Wild Awake

“He’s dead, baby. He passed on Tuesday night.”
    I stare at her, stricken. “What? How?”
    “He’d been sick for a long time, baby. HIV. He didn’t like people to know.”
    “Does he have any family?” I say, but Jasmine says no.
    I hurry back up the stairs to Doug’s room, blinking back tears. I will pack up his things; I will keep them in my closet until someone who loves him picks them up . But when I get there, there’s a skinny, sunken-cheeked, green-skinned elf in the room with the microwave under one arm and Doug’s blanket under the other.
    “Hey,” I say, and he turns and snarls at me with a face of such pure, ugly, Gollum-like desperation that I take Snoogie and bolt before he kills us both.
    Snoogie doesn’t stop yowling the whole bike ride home, and I have to hold her in one arm like a tattered, flea-bitten baby to keep her from twisting away and getting run over by a bus. When we get home, I drag us to the top of the stairs and pull my bedroom door open, ready to collapse on the floor.
    But there’s already something on the floor. A smashed thing.
    Blue shards crisscrossed with looping silver. The splintering angles of a broken frame.
    I look at the wall. The nail is bare. I look back at the floor.
    Sukey’s painting.
    I die.

chapter thirty-seven
    Someone’s knocking on the front door of my house.
    I’m sitting in bed with my knees drawn up to my chest, licking the salt on my scabs. Snoogie is roaming around my bedroom with her nose to the floor, tail erect, her ragged ear oozing. Sukey’s painting is spread out on the blanket in front of me in sixteen splintery pieces. I’ll never be able to put it back together, or put anything back to the way it’s supposed to be. It’s still Sunday, only Sunday, but Doug is dead and my band has dissolved and the azaleas are lying, unscrewed, on the lawn.
    Someone’s still knocking on the front door. I hug my knees tighter and squeeze my eyes shut, willing whoever it is to go away.
    I think it’s a mailman coming after me with a bushel of accusatory letters from the Showcase.
    I think it’s my mother and father and Petra Malcywyck coming to cart me away and electrocute me until I confess to being a monomaniac.
    I think it’s Motorcycle Man coming to confuse me with yellow pills.
    I think it’s Dr. Scaliteri and Nelson Chow coming to stand around the piano and cast damning glares at me while I play, weeping, through all one hundred pages of Concerto No. 2.
    I think it’s Doug’s druggie friends dragging a body bag.
    I think it’s policemen and firefighters and emergency room doctors coming to declare me legally dead after I cut my wrists with a pair of scissors.
    I think it’s all my teachers from school coming to click their tongues and shake their heads over how far I’ve fallen after such a promising year.
    I think it’s Lukas and Kelsey coming to squint at me like an animal at the zoo.
    I think it’s a murderer.
    I think it’s a vampire.
    I think it’s the bizarro version of myself, and when she sees me sitting on her bed in a cave of blankets, we’re going to fight each other to death like wolves.
    Someone’s knocking on the front door, and I’m too messed up to go downstairs and answer it but too scared to stay here listening, not knowing who’s there.
    I wrap my quilt around my shoulders like a cape and go downstairs. As I walk toward the front door, I can see them all standing there on the front step: the mailman, my parents, Petra, Dr. Scaliteri and her Serious Students, the burnouts from the Imperial, the police, my teachers, Kelsey Bartlett, Lukas, the murderer, the vampire, and my own indignant double, all shaking their heads.
    With every step I take, I’m conscious of my bare feet connecting with the cool stone floor of the front hall. I’m shivery and feverish. My body is grinding and listing like a broken bicycle. I’m sorry , I want to say to everybody who is waiting outside. I especially want to say it to my double. I want to hug my other self and apologize for crashing my bicycle and hurting my leg. I want to kiss her scabs better and not let her take Motorcycle Man’s yellow pills. I want to call her a cab instead of sending her limping through the night. I want to tuck her into a clean bed with a mug of Sleepytime tea and a good book to read until she falls asleep. I want to make her some good food and make sure she eats it. I want to hold her hand when Doug dies and tell her she was a good friend. I