“Thirty-three,” murmurs Motorcycle Man.
I turn the number over and over like a secret code. Thirty-three. As in 4:33. As in the piano piece by John Cage that is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of nothing but rests.
An untraceable blur of seconds passes. I count to 4:33.
Then I am in a car with black leather seats and a stereo that glows like a slot machine.
chapter thirty-five
“Kiri. Kiri!”
On Hastings Street I am so very busy and walking so very fast that when I hear Skunk calling my name it takes me almost three blocks to turn around. My knees are scraped again, but I don’t think it’s from crashing a bicycle since I’m not riding one. Then I remember—I was in a car with a man, some kind of label rep, but the stereo played evil music so I screamed, “Pull over!” and clawed my way out onto the sidewalk like a shipwreck survivor washing up on a rocky beach. Sukey died in a car crash—at least she did originally—and I did not like the way his hands strangled the wheel like white tentacles and his eyes were twin heat guns on my skin.
I stop on the sidewalk, and Skunk swoops up next to me. Skate shoes. No helmet. He brakes, jumps off his bike, and catches me in his arms like I’m a blown-away newspaper he’s been chasing down the street.
“Kiri. I’ve been looking all over for you. Whose car was that?”
I give him a once-over. Sunshine is streaming out of his head in a huge pink-and-gold halo despite the fact that the rest of the street is still dark. His black bicycle is glazed in neon light. When he talks, his words reverberate weirdly, like he’s speaking into a microphone with a delay line. I think I might be dreaming, or the subject of a very elaborate hoax. I put my hands on my hips and squint. “Are you a trick?”
“No. I promise, no.”
“How can I tell?”
He sticks out his arm for me to smell. I put my nose against his sleeve. American Spirits. Lapsang souchong. WD-40.
I nod reluctantly.
“Okay.”
Skunk glances up and down the street as if he’s afraid there are spies in the doorways or snipers on the roof. Maybe he’s worried about the homeless men trundling down the middle of the road with their shopping carts full of empty bottles. Maybe there are secret cameras hidden in their clinking, clanking loads.
“We can’t stay here,” says Skunk. “We have to get off the street. Can you ride on my handlebars?”
Skunk’s bicycle is glowing like Christmas lights. It looks magical, sleek, like a time machine. It’s almost too beautiful to touch.
“Can you do it?” pleads Skunk. “Here, put your hand on my shoulder.”
He lifts me onto his handlebars and climbs on behind me. The metal is lightning-cool under my thighs. I lean back and Skunk puts his arms around me. He grabs the handlebars and pushes off with his foot. Soon we’re zigzagging through the streets in a convoluted route of Skunk’s own devising. We cut through alleys, roll across construction sites, and slip through the vast hollow silence of a parking garage. I understand without asking that what Skunk is doing is throwing the secret agents off our trail. Nobody could follow us in a car, not with the shortcuts he’s taking. They’d have to be on bicycles, and we haven’t seen another bicycle since we started.
As we jag through the city, I have the unsettling sensation of being caught in a dream, an imaginary world Skunk and I have silently agreed to call real. The buildings and lampposts and street signs reel past in a seasick parade, and I’m not sure if we’re escaping something anymore or just clinging together while we drown.
“Love-bison,” I say, but now it sounds desperate, like a thing you scream before you both burst into flames.
When we roll to a stop outside a twenty-four-hour diner, Skunk’s T-shirt is soaked in sweat.
“Wait here,” he pants, clutching the brakes while I jump off.
He whips around the corner and reappears a minute later, on foot. His forehead is beaded with sweat, and his hands are shaking from squeezing the handlebars so tight.
“I locked it up in front of an apartment building,” he says by way of explanation. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
We go into the diner and take the booth at very back, next to the bathrooms, far away from the door. We both squeeze into the same side of the booth. Skunk’s body is damp and hot like a rain forest. He scans the diner.
“I think we’re okay here,” he says, but his eyes keep checking and checking.
The waitress comes and slaps menus down on our table. Skunk’s too distracted to order. I sit up and take charge.
“We need six grilled-cheese sandwiches and a gallon of coffee.”
She blinks.
“Coffee comes only in mugs this size. But you get a free refill.”
I flutter my hand. “Do what you can.”
When the waitress goes away, Skunk turns to me.
“Kiri.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Now that it’s safe to talk, you can tell me. Who was the man in the car?” His brown eyes are huge with concern. It occurs to me, suddenly, what a strange coincidence it is that Skunk was out for a bike ride at the same time I was swimming through the strange leather-and-glass aquarium of Motorcycle Man’s car. Our connection must run deeper than I ever imagined; Skunk must have sensed that something was afoot.
This being said, my memory of the preceding hours is becoming more and more slippery. I peer into Skunk’s eyes, which are glowing like little planets.
“I don’t remember.”
Skunk’s smoking hand keeps moving to his cigarette pocket and back to the table, as if it keeps sneaking away on him and he has to constantly herd it back. His eyes strain into mine, as if he thinks if he looks hard enough he’ll be able to see the memories I can’t piece together. “Try, Kiri. Try. What did he say to you? What did he want?”
Before I have the chance to answer, the waitress comes carrying six plates of grilled-cheese sandwiches and two cups of coffee, which she unloads onto the table. Each sandwich comes with a bright green pickle. I pick one up and eat it. Its firm, cool pickle bones snap in my mouth like a frog’s. My thoughts are woozy and colorful. It’s like being at a carnival. Each time Skunk asks a question, I cast my little plastic fishing rod and reel in a different prize. I sit up suddenly, remembering something.
“Four thirty-three,” I say to Skunk. “That’s the message he gave me.”
“Four thirty-three.”
Our eyes both snap to the greasy white clock on the diner wall. It’s 4:32. Just when the minute hand slides forward, we hear the scream of police sirens on the street outside the diner. We hold our breath as the sound crescendos to a brain-cracking whine that seems to hover outside the diner interminably before rushing away.
“Oh God.”
Skunk squashes his fist against his mouth, blinking rapidly. I pick up my grilled-cheese sandwich and dispatch it in six bites. It’s delicious. Golden brown on the outside and traffic-cone orange on the inside. The coffee is hot and watery in its white china cup and comes with a mean little spoon, which I hide in a crack in the booth’s leather lining. Beside me, Skunk is knitting and unknitting his fingers on the table and muttering worriedly to himself. I reach under the table and unbuckle my murder-shoes. They clatter onto the dirty diner floor. I pull my bare feet under me and sit cross-legged on the leather seat. Now that I have eaten my sandwich, the world is coming into sharper focus. When I look around the diner, I see people eating pancakes, not blurry rainbows like a moment ago.
“They’ve been following you,” says Skunk. “They used me to get to you.”
I pluck another sandwich off a plate and sink my teeth into it. Hungry. I’ve never been so hungry in my life.
“They tried to kill you once before, and tonight they tried again. Both times it was right after you played at the Train Room. It’s a pattern, Kiri.”
I slurp up my coffee, and the waitress swoops in to refill it. “No shoes, no service.”
“Oh, sorry.�
�
I slip my feet back into Sukey’s shoes without buckling them and take a sip of my coffee. The lights and color of the diner have started to quiet down, like someone in the kitchen has adjusted a knob.
Skunk is staring at the patterns in the tabletop as if they reveal a horrifying picture he’s never put together before. He looks at me. “Promise you won’t go back to the Train Room.”
I feel like I’m waking up after a long sleep in a strange bed. For the first time since he appeared on his bicycle, Skunk’s face comes into focus, and his words start to make sense. I put down my coffee cup.
“What do you mean, don’t go back to the Train Room? Me and Lukas just won Battle of the Bands. We’re going to play our own show next Saturday, which you would know if you’d actually come. Speaking of which—”
“Don’t go back to the Train Room,” says Skunk. “Don’t go back there and don’t go to my house. Where’s your phone?”
I stupidly hand it to him. He opens my contacts list and scrolls down to his name.
“Hey—what are you doing?”
Skunk presses a button and hands me back my phone. The screen reads CONTACT DELETED.
“What the—why’d you do that?”
He takes out his phone and does the same thing to my phone number while I sputter at him, outraged.
“It’s too dangerous, Kiri. They’re using me to track you. As long as we’re together, they’ll keep trying to kill you. You have to stay away from me. They’ve already come too close.”
Our four remaining grilled-cheese sandwiches are growing cold. Skunk hasn’t touched his food or coffee. His face has stiffened into a mask of grim resolve.
My brain fumbles for an appropriate response and arrives clumsily at rage. I jerk away from Skunk.
“There’s nobody trying to get me, Skunk. You’re having a Thing.”
Skunk shakes his head in a maddeningly knowing way.
“You don’t understand it now, Kiri, but you will someday. I’m just trying to keep you safe. If you go to the Train Room again, they’ll be waiting for you. And if they see you with me—”
“Stop it, Skunk. You’re paranoid. You need to go outside and smoke a cigarette. You haven’t been taking your meds.”
Skunk doesn’t stop. He keeps on speaking in a low, insistent drone, as if he’s not even listening to what I’m saying. The waitress comes again to take our plates. I thought the yellow pills were finished, but apparently not: Her face is slice-mouthed and awful, like an evil marionette’s. All of a sudden, I can feel the world spiraling out of my control just as clearly as you can watch an escaped balloon heading for power lines. I wriggle out of the booth and stand up. My unbuckled shoes make me unsteady. I sway briefly, clutching the table.
“Come on, Skunk. Come with me. We’re going to my house.”
Skunk pauses just long enough to give me an icy stare. He doesn’t move from his spot on the leather bench.
“If you need to communicate with me,” he says, “use a radio.”
I stare at him, my beautiful mysterious love-bison turned hostile alien. And I honestly don’t know who I’m seeing. And I don’t know who I am, either, pleading with him in a twenty-four-hour diner while my head thrashes in a sea of chemicals like a cat trying to find its way out from under a heavy blanket.
I am a heartless monomaniac.
I don’t know what to do.
I spin on my silver heels and bomb out of there just as fast as I can possibly limp.
chapter thirty-six
Sometimes, a problem looks so small you can crush it between your fingers. Then you wake up one morning and it’s eating you alive.
When I leave the diner, it’s like the world comes unplugged. I run around pressing buttons, but nothing is working and nothing makes sense.
First, Denny and I get into a huge fight because I start practicing piano as soon as I get home without even bothering to change out of my murder-shoes or my scotch-smelling dress. I start practicing piano because I don’t know what else to do. There is nothing left to do. There is nothing left to do except what I was supposed to be doing in the first place, all summer long: practicing. I play Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Fish, Fish, Debussy, Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach. I drown out the worries that snake through my brain. I block out the touches of spiders and skunks. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a five-piano alarm.
Denny comes down the stairs, white-hot furious with sleep-puffy eyes.
“Where the HELL have you been?”
“Battle of the Bands.”
“I drove around looking for you for TWO HOURS. Your friend’s mom called at midnight and said I had to pick you up, then you weren’t even there.”
“Leave me alone. I’m practicing.”
“It’s six o’ clock in the FUCKING MORNING.”
“It’s not my fault you sleep all the time.”
“You’re FUCKING INSANE.”
He snatches the wooden metronome from on top of the piano and throws it hard at the floor. Like everything else in the world, it explodes into a million splintery pieces. I keep playing.
“You’d better listen to me, you psycho BITCH.”
Denny’s voice has a high-pitched strain to it like wind screaming in a chimney. I don’t care. I need to practice. The International Young Pianists’ Showcase requires my presence at 2:07 p.m. on Sunday, July 30. Now that I’ve scared off Lukas and abandoned Skunk, piano is all I have left. Triplets, triplets, left hand plays triplets. Right hand floats above.
Denny grabs my shoulders. Before I realize what’s happening, the piano bench topples like a kicked colt. My chin cracks against the floor. I am down. I have been downed. Kiri down. An ache springs up where my jaw hit the hardwood. My head floats dizzily from the surprise fall. I hear Denny stomp back up the stairs and slam the door.
For a moment, I lie there, stunned. I get up, lurch up the stairs, and pound on Denny’s door. “Denny—”
“Piss off.”
I talk at his door in a loud, fast, choppy gurgle.
“I’m sorry, Denny. I didn’t mean to wake you up. Maybe you could wear earplugs or something. The Showcase is in two weeks, and I basically need to practice nonstop until Mom and Dad get home.”
He crashes around his room. I hear him dial a number on the cordless phone. It’s sixteen digits long, which can only mean one thing.
The cruise ship.
“Mom? Hey. Kiri’s lost her mind.”
No.
I grab the doorknob, but it’s locked. Denny speaks nice and loud so I can hear.
“Yeah, she never sleeps, and she starts practicing piano at six in the morning, and I’m pretty sure she’s on drugs.”
No. No, no, no.
I jiggle the doorknob frantically and strain against the door with all my weight. “He’s lying!” I shout.
“What’s that?” says Denny, his voice dripping with responsible-older-brotherness like a switchblade dipped in honey. “Sure, you can talk to her. Hang on.”
The door pops open. Denny smirks as he hands me the phone. I snatch it and stalk down the hall to my room. By some miracle, I hear my own Responsible Voice spool out, calm and reassuring.
“Hi, Mom. I don’t think Denny understands. The Showcase is in two weeks.”
I sound so convincing it’s scary. I keep going, amazed at my own skill.
“I know, but he didn’t even try asking nicely. He can’t just come home out of the blue and expect me to work around his slacker schedule when I have so much to do.”
This is going well. This is going better than well. I press on. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I told him I was sleeping over at Angela’s last night, but he doesn’t listen to a word I say. Ha-ha. Okay. I’ll tell him. Thanks, Mom. How’s the cruise going?”
Through my bedroom wall, I can hear Denny turn up his music to drown me out. I smile ferociously into the mouthpiece, hearing precisely nothing of my mother’s reply. “Ha-ha, sounds awesome. Say hi to Dad for
me. Talk to you later. Bye.”
When I hang up, relief is coursing through my veins. I take the phone downstairs and drop it into its cradle.
“Mom says to let me practice!” I shout up the stairs.
I go to the piano, right the toppled bench, and start up where I left off without even getting ice for my chin.
Denny doesn’t come down again.
At one p.m. I take a quick lunch break, scarfing chips and salsa in front of the computer. There’s an email from my mom, saying it was nice talking to me on the phone this morning, but she just got a very worrisome email from Petra Malcywyck, who says that I seem to be having a rough time, and is there something going on that she should know about?
I reply to inform her that I have in fact been having a lovely time. I have been attending Hot Yoga classes at FitCity thrice a week, I have been learning the art of bicycle repair, I have been cooking organic macrobiotic three-course meals using the grocery money she left on top of the fridge, I have been practicing piano like a child of traditional Asian parents, I have been reading all the links to supposedly fascinating physics articles my friend Teagan has been emailing me from physics camp, and, oh yes, I have been watering the living crap out of the azaleas.
I write a similar email to Petra that is slightly more acerbic in tone.
A few minutes later, Lukas calls. I almost don’t answer. Then I do. I have a couple things to say to him. But instead of apologizing for being a treacherous narc, he says his great-grandma’s sick and they’re going up north to be with her next weekend so, um, sorry, but he can’t play our victory show at the Train Room on Saturday and is throwing everything we’ve been working on since September on the stink barge.
I tell Lukas to have fun at IndieFest with Kelsey Bartlett next weekend, whereupon he mumbles something about dropping off my gear and hangs up.
A little after noon, the phone rings again. It’s Dr. Scaliteri. I take the phone into the kitchen with me and press a pack of frozen peas to the bruised part of my chin, thinking, Dr. Scaliteri, if you knew how much I’ve suffered for my art—does Nelson Chow have to stand up to vicious thugs every time he practices piano? Does Nelson Chow have slivers of shattered metronome stuck to the bottoms of his feet?
Wild Awake Page 20
