Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,74

you are eating real food,” says Petra. “I can give him instructions for roast chicken, if he doesn’t know how.”

My suspicion dissolves into relief, and I remember how much I love Petra.

“He knows how to cook a chicken,” I say.

As the day progresses, I become more and more worried about Skunk. What if Martine took him to some evil mental hospital and had him committed because he goes to bed at four a.m.? She’s a nurse. They would believe her word over his, even though Skunk is obviously and thoroughly sane. Too bad he doesn’t have his phone, because then he would be able to call me for help.

I try calling him one more time just in case, but all I get is the same constipated robot voice telling me the subscriber has not set up their voice-mail in-box.

I start calling hospitals.

“Is there a Philippe in your psychiatric ward?”

“Philippe who?”

“He’s really big. Like a bison. He has tattoos all over his arms.”

“What’s the last name?”

“Could you just go look if he’s there?”

Denny comes home from skimboarding.

“Denny, can you drive me somewhere?”

“No, get a license.”

“It’s extremely, extremely, extremely urgent. I need to go a psychiatric ward.”

“No shit.”

“I need to find someone.”

“If they’re in a psych ward, they’re probably not allowed to see you anyway.”

“Please.”

“I told you. Get a license.”

I go on the internet and look up the symptoms of psychosis. Somehow I end up taking a self-scoring suicide quiz on a mental health website. According to the quiz, I have an 87 percent risk of committing suicide. This sounds serious. I wonder if maybe I’m on the verge of suicide right now. Maybe that means I can join Skunk in the psych ward. The website says there’s a hotline you should call if your score is over 50 percent. I call the hotline. It rings busy. When I hang up the phone, it rings immediately. I think it’s the hotline calling back, but it’s my parents calling from Lithuania, where they are eating herring and snurkleberry jam.

“I am bringing you and Denny some snurkleberry jam,” titters my mother.

“Maybe you could study piano in Lithuania,” says my dad. “Then we’d have an excuse to come here all the time.”

“I haven’t slept in three days,” I say.

They chortle as if I’ve made some funny joke.

“There’ll be plenty of time for sleeping after the Showcase,” says my dad.

“If you’re stressed, you can borrow my gym card,” says my mom. “It’s in the basket on top of the fridge.”

“I don’t think—”

“They have something called Hot Yoga. That might be relaxing.”

I stare at the ceiling. I don’t need to relax, I need to find Skunk.

“Is the computer working okay?” says my dad.

“They have Sunrise Pilates on our ship,” says my mom.

I am not sure how to decode this. Surely we must be talking about something bigger than computer viruses and ambiguously spiritual exercise regimens. There must be something buried deeper, a subtext I’ve been too thick to parse.

“I’m dying,” I say carefully, trying to load each word with as many layers of meaning as I can.

“All right,” says my mom. “Go take a nap.”

chapter thirty-three

When I answer my ringing cell phone on Saturday morning at four a.m., Skunk’s voice whispers, “The Way that can be experienced is not true.”

I hold the phone close to my face and whisper, “The world that can be constructed is not real.”

I hear the crackle of a radio in the background. Sometimes Skunk tunes one or more of his radios to static when he’s feeling paranoid. I spread my legs out on the kitchen floor, where I am sitting and organizing the cleaning supplies, soaps and detergents and powders and sprays.

“Hi, Kiri.”

“Hi, Skunk. Are you listening to the radio?”

Pause. “Yes.”

“How many radios?”

Pause. “Three.”

“Is this a three-radio alert?”

Pause.

“I was worried you were in a mental hospital. I called all the mental hospitals asking if they had you. I was afraid your aunt Martine had brought you in for not going to bed when she wanted. She seemed like kind of a, excuse me, bitch.”

There’s a very long pause. Skunk says quietly, “I was in a hospital. Not this time. Six months ago. I had a thing. That’s why she’s so afraid.”

This time, it’s my turn to pause. “Afraid of what, Skunk?”

“Afraid it will happen again.”

“The Thing?”

“The Thing.”

Pause. “Where did you go this time?”

Pause. “Guess.”

“Not a mental hospital.”

“No.”

“Um.” Pause. “Um.” Think. “Lucky Foo’s.”

“No.”

“Montreal.”

“No.”

Pause.

Pause. “Give up?”

Skunk’s voice is very quiet. I picture him sitting on the floor in the radio temple with his hand