man.”
I turn my bike around and wheel it toward the side alley. The tires feel firm and healthy. My bike feels whole and reassuring, back to its old reliable self. Even though I’m worn out, I’m kinda looking forward to the ride home.
“Hey.”
I stop and turn my head. For a second, I think he’s going to ask for my number, but instead he takes something out of the cardboard box and tosses it to me. I catch it. It’s a little blinker light. When I press the button, its white LEDs start to flash on and off.
“Thanks.”
I snap it onto the seat post of my bike and give Skunk an awkward wave good-bye. He picks up his box and stands there watching as I walk my bike down the side of the house, as if to make sure he put the wheel on right.
I get to the street, hop on, and don’t stop pedaling until I can see the lights on my front porch.
chapter five
“I can’t believe you went down there. You do realize that guy who called you was running a scam.”
Lukas unscrews the glass jar with the fuzzy green nugget of weed at the bottom. He reaches in, breaks off a tiny chunk, and places it in a silver grinder. Lukas packs a bowl like it’s a Japanese tea ceremony: formal, lengthy, and full of cryptic little steps that absolutely have to be done the right way.
“Oh, come on, Lukas—”
He cuts me off. “Let’s see. Calling people on the phone, telling them you have valuable heirlooms belonging to their dead relatives and all they have to do is meet you downtown alone at night to pick them up. Sure, Kiri, doesn’t sound like a scam at all.”
“He didn’t say he had anything valuable, he just—”
“He could have knifed you. He could have stolen your bike. I mean, no offense, but wasn’t your sister kind of a druggie? What if it’s one of her druggie friends?”
“Sukey wasn’t a druggie. What makes you think she was a druggie?”
“Didn’t she die of an overdose or something?”
“No!”
“How’d she die, then?”
“She was in an accident.”
“What kind of accident?”
“What kind of accident do you think? There’s a reason I’m still not allowed to drive.”
I say it a bit too vehemently. Lukas glances up.
“Sorry. I’m just saying maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t find him.”
My cheeks flush. At the time Sukey died, I was a giggly seventh grader whose idea of a good time was playing my favorite Disney songs on the keyboard over and over with my equally giggly friends. I know there are details about the accident that Mom and Dad have never told me, and a pathetic little part of me is grateful for that. Just thinking about the possibility of details makes my mouth go dry and my stomach clench like I’m going to throw up—if I knew exactly what she had been doing, or where she had been going, or who she had been fighting with on her cell phone before she crashed, I’d feel sick for the rest of my life.
Lukas takes the lid off the grinder and taps the weed out onto the book on his lap. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I gave it to him for his birthday. He unzips his pencil case, takes out the teak pipe he got at the Balinese import store on Commercial Drive, and packs the weed into it carefully like he’s tucking it into bed. His eyes narrow in concentration.
“Why don’t you ask your dad about it?” says Lukas. “Your parents can get email on their cruise ship, right?”
I reach behind my head and massage the muscles in my neck. Even though I didn’t get home until late last night, I still got up early and practiced piano for five and a half hours before coming over to Lukas’s house, just like my schedule said, and I can feel it in my shoulders and back.
“My dad would just tell me I shouldn’t have gone down there.”
“What about your mom?”
“She never knows anything about anything.”
When confronted with any kind of life situation, Lukas can be trusted to direct you to one of two handy flowcharts:
1. Ask Parent A Ask Parent B
or
2. Ask Parent B Ask Parent A.
If your problem cannot be resolved by talking to Parent A or Parent B, both charts direct you to C: Problem Not Worth Solving.
Which he does right on cue.
“Why do you want to find this Doug guy so bad anyway?”
“He has her things.”
“What