Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,53
dead. I’m sure she sees us, but Skunk motions for me to stay where I am. He jumps up and rummages noisily through his dresser.
“Ouai, tante Martine. J’viens. Un moment, j’suis en train de me changer.”
“D’accord.”
She shuts the door. My body goes limp, but Skunk is quaking with silent laughter.
“I told her I was changing. I have to go upstairs for a while,” he whispers. “Don’t worry.”
He climbs the stairs. Before he opens the door, he looks over his shoulder to cast me a mischievous grin.
“Hey, Aunt Martine. What’s for dinner?” he says more loudly than he needs to. I have to bury my head under the quilt before I laugh so hard I give our secret away.
When Skunk comes back down, he lights big beeswax candles and tunes one of the radios to this station that plays detective shows from the 1940s. We lie on the floor and listen, the quilt wrapped around us. I lift his hand and very gently bite the tender perfect acorn of his finger. He murmurs and pulls me in close, and we spoon while the radio detective comforts a hysterical woman whose husband has just been found poisoned in bed.
“It was the butler,” I whisper.
“No way,” murmurs Skunk. “It was definitely the wife.”
“No way.”
“She’s having an affair with the butler.”
“You’re smoking crack.”
“Just wait.”
I sigh and nest my body more snugly into Skunk’s. The show goes on. It turns out it was the hysterical wife. Skunk was right.
We listen to another one starring the same detective, and this time Skunk predicts the killer again. “You’ve listened to way too many of these,” I say.
“You always think it’s the obvious suspect. It’s never the obvious suspect.”
“Thanks, Inspector Gadget.”
“It’s always the last person you’d ever guess.”
“I still don’t get why the groundskeeper killed Dr. Knight.”
“He’d falsified his brother’s will so Harry wouldn’t inherit Birch Pond anymore. The only way to get it back was to kill Dr. Knight.”
“You have listened to way too many of these.”
“Let’s listen to one more.”
I prop my head up on my elbows and look down at him. “Aren’t you getting tired? Don’t you ever sleep?”
“We’ll sleep,” whispers Skunk. “But let’s listen to another one first.”
I start to protest. Skunk reaches up and touches my hair, and before I know it I’m kissing him again. Soon neither of us is paying enough attention to the show to figure out who killed who.
All night we drift in and out of sleep, waking up just long enough to kiss and tangle and fall asleep again with our limbs in a knot. It feels like we’re living in a dream, like there’s no way what we’re doing is possible. But it is. And we are. And I don’t ever want it to end. I think back to Lukas and the disaster with the wine, and it seems hilarious now, like I’ve traded in a jar full of pennies for a bar of gold. It’s amazing how quickly the things you thought would make you happy seem small once you stumble on something true.
Beautiful, I think to myself as I float back into sleep, my whole body thrumming with a tender, exhausted state of exhilaration. Beside me, Skunk’s body is warm under his T-shirt. The last thing I see before falling asleep is the Kali painting on Skunk’s wall. Her blue-gold body is draped in equal parts flowers and severed heads—as if beauty and horror were interchangeable and what matters most is trusting in the dance. I gaze at her until I can almost hear the clink of bells, the thud of drums. My eyes droop shut, and then I’m gone.
Sometime around noon on Saturday we both take showers in the tiny downstairs bathroom. Skunk gives me a soft old T-shirt to wear and a pair of his aunt’s sweatpants he finds in the dryer. They’re big in the butt and they make me look like an orangutan, but at least they’re clean. Oh, Skunk! Oh, Bicycle Boy! This afternoon’s omelet features Asiago and leeks. When did Lukas ever feed me? When did Lukas peel off my borrowed socks and do a weird and vaguely pleasant shiatsu thing to my feet?
That evening when Skunk comes downstairs from checking in with his aunt and uncle, he does a silent victory dance in the middle of the floor.
What’s going on? I say with my eyes.
He just smiles and keeps dancing.
No, tell me!
I pound the bed with my fist in mock frustration. High heels click on the floor above