Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,77
won’t leave without—”
“Denny can pick me up.”
Lukas looks dubious, but at least he quits arguing. He casts me a wounded glance and makes his way down the stairs. I stick my hands on my hips and shout after him in my most monomaniacal voice.
“Great bands don’t psychoanalyze!”
I stomp back up to the Train Room, pushing through the swinging doors into the dark, still-crowded venue. I go all the way to the back and hide in the sound booth. After a minute, I see Petra and Lukas come in through the doors. They split up and look around. When they can’t find me, they meet up again and have a short, stressed-out conference, then turn around and go back out.
Ten seconds later my cell phone starts ringing, but I turn it off and shove it back into my purse. I’ve had enough of Lukas’s hysteria for one night. Before we went on, he was worried the new amp wouldn’t work. Then he said his shoulders hurt and he might have strained a muscle. Then he kept checking his dad’s phone obsessively to see what time it was. Then I developed an alarming case of monomania.
Also, Skunk never showed up.
I walk up to the refreshment booth and ask for a ginger ale. The guy working the booth recognizes me from our set and lets me have it for free. He has a red beard and alarmingly straight shoulders, like someone squared them off with a ruler. He shovels ice into a plastic cup, squirts in the ginger ale with a flourish, fits a lime wedge over the edge of the cup, and slides it across the counter to me.
“You guys rocked. It’s on the house.”
“Why, thank you. Did you know I have monomania?”
“Is that like mononucleosis?”
“It’s much worse.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. It’s the rarest form of monomania in the world. It’s the kind of monomania only gotten by famous musicians.”
“Wow.”
“Jimi Hendrix had it.”
Amused sparkle of eyes. “I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do. Thanks for the ginger ale.”
“Good luck with the monomania.”
“Oh yes.” I take my drink and slink my way to a vacant stool. My silver shoes flash like knives. I alight on the stool and bring my glass to my lips. When I take a sip, I let the ginger ale swim around in my mouth for a second, fizzing, before it goes down.
Someone pokes my arm, and when I look it’s this kid from school holding a curved aluminum flask.
“Top up?” he says, and I hand him my cup. Something clear and alcoholic glugs out of the flask. He winks, hands it back, and disappears.
I cross one leg over the other and eye the other people in the Train Room. I take another sip of my new and improved ginger ale. I am grooming myself for my new life as a monomaniac. In my new life as a monomaniac, I sip cocktails and brazenly fang the crowd. In my new life as a monomaniac, I wield the silver scissors of my own Way.
I think about Lukas and feel a stab of betrayal so sharp it makes me gasp.
The next sip of doctored ginger ale blossoms hotly in my throat like a flaming flower.
I feel like I should have a top hat and a monocle. A monocle for the monomaniac. A monocle and a motorcycle. I would go monocling around Stanley Park in the dark most monomaniacally. Where’s a good top hat when you need one?
I know I should try to stop this—this, this whatever it is—but part of me doesn’t want to and part of me doesn’t think I can. I feel like a tire rolling down a hill, heavy and fast and completely indestructible, and if there was ever a point when I could have slowed down, that point is teensy-tiny far behind me now.
All these kids I don’t know keep coming up to me to say hey and give me props on Sonic Drift: music nerds who want to know what kind of synth I’m rocking, clusters of tank-topped ninth-grade girls who want to know if Lukas is single.
It’s like I have become magnetically attractive, sitting here on my stool, fixing the room with a savage glare. I inform each one of my admirers that I am a monomaniac. Most of them look impressed. There are fist pumps and high fives. A girl and a guy in full Native American sun dance regalia slip me another drink. It appears I am very amusing. Amusing or