Wild Awake

of the nubbly carpet beneath my toes, and the notes from Teagan tacked to my bulletin board, and the way the pale blue curtains are furred with dust. Lukas is standing close enough that our arms brush, and for the second time this evening I’m aware of the delicious clean-smellingness of my own body, like a fresh-cut branch.
    “See that painting?”
    I point at the wall. He has to lean over my bed to see it clearly in the carefully dimmed light.
    “Sukey did it.”
    I can hear the pride in my voice, as if I’m the one who painted the silver-edged birds. Lukas squints.
    “What does it say?”
    “‘We gamboled, star-clad.’”
    “Is that from Shakespeare or something?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “What does it mean?”
    “Literally, it’s about frolicking under the stars. But it can mean anything you want.”
    Lukas finishes looking and straightens up, his arm brushing mine again. This is my moment. I put my hand on his inner elbow.
    “Shall we?”
    We both lift our wineglasses and take a sip at the same time. I can feel my pulse speeding up like in the moment before you get a test handed back to you and you’re still not sure whether you bombed it or got an A. The smell of French bread is starting to fill the house, warm and floury.
    “Um,” says Lukas, his hand darting up to touch his collarbone like he does when he’s nervous. “Shall we what?”
    “Gambol, star-clad.”
    I can tell he’s thinking about it. Wondering exactly what type of gamboling I mean. Debating whether this is an acceptable breach of Focusing on Our Art. Asking himself if he can spare the vital forces necessary to give in to fleeting physical attraction and still have enough left over for his drum kit. He glances at the painting again, then down at my red bedspread, then back at me. His lip quivers. As if on cue, we both take another sip of wine.
    The smell of warming bread is growing stronger, mixed with the scent of lilac bushes wafting in through the open window. For one utterly still moment, we’re suspended, Lukas and I, like two tightrope walkers far above the ground.
    I reach out and touch his earlobe with my finger.
    Lukas jerks away like I’ve just burned him with a match.
    “Wait, Kiri. I need to tell you something.”
    The warm, swimmy feeling I was getting from the wine evaporates instantly. I feel the tightrope shaking, then snapping. Then I realize I was walking on it alone. My mind races over the past few minutes, scanning them for wrong turns. Did I go too far? I didn’t grab Lukas or tear off his pants or even kiss him. I just wanted to touch him, to remind him that the door was still open and I was still there, and see if maybe he was still there too. But Lukas looks so upset I suddenly feel like some kind of brutal she-rapist in my clingy blue dress.
    “Um. Can we sit down for a minute?” says Lukas, his cheeks reddening. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
    Now I’m going from wondering if Lukas thinks I’m an oversexed maniac to wondering if He’s Just Not That Into Me and has been too nice to tell me until now. When we sit on my bed, my heart breaks a little. This is how I had imagined us sitting. But if everything was going according to my imaginings, Lukas’s hands would be under my dress, not lying in his lap, and we’d be exploring each other, not having another sure-to-be-lengthy discussion about why we shouldn’t date.
    I can hear the music playing downstairs, bright and dreamy and so utterly inappropriate for the moment we’re having, I want to smash my iPod. Lukas blurts out what he has to say in a single suffocating sentence:
    “Don’t-get-mad-I-hooked-up-with-Kelsey.”
    I look away before he can see the hurt and embarrassment that streak across my face like a pair of mice running out from under the stove. Kelsey Bartlett. Of course he’d choose her over me. I know I’m not that attractive, especially to someone like Lukas, who has a perfect body—I have a big mouth and too much hair and I don’t pluck my eyebrows often enough even though I come from a family of Eyebrow People and have what is basically a single unbroken line of fur across my forehead. In five seconds I’ve gone from feeling like a sleek, warm love-otter to a cold, untouchable frog.
    Ribbit .
    “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Kiri. I didn’t know you still felt that way about me.”
    Lukas is peering at me like I’m a puzzle, some complex piece of machinery he didn’t realize was