do you mean, don’t go back to the Train Room? Me and Lukas just won Battle of the Bands. We’re going to play our own show next Saturday, which you would know if you’d actually come. Speaking of which—”
“Don’t go back to the Train Room,” says Skunk. “Don’t go back there and don’t go to my house. Where’s your phone?”
I stupidly hand it to him. He opens my contacts list and scrolls down to his name.
“Hey—what are you doing?”
Skunk presses a button and hands me back my phone. The screen reads CONTACT DELETED.
“What the—why’d you do that?”
He takes out his phone and does the same thing to my phone number while I sputter at him, outraged.
“It’s too dangerous, Kiri. They’re using me to track you. As long as we’re together, they’ll keep trying to kill you. You have to stay away from me. They’ve already come too close.”
Our four remaining grilled-cheese sandwiches are growing cold. Skunk hasn’t touched his food or coffee. His face has stiffened into a mask of grim resolve.
My brain fumbles for an appropriate response and arrives clumsily at rage. I jerk away from Skunk.
“There’s nobody trying to get me, Skunk. You’re having a Thing.”
Skunk shakes his head in a maddeningly knowing way.
“You don’t understand it now, Kiri, but you will someday. I’m just trying to keep you safe. If you go to the Train Room again, they’ll be waiting for you. And if they see you with me—”
“Stop it, Skunk. You’re paranoid. You need to go outside and smoke a cigarette. You haven’t been taking your meds.”
Skunk doesn’t stop. He keeps on speaking in a low, insistent drone, as if he’s not even listening to what I’m saying. The waitress comes again to take our plates. I thought the yellow pills were finished, but apparently not: Her face is slice-mouthed and awful, like an evil marionette’s. All of a sudden, I can feel the world spiraling out of my control just as clearly as you can watch an escaped balloon heading for power lines. I wriggle out of the booth and stand up. My unbuckled shoes make me unsteady. I sway briefly, clutching the table.
“Come on, Skunk. Come with me. We’re going to my house.”
Skunk pauses just long enough to give me an icy stare. He doesn’t move from his spot on the leather bench.
“If you need to communicate with me,” he says, “use a radio.”
I stare at him, my beautiful mysterious love-bison turned hostile alien. And I honestly don’t know who I’m seeing. And I don’t know who I am, either, pleading with him in a twenty-four-hour diner while my head thrashes in a sea of chemicals like a cat trying to find its way out from under a heavy blanket.
I am a heartless monomaniac.
I don’t know what to do.
I spin on my silver heels and bomb out of there just as fast as I can possibly limp.
chapter thirty-six
Sometimes, a problem looks so small you can crush it between your fingers. Then you wake up one morning and it’s eating you alive.
When I leave the diner, it’s like the world comes unplugged. I run around pressing buttons, but nothing is working and nothing makes sense.
First, Denny and I get into a huge fight because I start practicing piano as soon as I get home without even bothering to change out of my murder-shoes or my scotch-smelling dress. I start practicing piano because I don’t know what else to do. There is nothing left to do. There is nothing left to do except what I was supposed to be doing in the first place, all summer long: practicing. I play Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, and Fish, Fish, Debussy, Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach. I drown out the worries that snake through my brain. I block out the touches of spiders and skunks. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a five-piano alarm.
Denny comes down the stairs, white-hot furious with sleep-puffy eyes.
“Where the HELL have you been?”
“Battle of the Bands.”
“I drove around looking for you for TWO HOURS. Your friend’s mom called at midnight and said I had to pick you up, then you weren’t even there.”
“Leave me alone. I’m practicing.”
“It’s six o’ clock in the FUCKING MORNING.”
“It’s not my fault you sleep all the time.”
“You’re FUCKING INSANE.”
He snatches the wooden metronome from on top of the piano and throws it hard at the floor. Like everything else in the world, it explodes into a million splintery pieces. I keep playing.
“You’d better listen to me, you psycho BITCH.”
Denny’s voice has