Wild Awake

microwave burritos.
    The next time I wake up, Denny pulls me out from under the piano again and slams a plastic bottle full of water on the floor next to my face.
    “Sit up and drink this.”
    I make a strangled murmur of revolt and close my eyes. Bad move. Denny grabs my shoulders, hauls me up off the floor, and tosses me onto the couch. He puts the bottle in my hand.
    “Drink it.”
    Denny’s wearing his summer uniform, scruffy board shorts and a dark blue T-shirt, and sporting a new angular haircut that makes him look like a backup dancer for a B-list pop star. He plants himself in front of me and watches while I unscrew the plastic cap and take a slow dribbling sip of water. As the water wets my throat, the turtle part of me swims away. I am Kiri, sitting on a couch drinking water. This is my brother, Denny. My tongue feels around for language.
    “What are you doing here?” I say.
    “Dr. Patel went on vacation. I got two weeks off.”
    Two weeks off. The words set off distant alarm bells, and I’m not sure why. Just when things were going so nicely , I think, then wince as the first pangs of a headache lance through my skull.
    Denny picks up the Ziploc bag on the coffee table and helps himself to a chunk of my weed. He takes a Tic Tac container out of his pocket and tucks the weed in for safekeeping.
    “Hey,” I slur woozily. “That’s my stash.”
    Denny comes back to the couch and brings his face close to mine. He has a new piercing, I notice—a small silver hoop in the cartilage of his left ear. It looks infected. I’m about to tell him so when he grabs my arm.
    “Drink all that water, Kiri. You listening? You’re probably really dehydrated.”
    I nod and try to retract my arm. He doesn’t let go.
    “When you finish drinking that water, clean up all this crap. I don’t know what you got up to last night, but if Mom and Dad saw this place, they’d freak.”
    I glance at the sheet music strewn across the living room floor, the half-smoked joint on the coffee table, Sukey’s silver shoes like fallen stars near the piano bench. It looks like an artist lives here—a passionate and tormented soul. Maybe even a genius. Sukey would be proud.
    “I’m a real musician now, Denny,” I croak.
    “I can see that,” he says, rolling his eyes.
    He lets go of my arm, stalks to the kitchen, and picks up his keys and cell phone off the counter. I strain my neck to watch him, holding the water bottle between my knees.
    “Where are you going?”
    He yanks open the front door without answering.
    “Where are you going, Denny?”
    “Enjoy your hangover,” he calls, slamming it shut behind him.
    I sit on the couch in stunned silence, the water bottle dribbling onto my lap.
    Denny is here.
    Denny is here .
    I feel exposed, like an inventor whose secret workshop has just been raided by the CIA. I’m a trapdoor spider whose trapdoor has been pried open. I’m a fetal pig pulled from its bucket of brine, my inner workings sliced open for all to see. Nobody was supposed to be here. Nobody was supposed to walk in and become a witness to the fact that things weren’t proceeding in an utterly Serious manner. Especially not Denny.
    Maybe it’s not too late.
    This was just a blip, an accidental quiver on the otherwise even Richter scale of my Seriousness. Yes. Okay. All is good. I need to hide Sukey’s things and clean the house and practice for at least eight hours. There is utterly and regrettably no time whatsoever to sleep anymore, not until at least Monday. I put the water bottle on the floor, stand up, limp to the bathroom, and bow over the sink, splashing water on my face for what seems like a very long time.
    I scrape my hair into a ponytail and throw a sweatshirt on over my dress. My knees are bloody mosaics of scabs. No time to deal with them now. I shake out a handful of ibuprofen and knock them back with coffee. Time to clean up my act. I scoop up all the sheet music from the living room floor and pile it in a high, unsteady tower next to the piano. The pages are mottled and water-stained, and some of them are ripped from being walked on. “Sorry,” I whisper to Stanley Otter Fish, doing my best to smooth the paper out.
    I clean up the puke with a towel and throw the towel in the washing machine. I clean the kitchen floor with another towel and throw that towel in the washing machine. I grab another towel and use it to lovingly polish every inch of the grand piano. Soon every towel in the house is