Wild Awake

manning the grill.
    “Go ahead,” he says when he sees me. “You can be the first one in.”
    The suggestion is too tantalizing to resist.
    I can see my reflection wobbling on the surface of the water like the film of edible ink on a Your-Photo-on-a-Cake. I slip my feet out of my sandals, swing my first leg over the edge, and the water swallows up my leg all the way to the hem of my shorts. I swing my other leg in and stand there like a stork in the middle of the warm, bubbling water. Inside the house, a group of guys has just shown up: I can see a flock of wide-brimmed caps moving toward the chip bowls on the kitchen counter. A pair of celery girls squeak open the sliding glass door and come onto the deck to gawk at me.
    “Omigod, Kiri, are you really getting in?”
    “I am in.”
    And oh how brightly doth the first stars shine in the waning nectarine of the sky. This is real. This is like one of Sukey’s paintings. Now if only Lukas would come out here and dance with me and the celery girls would go back inside with their tanned legs and big teeth. I scrape the surface of the water with my fingers. The celery girls squeal.
    “But your clothes are going to get wet. Where’s your bathing suit?”
    I ignore them and turn around in a slow circle, feeling the hot jets of water whooshing against my legs. Little white petals are falling from a Japanese cherry tree and landing on the water. Little bubbles are crowning the hairs on my legs. I am the Lady of the Lake. Suck it, bitches.
    “Are you just going to spin around in circles and not say anything?”
    I reach up, plug my nostrils, and submerge, submarine-style, until their voices are nothing but warbling squeaks above the surface of the water.
    When I come up again, the celery girls are still standing there, now joined on the deck by a half-dozen more gawking girls and a handful of lumbering Ball-Cap Orangutans that start hooting and taking pictures on their cell phones when I emerge soaking wet.
    I take a quick bow, step out of the hot tub, push through my crowd of admirers, and go inside, trailing wet footprints across the kitchen floor. My random act of beauty accomplished, I make a unilateral decision to grab Lukas and bust out of here.
    Lukas is still talking to Kelsey, whom I suddenly can’t stand with a level of not-standingness so powerful I can hardly restrain it from leaping out of my throat like one of those snakes-in-a-can. She’s telling Lukas about how much she loves waterskiing, her voice high and whiny-sounding. I wedge myself between them. “Lukas? D’you want to go?”
    “Oh, hey, Kiri.”
    Lukas is holding a can of soda with beads of condensation on the outside. I can smell the chemical tang of the fake lemon when he takes a sip. I not so much ignore Kelsey as fail to see any point in acknowledging her existence for the second time in a single evening. Kelsey looks down at my dripping clothes.
    “Ooh, looks like someone found the hot tub. I can lend you a swimsuit, babe.”
    I sort of nod at Kelsey, but my eyes are locked on Lukas. “Hey, Lukas? Lukas. Are you ready to go?”
    The wired feeling that started when I left my house has grown into a thrumming, crackling, electrical field. I want to kiss Lukas. I want to dance down the street. There’s a reason people get drunk after funerals, and I suddenly know what it is: the flip side of sadness is a dark, devouring joy, a life that demands to be fed.
    “Lukas—”
    Do Lukas and Kelsey exchange a look? Was that a look? Bitch, don’t exchange a look with my future boyfriend!
    Lukas rocks on his heels. “Actually, I was just about to get a burger.”
    Kelsey licks her lips in what I cannot help but interpret as a lecherous fashion. “Mmm,” she says, looking me square in the eye. “Think I will too.”
    I cast Lukas an urgent look, but it bounces right off him. He gives me a strained smile and turns around to go outside to the barbecue. Kelsey follows him, waving over her shoulder at me.
    “Bye, Kiri. Sorry you had to leave so early!”
    On the walk home from Kelsey’s, a car full of college boys slows down and follows me for an entire block, whistling at me and shouting, “Where’s the wet T-shirt contest?” I give them the finger, but they just laugh, and when I duck into the corner store to escape them, the cashier shoos me back out again for dripping water on the floor. As I hurry down the street, my wet clothes cling to my skin, clammy and uncomfortable. When I get