Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,54
our heads. Do Skunk’s aunt and uncle have company over? Are we about to get busted? Is Skunk getting some kind of sick pleasure out of almost getting caught?
I’m about to bolt for the alley when Skunk slides onto the bed beside me and whispers in my ear, “They’re going to an engagement party in Surrey. They won’t be home until eleven.”
When Skunk’s aunt and uncle leave for the party, we go upstairs and play house. We snuggle up on the couch and watch movies on the big-screen TV. We play with the cat. I climb onto Skunk’s aunt’s elliptical machine and swing my legs so hard I almost break it. When I discover the waterbed in Skunk’s aunt and uncle’s room when I’m walking through after using their bathroom, I shriek so loud, Skunk comes running in to save me.
We stare at it, then at each other, both of us waiting for the other person to say what they’re thinking first.
“We shouldn’t,” says Skunk.
So we do.
When the rain stops, just past ten, we’re lying on the floor of Skunk’s bedroom flushed and breathless, our teacups abandoned nearby. We both hear it at the same time: the sudden silence, where the patter of rain had sounded in the courtyard ever since we come in from our ride. I burrow my hand in the soft black tangle of his hair. “Time to go home.”
I feel a pinprick of uncertainty when I say it. Maybe it was crazy to stay here. Maybe Skunk thinks I’m a big easy sloot, and all those sweet things we did were just games to him. If you’d only been responsible like I told you to be, you wouldn’t have to worry about those questions, says the version of myself that went home and practiced piano on Thursday night. For one perilous moment, my heart hangs in the air like a flipped coin. I know by the time I get home, that coin’s going to have landed either on drunken elation or crippling regret, and I don’t want to wait that long to find out which one it’s going to be. I decide to do a test.
“There’s something I want to do before I go,” I say. “I need to whisper it, though.”
Skunk tilts his head, and I murmur it in his ear. When I pull away, he grins.
“Do you . . . want to?” I say.
He nods and starts to unbutton his jeans. We undress quickly, dropping shirts and underwear, and I glimpse Skunk’s body, pale and lustrous as a pearl, his tattoos dark on his arms. When we’re both naked, I reach for Skunk’s hand.
The glass door slides open easily. The wet concrete in the courtyard is cold and rough under our feet. I glance at the sky and let out a happy whoop.
We gambol, star-clad, while the last few raindrops splash around us and the pear tree shakes its wet, white blossoms on our heads.
chapter twenty-five
When I get home, I plug my dead cell phone into its charger and discover a million messages from Lukas, asking where I am and when we’re leaving for Battle of the Bands, which is on Saturday night at nine, which is—oh God—an hour and a half ago.
Shitshitshitshitshit.
I mash Lukas’s name in the call log and practically pee my pants while I’m waiting for him to pick up, because the full awful truth of how badly I’ve just screwed up is dawning on me in all its horror. If we miss Battle of the Bands because of me being a huge irresponsible sloot with Bicycle Boy, I’ll never be able to look Lukas in the face again.
Pick up, pick up, pick up, I plead to the cell phone gods, and when Lukas finally picks up, he shrieks, “WHERE ARE YOU?” and I shriek, “AT HOME COME PICK ME UP!” and a minute later Petra’s car screeches into the driveway. I scurry out with my synth under my arm and cords dangling everywhere and cram myself into the backseat without even bothering to put my gear in the back of the station wagon.
“I’m so sorry. So sorry,” I babble while Petra bombs through a yellow light and heads for the bridge. Lukas’s dad cringes in the passenger seat. He’s a safety freak, and Petra’s driving is cause for alarm on the best of days.
Lukas looks at me with his eyes bugged out and says, “I called you fifty-one times! My call log says fifty-one times!”
“We were worried about you, Kiri,”