Wild Awake

seems to hover outside the diner interminably before rushing away.
    “Oh God.”
    Skunk squashes his fist against his mouth, blinking rapidly. I pick up my grilled-cheese sandwich and dispatch it in six bites. It’s delicious. Golden brown on the outside and traffic-cone orange on the inside. The coffee is hot and watery in its white china cup and comes with a mean little spoon, which I hide in a crack in the booth’s leather lining. Beside me, Skunk is knitting and unknitting his fingers on the table and muttering worriedly to himself. I reach under the table and unbuckle my murder-shoes. They clatter onto the dirty diner floor. I pull my bare feet under me and sit cross-legged on the leather seat. Now that I have eaten my sandwich, the world is coming into sharper focus. When I look around the diner, I see people eating pancakes, not blurry rainbows like a moment ago.
    “They’ve been following you,” says Skunk. “They used me to get to you.”
    I pluck another sandwich off a plate and sink my teeth into it. Hungry. I’ve never been so hungry in my life.
    “They tried to kill you once before, and tonight they tried again. Both times it was right after you played at the Train Room. It’s a pattern, Kiri.”
    I slurp up my coffee, and the waitress swoops in to refill it. “No shoes, no service.”
    “Oh, sorry.”
    I slip my feet back into Sukey’s shoes without buckling them and take a sip of my coffee. The lights and color of the diner have started to quiet down, like someone in the kitchen has adjusted a knob.
    Skunk is staring at the patterns in the tabletop as if they reveal a horrifying picture he’s never put together before. He looks at me. “Promise you won’t go back to the Train Room.”
    I feel like I’m waking up after a long sleep in a strange bed. For the first time since he appeared on his bicycle, Skunk’s face comes into focus, and his words start to make sense. I put down my coffee cup.
    “What do you mean, don’t go back to the Train Room? Me and Lukas just won Battle of the Bands. We’re going to play our own show next Saturday, which you would know if you’d actually come. Speaking of which—”
    “Don’t go back to the Train Room,” says Skunk. “Don’t go back there and don’t go to my house. Where’s your phone?”
    I stupidly hand it to him. He opens my contacts list and scrolls down to his name.
    “Hey—what are you doing?”
    Skunk presses a button and hands me back my phone. The screen reads CONTACT DELETED .
    “What the—why’d you do that?”
    He takes out his phone and does the same thing to my phone number while I sputter at him, outraged.
    “It’s too dangerous, Kiri. They’re using me to track you. As long as we’re together, they’ll keep trying to kill you. You have to stay away from me. They’ve already come too close.”
    Our four remaining grilled-cheese sandwiches are growing cold. Skunk hasn’t touched his food or coffee. His face has stiffened into a mask of grim resolve.
    My brain fumbles for an appropriate response and arrives clumsily at rage. I jerk away from Skunk.
    “There’s nobody trying to get me, Skunk. You’re having a Thing.”
    Skunk shakes his head in a maddeningly knowing way.
    “You don’t understand it now, Kiri, but you will someday. I’m just trying to keep you safe. If you go to the Train Room again, they’ll be waiting for you. And if they see you with me—”
    “Stop it, Skunk. You’re paranoid. You need to go outside and smoke a cigarette. You haven’t been taking your meds.”
    Skunk doesn’t stop. He keeps on speaking in a low, insistent drone, as if he’s not even listening to what I’m saying. The waitress comes again to take our plates. I thought the yellow pills were finished, but apparently not: Her face is slice-mouthed and awful, like an evil marionette’s. All of a sudden, I can feel the world spiraling out of my control just as clearly as you can watch an escaped balloon heading for power lines. I wriggle out of the booth and stand up. My unbuckled shoes make me unsteady. I sway briefly, clutching the table.
    “Come on, Skunk. Come with me. We’re going to my house.”
    Skunk pauses just long enough to give me an icy stare. He doesn’t move from his spot on the leather bench.
    “If you need to communicate with me,” he says, “use a radio.”
    I stare at him, my beautiful mysterious love-bison turned hostile alien. And I honestly don’t know who I’m seeing. And I don’t know