Wild Awake (20 page)

Maybe it’s not too late.

This was just a blip, an accidental quiver on the otherwise even Richter scale of my Seriousness. Yes. Okay. All is good. I need to hide Sukey’s things and clean the house and practice for at least eight hours. There is utterly and regrettably no time whatsoever to sleep anymore, not until at least Monday. I put the water bottle on the floor, stand up, limp to the bathroom, and bow over the sink, splashing water on my face for what seems like a very long time.

I scrape my hair into a ponytail and throw a sweatshirt on over my dress. My knees are bloody mosaics of scabs. No time to deal with them now. I shake out a handful of ibuprofen and knock them back with coffee. Time to clean up my act. I scoop up all the sheet music from the living room floor and pile it in a high, unsteady tower next to the piano. The pages are mottled and water-stained, and some of them are ripped from being walked on. “Sorry,” I whisper to Stanley Otter Fish, doing my best to smooth the paper out.

I clean up the puke with a towel and throw the towel in the washing machine. I clean the kitchen floor with another towel and throw that towel in the washing machine. I grab another towel and use it to lovingly polish every inch of the grand piano. Soon every towel in the house is thumping around in the washer like a family of poor bedraggled beavers trapped in a whirlpool. I dump in more detergent, and the beavers disappear under a mushroom cloud of bubbles.

I clean up the kitchen and wash all the dishes and put them away. I unwrap one of the bowls of oatmeal from the fridge and eat it cold. It’s gray and congealed. The raisins are plump and gross from absorbing water. I pick them out and put them in a bowl, in case Denny wants them. Waste is bad.

As I move around the house, my head feels like a public swimming pool during open swim: shouts and splashes, echoes, impossible to swim in a straight line without bashing into someone’s hairy leg. My emotions keep flipping between pride and rage and guilt and self-defense, like the shiny red pointer on a game-show wheel.

What do I owe Denny, anyway? What do I owe Mom and Dad? Clean carpets and a pleasant phone voice. That’s all they’ve ever wanted, and all I’ve ever given them. That’s all I’ve ever given them, and that’s all they deserve, because if it wasn’t for their precious carpets, Sukey wouldn’t have escaped to the Imperial and she wouldn’t be dead.

I think this as I haul out the vacuum.

I think this as I plow it murderously around the living room.

That’s all they deserve, those liars, those fakes
, but when I’m finished ranting, the carpet is clean.

At ten p.m. the phone starts ringing, but I absolutely must practice so I don’t answer it, even when it rings again at ten fifteen and again at 10:18 and again at 10:22. I sit at the piano with my back to the squalling phone, practicing scales and arpeggios. I won’t answer it. I won’t.

I tell myself I won’t answer it because I’m finished with telephone voices, but really the sound of the telephone fills me with a cold and queasy dread.

I’m afraid it’s my parents calling to tell me they know, they know, and they’re coming home directly. I don’t know what my parents know or what they’re coming home to do to me, but I’m sure it’s shameful and sinister and absolutely devastating, so I don’t answer the phone.

The phone rings again at ten thirty and three more times between 10:35 and 10:40. It’s not Skunk, because Skunk has my cell number, not the home phone, and even if it was Skunk, I couldn’t answer because although I haven’t gone to the garage to look, I know that something shameful and sinister and absolutely devastating has happened to my bicycle, and when he sees it he’ll know all about the trap-door spider and the fetal pig.

At eleven thirty I hear Denny’s car in the driveway. The house is spotless. I even cut flowers from outside, daffodils and azaleas and bright pink cosmos, and put them in vases all around the room and on top of the piano. When Denny walks in, I’m polishing the wineglasses and placing them back on their shelf in perfect rows. He glares.

“Don’t you pick up the phone? I called, like, twenty times.”

He roves around the kitchen, yanking the fridge open and shutting it, banging all the cupboard doors. “There’s no freaking food in this house. I wanted you to pick up yam rolls before Kits Sushi closed.”

He swipes a pizza coupon off the fridge door and starts dialing the number. I inspect the last wineglass for smudges and carefully lift it into its spot.

“Did you know Sukey used to go watch the ships?” I blurt.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I adjust the wineglass by a quarter degree. “She used to sneak out to Kits Beach and watch the ships.”

“So what?”

I glance back at him. “I just thought you should know that.”

Denny’s expression is unreadable. He pauses and slowly lowers the phone into its cradle.

“I found out,” I warble, a little too loud.

“What do you want, a medal?”

The wineglasses look perfect now, three sparkling rows of three. I gently close the cupboard door and start in on the knives.

“I went to the place where she was living,” I say. “I got that frog that used to sit on her windowsill. And her quilt.”

“Put that knife down,” says Denny. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I’m cleaning them.”

“They’re already clean.”

“Jars of paint, too,” I say. “They’re not even dry.”

I polish the knife and slide it back into the wooden block, its blade as flawlessly reflective as the mirror on a ballet studio wall. Denny leans across the counter and snatches the dishcloth before I can clean any more.

“Quit it,” he says. “Are we talking real life here, or are you still tripping on whatever is it you took last night?” He stares at my eyes, which are admittedly a little red. “Oh my God. You’re on meth.”

“I’m not on drugs, Denny.”

“You were passed out under the piano.”

“I was hungover. It was Battle of the Bands.”

Denny shakes his head. “No. No way. It’s not alcohol. Look at you—you’re all tweaky. You’re hopped up on something. Drinking doesn’t do that. What is it? Coke? E? Your eyes are all bloodshot. You look fucking insane.”

“I smoked some pot. A lot of pot.”

“Oh, really. Speaking of which, where’d you get all that pot?”

I lift my chin. “None of your business.”

He narrows his eyes. I can see the thought forming in his head before he does. I make a grab for the phone, but he snatches it first.

“Maybe I should call Mom and Dad,” he says.

I lunge across the counter, clawing at Denny’s hands as he starts to dial. “The only reason you would ever do that is to be an asshole.”

“They would be so worried if they knew their perfect little pianist was on drugs. They might have to cut their trip short and fly home to take care of you. What a shame. Let me just dial this number, and—”

I pant, the counter edge cutting into my stomach as Denny and I do a slow-motion arm-wrestle for the phone. “You don’t really think I’m on drugs,” I say through clenched teeth. “You’re just trying to avoid the conversation.”

“What conversation?” he says.

“Exactly.”

Denny relaxes his grip on the phone. I swipe it and hold it behind my back, its plastic case hot in my hand. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Denny watches me warily. “You were
twelve
, Kiri. You hung on Sukey’s every word like she was your guru. You couldn’t have handled it then, and by the looks of it you can’t even handle it now.”

I glare at him, outraged. I know how I must look right now, with my scraped-up knees and bloodshot eyes and the trembly-tense posture of a first-time gangster holding up a convenience store. But it’s not fair. It’s a misrepresentation. I’m the strong person here, the one who stayed nice when everyone else was slamming doors, the one who filled the house with music when grief had drained it to a creeping silence, the one who rode to the Imperial on a freaking bicycle to bring a piece of Sukey home. If there’s something I can’t handle, it’s being told all of that means nothing. My face heats up.

“Well, I know more than any of you now. You want to know who killed her? A kid with a sideways nose. You want to know how I got her stuff? Her alcoholic neighbor kept it in his closet for five years because nobody from our stupid family cared enough to go down there and clear out her studio after it happened.”

Denny sighs and runs a hand through his idiotic haircut like a long-suffering adult trapped in negotiations with a three-year-old. “It’s not that simple. You don’t even know all the details.”

The condescension in his voice hits me like baking soda on vinegar. I erupt.

“‘You don’t know the details. You don’t know the details.’ I’m the one who went down there, so don’t give me that crap about details.”

Denny smirks. “Oh yeah? You know about her tiny little pill problem?”

“Lots of great artists use mind-altering substances.”

“You know she owed people money?”

I don’t answer.

Denny keeps going, his voice oh-so-casual, drumming on the counter with his fingernails.

“You know what great artists with tiny little pill problems do to
get
money?” he says.

The sentence hangs in the air like a tossed grenade. Denny’s eyes pin me to the spot. I writhe like one of the sea urchins he tortures in his lab, dark possibilities crowding into my mind.

“Mom and Dad should have helped her,” I bleat.

“They
did
. Do you know how many times Dad tried to—”

“She was working on a painting. A big one. Which you and Mom and Dad would know if you’d actually believed in her.”

Whatever scrap of sympathy was in Denny’s eyes before burns away instantly. “I don’t know what kind of warm, fuzzy story this alcoholic neighbor told you, but she wasn’t there on a freaking art residency.”

“It’s true. She was working on it when she
died
.”

Denny gives me a look of such utter incredulity that it appears he is considering, for real this time, the possibility that I may actually be insane.

“Oh, right,” he says, his hands dropping to his sides in disbelief. “Our dear, sweet, innocent Sukey was hard at work on a lovely painting in her lovely art studio when this random drug dealer just happened to walk in and stab her to death. If that’s true, where’s the painting? Don’t tell me her alcoholic neighbor saved that stupid frog but let this supposed masterpiece get thrown out.”

“Maybe it got blood on it,” I say, but my mind is already racing to the stains on the quilt. Doug
would
have saved the painting. Maybe he still has it. Maybe it’s the one thing he couldn’t bear to give away. Or maybe he brought it to an art gallery, just like Sukey was planning.

I must look distraught, because Denny reaches across the counter and pats my hand.

“Hey. She was my sister too.”

I yank my hand away, and Denny shakes his head, his pity giving way to exasperation.

“Come on, Kiri. If you’re going to make a stink about how nobody told you the truth, you should at least stop lying to yourself.”

He stalks out of the kitchen. I stay there smoldering, hating Denny, hating our parents, trying to think up the perfect comeback to prove them all wrong.

But five minutes later, I haven’t come up with one, and I’m still standing in the kitchen alone.

The next morning, I can’t stand
to be in the house. Denny’s words from the night before are like a stone in my shoe, their truth a grinding presence I can’t ignore.
He’s wrong
, I tell myself again and again. But there’s a ten-pound weight in the pit of my stomach that says otherwise. The fridge buzzes and tiny spiders crawl out of the flowers I cut from the backyard until there’s nothing I can do but grab my keys and wallet and catch a bus downtown. I tell myself I’m only going to drop in on Doug for a friendly visit, but Sukey’s painting is all I can think about as I hurry to the stop.

The minute I get on the bus, I start to regret it. It lurches along, hardly traveling six feet before an iguana-faced senior citizen pulls the cord and makes it stop again. A tall, pimply boy sits down next to me, takes out a spiral-bound notebook, a pen, and graphing calculator, and starts working on a long and seemingly impossible math equation, breathing loudly through his mouth. I think of Goth Girl from
The Adolescent Depression Workbook
. Maybe they should date.

“Need some help?” I ask in a friendly way, but he just glances at me with a terrified expression and scribbles more numbers down.

The bus crawls along West Broadway, getting more and more crowded at every stop. It would have been faster to ride my bike, but the front wheel is bent and there are splinters of pain in my kneecaps when I walk, so I can’t imagine trying to pedal. I grit my teeth while people pull the cord and get off at the most mundane and pointless places: the Laundromat, the bank. It seems so petty of them to keep doing that, I can hardly contain my frustration.
Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go
. Math Boy’s shoulder jostles mine, and the old lady sitting behind me unwraps a breath mint that smells like industrial detergent. The only thing that keeps me from flipping out completely is when Skunk texts me
WHERE’S MY CRAZY GIRL?
and I text back
ON A MISSION
and he texts me
COME OVER LATER?
and I text
YES YES
and he texts
OK BEAUTIFUL
.

When I finally get to the Imperial, Doug is sitting on his mattress, his blue fleece blanket gathered around his scrawny legs, beer can plugged into the hollow of his hand. Snoogie’s munching greedily at the cat food I brought for her the other day. I can hear the star-shaped pink pellets cracking between her teeth. I sit down beside her on the dirty floor and break open the pomegranate I bought at MONEY FOOD before coming in. Some days call for strange fruit.

“My brother wants to know what happened to the painting,” I say, doing my best to sound casual and nonthreatening in case Doug really did keep it for himself or sold it for beer money one day when he got desperate.