Wild Awake

again. I start thinking about all the complicated things I need to explain to Mom and Dad—Sukey’s things, the Showcase, Skunk—and spend the rest of the night wide awake, planning for their arrival.
    First I think it might be best if I’m sitting at the piano practicing when they show up, and I can twist around with a pleasantly surprised expression on my face as if I hadn’t heard the cab in the driveway.
    Then I think I should lay out Sukey’s things in the living room and stage a family catharsis, talk show–style, and we’ll all weep and hug and confess our wrongdoings and emerge from the house hours later, bleached by forgiveness and scoured by tears.
    Then I start worrying that Mom and Dad are going to be angry at me for embarrassing them in front of Petra and Dr. Scaliteri. In that case, perhaps a vulnerable approach would work best. They’ll walk in and I’ll be curled up on the couch, frail and frightened, with Snoogie the cat in my arms, their poor hardworking daughter who nearly practiced herself to death just to make them proud.
    The clock on my nightstand glows red, and even though I try all sorts of different sleeping positions and pillow configurations and chants and spells and prayers, the sun comes up in the morning and I haven’t slept at all.
    My parents materialize like sunscreen-smelling aliens, all rolling luggage and breathable clothes. There’s a brightness about them that doesn’t seem real, a sanitized freshness like cut flowers gazing out at the world through cellophane.
    I come out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth and Mom and Dad are just there , as crisp and neat and color-coordinated as people clipped out of a catalogue. The various scripts I’d run through in my head scramble themselves into a dizzying triple helix and instead I just stare at them, raw-eyed from lack of sleep, as they bump around the kitchen, talking at me so fast I can only process a quarter of what they say.
    “Kiri,” they keep saying like a pair of chirping birds.
    They want to know what happened to the azalea bushes.
    And where I put the mail.
    They have spent their last three days on the cruise ship doing Research on various teen mental health websites. They tell me it’s a good thing Petra and Denny observed the Warning Signs, or I might be in real trouble.
    My dad pushes a pile of books into my hands that they apparently bought on the way home from the airport. I scan the titles. The Adolescent Depression Workbook .
    You’re fucking kidding me , I think.
    My parents chatter on and on. Petra has recommended a Hip Young Counselor with whom I will be having an appointment tomorrow morning to discuss a possible future in monomania. Petra has also recommended an acoustic guitar–wielding music therapist, who is supposed to be very, very skilled with troubled teens. Since I am so musical, we are sure to be great friends.
    They dig out a few little presents for me: the shampoo and soaps from the cruise ship, a necklace made of some sea creature’s crushed-up bones. I twist the little pink shells between my fingers, wondering when they’re going to ask me what happened, how I’m feeling, what I think’s going on. Petra’s right, Lukas is right, Denny’s right, Skunk’s right, they’re all right—I’m Thingy, I’m having a Thing. I’m exhausted and cracked out and not entirely okay. But I don’t even care about that anymore. That seems like something that will get better. It’s right now I’m worried about: It’s standing here together with so much to say, and not saying anything at all.
    I hover there a moment longer, waiting for them to ask me about something, anything, that actually matters.
    Dad busies himself with the plugging-in of cell phone chargers.
    Mom checks the fridge for milk.
    There’s an exaggerated kind of industriousness to their movements, bright and false, like kids pretending to be absorbed in taking notes so the teacher doesn’t call on them. Mom is unscrewing a giant bottle of vitamin pills that gives off a scent like rubber flowers, Dad’s pouring himself a glass of water at the sink, and for the first time since Sukey died I can see us clearly, hovering at the intersection of love and avoidance like lost tourists who can’t decide which road will bring them home.
    My shoulders start to tremble and my chest swells up like a hot-water bottle filled too fast.
    “Mom?” I warble. “Dad?”
    They both spin around at once.
    “Can we talk?”
    It comes