Wild Awake

slam of the Khachaturian, “do you have any suggestions for Kiri?”
    Nelson puffs out his lips while he thinks. Dr. Scaliteri waits, tapping her pen on her knee. He scratches his arm.
    “It sounds like she’s afraid of the music.”
    Dr. Scaliteri turns to me brightly.
    “That’s interesting, isn’t it, Kiri? Tell us why, Nelson.”
    “She’s rushing through a lot of places.”
    “Aha,” says Dr. Scaliteri, widening her eyes as if Nelson Chow has just pulled a live rabbit out of the piano and set it, hopping, on the floor. “What do you think of that, Kiri?”
    I don’t know what I think. My mind is in space. My sister was killed by a kid with a sideways nose.
    Snap out of it .
    I try to look Serious.
    “What?”
    Dr. Scaliteri claps her hands.
    “Switch places. Up, up, up.”
    This is one of Dr. Scaliteri’s favorite tricks, the old switcheroo. I peel my thighs off the leather seat and stand to the side while Nelson takes my place at the piano.
    “Nelson, give us the Khachaturian.”
    Not play us the Khachaturian. Give us the Khachaturian. As if Nelson in his insufferable yellow T-shirt is some kind of saint from whom all music floweth. He starts playing my piece— my piece —his hands blitzing over the keys. My heart sinks. It sounds completely different from when I play it. There’s something powerful in it I can’t put my finger on, something commanding and deep. Nelson must have stronger fingers than I do, or better technique. By the time he finishes his piece and reverts to Standby mode, I’m so embarrassed I want to melt into the floor.
    Dr. Scaliteri turns to me and displays her fangs.
    “What did you notice about Nelson’s playing?”
    I try to think, but she doesn’t wait for me to answer.
    “Nelson listens ,” says Dr. Scaliteri triumphantly.
    Bitch, please.
    Dr. Scaliteri gives me one last long look, as if to gauge my level of Seriousness. She picks up a stack of sheet music that was sitting on her desk and hands it to me. My eyes skate over the cover page: Concerto No. 2.
    Dr. Scaliteri nods at the door.
    “Next Thursday or nothing,” she says.

chapter nineteen
    The next week is simple .
    I don’t think.
    I don’t sleep.
    I don’t have endless looping nightmares about a kid with a sideways nose.
    I just practice and practice until the world dissolves and anything that’s not piano fades away. Pretty soon, reality takes on the clean, sharp simplicity of a training montage. Cut to Kiri playing the Prokofiev, turning up the metronome one more notch, playing it again. Cut to Kiri fumbling with the sixteenth note section, frowning, and starting over, her eyebrows knit in an attitude of grim determination. Kiri tapping out notes on the kitchen counter while she waits for her instant oatmeal to microwave, Kiri doing sit-ups on the living room floor while Prokofiev plays on the speakers. Kiri working. Kiri getting Serious. Kiri practicing as if her whole life depends on it.
    The kitchen sink fills up with milk-slimed cereal bowls and spoons studded with dried Grape-Nuts. My life consists of the safe little triangle between the fridge, the bathroom, and the piano. When my shoulders start to droop, I drink some coffee and keep going. There simply isn’t time to stop. I have more than one hundred pages of music to memorize by next Thursday. One hundred pages in six days.
    Each time I make a mistake, I pounce on it with my claws extended and wrestle it to death.
    Each time I feel like resting, I think about the master class with Tzlatina Tzoriskaya and force myself to go on.
    Each time I feel like crying, I tell myself to knock it off.
    I think about all the money that’s gone into my piano lessons, and the days and weeks and hours. I have to get this right, I just have to, or else—
    I don’t want to think about the “or else.” Or else is a blank. A big gaping canyon. And on the other side of it is a person I don’t know how to be.
    By the third day, I don’t have eyes anymore—I have orbital cavities. My hair hangs limp and greasy like I’m an actress at a haunted house. My back aches like I’ve been dragging the piano across the floor, not playing it, and my mouth tastes like caffeine. When my friend Teagan calls from physics camp to tell me a convoluted but hilarious story about the second law of thermodynamics, she stops halfway through to ask if she should, like, call me an ambulance. When Lukas’s mom calls to check on me, I carry the phone to the piano and play