Wild Awake

different Kiri altogether. My legs are slick with bicycle grease and rainwater, muscles aching from the ride. I want to freeze myself in this feeling like a fern in amber.
    I saw the ships , I want to tell Sukey. I know she’d know what I mean.
    Skunk closes the shed door and hooks the combination lock through the metal latch. We stand in the courtyard, rain splashing off our shoulders. I think of my empty house and nudge my kickstand down, playing for time.
    “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
    I do need to pee, but mostly I just don’t want to go home. When I think of everywhere I’ve been tonight, the warehouses and the sea wall, my house seems lifeless, a plastic Monopoly piece in a world full of brick and glass and water and wood and stone.
    Skunk plays with his keys.
    “Sure. We have to be quiet, though. My aunt and uncle are sleeping upstairs.”
    “No problem. I’ll be in and out.”
    I leave my bike in the courtyard and follow Skunk to the house, waiting as he unlocks the sliding glass door and pulls it open. I can’t help but feel a little excited. I’m finally being admitted to the inner sanctum. The Sanctum Skunkorium. The cave of mysteries.
    He goes in first, and I follow. As I step inside, I forget all about my need to pee. My senses reel.
    Skunk’s room is one of the most bizarre and beautiful places I’ve ever seen.
    The entire room is filled with old radios. It reminds me of nothing so much as an aviary, each radio a different bird, some with gleaming wooden coats like sparrows and some with green plastic shoulders like parrots. They perch on ledges and shelves, peeking down from windowsills and peering out from in between stacks of old books, their antennas perked at quirky angles, their dials glowing faintly in the dim golden light of an antique lamp. Some of them look ancient, with curved wooden cases and glass-plated dials, and some are squat and cheerful. I even think I can hear birds in here, a faint hooting and scratching, until I realize one of the radios is turned on with its volume low.
    There’s an unmade bed loosely covered by a black-and-green quilt. A row of red Chinese lanterns hangs above the bed, their bellies glowing. The ashtray on the bedside table is littered with the stubs of incense sticks. I glimpse the soft curves of an ornate velvet armchair piled with clothes. Behind the armchair hangs a painting of the Hindu goddess Kali, her four arms held at right angles, tongue stuck out. The room smells like something I’ve only smelled one time before. It takes me a moment to place it: myrrh.
    Skunk plants his hand on the wall and slides off his wet shoes.
    “Bathroom’s through there.” He indicates a little hallway with his chin. “The light switch is sort of hard to find. It’s on the wall under the mirror.”
    His face is turned toward the floor, concentrating on his shoes. Rainwater slips off his hair and the back of his neck and drops to the floor, making little wet polka dots on the hardwood.
    I’m not listening to his instructions about the light switch. Something in the corner of the room has caught my eye. “My grandma had that radio.”
    Skunk looks up, smiling. He’s peeled off his wet socks and balled them up inside his shoes. His bare feet are surprisingly pale and hairless.
    “Oh yeah?”
    “The blue one with the clock on the front. She kept it tuned to this crazy Christian station where they were always telling you to put your hands on the radio and pray for healing.”
    “The blue one’s my second favorite,” he says.
    “Which one’s your first favorite?”
    “See that little red one on the top ledge?”
    I scan the wall until I see it.
    “The plastic one?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s cute. Where’d you get it?”
    “I found it sitting next to a fire hydrant. I was walking past and thought I heard something, and it was this radio sitting on the sidewalk, running on batteries. It was like it had wandered out into the world and gotten lost and it was calling out, hoping someone would find it.”
    “Aww. That’s sweet. What was it playing?”
    Skunk grins.
    “Marilyn Manson.”
    I go to the bathroom, and when I come back the rain is slapping horizontally against the glass door. Skunk is sitting on the floor, putting on dry socks. I put my hand on the door. I know this is supposed to be the part where I go home.
    But what would happen if I didn’t?
    “Well, it was nice riding with you,” I say, reaching up to brush the wet hair out of my