Wild Awake

by Hilary T. Smith

  “D’you want some help?”

  Doug doesn’t seem to hear me. He rests on his crutches to catch his breath. I step into his room and pick my way across the cluttered floor. “What’s in there?”

  The cat runs out from under a wooden coffee table and jumps onto the mattress. Doug gazes after it.

  “Sukey-girl’s things. The manager sent someone in there to dump all her stuff in the trash after the cops left and I said, that ain’t right.”

  Doug aims his foot at the middle of the bag and gives it a push.

  “Think you can lift that?”

  I eye the bag doubtfully.

  “Yeah.”

  I grab the garbage bag around the neck and hoist it onto my back. Doug watches me struggle upright.

  “You got it, honey.”

  “What did you say about cops?” I say, trying to balance the bag so it doesn’t knock over any of Doug’s stuff.

  I know Sukey got in trouble with the police a couple times after she moved out, because Dad used to get phone calls late at night and have to drive down to the station. Doug ignores the question.

  “Big yellow painting. Size of that window. She did it just for me. Reminded me of wheat fields. I bet your daddy’s got a dozen of ’em, eh?”

  “No. She didn’t give him any. I only have one, in my bedroom. I was hoping you’d—”

  “We always joked I was gonna be rich someday when she got famous and the paintings were worth money, eh. I said, Sukey-girl, you’re gonna make me and Snoogie into millionaires.”

  The heavy bag is pressing into my back. I can feel myself starting to sweat. I know I should head for the stairs, but my feet refuse to move.

  “Doug? Why did you say there were cops?”

  He’s produced another beer from some hiding spot, and now he cracks it open. His bloodshot blue eyes are wandering.

  “Goddamn management didn’t hardly wait twenty-four hours before they stuck the next person in there. They got this rat-faced little tweaker moved in before the blood was even dry on the floor. There’s no respect around here. None at all.”

  I wheel around to see Doug better and knock over a half-full can of beer that was perched on top of an unplugged mini-fridge. I really wish there was a light in here, because I’m starting to feel claustrophobic in the dimness with a giant trash bag pressing on my back and my ears buzzing louder and louder with every word Doug says.

  “Doug,” I say in my steadiest, untrembliest voice, “what are you talking about?”

  Doug reaches out to stabilize the bag before it slips out of my hands. He holds on while I get a better grip. While I’m trying to find the right place to rest the weight of the bag on my shoulder, he leans his face in close to mine and fixes me with his big drunk eyes.

  “Oh, honey,” he says. “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

  chapter eleven

  When I step outside again, the world feels like it’s been Photoshopped: The colors are supersaturated, and the brightness levels are way too high. The garbage bag containing Sukey’s earthly possessions is a huge sticky lump on my back. I feel like an insect, an ant carrying a crumb a hundred times bigger than I am. Except unlike an ant, I can’t handle this load. It’s too big. I can smell the panic in my sweat. I literally cannot breathe.

  I see Skunk’s van parked by the curb. Sunlight is glaring off the windshield. I lurch toward it, the garbage bag riding on my back like a monster, a mountain, a grotesque ball-and-chain.

  Don’t-think-about-it-Don’t-think-about-it-Don’t-think-about-it.

  There’s a thin, tight thread running between my heart and the crown of my head that’s threatening to snap. I try to focus on getting to Skunk’s van, but the world is loud and awful and heavy, and the truth is even worse. I don’t know if I can make it to the van. I don’t know if I can make it another step. I can feel the plastic garbage bag stretching and straining, and it’s just a matter of which one of us breaks first.

  Don’t think about it.

  I hear a car door slam.

  “Kiri?”

  Don’t cry.

  Skunk lumbers toward me. Something about the sight of his scruffy T-shirt anchors me, and I shuffle toward him like a duckling imprinting on a backhoe.

  “Hang on.”

  I stop. Skunk lifts the bag off my back. I wait next to the van while he opens the back door and hoists the bag inside. My back and shoulders are aching from the trip down the stairs, and my heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s trying to dig a tunnel out of my chest.

  “You okay?”

  Don’t cry.

  My best and most reliable Normal Voice comes out as a high and strangled squeak.

  “Yup.”

  “You sure?”

  Rapid nodding.

  “You want a ride home? You look kind of freaked out.”

  I decide that Skunk must be very perceptive for a person whose wallet is attached to his belt by a chain. When I get into the van and close the door, I am finally able to breathe.

  Just as we’re buckling our seat belts, Doug comes staggering up the sidewalk and knocks on the window. I can’t imagine how he got down the stairs so fast—he must have rolled down, or used someone’s greasy pizza box as a toboggan. I don’t want to talk to him, but the morning has already taken such a gruesome turn it can hardly get any worse. I grab the old-school plastic handle and crank the window down. He sticks his grizzled old face through the window. His beer breath fills up the whole van. I notice Skunk sizing him up, probably wondering whether to step on the gas and rip his head off.

  “Hey. Hey!”

  Doug’s shouting like we’re across the street from him, not sitting within spitting distance. His yellow fingers grip the edge of the window like he thinks that’s going to stop us from driving away.

  “Honey, listen. I didn’t mean to upset you back there, eh? We all loved Sukey-girl.”

  I don’t want to hear it, and I don’t want Doug’s nasty beer spit spraying onto my skin. His face is huge and mottled and much, much too close.

  “It’s fine.”

  He leans his head in even closer. “I didn’t mean to scare you, eh, honey? You know if you ever—”

  “IT’S FINE.”

  His eyes widen, and he moves his head back like I’m the one shouting in his face while he’s trying to drive away. He glances back toward the doorway of the Imperial but doesn’t lift his fingers off the edge of the window. When he speaks again, his voice has gone down to a normal volume.

  “Hey, do you think you could help me out with five bucks?”

  I stick my hand in my pocket, fish out a bill, and push it at him. He grunts and peels his fingers off the window. I look at Skunk. “Let’s go.”

  Skunk signals and pulls out into traffic, leaving Doug standing there on the sidewalk with his crutches. I watch his crooked shape recede in the rearview mirror.

  We drive down Columbia Street, and soon we’ve put one block, two blocks, three blocks between ourselves and the Imperial Hotel. The farther away we get, the less real the Imperial seems, until what happened in Doug’s room starts to feel fake, implausible, like something that couldn’t have happened after all.

  Except that it did.

  Skunk reaches into the cup holder. “Coffee?”

  I realize that’s what I’ve been smelling for the past two minutes. He lifts a hot paper cup and hands it to me.

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s black.”

  “That’s fine.”

  I smile at him, doing my best to keep a lid on things, secure the emotional perimeter, choke off the flood inside me like a thumb clamped over a garden hose. It’s my own fault for going in there. I should have gone home and practiced piano like I wanted to.

  I feel a stray sob straining at the back of my throat and take a sip of coffee to suppress it. But somehow, when I swallow my coffee I forget to not think about what Doug told me, and before I know it there’s coffee all over my lap and tears washing over my
cheeks and my chest hurts so bad I actually look down to see if I’ve been shot. I wipe my nose on my sleeve and try to jam the mostly empty coffee cup back into the cup holder before I spill it all.

  Skunk is steering with one hand and feeling around under the seat for a napkin with the other. Neither of us knows where we’re going. I try to stop crying and apologize, but all I can manage is a series of soft shrieks.

  “I’m sorry,” I gasp.

  “Shh, no, it’s okay.”

  He finds a stack of napkins in an old Taco Bell bag and hands them to me. I put them on my lap, and within a matter of seconds they’re all soaked. Between sobs, I somehow blurt it out: “I just found out my sister was murdered in that hotel.”

  When I say it out loud, I immediately regret it. It’s just like the time I told Petra I was stressed out over auditions for the Showcase: He’s going to think I can’t handle it. Now each time he sees me—assuming we ever see each other again—he’s going to think of this tearstained freakazoid who got him to haul her murder-bag home in his van.

  “I thought it was an accident,” I babble through my tears. “My parents said—they never told me she was—”

  Murdered.

  When I get to that word, my throat constricts. I don’t know who killed her or why he did it or if they caught him or what Sukey did or didn’t do to bring it on. Doug didn’t get that far before I bolted for the stairs.

  All I heard was the word stabbed.

  Followed shortly by the word death.

  Skunk glances over at me and gently touches his hand to my elbow.

  “Hey.”

  I turn my face away so Skunk won’t have to witness how pitiful I am with my messy tears and blotchy face. Outside the van, the world is surreal, going about its business with incomprehensible calm. A FedEx truck idles next to a mailbox. A man with two little kids comes out of a noodle shop holding a stack of Styrofoam take-out boxes.

  “Where are your parents?” Skunk says softly, as if I’m a lost kitten he’s trying not to scare away. “How do we get you home?”

  He fishes in his pocket for his cell phone.

  “Here.”

  I wave it away, sniffing back my tears.

  “It’s okay, I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to call your mom or dad?”

  “I can’t, it’s long distance, they’re away on this cruise.”

  “Is there someone else?”

  “No, I’m really fine.”

  Skunk keeps a firm grip on the wheel. “You wanna just drive for a while? Want me to take you back to your house?”

  A new wave of grief breaks over me, and I can’t answer him. All I can think about is Sukey, my Sukey, with her zebra-print jacket covered in blood.

  We drive on in silence. Skunk flips the turn signal and does a U-turn at the green light. I wonder if he’s taking me back to the Imperial to be with the other freaks and crazy people where I belong. But we drive past the Imperial and farther into China-town. I watch the red lampposts going by.

  “Where are we going?” I croak, my voice hoarse from crying.

  He signals and pulls into a parking spot. His face, flat and groggy when I knocked on his door this morning, has sharpened with resolve.

  “Lucky Foo’s for dim sum. And then maybe the China Cat Bakery for buns with red bean paste.”

  chapter twelve

  Whoever says that food can’t fix your emotions has never eaten a plate of salty, oily dim sum at Lucky Foo’s. By the time the waitress comes by with our third pot of Lapsang souchong, I’ve turned from a ragged, sobbing wreck into an exhausted puddle. The dim sum we ordered is long gone. But I feel like as long as I stay here, snug and cozy in the dim wooden booth with the stone fountain burbling in the corner, I’ll never have to face whatever’s waiting for me in the back of Skunk’s van.

  I’ve told Skunk everything.

  I told him about Sukey’s art show.

  And about the time she snuck me out to McDonald’s past my bedtime and we shared a chocolate milkshake.

  And about the purple paint splatter on the carpet of Sukey’s old bedroom that Mom never managed to scrub out.

  And about the matching paintings she promised we’d hang in our bedrooms forever, daffodiliad and we gamboled, star-clad.

  “And you had no idea she was murdered?” says Skunk.

  “No!” I burst out, louder than I need to. “They said it was an accident. They made it sound like a car crash. Drunk driving, something like that. Mom said it wasn’t nice to talk about.”

  “Nobody mentioned it at the funeral?”

  Skunk’s voice is gentle, but his eyes betray a hint of incredulity. He’s right. How could you not know how your own sister died? My parents must be pretty great liars.

  A little voice inside me adds, Or you must be pretty great at playing along with them.

  I mumble into my teacup, “I didn’t go to Sukey’s funeral.”

  The silence that stretches between us swarms with unsayables. I know what Skunk’s thinking.

  “My parents didn’t want me to,” I squeak. “They said I’d be too upset.”

  Instead, I stayed home with Auntie Moana, in my pajamas all day like a little kid. We watched TV and made cookies, and when they came home from the funeral, Mom and Dad and even Denny made a big deal out of how delicious they were. Later, Mom sat on my bed and gave me “the talk”—this is what we say when people ask about Sukey’s accident, this is how we act—then asked me if I wanted to go to Central Music next week and pick out my very own grand piano.

  “Didn’t they tell you later?” says Skunk.

  “No,” I say, but I’m remembering the music store, the guitars hanging from the walls, the pianos herded together like elephants, shiny uprights and voluptuous baby grands. I felt a strange mix of guilt and anticipation as I wandered through them, testing the keys. Denny turned mean when Sukey died, lashing out at the slightest provocation, going straight to his bedroom the minute he got home from school. I had to be the good one. The talkative one at dinner. Mom and Dad needed me, it was obvious from the way they’d started lavishing me with praise for the stupidest things. The smiles on their faces when I picked out my piano said it all: Someone in our family was going to be okay, and we’d all somehow agreed that person was going to be me.

  Skunk reaches for the teapot. When he does, the sleeve of his T-shirt rides up, and I see the tattoo on his upper arm.

  “Sukey had a tattoo of a bird in the same place,” I blurt. “What’s the story with yours?”

  He finishes pouring the tea and sets the teapot down, his sleeve sliding back over the delicate shape of the bird. His hand moves to his shoulder protectively.

  “Nothing. It’s from a band I used to be in. We all got the same one. It’s stupid.”

  “No, it’s not. Can I see it? What was your band called?”

  He looks uncomfortable, like he’s sorry he ever poured the tea. So far, Skunk hasn’t answered any questions, not that I’ve asked very many. When he talks, it’s always something short, a door he slides shut quickly so whatever’s inside won’t escape. He looks down at the table.

  “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

  “It can’t have been that long ago. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Three years younger than Denny. I’d been trying to guess. “Are you in school or something?”

  “Not right now. I’m starting a bike repair apprenticeship in September.”

  I trace the rim of my teacup with my finger. “I’m in a band too.”

  He looks up, glad to have the attention deflected from him. “Oh yeah? What do you play?”

  “Synth. I’ve got an old Juno.” I sniff. I have that post-cry headachy thing, like my head is being crushed inside a vise. “We haven’t actually played any shows yet, but we’re doing Battle of the Bands this summer at the Train Room. Do you ever go to shows there? It’s, like, the only all-ages venue that doesn’t suck. It
’s pretty near your house.”

  The smile that was starting to form when I said I played synth vanishes from Skunk’s face. It’s like somebody drew a curtain: His expression goes neutral, mouth straight, eyes blank. I pick up the clay pot and pour him some tea.

  “What’s wrong? What are you thinking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on.”

  “My band played a show there once.” He shakes his head as if to dislodge the memory. “But I haven’t been back.”

  I imagine Skunk onstage, pawing an electric guitar. I try to guess the band name that goes with the tattoo—Bird Slayer? Big Skunk and the Birds of Death? Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as Sonic Drift. I pick up my warm teacup and cradle it in my hands. “Why’d your band break up?”

  “It didn’t.” The words seem to pop out of Skunk’s mouth before he has a chance to stop them. A look of regret flashes across his face, and he hurries on before I can question him.

  “They went back to the East Coast,” says Skunk. “And I stayed here.”

  I’m about to ask him why, but the bells on the restaurant door tinkle softly, and a party of five crowds into the tiny reception area. It’s almost six—dinnertime. Time to give up our table. I decide to let him off the hook.

  “I guess we should go.”

  “Sure you don’t want more dim sum?”

  “I’m good.”

  Skunk nods. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  When Skunk drops me off, we trade numbers so I can pick up my bike later.

  “I don’t really keep my phone turned on all the time,” he says, handing me back my phone after keying his number into my contacts. Which I take to mean: I hope to God this messed-up girl doesn’t start calling me.

  He lifts the garbage bag out of the van for me and dismisses my renewed volley of thanks and apologies with an embarrassed shake of his head. He looks relieved as he pulls out of the driveway, giving me a quiet half wave over the top of the steering wheel. By the time I carry the bag to the front door, he’s already gone.

  Even though my first instinct is to rip the garbage bag open as soon as I get in the door, that’s not what I do. There’s something about the house that stops me: the neatness of the shoes on my mom’s prized Pottery Barn shoe rack, the muted coolness of the front hall. I pause, my fingers already tearing through the thin plastic, and force myself to lift them off.