Wild Awake

hair.
    I plug in the alarm clock.
    I buckle on the silver shoes and take an exploratory stroll around the room. They fit, which surprises me, and I stand there, teetering, feeling my legs lengthen like a stretched piece of gum.
    I lay out the leather skirt and sparkly pink tube top on the bed and imagine Sukey wearing them. The skirt has a small yellow splatter of paint on the front. Somehow, that splatter reassures me, like at least some things didn’t change after she moved into the Imperial.
    I roll a joint with one of the Zig-Zag papers and smoke it, sitting on the bed. After I smoke the joint, I question the ceramic frog. He, surely, must have some comment to make about what happened, some amphibian complaint.
    Mister Frog, you have been with Sukey for so long. Did you see what happened? Did you try to stop it?
    I talk to the frog for a good long time. All he does is gaze at me with dumb froggy eyes. I shake him and speak severely.
    Mister Frog, we have ways of making of you talk .
    When I get tired of the frog, I pick up the wooden bear. It’s small and light, carved out of a pale blond wood, a scrap of pine or maple. It has pointy little bear ears and a doglike snout, and one of its paws has just snatched an oblong shard of a salmon. It fits in my hand like a toy. Hey, little bear , I think, stroking its sleek wooden back. It’s okay .
    When I turn it over in my hand to look at it more closely, I realize there’s an inscription scratched on the underside with a knife or the sharp tip of a nail: FOR SUKY. FROM DOUG .
    I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for sad things, I guess. I hug the bear in my hands and cry and cry.
    By the time I get to the scary things, it’s well past four. The light on the ceiling buzzes faintly, as if to complain about being left on for so long. I’m still wearing Sukey’s silver shoes. I imagine they’ll bring Sukey back if I click their heels together three times, but when I try it, nothing happens. I pick up an empty pill bottle and gaze at the ruined label. The paper is rippled as if it got wet, and some of the letters have been completely rubbed off. The part I can read says 300 MG BY MOUTH , but 300 milligrams of what? I pore over the other bottles: Percocet, Demerol, Oxycodone. They’re not Sukey’s, they can’t be Sukey’s, but why are they in the bag?
    I put them down and pick up the bloody quilt. It’s stiff and bunched. I pull it apart, smoothing it out with my hands. The bloody parts look like invasions of bacteria in a petri dish, billowing clouds of black. Underneath, I can make out the scraps of flowered cotton and blue corduroy. The quilt is a horror, a nightmare in my arms, but all I can think about is how much the blood looks like paint—something knocked over and spilled by a clumsy elbow. An accident. I bundle it up carefully and slip it back into the bag, leaving everything else on the frilly bedspread.
    I mean to go back to bed then. I really do. But not before touching each object one last time.
    When the sun comes up at five, I am twisting the paper clip in my fingers. I am using its burnt tip to spell her name on the back of my hand.

chapter sixteen
    “You seem happy today,” says Lukas .
    Lukas and I are walking down West Broadway on our way to a party at Kelsey Bartlett’s house. Or rather, Lukas is walking. I am hopping along beside him, tugging leaves and petals off every tree we pass. I felt a crazy burst of energy when I saw him waiting for me on the corner in front of the supermarket, and everything from last night seemed to slip off my shouldres like a heavy backpack. My body’s a little achy from not sleeping, but instead of feeling exhausted, I’m wired. The evening air smells like a pair of old jeans baking on a clothesline, and the sky is the color of a squeezed peach. I tuck a blossom behind Lukas’s ear.
    “I was up all night.”
    “Why?”
    “I opened the bag.”
    “Oh.”
    He gives me a half-worried, half-encouraging glance, as if he’s afraid to ask what was inside. We’re walking down the Greek block, past the little grocery store with its shelves of canned olives and tahini. A woman in a green dress pushes the door open, and the sudden whiff of baking pita bread reminds me I haven’t eaten yet today. Lukas notices the blossom and bats it off.
    “Want to know what was in the bag?”
    I start to list the objects in no particular order. Lukas stops me when I get to the bloody quilt.
    “I don’t think I can listen to