Wild Awake - By Hilary T. Smith Page 0,86

the amp and the little green radio and yowling, prowling Snoogie the cat, and we close the door and plug everything in and we play, slow and mournful, a dark dreadful dirge for Doug and Sukey.

The neck of Skunk’s bass is cracked. I hadn’t noticed it before. There’s a jagged seam running across it where the wood split and was glued back together. When he plays, the bass moans like a broken animal. My synth keens along like a lovelorn bird. Between us, the radio crackles.

As we play, I start to cry, and when I look over at him, I see that Skunk is crying too.

“How long has it been since you played?” I ask him.

“Six months,” says my beautiful tearstained love-bison. “Not since before the Thing happened.”

“Last night at the diner,” I start. “You seemed like a different person.”

“Please, Kiri,” says Skunk.

“No,” I burst out. “I need to know what’s going on.”

His fingers travel over the strings as if their melody could answer for him.

“I freaked out,” he says. “I even knew I was freaking out—I was aware—but I was so scared when I found you on Hastings Street, I couldn’t control it.”

“Are you still freaking now?” I say. “Has it stopped? Are you better? You thought people were trying to kill me—”

“Please,” Skunk says again, but I’m shaking, remembering the look on his face when he deleted his number from my phone.

“Maybe your aunt’s right about the medicine,” I say.

I feel terrible saying it, like I’m betraying him, but I’m so scared he’ll slip back into that cold place again and I won’t know what to do.

Skunk casts me a pleading glance.

“I know I messed up this time, but I can get by without the pills if I try hard enough, I really can.”

“If the pills help you, why does it matter?”

Skunk’s face boxes up. “You shouldn’t have to take pills to be okay.”

“Everyone does something to be okay, Skunk. That’s how the world is. At least the only things you need to muffle to survive are the voices in your head. Some people muffle their hearts.”

“I just wish I could be strong for you,” he says.

“I wish I could be strong for you.”

We play on, weeping, until the little green radio runs out of battery and its power light quietly blinks out.

When we come upstairs from the basement, I hear Denny and his friend Chris in the living room, playing Xbox. I’m still a little drunk with tears, and my head feels big and clunky like it’s filled with wet cement. Skunk’s behind me, his hand warm and still on the small of my back. We go into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

The kitchen is blurry and confusing in my post-music stupor. I pull the big tin of Folgers toward myself, peel off the plastic lid, and scoop coffee into a filter. The scoop is red, like the wheelbarrow in the poem. How red the plastic coffee scoop amid the black coffee. I forget how it goes.

Skunk rinses the glass tureen and pours water into the machine, locates mugs. He asks me where the bathroom is, and I point him down the hall. While Skunk’s in the bathroom, Denny wanders into the kitchen holding a beer. I drop the coffee filter into its plastic cradle, shut the little door, and press on. The machine burbles to life.

“Hey,” he says.

I ignore him. Denny smashed Sukey’s painting. I have decided he no longer exists. He’s an evil ghost. A mean phantom who lives in my house. A thing that will go away if I ignore it for long enough.

Down the hall, the toilet flushes. Denny leans against the kitchen counter, arms folded over his chest. He has that elaborately interested look about him like he’s trying to make peace.

“Was that you and Lukas playing? You sound a little like this band called Birdseye.”

When he says that, Skunk comes into the kitchen. Denny does a double take. His eyes flit to Skunk’s tattoos and back to his face, as if putting something together.

“Hey, man,” he says. “You want a beer?”

I slide past Skunk. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I whisper so Denny can’t hear.

Skunk freezes. “Actually, Kiri, I gotta get home.”

“You’re not staying?”

“I can’t. I’m supposed to be home for dinner with my aunt and uncle.”

“You sure you don’t want a beer, man?” says Denny.

“No thanks, I don’t drink.”

Denny is using his cool voice, all casual, super-chill. He leans against the counter like, Oh, I’m the cool