Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,49

the raindrops off his forehead.

“I used to. I was a big-time stoner when I was twelve.”

“When you were twelve? Where does a twelve-year-old get pot?”

Skunk laughs. “In Montreal, you can do anything when you’re twelve.”

He pronounces it Mo-ray-all, with this whiff of a Quebecois accent that makes my insides go limp. As we bike to his neighborhood, Skunk tells me about growing up in Montreal: smoking cigarettes at recess, skipping school to play in bands, moving out of his mom and stepdad’s apartment when he was sixteen to live in a shared house with the Band That Shall Not Be Mentioned.

“So you’d what, blaze and do multiplication tables?” I say.

“Yeah. Or just sit in my room and play bass.”

“What happens if you smoke weed now?”

“My paranoia gets worse.”

I give him a funny look.

“It gets worse? You mean you’re just generally paranoid all the time? Are you paranoid right now? Are you paranoid about me?”

I swoop my bike closer to Skunk’s and give him my best evil stare.

“I am plotting to kill you, Skunk. Kiri Byrd in the toolshed with a bike wrench.”

He gives my handlebars a light push. I veer away, laughing.

“How do you know I’m not plotting to kill you?” says Skunk. “I could have sabotaged your bike and you wouldn’t even know it. Your tires might blow up the next time you go over a bump.”

I swoop closer again, rain falling lush and heavy on my skin.

“You’re not that evil.”

“Try me.”

“You just think you are because you have tattoos. Speaking of which, should I get one? I was thinking about getting Beethoven’s face right here.”

I point to a spot on my arm. Skunk grimaces.

“Please don’t.”

“Why? What’s wrong with Beethoven? It would make me more legit as a pianist. I’m going to be in this big piano festival soon, and I want the other contestants to know I mean business. When I flex my bicep, Beethoven could scowl at them menacingly.”

“Or you could scowl at them menacingly.”

“Trust me. I’ve got that part down.”

“You’re a little crazy, you know.”

“Look who’s talking, Bicycle Boy.”

When we get to Skunk’s house, the rain is still pouring down. We wheel our bikes through the iron gate and down the side of the house, flower stems slapping wetly against our legs. Skunk unlocks the shed and lifts his bike onto its pegs. He finds my plastic shopping bags stowed under the workbench and hands them to me. I feel the ridiculous shape of the acorn squash and the straw hat. The piano lesson I had this afternoon feels like something that happened years ago, to a different Kiri altogether. My legs are slick with bicycle grease and rainwater, muscles aching from the ride. I want to freeze myself in this feeling like a fern in amber.

I saw the ships, I want to tell Sukey. I know she’d know what I mean.

Skunk closes the shed door and hooks the combination lock through the metal latch. We stand in the courtyard, rain splashing off our shoulders. I think of my empty house and nudge my kickstand down, playing for time.

“Mind if I use your bathroom?”

I do need to pee, but mostly I just don’t want to go home. When I think of everywhere I’ve been tonight, the warehouses and the sea wall, my house seems lifeless, a plastic Monopoly piece in a world full of brick and glass and water and wood and stone.

Skunk plays with his keys.

“Sure. We have to be quiet, though. My aunt and uncle are sleeping upstairs.”

“No problem. I’ll be in and out.”

I leave my bike in the courtyard and follow Skunk to the house, waiting as he unlocks the sliding glass door and pulls it open. I can’t help but feel a little excited. I’m finally being admitted to the inner sanctum. The Sanctum Skunkorium. The cave of mysteries.

He goes in first, and I follow. As I step inside, I forget all about my need to pee. My senses reel.

Skunk’s room is one of the most bizarre and beautiful places I’ve ever seen.

The entire room is filled with old radios. It reminds me of nothing so much as an aviary, each radio a different bird, some with gleaming wooden coats like sparrows and some with green plastic shoulders like parrots. They perch on ledges and shelves, peeking down from windowsills and peering out from in between stacks of old books, their antennas perked at quirky angles, their dials glowing faintly in the dim golden light of an antique lamp. Some of them