Wild Awake

he says. “Are we talking real life here, or are you still tripping on whatever is it you took last night?” He stares at my eyes, which are admittedly a little red. “Oh my God. You’re on meth.”
    “I’m not on drugs, Denny.”
    “You were passed out under the piano.”
    “I was hungover. It was Battle of the Bands.”
    Denny shakes his head. “No. No way. It’s not alcohol. Look at you—you’re all tweaky. You’re hopped up on something. Drinking doesn’t do that. What is it? Coke? E? Your eyes are all bloodshot. You look fucking insane.”
    “I smoked some pot. A lot of pot.”
    “Oh, really. Speaking of which, where’d you get all that pot?”
    I lift my chin. “None of your business.”
    He narrows his eyes. I can see the thought forming in his head before he does. I make a grab for the phone, but he snatches it first.
    “Maybe I should call Mom and Dad,” he says.
    I lunge across the counter, clawing at Denny’s hands as he starts to dial. “The only reason you would ever do that is to be an asshole.”
    “They would be so worried if they knew their perfect little pianist was on drugs. They might have to cut their trip short and fly home to take care of you. What a shame. Let me just dial this number, and—”
    I pant, the counter edge cutting into my stomach as Denny and I do a slow-motion arm-wrestle for the phone. “You don’t really think I’m on drugs,” I say through clenched teeth. “You’re just trying to avoid the conversation.”
    “What conversation?” he says.
    “Exactly.”
    Denny relaxes his grip on the phone. I swipe it and hold it behind my back, its plastic case hot in my hand. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
    Denny watches me warily. “You were twelve , Kiri. You hung on Sukey’s every word like she was your guru. You couldn’t have handled it then, and by the looks of it you can’t even handle it now.”
    I glare at him, outraged. I know how I must look right now, with my scraped-up knees and bloodshot eyes and the trembly-tense posture of a first-time gangster holding up a convenience store. But it’s not fair. It’s a misrepresentation. I’m the strong person here, the one who stayed nice when everyone else was slamming doors, the one who filled the house with music when grief had drained it to a creeping silence, the one who rode to the Imperial on a freaking bicycle to bring a piece of Sukey home. If there’s something I can’t handle, it’s being told all of that means nothing. My face heats up.
    “Well, I know more than any of you now. You want to know who killed her? A kid with a sideways nose. You want to know how I got her stuff? Her alcoholic neighbor kept it in his closet for five years because nobody from our stupid family cared enough to go down there and clear out her studio after it happened.”
    Denny sighs and runs a hand through his idiotic haircut like a long-suffering adult trapped in negotiations with a three-year-old. “It’s not that simple. You don’t even know all the details.”
    The condescension in his voice hits me like baking soda on vinegar. I erupt.
    “‘You don’t know the details. You don’t know the details.’ I’m the one who went down there, so don’t give me that crap about details.”
    Denny smirks. “Oh yeah? You know about her tiny little pill problem?”
    “Lots of great artists use mind-altering substances.”
    “You know she owed people money?”
    I don’t answer.
    Denny keeps going, his voice oh-so-casual, drumming on the counter with his fingernails.
    “You know what great artists with tiny little pill problems do to get money?” he says.
    The sentence hangs in the air like a tossed grenade. Denny’s eyes pin me to the spot. I writhe like one of the sea urchins he tortures in his lab, dark possibilities crowding into my mind.
    “Mom and Dad should have helped her,” I bleat.
    “They did . Do you know how many times Dad tried to—”
    “She was working on a painting. A big one. Which you and Mom and Dad would know if you’d actually believed in her.”
    Whatever scrap of sympathy was in Denny’s eyes before burns away instantly. “I don’t know what kind of warm, fuzzy story this alcoholic neighbor told you, but she wasn’t there on a freaking art residency.”
    “It’s true. She was working on it when she died .”
    Denny gives me a look of such utter incredulity that it appears he is considering, for real this time, the possibility that I may actually be insane.
    “Oh,