Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,38

safe little triangle between the fridge, the bathroom, and the piano. When my shoulders start to droop, I drink some coffee and keep going. There simply isn’t time to stop. I have more than one hundred pages of music to memorize by next Thursday. One hundred pages in six days.

Each time I make a mistake, I pounce on it with my claws extended and wrestle it to death.

Each time I feel like resting, I think about the master class with Tzlatina Tzoriskaya and force myself to go on.

Each time I feel like crying, I tell myself to knock it off.

I think about all the money that’s gone into my piano lessons, and the days and weeks and hours. I have to get this right, I just have to, or else—

I don’t want to think about the “or else.” Or else is a blank. A big gaping canyon. And on the other side of it is a person I don’t know how to be.

By the third day, I don’t have eyes anymore—I have orbital cavities. My hair hangs limp and greasy like I’m an actress at a haunted house. My back aches like I’ve been dragging the piano across the floor, not playing it, and my mouth tastes like caffeine. When my friend Teagan calls from physics camp to tell me a convoluted but hilarious story about the second law of thermodynamics, she stops halfway through to ask if she should, like, call me an ambulance. When Lukas’s mom calls to check on me, I carry the phone to the piano and play her part of the concerto.

“It is incredible what you do with this piano,” says Petra. “I am wishing we had started Lukas when he was young.”

Her approval is a gold star I use to hold up all the ones whose edges have started to curl.

The metronome ticks. I lose track of days. My clothes start to smell like I just ran a marathon. Several nights pass where I don’t see my bed, don’t even go upstairs at all. Sergei Prokofiev starts talking to me, a constant internal chatter, critiquing my technique and making grim Russian noises whenever I miss a note. I can feel the music growing on me like a graft on a plum tree, the new leaves shooting out, becoming a part of my brain.

At one point, my parents call long-distance from Brazil to give me a detailed update on the state of the lemur population at the Sao Rodrigo Wildlife Preserve, which they visited on a recent excursion from their cruise ship. My mom gives me a full report on the distinct habits, personalities, and dietary preferences of all six members of the lemur family showcased in the little pen at the visitor center. My dad’s contribution is a scathing condemnation of the boldness of the Brazilian homeless person. I pace around the kitchen while they talk, and eventually set the phone on top of the fridge and wander away.

When Wednesday night rolls around, I’m ready. I’ve spent an entire week Focusing on My Art, and now not only am I a honed and dangerous pianist, I have also become Serious. I’m a finely focused laser beam. Forget burning the candle at both ends—I’ve dipped the candle in kerosene and torched that sucker. One hundred pages of music, all safely stored in my brain. You tell me if that isn’t Serious. You just try telling me that isn’t some Serious shit.

chapter twenty

Not even ten minutes after I declare victory on the Prokofiev, the phone rings and it’s Lukas calling to see if I want to watch Zardoz. The timing is so uncanny it’s got to be a sign. I tell him to come over in an hour, by which I mean, Give me an hour to prepare my sex-dome.

I hang up the phone and launch into preparation mode.

First, I clean up the living room, fluffing pillows and draping the chenille blanket invitingly over the back of the couch. I load a good playlist onto my iPod, flick off lights and switch on lamps, gather up all the old newspapers and dump them into the recycling bin in the garage. Next, I tackle my bedroom, tossing dirty socks and underwear into the laundry bin and hanging up clothes. I spend five minutes debating whether to leave a black bra hanging casually over the closet door, then decide it looks too staged and move it to a dresser drawer. I crank open the window next to my