Wild Awake

total babe despite being in her early fifties and having completely gray hair. She has a really high voice but a serious manner, like Minnie Mouse addressing the United Nations.
    “It’s been good so far. I’m getting a ton of practicing done.”
    Which reminds me I need to go home soon and practice some more. I thought about telling Lukas I didn’t have time for Battle of the Bands on top of the International Young Pianists’ Showcase, but when a golden sex god begs you to make the musical equivalent of hot, sweaty love with him, it’s pretty hard to say no.
    “It doesn’t bother you at night to be alone?” says Petra.
    I smile brightly. “Nope.”
    Petra furrows her brow and mutters something in Polish. “When your mother told me they were planning to do this trip, I said to her she must be crazy.”
    As we speak, my parents are on Day Four of the twenty-fifth-anniversary cruise they’ve been planning for years. It’s their first time going anywhere, ever, and they fretted over it like they were expecting a baby: shopping for Travel Clothes, reading Travel Books, taking a whole rainbow of Travel Pills for the obscure and possibly imaginary tropical diseases they would otherwise almost certainly contract abroad. My brother, Denny, was supposed to come home from college to stay with me, but at the last minute he decided to spend his summer torturing sea urchins at the marine biology lab instead.
    My parents’ decision to leave me at home alone is a sensitive subject with Lukas’s mom, who believes—to paraphrase—that they are one trill short of a sonatina.
    Petra takes down olive oil and balsamic vinegar from a shelf and starts making vinaigrette for the salad.
    “And what will you eat?” she says.
    “I eat cereal.”
    “And what will you eat with this cereal?”
    “Soymilk and a banana.”
    Judging by the look she gives me, I might as well have said I was eating my cereal with malt liquor and Adderall. She shakes her head and whacks the salad tongs against the side of the bowl.
    “I am afraid you will starve to death with this cereal. This can go to the table.”
    I take the salad bowl and carry it to the kitchen table. Besides the scalloped potatoes and salad, there’s fresh bread and butter, green beans, and a plate of roast chicken. How Lukas manages to be so skinny while eating Petra’s cooking every day is a mystery on par with metaparticles.
    “And what will happen if you hit your head on the floor?”
    I’m trying to figure out how, exactly, I would manage to hit my head on the floor, when Lukas comes out of his room in a fresh pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, and I’m still high enough that I just gaze at him while Petra calls Lukas’s dad in from his study for dinner.
    After a dinner full of typical Malcywyck-family repartee over the fine distinction between electrosoul and electrofunk as pertaining to various obscure seventies bands, Lukas and I load the dishwasher while Petra packs enough leftovers to last me a month. By the time she’s finished, the stack of Tupperware is practically scraping the ceiling. She packs them into two canvas grocery bags and hands them to me.
    “Take this home. You will eat something besides this banana and cereal.”
    When I say thanks, Petra squints at me. “You will call if there is anything wrong?”
    “Yes.”
    “You will lock the doors?”
    “Yes.”
    She holds my gaze a few seconds longer. Petra has this way of looking at you that makes you want to confess things you didn’t even know you were hiding. It’s a social worker trick, and if you’re not careful, it’ll nail you every time. She burned me with it last fall when I was so stressed out over auditions for the Showcase, I started crying at their kitchen table. I had to grin like a freaking used-car salesman every time I saw her for weeks after that to convince her I wasn’t some kind of Depressed Teen like Goth Girl on the book downstairs.
    I give her a dopey smile. No problems here, lady .
    “You want to stay for a while and watch TV?” says Lukas.
    “Uh-uh. I need to get home and practice.”
    Petra crosses her arms.
    “Kiri. You are sure you don’t want to stay?”
    I hesitate. Lukas’s dad puts his hands on Lukas’s shoulders and squeezes them, waiting for my answer.
    Something about that gesture that makes my heart twinge, and for one disorienting moment I’m aware of myself, standing in their kitchen, loaded down with containers of their food. This is not