Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,62

ibuprofen and knock them back with coffee. Time to clean up my act. I scoop up all the sheet music from the living room floor and pile it in a high, unsteady tower next to the piano. The pages are mottled and water-stained, and some of them are ripped from being walked on. “Sorry,” I whisper to Stanley Otter Fish, doing my best to smooth the paper out.

I clean up the puke with a towel and throw the towel in the washing machine. I clean the kitchen floor with another towel and throw that towel in the washing machine. I grab another towel and use it to lovingly polish every inch of the grand piano. Soon every towel in the house is thumping around in the washer like a family of poor bedraggled beavers trapped in a whirlpool. I dump in more detergent, and the beavers disappear under a mushroom cloud of bubbles.

I clean up the kitchen and wash all the dishes and put them away. I unwrap one of the bowls of oatmeal from the fridge and eat it cold. It’s gray and congealed. The raisins are plump and gross from absorbing water. I pick them out and put them in a bowl, in case Denny wants them. Waste is bad.

As I move around the house, my head feels like a public swimming pool during open swim: shouts and splashes, echoes, impossible to swim in a straight line without bashing into someone’s hairy leg. My emotions keep flipping between pride and rage and guilt and self-defense, like the shiny red pointer on a game-show wheel.

What do I owe Denny, anyway? What do I owe Mom and Dad? Clean carpets and a pleasant phone voice. That’s all they’ve ever wanted, and all I’ve ever given them. That’s all I’ve ever given them, and that’s all they deserve, because if it wasn’t for their precious carpets, Sukey wouldn’t have escaped to the Imperial and she wouldn’t be dead.

I think this as I haul out the vacuum.

I think this as I plow it murderously around the living room.

That’s all they deserve, those liars, those fakes, but when I’m finished ranting, the carpet is clean.

At ten p.m. the phone starts ringing, but I absolutely must practice so I don’t answer it, even when it rings again at ten fifteen and again at 10:18 and again at 10:22. I sit at the piano with my back to the squalling phone, practicing scales and arpeggios. I won’t answer it. I won’t.

I tell myself I won’t answer it because I’m finished with telephone voices, but really the sound of the telephone fills me with a cold and queasy dread.

I’m afraid it’s my parents calling to tell me they know, they know, and they’re coming home directly. I don’t know what my parents know or what they’re coming home to do to me, but I’m sure it’s shameful and sinister and absolutely devastating, so I don’t answer the phone.

The phone rings again at ten thirty and three more times between 10:35 and 10:40. It’s not Skunk, because Skunk has my cell number, not the home phone, and even if it was Skunk, I couldn’t answer because although I haven’t gone to the garage to look, I know that something shameful and sinister and absolutely devastating has happened to my bicycle, and when he sees it he’ll know all about the trap-door spider and the fetal pig.

At eleven thirty I hear Denny’s car in the driveway. The house is spotless. I even cut flowers from outside, daffodils and azaleas and bright pink cosmos, and put them in vases all around the room and on top of the piano. When Denny walks in, I’m polishing the wineglasses and placing them back on their shelf in perfect rows. He glares.

“Don’t you pick up the phone? I called, like, twenty times.”

He roves around the kitchen, yanking the fridge open and shutting it, banging all the cupboard doors. “There’s no freaking food in this house. I wanted you to pick up yam rolls before Kits Sushi closed.”

He swipes a pizza coupon off the fridge door and starts dialing the number. I inspect the last wineglass for smudges and carefully lift it into its spot.

“Did you know Sukey used to go watch the ships?” I blurt.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I adjust the wineglass by a quarter degree. “She used to sneak out to Kits Beach and watch the ships.”

“So what?”

I glance back at him. “I just thought you should know that.”

Denny’s