Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,55

says Petra, cutting off a bus that was going too slowly for her taste and merging into the left lane. “I was about to have Lukas break into your house in case you had slipped in the shower and hit your head.”

“My phone was dead,” I blurt. “I went out of town and forgot my charger. I went to visit Denny in Victoria. I just got back, like, five minutes ago. The bus from the ferry took longer than I thought.”

“You went to visit Denny?” Lukas says.

“Um. Yeah.”

I don’t mean to lie, but the truth is suddenly too complicated to explain, especially to Lukas, especially in front of Lukas’s mom. How am I supposed to tell them I just spent the better part of forty-eight hours snarfling with Bicycle Boy? Lukas doesn’t even know about Skunk except as that sketchy guy who fixed my tire the night I biked to the Downtown Eastside. There hasn’t exactly been time to give him an update. And Petra would flip if she knew the truth. Plus, I haven’t eaten anything except omelets and toast for two days; that alone would be enough to make her call in the riot police.

Lukas looks different tonight, and it takes me a moment to figure out why. Then I realize he’s wearing all black, like he wanted us to do so we’d look like a serious band. Then I realize I’m still wearing Skunk’s aunt’s big-butt sweatpants and Skunk’s old T-shirt with no bra. Real smooth, Kiri. Way to make a hot first impression for your band.

“Next time you remember to tell somebody where you go,” says Petra, casting me a stern look in the rearview mirror. She’s wearing glasses with dark green frames, which make her look even more stern than usual. “I called your mother, and she said you were probably sleeping over at the house of a girlfriend. But if you were gone for any longer, I would have called the police.”

Petra pulls up in front of the venue and lets us out. She drives away to find parking while Lukas, his dad, and I hustle the gear up the stairs. I bang my synth on the wall by accident, and the seam holding the two pieces of silver plastic together pops apart.

“Crap.”

“What’s going on?” barks Lukas. We stop in the middle of the stairs, staggering under our armloads of gear.

“I think I just broke my synth.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“It’s not my fault. If I wasn’t carrying your cymbal, I could have—”

“Can you fix it?” he squeals.

“I don’t know, it looks like—”

“Pop it back together. It doesn’t look like the electronics are damaged.”

“I don’t think I can—”

“Just try.”

“God, Lukas. Chill out.”

I feel around the edge of the synth. The top and bottom halves have completely split apart. I think a screw must have popped out when it hit the wall.

“Let’s just go upstairs, and I’ll figure this out when I’m not carrying half a drum kit,” I say.

Lukas stomps up the stairs. I pause to adjust the instruments I’m carrying so the edge of Lukas’s cymbal stops slicing into my arm. A few steps later, I stop again because I’m close to dropping a drumstick. By the time I get to the top of the stairs, Lukas and his dad are nowhere to be seen. I spot some of our gear in a pile by the wall where they dumped it. The Train Room is packed and loud, and it’s too dim to see anything except a crowded mass of horny underage bodies. I stand in the doorway, craning my neck.

Up onstage, there’s a punk band playing—one of our rivals, assuming we even get to play. All the kids in the band go to our school: straight-edge Alex with the Mohawk, Derick Mason, Ayo Ngebi, and that girl Nikky Sharp, who won’t even talk to you if you’re not punk. They sound like a shitty version of the Dropkick Murphys, all raspy-voiced shouting and bashing drums.

I drop my gear and go to hunt down Lukas and his dad. I find them at the back of the room, talking to a short, tightly built guy in his twenties with a black beard like a massive halo engulfing his whole face. I join them, panting.

“Hey. What’s the word?”

Lukas doesn’t even look at me.

“I can squeeze you guys in at the end,” says Blackbeard, squinting down at the clipboard he’s holding, “but you only get one song, not three. That’s four minutes, tops.”

“Can’t we get a little