Wild Awake (27 page)

But there’s already something on the floor. A smashed thing.

Blue shards crisscrossed with looping silver. The splintering angles of a broken frame.

I look at the wall. The nail is bare. I look back at the floor.

Sukey’s painting.

I die.

Someone’s knocking on the front
door of my house.

I’m sitting in bed with my knees drawn up to my chest, 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 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 older brother who always takes an interest in Kiri’s friends
. He keeps trying to check out Skunk’s tattoos while pretending he’s not. I have never, ever seen him act like this before.

I put my hand on Skunk’s arm. “What about coffee?”

“I’ll make some at home. Sorry, I lost track of how long we were in the basement. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He walks to the front door. I follow him.

“Hey, nice meeting you,” calls Denny. “You should come over and jam again sometime.”

Outside, Skunk kisses me before getting into his van.

“What’s going on? Why are you leaving?”

“I got shy.”

I arch my eyebrows. “Highly dubious.”

“Kiri?”

“Mm.”

“Give me your phone.” I hand it to him, and he keys his number back in.

“Call me any time of day or night if anything’s going bad.”

“Why don’t you just stay?”

Skunk glances at the house. “I just can’t. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

When I go back inside, Denny has been joined in the kitchen by his friend Chris. They’re both holding their beers and watching out the window while Skunk drives away. I glare at them and pour myself some coffee.

Denny looks at me like I have snakes growing out of my head.

“You never told me you were dating Phil freaking Coswell.”

I forget I’m not talking to Denny. “Who?”

Chris is still staring out the window, as if there’s a chance Skunk will come back.

“Dude, didn’t he go psycho?”

There were the magazine headlines:
BIRDSEYE FRONTMAN ATTACKS BANDMATE
.
PHIL COSWELL ASSAULTS DRUMMER DURING SHOW; BANDMATES BLAME DRUGS
.
BIRDSEYE TOUR CANCELED FOLLOWING FRONTMAN’S PSYCHOTIC BREAKDOWN.

And the indie music blog posts:
Phil Coswell Finally Loses His Mind
.
Phil “Birdseye” Coswell Knocks Out Bandmate with a Bass Guitar
.
Birdseye Tour Turns into Psychotic Nightmare
.

And the YouTube videos, shot on cell phones, of the event:
Watch Phill Cozwel Goin Psyko at Concert
.
Phil Coswell Losing His #%$* at the Train Room—Part 1
.
Phil Coswell Psycho Attack
.

I click through tab after tab of YouTube videos, Pitchfork write-ups, and articles in the
Ubyssey
and the
Georgia Straight
. They’re all about a boy named Philippe with a green bass guitar who lost his mind at the Train Room.

There are quotes from bandmates, onlookers, and friends: “Coswell, 18, allegedly swung his bass guitar at a bandmate’s head, knocking her unconscious.” “Bandmates say Coswell had been ‘progressively losing his mind’ over the course of the tour.” “They describe Coswell as ‘volatile,’ ‘unstable,’ and ‘really paranoid.’” “Bandmates say he had been abusing drugs for several months leading up to the breakdown.” “Tess Elowak, Coswell’s bandmate and former girlfriend, says she will not press charges.” “Coswell has since been hospitalized for psychosis.”

I watch all the videos. At first, I can’t believe it’s Skunk. He’s skinny. He has the same black hair and brown eyes, but he’s about a hundred pounds lighter and his face is sharper, more triangular. The only way I know it’s really him is by looking at his tattoos. The videos are really low quality, but I can make out the general shapes of the ink on his arms, the bird silhouette and the bass clef. It’s Skunk, but it’s also not Skunk—it’s this wiry teenage rock star clutching a bass like he’s drowning.

I recognize the wooden stage at the Train Room with the rusty railway crossing sign nailed to the wall. His band, the six of them, takes up the entire stage with all their gear. They’re all dressed in black. Four guys, two girls with ragged haircuts. Skunk’s center stage with his own mic. Whoever’s shooting the video is somewhere near the back of the crowded room, holding a cell phone camera high over the sea of heads to catch a bit of the show.

In the first few seconds of video, it’s hard to tell that something’s wrong. Everyone in the band is playing their instrument, and the crowd is humming along. But slowly, you realize there’s something out of place. Skunk isn’t singing. He’s talking. No, he’s shouting. At first, it seems like part of the music, but the song ends and he keeps going: “STOP IT! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

You can hear the person taking the video talking to their friend.
“Whoa, dude. D’you think he’s tripping on something?”

The harmonium player and the electric guitarist put down their instruments. In the grainy video, you can see them huddle around Skunk, talking to him, trying to walk him backstage, but he shakes off their hands like a scared animal, clutching his bass to his chest. The crowd’s buzzing now, that greedy, hungry thrum of excitement people make when something bad is happening and it’s not happening to them.

“Whoa-ho-ho, man—are they gonna fight?”

The camera tilts toward the floor, showing a dim swarm of sneakers and pant legs, and when it swings toward the stage again, Skunk is locked in a slow-motion wrestling match with the harmonium player, still shouting “STOP!” and “NO!” and all sorts of things in French.

Everything happens in the next two seconds.

Skunk wrenches free and staggers forward, swinging his bass like a club. Most of his bandmates get out of the way in time, but in the midst of the chaos, you can just make out the blond girl’s arms flying up to protect her head.