Wild Awake

it onto the seat post of my bike and give Skunk an awkward wave good-bye. He picks up his box and stands there watching as I walk my bike down the side of the house, as if to make sure he put the wheel on right.
    I get to the street, hop on, and don’t stop pedaling until I can see the lights on my front porch.

chapter five
    “I can’t believe you went down there. You do realize that guy who called you was running a scam.”
    Lukas unscrews the glass jar with the fuzzy green nugget of weed at the bottom. He reaches in, breaks off a tiny chunk, and places it in a silver grinder. Lukas packs a bowl like it’s a Japanese tea ceremony: formal, lengthy, and full of cryptic little steps that absolutely have to be done the right way.
    “Oh, come on, Lukas—”
    He cuts me off. “Let’s see. Calling people on the phone, telling them you have valuable heirlooms belonging to their dead relatives and all they have to do is meet you downtown alone at night to pick them up. Sure, Kiri, doesn’t sound like a scam at all.”
    “He didn’t say he had anything valuable, he just—”
    “He could have knifed you. He could have stolen your bike. I mean, no offense, but wasn’t your sister kind of a druggie? What if it’s one of her druggie friends?”
    “Sukey wasn’t a druggie. What makes you think she was a druggie?”
    “Didn’t she die of an overdose or something?”
    “No!”
    “How’d she die, then?”
    “She was in an accident.”
    “What kind of accident?”
    “What kind of accident do you think? There’s a reason I’m still not allowed to drive.”
    I say it a bit too vehemently. Lukas glances up.
    “Sorry. I’m just saying maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t find him.”
    My cheeks flush. At the time Sukey died, I was a giggly seventh grader whose idea of a good time was playing my favorite Disney songs on the keyboard over and over with my equally giggly friends. I know there are details about the accident that Mom and Dad have never told me, and a pathetic little part of me is grateful for that. Just thinking about the possibility of details makes my mouth go dry and my stomach clench like I’m going to throw up—if I knew exactly what she had been doing, or where she had been going, or who she had been fighting with on her cell phone before she crashed, I’d feel sick for the rest of my life.
    Lukas takes the lid off the grinder and taps the weed out onto the book on his lap. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . I gave it to him for his birthday. He unzips his pencil case, takes out the teak pipe he got at the Balinese import store on Commercial Drive, and packs the weed into it carefully like he’s tucking it into bed. His eyes narrow in concentration.
    “Why don’t you ask your dad about it?” says Lukas. “Your parents can get email on their cruise ship, right?”
    I reach behind my head and massage the muscles in my neck. Even though I didn’t get home until late last night, I still got up early and practiced piano for five and a half hours before coming over to Lukas’s house, just like my schedule said, and I can feel it in my shoulders and back.
    “My dad would just tell me I shouldn’t have gone down there.”
    “What about your mom?”
    “She never knows anything about anything.”
    When confronted with any kind of life situation, Lukas can be trusted to direct you to one of two handy flowcharts:
    1. Ask Parent A Ask Parent B
or
    2. Ask Parent B Ask Parent A .
    If your problem cannot be resolved by talking to Parent A or Parent B, both charts direct you to C: Problem Not Worth Solving .
    Which he does right on cue.
    “Why do you want to find this Doug guy so bad anyway?”
    “He has her things.”
    “What things?”
    I cross my arms. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
    “What things?” he insists.
    Sometimes, I hate Lukas.
    “Well, he didn’t say specifically .”
    Lukas lets out a self-satisfied grunt. “See? I told you. Scammer.”
    He flicks his silver lighter and takes one long puff. He closes his eyes when he exhales, and I watch the smoke pour out from his lips and float up past the top of his head. Lukas never takes more than one hit, as if his senses are so refined that anything more than the slightest puff would leave him more baked than a tray of cookies. He hands the pipe to me. “Here.”
    I flick the lighter over the bowl and suck too hard. Lukas has been trying to teach me the right way to smoke weed for months, but I always end up burning the