takes all the things I love about you and stifles them. She doesn’t mean to, but that’s what happens when you’re with her. You fizzle. You die. You become