Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,79

how old he is. Numbers float out of my head like bubbles.

“Thirty-three,” murmurs Motorcycle Man.

I turn the number over and over like a secret code. Thirty-three. As in 4:33. As in the piano piece by John Cage that is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of nothing but rests.

An untraceable blur of seconds passes. I count to 4:33.

Then I am in a car with black leather seats and a stereo that glows like a slot machine.

chapter thirty-five

“Kiri. Kiri!”

On Hastings Street I am so very busy and walking so very fast that when I hear Skunk calling my name it takes me almost three blocks to turn around. My knees are scraped again, but I don’t think it’s from crashing a bicycle since I’m not riding one. Then I remember—I was in a car with a man, some kind of label rep, but the stereo played evil music so I screamed, “Pull over!” and clawed my way out onto the sidewalk like a shipwreck survivor washing up on a rocky beach. Sukey died in a car crash—at least she did originally—and I did not like the way his hands strangled the wheel like white tentacles and his eyes were twin heat guns on my skin.

I stop on the sidewalk, and Skunk swoops up next to me. Skate shoes. No helmet. He brakes, jumps off his bike, and catches me in his arms like I’m a blown-away newspaper he’s been chasing down the street.

“Kiri. I’ve been looking all over for you. Whose car was that?”

I give him a once-over. Sunshine is streaming out of his head in a huge pink-and-gold halo despite the fact that the rest of the street is still dark. His black bicycle is glazed in neon light. When he talks, his words reverberate weirdly, like he’s speaking into a microphone with a delay line. I think I might be dreaming, or the subject of a very elaborate hoax. I put my hands on my hips and squint. “Are you a trick?”

“No. I promise, no.”

“How can I tell?”

He sticks out his arm for me to smell. I put my nose against his sleeve. American Spirits. Lapsang souchong. WD-40.

I nod reluctantly.

“Okay.”

Skunk glances up and down the street as if he’s afraid there are spies in the doorways or snipers on the roof. Maybe he’s worried about the homeless men trundling down the middle of the road with their shopping carts full of empty bottles. Maybe there are secret cameras hidden in their clinking, clanking loads.

“We can’t stay here,” says Skunk. “We have to get off the street. Can you ride on my handlebars?”

Skunk’s bicycle is glowing like Christmas lights. It looks magical, sleek, like a time machine. It’s almost too beautiful to touch.

“Can you do it?” pleads Skunk. “Here, put your hand on my shoulder.”

He lifts me onto his handlebars and climbs on behind me. The metal is lightning-cool under my thighs. I lean back and Skunk puts his arms around me. He grabs the handlebars and pushes off with his foot. Soon we’re zigzagging through the streets in a convoluted route of Skunk’s own devising. We cut through alleys, roll across construction sites, and slip through the vast hollow silence of a parking garage. I understand without asking that what Skunk is doing is throwing the secret agents off our trail. Nobody could follow us in a car, not with the shortcuts he’s taking. They’d have to be on bicycles, and we haven’t seen another bicycle since we started.

As we jag through the city, I have the unsettling sensation of being caught in a dream, an imaginary world Skunk and I have silently agreed to call real. The buildings and lampposts and street signs reel past in a seasick parade, and I’m not sure if we’re escaping something anymore or just clinging together while we drown.

“Love-bison,” I say, but now it sounds desperate, like a thing you scream before you both burst into flames.

When we roll to a stop outside a twenty-four-hour diner, Skunk’s T-shirt is soaked in sweat.

“Wait here,” he pants, clutching the brakes while I jump off.

He whips around the corner and reappears a minute later, on foot. His forehead is beaded with sweat, and his hands are shaking from squeezing the handlebars so tight.

“I locked it up in front of an apartment building,” he says by way of explanation. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

We go into the diner and take the booth at very back, next to the bathrooms, far away from the door. We both squeeze