Wild Awake

together.
    “Whassat?”
    “Sukey said there were lots of other artists in the building.”
    “She did, eh?” Doug chuckles, a rusty sound like a pair of scissors left out in the rain. “Good old Sukey. What a kid.”
    Doug jerks his chin at the brick building to our right. “This is the one. I saw you down there with your bike the other night, eh, but you ran off before I could come down and meet ya.”
    We’re back at the intersection of Columbia and East Pender, across from MONEY FOOD ENTERPRISES, standing in front of that creepy hotel. Doug lifts a veiny hand and points at one of the windows on the fourth floor.
    “Sukey-girl lived in that one. Four-oh-nine.”
    He takes another swig of beer and eyes my bicycle.
    “Don’t you got a boyfriend with a truck or something, honey? You won’t get much home on the back of that thing.”
    I hardly hear him. The window Doug pointed at is a jagged spiderweb of splintered glass. There’s something pushed up against it, a mattress or a piece of furniture, blocking the room from view. As I gaze at it, my elation at finding Sukey’s studio turns into a cold lump at the pit of my stomach.
    This can’t be right.
    Sukey wouldn’t have lived here. Not in this building. Not down the hall from someone like Doug. And especially not behind that evil-looking window, four stories up from a piss-smelling sidewalk where even the pigeons look strung out.
    I look back at Doug.
    “Where’d you get my number?”
    Doug turns his oversized eyes on me and lowers his beer.
    “Looked it up in the phone book. Guess I shouldn’t have bothered, eh?”
    We stare each other down. I have the same swimmy feeling in my guts as I get before a piano recital. That trapped feeling, when there’s still technically time to run away, slip out the back door, but at the same time I know I’ve come too far and invested too much to back out.
    “She really lived here?” I say.
    “Right here.”
    It occurs to me that Sukey might have moved here because it was the only place she could afford. Struggling artists always live in cheap places: drafty garrets, crumbling country estates, pay-by-the-week hotels in the Downtown Eastside. . . . But by the looks of the decaying humanoids slumped in the doorway of the Imperial Hotel, there hasn’t been any art happening here in a long, long time.
    I cast another glance at Sukey’s window. “Can I come back in a few weeks?”
    In a few weeks, Mom and Dad can deal with this. In a few weeks, I won’t even have to get involved. The thought soothes me. Yes. I’ll bike home and practice piano, then go to Lukas’s for dinner.
    Doug spits.
    “I don’t know, honey. Building wasn’t supposed to come down until September, but now they’re saying it might be sooner. And anyways, I’ll be long gone before then.”
    “Can’t somebody else hold it till I get the chance to—”
    Doug crumples his beer can.
    “You don’t want to deal with it, guess it’s going down with the rest of this dump. I told myself I was only going to try calling her family one more time. We’re not interested ,” he says, mimicking my dad’s clipped syllables. “I don’t think so,” he continues in the voice my mom uses with telemarketers.
    A blaze of shame burns my cheeks. They must have thought he was crazy . I glance at his beer can.
    Maybe they were right .
    “Wait,” I say. “I’m just thinking.”
    I could see if Lukas’s mom would come pick me up. But she doesn’t get home from work until six, and she’d ask too many social-worker questions anyway. I guess I could drag everything on the bus. . . .
    Suddenly, I have an idea. It’s a terrible idea and it will probably backfire. But it’s the only thing I can think of that might actually work, and once I’ve thought of it, I can’t let it go.
    “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Will you still be here?”
    “Reckon so.”
    “I do want her stuff. I just need to go get—”
    “Go on. I ain’t going nowhere.”
    Doug crutches his way over to the doorway and sits down on the steps. He slides a half-smoked cigarette out of his pocket and lights it.
    I get on my bicycle and pedal as fast as I can.

chapter nine
    “Oh, hey. You brought back my light.”
    Skunk slides the door open a little wider and turns the bike light over in his fingers before slipping it into his pocket. He’s blinking funny, and his hair’s tousled as if he just woke up from a nap. He’s wearing an old band T-shirt that makes him look