Wild Awake

through me. Hey, k-bird. Hang this in your room, and I’ll keep the other one hanging in my studio . I try to fill my brain with the pattern on the Formica table.
    “What did they do?”
    Doug looks around the diner as if he has only now become concerned about being overheard. He lowers his voice. “They bashed his head in with a pipe. Threw his body in the Dumpster.” He drains his coffee. “No more kid.”

chapter eighteen
    “Kiri,” says Dr. Scaliteri, leaning forward on her exercise ball and gripping my wrist. “You must get serious about this piano. We worked on these problems on Monday and there’s no change. No change at all.”
    I am sitting on the piano bench, wearing a short green wrap skirt, a black tank top, and a cowrie-shell necklace. This morning I showered and brushed my teeth and even put on makeup. Securing the perimeter goes for appearances, too.
    On the bus ride here I almost cried, imagining Billy barging into Sukey’s room at the Imperial while we were safe in our house, a ten-minute drive away. Even though I’ve taken the same bus a hundred times, I looked out the window and didn’t recognize a thing—as if I’d been seeing the whole world wrong, as if I’d never really seen it at all. I panicked and thought I’d missed my stop, but ended up getting off a stop too soon and walking the last ten blocks, arriving at Dr. Scaliteri’s house sweaty and five minutes late.
    I force myself to meet her eyes.
    “I’m sorry. I’ve been—something came up.”
    Dr. Scaliteri glowers. She turns to her desk, and it looks like we’re about to go through the old calendar routine again, but instead she picks up a piece of mail. She waves the envelope at me.
    “Your name has come up for the master class with Tzlatina Tzoriskaya,” she says.
    The sweat freezes on my skin.
    The master class is this elite inner Showcase-within-the-Showcase, whereby qualified Young Pianists are given the opportunity to learn an extra piece selected by the judge for its extreme difficulty and announced just weeks before the big event. It’s supposed to test your ability to learn music quickly—that, and your ability to not have a nervous breakdown under circumstances almost clinically designed to produce one.
    Dr. Scaliteri enunciates slowly.
    “For this class, Tzlatina has selected the Prokofiev.”
    “Which Prokofiev?”
    “The Concerto Number Two.”
    Only one of the hardest piano pieces ever written. My jaw drops.
    “I can’t have that ready that in time for the Showcase. It’s a hundred pages long.”
    “For the master class, it must not be ready. It must only be memorized. Tzlatina will give you instruction on how to polish. It is a very big opportunity for you.”
    “I know, but—”
    “Tzlatina is on the faculty of music at the Royal Conservatory. You will be auditioning there in the fall, yes? So you see that it is very important for you to make an impression.”
    My palms inexplicably start to sweat, and my eyes dart to the floor. Get it together, Kiri , warns a voice in my head, but that only makes me sweat harder. The piano’s pedals shine back at me, dainty brass paws, and its smell of felt and lacquer presses at my nostrils. I wish I was outside, on the sidewalk, somewhere with air. I wish I was riding a bus with its windows open.
    “You will not audition for the Conservatory?” says Dr. Scaliteri.
    I look up. “What? Of course I’m going to audition.”
    Dr. Scaliteri crosses her arms. “What’s happening with you, Kiri? You used to be so full of focus, and now it’s distraction, distraction.”
    Dr. Scaliteri says the word distraction like she’s talking about hard drugs. I recognize that tone. It’s the one Dad used to use with Sukey. I blush. “I’m not losing my focus.”
    “Okay,” Dr. Scaliteri says with an exasperated flutter of her well-groomed hands. “Okay. But you know, the other students in the competition, they come from all over the country, all over the world, from all the best teachers. They are serious piano students.”
    “I am serious.”
    “Then you will stop mooning around with this boyfriend of yours and you will memorize the Prokofiev.”
    When she’s finished this little pep talk, Dr. Scaliteri calls in Nelson Chow, who has just walked in the door looking dapper in his khaki pants and a yellow T-shirt, and has me play my entire repertoire over again.
    “Now, Nelson,” says Dr. Scaliteri when I’ve just deployed the last deafening atonal