Wild Awake

While I was out making a fool of myself in the Downtown Eastside, I missed six hours of piano practice. While I was out there blubbering over private family business with a total stranger, the azaleas went unwatered and the mail went unretrieved.
    I glance at myself in the mirror hanging opposite the front door. Puffy, tearstained face. Messy hair. Pitiful eyes.
    I remember the day when my seventh-grade teacher called my parents to tell them I’d been crying in the bathrooms at lunchtime after Sukey died—how disappointed Dad was that I was using Sukey’s death as an excuse to get attention from my teachers; how delicately Mom suggested that Sukey would have wanted me to be happy; my humiliation at letting them down.
    Get it together, Kiri .
    I take a deep breath, pick up the garbage bag, and carry it up the stairs. I pause in front of my bedroom, then change my mind and go one door down to Sukey’s old room. Ever since Mom turned it into a guest bedroom, it doesn’t feel like Sukey’s at all. The walls are solid white where they used to be covered in Sukey’s paintings. There’s a Monet print where Sukey used to have a Nirvana poster. The purple stain on the carpet is the only real trace of her left in the whole house.
    Now, my mom keeps the bed in here done up like a bed in a hotel room, with a fancy duvet and a dozen completely unnecessary decorative pillows that you have to throw on the floor just to have enough room to lie down. There’s a fuzzy white hotel bathrobe that nobody has ever used hanging from a hook over the closet door, and a bath towel, hand towel, and washcloth folded up neatly on a low Japanese table at the foot of the bed, just waiting for a guest with extremely high-maintenance Toweling Needs to show up and use them.
    I pad across the carpet and place the garbage bag in the middle of the tightly made bed, then walk out and close the door.
    When I sit down at the piano and turn the metronome on, I feel a wave of relief. The metronome’s metal arm ticks back and forth and I play smoothly and evenly, never missing a note.
    Three hours pass quickly, by the end of which I am as calm and steady and reasonable as the metronome itself.
    See? I tell myself as I slip into bed. Everything’s under control .

chapter thirteen
    For the next three days, I am a model of self-discipline. Up at six. Practice until eleven thirty. Eat some leftovers straight out of the Tupperware without even warming them up. Water my mom’s azaleas. Bring in the mail. Drill my pieces some more. When I go over to Lukas’s house for band practice, I tell him what happened and make him promise not to tell his mom.
    “I knew you should have called your parents before agreeing to meet that guy,” he keeps saying, which is not the reaction I was expecting, but he gives me this sweet, awkward hug and even walks me home at the end of the night, telling me to call if I need anything.
    Each time I pass Sukey’s old bedroom on my way to the bathroom, I can hear the garbage bag in there, whining like a ghost. I don’t open it. I can’t open it. I tell myself I’ll open it once I’ve practiced for a few more hours.
    I practice for a few more hours.
    I still don’t open it.
    The piano is a sleek black submarine that carries me deep, deep down, until the surface world is nothing but a muffled shimmer. I practice carefully, paying attention to each note. I polish my pieces the way our neighbor, Mr. Hardy, polishes his vintage Thunderbird. Slowly. Obsessively. As long as I’m sitting at the piano, the entire universe is under my control. Eighty-eight keys, ten fingers. Sheet music is dependable. The notes don’t change when you’re not looking. You don’t open your book one day to discover that your pieces have switched from major to minor, or that the fast ones have gone slow, or that the melody has changed beyond recognition, leaving your fingers to stumble over unfamiliar notes. You don’t have to be brave, just careful.
    When my parents call to give me an update on their snorkeling adventures in the Caribbean Sea, I keep my voice bright and interested. While Mom tells me all about the tropical fish she saw in the coral reef this afternoon, I plan out exactly what I’m going to say, how I’m going to bring it up.
    I found out about Sukey— too accusatory.
    One of Sukey’s old friends called— too complicated to explain.
    “Your dad saw a giant sea tortoise. How big was it, Al? Three feet? We just bought an