Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,85

licking the salt on my scabs. Snoogie is roaming around my bedroom with her nose to the floor, tail erect, her ragged ear oozing. Sukey’s painting is spread out on the blanket in front of me in sixteen splintery pieces. I’ll never be able to put it back together, or put anything back to the way it’s supposed to be. It’s still Sunday, only Sunday, but Doug is dead and my band has dissolved and the azaleas are lying, unscrewed, on the lawn.

Someone’s still knocking on the front door. I hug my knees tighter and squeeze my eyes shut, willing whoever it is to go away.

I think it’s a mailman coming after me with a bushel of accusatory letters from the Showcase.

I think it’s my mother and father and Petra Malcywyck coming to cart me away and electrocute me until I confess to being a monomaniac.

I think it’s Motorcycle Man coming to confuse me with yellow pills.

I think it’s Dr. Scaliteri and Nelson Chow coming to stand around the piano and cast damning glares at me while I play, weeping, through all one hundred pages of Concerto No. 2.

I think it’s Doug’s druggie friends dragging a body bag.

I think it’s policemen and firefighters and emergency room doctors coming to declare me legally dead after I cut my wrists with a pair of scissors.

I think it’s all my teachers from school coming to click their tongues and shake their heads over how far I’ve fallen after such a promising year.

I think it’s Lukas and Kelsey coming to squint at me like an animal at the zoo.

I think it’s a murderer.

I think it’s a vampire.

I think it’s the bizarro version of myself, and when she sees me sitting on her bed in a cave of blankets, we’re going to fight each other to death like wolves.

Someone’s knocking on the front door, and I’m too messed up to go downstairs and answer it but too scared to stay here listening, not knowing who’s there.

I wrap my quilt around my shoulders like a cape and go downstairs. As I walk toward the front door, I can see them all standing there on the front step: the mailman, my parents, Petra, Dr. Scaliteri and her Serious Students, the burnouts from the Imperial, the police, my teachers, Kelsey Bartlett, Lukas, the murderer, the vampire, and my own indignant double, all shaking their heads.

With every step I take, I’m conscious of my bare feet connecting with the cool stone floor of the front hall. I’m shivery and feverish. My body is grinding and listing like a broken bicycle. I’m sorry, I want to say to everybody who is waiting outside. I especially want to say it to my double. I want to hug my other self and apologize for crashing my bicycle and hurting my leg. I want to kiss her scabs better and not let her take Motorcycle Man’s yellow pills. I want to call her a cab instead of sending her limping through the night. I want to tuck her into a clean bed with a mug of Sleepytime tea and a good book to read until she falls asleep. I want to make her some good food and make sure she eats it. I want to hold her hand when Doug dies and tell her she was a good friend. I want to tell her Sukey would be proud of her, that Sukey would have said any kind of pain is worth it if makes you brave.

I want to do all these things, but I can’t because I’m chilly and panicked and wearing a blanket for a cape. I hear the click of Snoogie’s claws on the floor behind me. I watch from a distance while I touch the cold doorknob and pull open the door.

It isn’t my parents or Lukas or a mailman.

It’s Skunk.

He’s wearing clothes I haven’t seen him wear before, old jeans and a dark blue shirt with a tear on the left sleeve. His face is pale like he hasn’t been sleeping either; his eyes are red like mine.

He’s carrying his electric bass in one hand and the little green radio in the other.

He starts to say something, but instead he puts down the bass and the radio and gathers me very tightly into his arms.

Skunk and I decide that the best place for us to be right now is my basement. We bunker ourselves down there with the boxes and the spiders and the bass and the synth and