like the petals of an enchanted flower. When I crouch to touch them, the paint splatters are smooth under my fingers, distinct from the roughness of the roof. I unscrew the last of the paint jars, the arsenic and ochre and gold, colors I would have hardly believed existed if she hadn’t brought them into my world. They splash onto the rooftop and scatter into a hundred different shapes, joining the cacaphony of colors. I don’t know what she would have painted with them and I guess I never will, but for now, like this, they are beautiful.
I sit on the rooftop all night long, cradled in the broken lawn chair like a ramshackle bird in a plastic nest. Below me, the neighborhood tosses and turns like a person in a fever. The lamps burn too bright. The street sweats. A bottle breaks on a sidewalk. A police car howls through an intersection.
I wrap my arms around my knees and cry and laugh for a very long time, but mostly I just hold myself very, very tightly, like a piece of dandelion fluff you’ve finally caught in your fingers after chasing it, leaping for it, again and again on a windy day. The universe, I realize, is full of little torches. Sometimes, for some reason, it’s your turn to carry one out of the fire—because the world needed it, or your family needed it, or you needed it to keep your soul from twisting into a shape that’s entirely wrong.
So you go, and you come back with paint all over your hands and scabs on your knees and the lingering traces of a song few people have ever heard, echoing in your ears.
I stay until the sky turns pale pink and a flock of small brown birds alights on the edge of the roof, chirping and whistling and flapping their wings. There’s a rumbling from the street as someone rolls up a metal screen. The sweetness of steaming buns fills the air: the Chinese bakery. I push myself up from the lawn chair and go to the place where the paint forms a brilliant carpet beneath my feet. The soul has a home of its own, Sukey said, and I want to live in that one. I feel, as I gaze down at the shining colors, that I am standing in a place I have been forever. A place I will leave without leaving. A place I will find, and yet search for, for the rest of my life.
As I climb onto the fire escape, a blueness catches my eye, so slight and far away, I almost don’t turn my head.
But I do stop.
And I do look.
And this is what I see: There, on the horizon, two ships.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editor, Molly O’Neill, who was a lighthouse in the stormy seas of revision and a great mentor; and to my agent, Laura Rennert, without whose wisdom and encouragement this ship might have capsized many times over. I’m grateful every day to have fallen into such good hands and am deeply indebted to you both.
Thank you to Lara Perkins and everyone at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency; my foreign rights agent, Taryn Fagerness; Barb Fitzsimmons, Lauren Flower, Tom Forget, Brenna Franzitta, Esilda Kerr, Casey McIntyre, Amy Ryan, Valerie Shea, Megan Sugrue, Katherine Tegen, Joel Tippie, and all the other wizards at HarperCollins who do the magical stuff that makes a book a book; Lynn Lindquist for encouragement in the early drafts; all the INTERN readers whose friendship has been an inspiration and an unexpected delight; and to friends and loved ones in too many cities to name.
May your own adventures be rich and true.
About the Author
Photo by Gabriel Jacobs
HILARY T. SMITH wanders, but is not lost. Also known as the formerly anonymous publishing industry blogger INTERN, Hilary is now a full-time writer and wilderness lover. She wrote various parts of Wild Awake while living in a van, on a houseboat, and in an off-the-grid cabin seven miles from the nearest paved road. By the time you read this, she will probably be living somewhere new, but you can always visit her online at www.hilarytsmith.com.
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Credits
Cover photo (girl) © 2013 by Mohamad Itani / Trevillion Images, (city) Busà Photography/Getty Images
Cover design and flower illustrations by Tom Forget
Copyright
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
WILD AWAKE. Copyright © 2013 by Hilary T. Smith. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Smith, Hilary T.
Wild awake / Hilary T. Smith. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: “The discovery of a startling family secret leads seventeen-year-old Kiri Byrd from a protected and naive life into a summer of mental illness, first love, and profound self-discovery.”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-0-06-218468-9
EPub Edition April 2013 ISBN 9780062184702
[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Mental illness—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H64923Wil 2013 2012045524
[Fic]—dc23 CIP
AC
* * *
13 14 15 16 17 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FIRST EDITION
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
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Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher