Summer is just a sweatier cold

My arms shivered, thousands of tiny hairs standing up like little soldiers trying to fend off the cold, but they couldn't. There was no army strong enough... because the cold was inside me.
It was a muggy summer evening, legs hanging over the warm white tiles and dangling small, pale feet into the chemical blue pool water. A longneck with a little foam still dripping from the mouth rested on its side a few inches from my right hand. The air held the sweet scent of freshly cut grass and chlorine, but inside the peeling white weatherboard house, I knew it smelled of manmade cold, that familiarly dusty yet pleasant aroma that the old air conditioner gave off.
For the first time in my life I wasn't looking back, I wanted to be right there where I was, right then. I wanted the tiny little kitten scratches on my hands, the broken toe nail from kicking the bedpost. I wanted the pretty, wavy beach blonde hair and I wanted to walk to the milk bar late at night for raspeberry slurpees and TeeVee snacks. Everything was perfect, except for the damn freezing cold that kept creeping through my veins and over my crawling skin.
They say that when you shiver, somebody's walked over your grave. But I know that isn't true. Not for me at least. I shivered because I was dying.