Wild Awake

start.
    I sit on the floor for a long time trying to roll a joint, then go downstairs and root through the junk drawer for the stem lighter we use to light the barbecue. I don’t even own a lighter, that’s how big a stoner I am.
    The barbecue lighter isn’t in its drawer. I open and shut a few other drawers, but it’s not there either. I bang around the kitchen looking for it until I realize there’s a perfectly good gas stove right in front of me. I switch on a burner and hold the tip of my messed-up excuse for a joint in the blue flame until it lights. I switch off the burner and blow out the little birthday-candle flame that has sprung up on the end of the twisted paper, put it to my lips, and inhale. The smoke tastes sour and pavementy, like a lemon candy dropped on the street. I turn on the kitchen fan for ventilation, mosey into the living room, and turn on the stereo.
    This is fun , I tell myself, turning up the volume dial. The music sounds lush and comical, like something played by elves. I wander back into the kitchen and open a brand-new box of cereal. The flakes make a high ringing sound when they tumble into the bowl that somehow fascinates me. I stand at the counter smoking and shaking cereal into the bowl until I completely lose track of time. When I finally get out the milk, it’s half past midnight.
    I take one bite, dump the rest out in the sink, and drag myself to bed.

chapter fourteen
    When I wake up, it’s very bright and very warm and very twelve thirty p.m. The nightmare I was having about Sukey’s murderer slinks out the back door of my mind. My mouth feels dry and sour like I just ate a gym sock, and I’ve got that throbbing headache that spells dehydration. I haven’t practiced piano and I haven’t opened the garbage bag, and now I have only twenty minutes before I have to leave for my piano lesson. From the second I open my eyes, I feel sick and shriveled and hollow in a way I know drinking a liter of water won’t help.
    I go to the bathroom, get undressed, turn on the shower, and step inside. As the water warms up, I remember flashes of my nightmare about Sukey. The part where I’m climbing the stairs of the Imperial Hotel with the massive garbage bag on my back, and I keep getting stuck between the railings. The part where she’s waiting for me to come save her, the part where I can hear her calling me through the walls. The part where I finally get to the fourth floor and she’s already dead. The part where I wake up and a spider is looking down on me from my bedroom ceiling, threatening to drop on my head.
    I squeeze shampoo into my hand.
    It’s okay , I tell myself. You’re okay. Just breathe .
    I press my lips together and work the shampoo into my hair. It fills the shower with a happy floral scent, and for some reason that pushes me over the edge. I buckle over, sobbing, my head resting against the hard shower tiles. I remember crying like this when Sukey died, the tears harsh, devouring, total. I hadn’t known I was capable of being so sad, and the discovery shocked and terrified me. It was like finding an extra door in the house I’d always lived in, and opening it to discover that the grief had carved out new rooms, new hallways, an entire bleak annex of its own. There were dark places in my mind I’d never known existed, and now that I’d seen them I knew they’d always be there, lying in wait, even when the original door had been sealed up.
    I let myself cry for a minute or two, then stop as sharply as twisting off a tap. There’s no time for this, no time. I have a piano lesson to get to, after all. You can put the garbage bag in the basement until Mom and Dad get home , I tell myself. And you never, ever, ever have to go back to the Imperial Hotel .
    By the time I’m dressed and putting my piano books into my backpack, I feel a little better, woozy from those endorphins your body pumps out when you cry.
    You’re fine , I tell myself again as I lock the house and walk down the driveway. You’re just rattled from the nightmare .
    Mr. Hardy waves to me from his front yard, where he stands watering his lilac bushes with a hose. He’s wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt from Run for the Cure—standard retired-person gear. I give him a cheerful smile and wave back.
    “Hey, Mr. Hardy.”
    See? You’re fine .
    My piano teacher, Dr. Scaliteri, lives way over in Kerrisdale, a forty-five-minute bus ride from my house. The Kerrisdale bus is always full of