Wild Awake

“Race you!”
    Before he can answer, I’ve shot ten feet ahead of him, the bike path melting into mercury beneath my tires. Up ahead where the seawall curves, a bronze sculpture shines brightly in the moonlight. I blast toward it.
    When I’m halfway there, a huge black shape streaks past me.
    It’s Skunk. Cutting through the night like a sailboat. Flying down the path as if he weighed nothing at all.
    I tip my face into the wind and charge after him, leaving the ships far behind. I know they will be there, waiting. But as my bicycle carries me deeper into the forest, it feels like I’m carrying them with me too.

chapter twenty-three
    It starts raining after we cross the Lions Gate Bridge back into Stanley Park. Soon, it’s a full-on downpour. The pack dwindles as people peel off in various directions to ride home. Red BMX and Purple Mongoose evaporate into the night somewhere around Denman Street, and by the time we hit Granville, it’s just me and Skunk. The nightclubs have emptied out and the heat lamps have been pulled inside. Granville Street is empty except for cop cars and the leftover drunks and homeless people shouting at each other on the sidewalk. My clothes are soaking wet and suctioned to my skin, and my tires are slick. We bike slowly, floating over the shining pavement.
    “You headed home?” says Skunk.
    “I guess I should.”
    The rain’s soft music has lulled me into a trance, and I hadn’t even realized we’d drifted past Burrard Street, where I should have turned off for the bridge.
    “You left your shopping bags in the shed this afternoon,” he says.
    “Perfect. I’ll come get them.”
    As we coast through the deepening puddles, listening to the muffled sound our tires make slashing through the water, I take another shot at digging for clams.
    “So why don’t you smoke pot?” I ask.
    Skunk wipes the raindrops off his forehead.
    “I used to. I was a big-time stoner when I was twelve.”
    “When you were twelve ? Where does a twelve-year-old get pot?”
    Skunk laughs. “In Montreal, you can do anything when you’re twelve.”
    He pronounces it Mo-ray-all , with this whiff of a Quebecois accent that makes my insides go limp. As we bike to his neighborhood, Skunk tells me about growing up in Montreal: smoking cigarettes at recess, skipping school to play in bands, moving out of his mom and stepdad’s apartment when he was sixteen to live in a shared house with the Band That Shall Not Be Mentioned.
    “So you’d what, blaze and do multiplication tables?” I say.
    “Yeah. Or just sit in my room and play bass.”
    “What happens if you smoke weed now?”
    “My paranoia gets worse.”
    I give him a funny look.
    “It gets worse? You mean you’re just generally paranoid all the time? Are you paranoid right now? Are you paranoid about me?”
    I swoop my bike closer to Skunk’s and give him my best evil stare.
    “I am plotting to kill you, Skunk. Kiri Byrd in the toolshed with a bike wrench.”
    He gives my handlebars a light push. I veer away, laughing.
    “How do you know I’m not plotting to kill you ?” says Skunk. “I could have sabotaged your bike and you wouldn’t even know it. Your tires might blow up the next time you go over a bump.”
    I swoop closer again, rain falling lush and heavy on my skin.
    “You’re not that evil.”
    “Try me.”
    “You just think you are because you have tattoos. Speaking of which, should I get one? I was thinking about getting Beethoven’s face right here.”
    I point to a spot on my arm. Skunk grimaces.
    “Please don’t.”
    “Why? What’s wrong with Beethoven? It would make me more legit as a pianist. I’m going to be in this big piano festival soon, and I want the other contestants to know I mean business. When I flex my bicep, Beethoven could scowl at them menacingly.”
    “Or you could scowl at them menacingly.”
    “Trust me. I’ve got that part down.”
    “You’re a little crazy, you know.”
    “Look who’s talking, Bicycle Boy.”
    When we get to Skunk’s house, the rain is still pouring down. We wheel our bikes through the iron gate and down the side of the house, flower stems slapping wetly against our legs. Skunk unlocks the shed and lifts his bike onto its pegs. He finds my plastic shopping bags stowed under the workbench and hands them to me. I feel the ridiculous shape of the acorn squash and the straw hat. The piano lesson I had this afternoon feels like something that happened years ago, to a