Wild Awake (2 page)

Doug Fieldgrass, whoever he is, clears his throat.

“Listen, this is Al Byrd’s number, right? Sukey’s old man?”

At the name Sukey, my attention snaps back to the phone. Sukey’s my sister. My
dead
sister. The one we never, ever talk about.

“Uh, yeah,” I stammer. “Yes. This is the right number.” I attempt to regain some of my well-practiced Telephone Poise. “May I ask what this is concerning?”

I’m just trying to keep myself from freaking out, but even I can hear how coldly impersonal those words sound, how carefully neutral the tone of voice. What am I doing? I stand up straight. My fingers tighten around the pen.

“Doug? You there? I’m Kiri. I’m Sukey’s sister.”

There’s a rustling, scratching noise like Doug just dropped the phone.

“Aw, hell,” I hear him mutter.

There’s a loud beep.

The line goes dead.

For one whole minute I stand there frozen with the phone in my hand, and in that minute I’m twelve again, called downstairs from my bedroom to hear the terrible news. I can smell the lasagna that was baking for dinner, hear the music I’d left playing upstairs, feel the shock of pain as sure and sudden as a yanked-out tooth before Mom and Dad had even said a word.

A trapped fly buzzes in the window and the fridge hums as it cycles on. I come to my senses and punch the call-return button. After two rings, there’s a muffled
click
.

“Lissen,” slurs Doug. “I ain’t going to call again. You want her stuff, you get yourself down here and take it. This place is shutting down soon, and I don’t have a lot of time.”

“What stuff?” I say, no longer trying to hide my agitation. “Who are you?”

He says a few words I can’t make out, something about Sukey’s things in a closet. I bite back my frustration.
Freaking ENUNCIATE
,
dude
. But I know if I snap, he’ll hang up again.

“Where are you?” I say, wrestling my voice into a strained semblance of patience.

He mumbles an address. I grab the message pad and scribble it down.

“Columbia? What’s the cross street?”

“I’ll wait outside the building,” he says, and hangs up the phone.

I stare at the address I’ve just written. Columbia Street is all the way downtown. My parents still won’t let me drive a car by myself because of Sukey’s accident—though they’ll never admit that’s the reason—and it’s easily a half-hour bike ride away. The idea of going is so absurd, so completely and totally out of the question, it stuns me temporarily. My brain flops like a fish at the bottom of a boat.

I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t.

But screw it. It’s for Sukey. I grab my house key off the counter and go.

I wheel my bike out of
the garage and hop on. As I pedal down the street, my stomach tingles like I just ate a whole bag of Pop Rocks. I can’t explain how urgent this feels. How breathless I am, not even counting the hills. As I charge up the bridge that crosses to downtown, I can hear the clinking of sailboat masts in the marina below. Ahead of me, the glittering angles of downtown beckon dangerously, like a drawer full of knives. I barrel through the intersection as the light turns yellow and glide up the store-lined street.

In a way, I feel like I’m going to see Sukey herself, not some questionable acquaintance who drunk-dialed my house. I imagine her standing on the corner, waiting for me in her zebra-print jacket and jeans.

Hey, Kiri-bird
, she’d say.
I hear you’re in a band
.

It’s just me and my boyfriend
, I’d say modestly, although Lukas and I aren’t officially dating, not yet.

That’s rad, Kiri. You got a demo for me?

In my imagination, I’m finally as cool as her, not a pathologically chirpy ten-year-old who turns red every time she drops an f-bomb.

Look at you biking around at night
, she’d say with a mischievous tilt of her chin.
You’re turning into a little badass
.

As I pedal down the street, I can almost smell Sukey’s hair spray on the breeze, catch a whiff of her strawberry bubblegum. Around me, the city blocks peel away like pages in a book I’m rifling through to find a single, highlighted sentence. But when I pass the Woodward’s building with its giant red
W
lit up with yellow bulbs, I slow down and skid to a stop.

Here’s where things get tricky.

This particular block of West Hastings Street marks a not-so-invisible boundary between downtown proper and the seventh circle of hell. Keep going past the big
W
and you’re in the Downtown Eastside, a place to which every creepy metaphor has already been applied: It’s the urine-smelling haunted house in the city’s squeaky-clean carnival, the one demented fang in its professionally whitened smile. Not a place you want to be after dark unless you’re scoring heroin or shooting a Gritty Documentary.

Not a place I expected to be after dark, either. Wasn’t Columbia supposed to be a few blocks back?

I keep riding east, pedaling so slowly my bike starts to wobble. I can see crowds of homeless people ahead, thick knots of them. From a distance, they almost look like nightclubbers: the same unsteady motions and drunken shouts, the odd woman in a short skirt and smeared makeup lurching down the street in high heels. I don’t want to keep going, but somehow my bicycle carries me forward, its tires whispering against the pavement, until I’m stopped at the intersection.

While I’m waiting for the light to change, this dude on a rusty kiddie bike pulls up next to me. He’s wearing an old jacket with faded green sleeves. He has sandy yellow hair and caved-in cheeks, and he looks like a cadaverous duck.

“Nice ride,” he says.

I fiddle with my gear charger. “Thanks.”

“Got a smoke?”

“Sorry.”

He grimaces, gives his bike a kick-start, and wobbles through the intersection against the red light. I watch him go, trying to quiet the alarm bells clanging inside my chest.
Don’t freak out. He wasn’t going to hurt you
. The light changes to green. I start to ride through, but instead, I make a ragged right turn and pedal up Gore Avenue into Chinatown. Somehow, the sight of the red lampposts makes me feel safer, as if the Chinese dragons carved into them can protect me from the freak show going on a block away.

By now it’s past dark, and I’m mad at myself for coming down here without looking up directions first. I thought I knew where Columbia Street was, and I was sure it came before Main Street, but now for all I know I’ve been riding parallel to it this whole time.

Should have called Lukas
.
Should have tried Mom and Dad. Shouldn’t have come down here at all
.

I’m so busy debating whether I should just go home that I don’t notice the broken glass on the road when I ride right through it. I hardly hear the soft hissing sound of my back tire deflating. Nope—I don’t notice anything until the thump of my rim riding the pavement jerks me back into reality.

I get off my bike and drag it onto the sidewalk to inspect the damage.

The back tire is completely flat. When I run my fingers around it, I find a tiny green shard of glass lodged in the rubber.

Shit. Shitshitshit
.

I start walking, dragging my bike beside me like an awkward, clomping, injured horse. It thumps along beside me, but I try not to slow down. As dodgeball has taught us: Slowness shows weakness. Weakness means a ball in the face.

I don’t think I need to elaborate any further.

A couple more guys on bikes reel past me, carrying bulging garbage bags full of empty pop cans on their backs.

“Hey!” I shout after them. “Where’s Columbia Street?”

The one on the left turns his head. He’s wearing a denim jacket with a black hoodie underneath. With the trash bag on his back, he looks like a punk-rock janitor.

“Two blocks thataway.”

“Thanks.”

He gives me a lopsided salute, and they disappear around a corner. I hurry my bike in the direction he pointed. When I see the green sign that says
COLUMBIA
in white letters, my knees go loose and weak. I recognize this place. I don’t know why, but I do. Something about the red brick buildings makes my memory spit and cough like an engine that can’t quite start up. I stand still, straining my ears, as if someone might whisper the answer.

Nothing. Just car sounds, tree-hush, the hoots and squeals of police cars two blocks away.

My hand moves to my pocket for the piece of paper with the address, but it’s not there. I check the other pocket. Empty. I rack my brains for the street number, but draw a blank.

Suddenly, this doesn’t feel like an adventure anymore.

Actually, it feels a lot like I’m standing on a sketchy block in the Downtown Eastside with a flat tire and no idea where I’m supposed to be or who I’m supposed to be meeting.

Nice work, Kiri. Way to be a badass
.

I’ve stopped in front of a Chinese grocery store with a metal screen pulled down over it for the night. There’s a bakery next to it, and across the street there’s a six-story brick building with an old plastic sign above the door that says
IMPERIAL HOTEL
. There’s some classy-looking buttressing around the first-floor windows, but whatever its former glory, it now looks like a National Register of Historic Places building crossed with a meth lab.

Where are you?
I plead silently, but Sukey doesn’t answer, and Doug doesn’t appear.

There’s a pair of crouched figures in the doorway of the hotel who look at me and mutter to each other in a way I don’t like. A moment later, one of them takes out a needle and starts shooting up right in front of me.

Just when I think things can’t get any more messed up, the yellow-haired homie who asked me for a cigarette at East Hastings rolls up on his bicycle and hovers next to me, his body so close I can smell the stale sweat on his jacket.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” he says to me with breath so thick with liquor it makes my head spin.

I strangle my handlebars.

“I’d rather you didn’t, dude.”

His face twists up.

“You’re an uptight pussy.”

That’s it. That takes the freaking cake. I grab my bike and run the hell away from Columbia Street.

“Got a flat?”

The guy who just spoke to me is standing outside a club where a speed metal band is thrashing away. I can hear the muffled bass and shrieking vocals, like they’re murdering something onstage. I nod without making eye contact, thinking,
I’ve dealt with enough sketchy dudes for one night
. I feel like I’ve been trudging along for hours, but I’ve only just made it back to the part of East Cordova Street where I can finally stop pretending to be holding a can of pepper spray.

His voice wafts after me. “I’ve got a spare tube at my place. If you need it.”

I tell myself this is some kind of sleazy trick to get me to go home with him, but I can’t help glancing back just in case.

He’s huge. Hagrid-esque. A bulldozer crossed with a gorilla. So big you can’t take him in with one glance. He’s like one of those enormous Group of Seven paintings at the art gallery—you have to back away to get the whole picture. Which I do. Rapidly.

I’m guessing he’s Denny’s age, maybe a little younger. He’s wearing a black T-shirt and black pants ripped off at the knees, and a stud belt circa 1999. He has a broad, pale face, spiky black hair, and brown eyes. His wallet is attached to his belt loop by a chain, and his industrial-strength arms are sleeved with tattoos.

So very
not
the type of guy whose spare tube I want in my tire.

“No thanks,” I say.

I keep walking. Now that I know someone’s watching me, I get all clumsy. When I yank my bike to the right to avoid what looks like a pile of human feces, the handlebars buckle in toward the frame, and one of the pedals scratches my shin. I feel like kicking my stupid bike.
Stop it. I’m just trying to get us home
.

The number 17 bus blows past, its weird fluorescent lighting making the passengers inside look like items in a vending machine. I can see a bus stop up ahead on the corner, so I grab my bike by the handlebars and run for it. The bus slows down, and I’m so relieved I start mentally composing the grateful speech I’m going to give the bus driver. Something that will flatter his or her heroic nature while playing down the fact that I don’t have my bus pass or $2.25 in exact change.

The light on the corner turns green, and the bus roars on with an insulting discharge of exhaust. I stop, panting, dizzy with disbelief.

That’s when I reconsider Homefry’s offer to fix my tire.

No, “reconsider” implies careful deliberation.

That’s when I say
screw it
and turn my bike around. I swagger down the sidewalk, trying to look like that whole chasing-a-bus thing was just something I did to be ironic.

“Hey,” I say, wheeling my bike to a halt in front of him.

He’s looking down at the pavement, squashing his cigarette with a skate shoe. I decide to be brave. At least the guy’s close to my age. If he turns out to be a mofo, I’ll just whip out my imaginary pepper spray and blast him to smithereens.

“I changed my mind about the tire. If the offer still stands.”

When he looks up, I fix him with my best don’t-mess-with-me stare. I run through a quick mental checklist:
not drunk, not homeless, not obviously a crackhead
. Even with the stud belt, that puts him head and shoulders above pretty much everyone else within a twelve-block radius of where we’re standing. His brown eyes flicker over my bike before looking at me. He nods his chin toward the door of the venue.

“You wanna hear the set first?”

I shake my head. “I don’t have ID.”

“It’s all-ages.”

“No thanks. I need to get home.”

He glances into the venue, and I can tell he’s weighing his desire to hear more screamo with his desire to deal with and possibly rape-murder me.

I decide to cut my losses. “You know what? It’s cool, I’ll just walk.”