Wild Awake

by Hilary T. Smith

  “Switch places. Up, up, up.”

  This is one of Dr. Scaliteri’s favorite tricks, the old switcheroo. I peel my thighs off the leather seat and stand to the side while Nelson takes my place at the piano.

  “Nelson, give us the Khachaturian.”

  Not play us the Khachaturian. Give us the Khachaturian. As if Nelson in his insufferable yellow T-shirt is some kind of saint from whom all music floweth. He starts playing my piece—my piece—his hands blitzing over the keys. My heart sinks. It sounds completely different from when I play it. There’s something powerful in it I can’t put my finger on, something commanding and deep. Nelson must have stronger fingers than I do, or better technique. By the time he finishes his piece and reverts to Standby mode, I’m so embarrassed I want to melt into the floor.

  Dr. Scaliteri turns to me and displays her fangs.

  “What did you notice about Nelson’s playing?”

  I try to think, but she doesn’t wait for me to answer.

  “Nelson listens,” says Dr. Scaliteri triumphantly.

  Bitch, please.

  Dr. Scaliteri gives me one last long look, as if to gauge my level of Seriousness. She picks up a stack of sheet music that was sitting on her desk and hands it to me. My eyes skate over the cover page: Concerto No. 2.

  Dr. Scaliteri nods at the door.

  “Next Thursday or nothing,” she says.

  chapter nineteen

  The next week is simple.

  I don’t think.

  I don’t sleep.

  I don’t have endless looping nightmares about a kid with a sideways nose.

  I just practice and practice until the world dissolves and anything that’s not piano fades away. Pretty soon, reality takes on the clean, sharp simplicity of a training montage. Cut to Kiri playing the Prokofiev, turning up the metronome one more notch, playing it again. Cut to Kiri fumbling with the sixteenth note section, frowning, and starting over, her eyebrows knit in an attitude of grim determination. Kiri tapping out notes on the kitchen counter while she waits for her instant oatmeal to microwave, Kiri doing sit-ups on the living room floor while Prokofiev plays on the speakers. Kiri working. Kiri getting Serious. Kiri practicing as if her whole life depends on it.

  The kitchen sink fills up with milk-slimed cereal bowls and spoons studded with dried Grape-Nuts. My life consists of the safe little triangle between the fridge, the bathroom, and the piano. When my shoulders start to droop, I drink some coffee and keep going. There simply isn’t time to stop. I have more than one hundred pages of music to memorize by next Thursday. One hundred pages in six days.

  Each time I make a mistake, I pounce on it with my claws extended and wrestle it to death.

  Each time I feel like resting, I think about the master class with Tzlatina Tzoriskaya and force myself to go on.

  Each time I feel like crying, I tell myself to knock it off.

  I think about all the money that’s gone into my piano lessons, and the days and weeks and hours. I have to get this right, I just have to, or else—

  I don’t want to think about the “or else.” Or else is a blank. A big gaping canyon. And on the other side of it is a person I don’t know how to be.

  By the third day, I don’t have eyes anymore—I have orbital cavities. My hair hangs limp and greasy like I’m an actress at a haunted house. My back aches like I’ve been dragging the piano across the floor, not playing it, and my mouth tastes like caffeine. When my friend Teagan calls from physics camp to tell me a convoluted but hilarious story about the second law of thermodynamics, she stops halfway through to ask if she should, like, call me an ambulance. When Lukas’s mom calls to check on me, I carry the phone to the piano and play her part of the concerto.

  “It is incredible what you do with this piano,” says Petra. “I am wishing we had started Lukas when he was young.”

  Her approval is a gold star I use to hold up all the ones whose edges have started to curl.

  The metronome ticks. I lose track of days. My clothes start to smell like I just ran a marathon. Several nights pass where I don’t see my bed, don’t even go upstairs at all. Sergei Prokofiev starts talking to me, a constant internal chatter, critiquing my technique and making grim Russian noises whenever I miss a note. I can feel the music growing on me like a graft on a plum tree, the new leaves shooting out, becoming a part of my brain.

  At one point, my parents call long-distance from Brazil to give me a detailed update on the state of the lemur population at the Sao Rodrigo Wildlife Preserve, which they visited on a recent excursion from their cruise ship. My mom gives me a full report on the distinct habits, personalities, and dietary preferences of all six members of the lemur family showcased in the little pen at the visitor center. My dad’s contribution is a scathing condemnation of the boldness of the Brazilian homeless person. I pace around the kitchen while they talk, and eventually set the phone on top of the fridge and wander away.

  When Wednesday night rolls around, I’m ready. I’ve spent an entire week Focusing on My Art, and now not only am I a honed and dangerous pianist, I have also become Serious. I’m a finely focused laser beam. Forget burning the candle at both ends—I’ve dipped the candle in kerosene and torched that sucker. One hundred pages of music, all safely stored in my brain. You tell me if that isn’t Serious. You just try telling me that isn’t some Serious shit.

  chapter twenty

  Not even ten minutes after I declare victory on the Prokofiev, the phone rings and it’s Lukas calling to see if I want to watch Zardoz. The timing is so uncanny it’s got to be a sign. I tell him to come over in an hour, by which I mean, Give me an hour to prepare my sex-dome.

  I hang up the phone and launch into preparation mode.

  First, I clean up the living room, fluffing pillows and draping the chenille blanket invitingly over the back of the couch. I load a good playlist onto my iPod, flick off lights and switch on lamps, gather up all the old newspapers and dump them into the recycling bin in the garage. Next, I tackle my bedroom, tossing dirty socks and underwear into the laundry bin and hanging up clothes. I spend five minutes debating whether to leave a black bra hanging casually over the closet door, then decide it looks too staged and move it to a dresser drawer. I crank open the window next to my bed so that the evening air slinks in luxuriously over the pillow.

  It’s not that I think all these preparations are necessary for romancing Lukas. He’s a simple person with simple likes and dislikes. It’s more to indulge my own sense of occasion that I whisk from room to room attending to these details. I feel like a theater director fussing over a set on opening night. I want the entrances and exits to be perfect. I want the trapdoors to swing open when they’re supposed to and the bed to swivel into place on cue. I run a sound check and test the lights. I stride around the house making sure that every prop is in place. I go down to the basement and select a bottle of red wine from the wooden rack, go to the kitchen and stick a frozen loaf of French bread in the oven.

  My heart fluttering, I go back to my bedroom and dig out the condom I’ve been saving ever since ninth-grade health class, the condom that has been hidden inside a Christmas sock stuffed inside an old running shoe wedged behind a box on the high shelf of my closet for three years and nevertheless seems to bleat its condomy presence to the world like a poorly muffled alarm clock whenever anyone comes into my room.

  I put it in an easy-to-reach spot in my drawer, then on second thought I put it back in the sock, because I don’t want it to seem like I just generally keep condoms casually accessible, then on third thought I take it back out of the sock, because what kind of creepy, desperate human owns a single, expired condom they’ve been keeping in a Christmas sock since ninth grade?

  Next, it’s time for Ultimate Physical Purification. I shower, shave every body part that isn’t directly attached to my skull, wash my hair, blow-dry it, clean under my toenails with one of those metal things you’re not supposed to use, apply scentless deodorant, pluck a fe
w eyebrow hairs, and moisturize everything. Twice. I imagine Sukey here with me, helping me get ready for the date.

  Lookin’ good, babe, she’d say approvingly. Then she’d mess up my hair, because you don’t want to look like you spent time on your hair, and quickly fill me in on the sort of arcane sexual knowledge I imagine all older sisters, but especially Sukey, must possess.

  I root through my closet and find the filmy blue dress Auntie Moana sent me for Christmas last year. I slip it on, my skin still warm from the shower, and float downstairs.

  At 8:20 Lukas shows up with the Netflix envelope bearing Zardoz. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and looks like a model in a Habitat for Humanity ad, like he’s about to pick up a hammer and build some disadvantaged refugees a duplex. I uncork the wine, and while it’s breathing we hang around the kitchen, talking music. Lukas’s eyes keep darting to my dress, which rides up my thighs in a dreadfully sexy manner when I sit on the kitchen counter, one leg draped over the other.

  “Have you heard of this band called Mist?” says Lukas.

  We have my laptop out, and we’re listening to songs on the internet. Lukas clicks on a music video, which starts to play. It’s some kind of hipster twee-pop crap, all xylophones and cutesy lyrics. I cringe.

  “Lukas, this music blows.”

  “Just listen for a second.”

  I listen for precisely one second, during which said music continues to blow. I raise my newly plucked eyebrows at Lukas.

  “I’m serious, why are you showing me this?”

  “I was thinking we might want to move our sound in that direction.”

  “Are you kidding me? This sounds like it was written by the Mickey Mouse Club.”

  Lukas ignores me. “Hear how the synth’s a little dancier?”

  He hums along for a few bars. I punch him lightly on the shoulder.

  “Lukas, we are not dumbing down our act. You’re the one who’s always saying you want us to be a serious band. Where’d you even hear about these losers?”

  “Kelsey played their album at her party after you left.”

  “Great. Now we’re taking career advice from Kelsey Bartlett?”

  “She actually knows a lot about—”

  “Lukas. Listen to me. We are building cathedrals. These guys”—I wave my hand at the laptop—“are making instant pudding.”

  Lukas rolls his eyes.

  “No, but that’s the thing. You make your first album mainstream to get radio play, then later, once you have a record deal and a following, you can slowly introduce the headier stuff. When you’re established.”

  “Yeah. Established in sucking.”

  “I just think we should make our music a little more accessible for Battle of the Bands. It’ll be temporary, okay?”

  I raise my eyebrows. “The douchy sellout you pretend to be is the douchy sellout you become.”

  “Since when are you so concerned with selling out?”

  “I just think we should live dangerously.”

  “Sure. After Battle of the Bands.”

  This isn’t the kind of flirtatious banter I’d been imagining. I give Lukas a smile. “Come upstairs. There’s something I wanted to show you.”

  I hop down from the counter, pick up the wine, and pour us each a glass. It glugs in the neck of the bottle in a way I think most waiters would disapprove of, but I don’t know any other way to do it. I hand Lukas his wine and pick up mine, cradling the glass in my hand. As an afterthought, I tuck the bottle under my arm. You never know. This could take a while.

  “Come on. It’s upstairs.”

  I start for the staircase, glancing over my shoulder to cast Lukas an encouraging smile. After a slight pause, he follows me. I can hear my dress swishing against my legs as we climb the stairs. When we get to the top, Lukas’s face is slightly red. He hangs outside the door when I go into my room, looking down at his wineglass like he’s afraid my bedchamber is filled with scandalous things to shock his Victorian sensibilities. Part of me is glad I stuck that bra in the drawer. Another part of me is enjoying his discomfort—it means I’m doing something right.

  I beckon him in.

  “It’s okay, Lukas. You can come in. I can’t show you out there.”

  He looks flustered but comes and joins me next to my bed. For a moment, all I can think about is the fact that Lukas is standing next to me in my bedroom. It makes the whole room feel different. I’m suddenly aware of the nubbly carpet beneath my toes, and the notes from Teagan tacked to my bulletin board, and the way the pale blue curtains are furred with dust. Lukas is standing close enough that our arms brush, and for the second time this evening I’m aware of the delicious clean-smellingness of my own body, like a fresh-cut branch.

  “See that painting?”

  I point at the wall. He has to lean over my bed to see it clearly in the carefully dimmed light.

  “Sukey did it.”

  I can hear the pride in my voice, as if I’m the one who painted the silver-edged birds. Lukas squints.

  “What does it say?”

  “‘We gamboled, star-clad.’”

  “Is that from Shakespeare or something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Literally, it’s about frolicking under the stars. But it can mean anything you want.”

  Lukas finishes looking and straightens up, his arm brushing mine again. This is my moment. I put my hand on his inner elbow.

  “Shall we?”

  We both lift our wineglasses and take a sip at the same time. I can feel my pulse speeding up like in the moment before you get a test handed back to you and you’re still not sure whether you bombed it or got an A. The smell of French bread is starting to fill the house, warm and floury.

  “Um,” says Lukas, his hand darting up to touch his collarbone like he does when he’s nervous. “Shall we what?”

  “Gambol, star-clad.”

  I can tell he’s thinking about it. Wondering exactly what type of gamboling I mean. Debating whether this is an acceptable breach of Focusing on Our Art. Asking himself if he can spare the vital forces necessary to give in to fleeting physical attraction and still have enough left over for his drum kit. He glances at the painting again, then down at my red bedspread, then back at me. His lip quivers. As if on cue, we both take another sip of wine.

  The smell of warming bread is growing stronger, mixed with the scent of lilac bushes wafting in through the open window. For one utterly still moment, we’re suspended, Lukas and I, like two tightrope walkers far above the ground.

  I reach out and touch his earlobe with my finger.

  Lukas jerks away like I’ve just burned him with a match.

  “Wait, Kiri. I need to tell you something.”

  The warm, swimmy feeling I was getting from the wine evaporates instantly. I feel the tightrope shaking, then snapping. Then I realize I was walking on it alone. My mind races over the past few minutes, scanning them for wrong turns. Did I go too far? I didn’t grab Lukas or tear off his pants or even kiss him. I just wanted to touch him, to remind him that the door was still open and I was still there, and see if maybe he was still there too. But Lukas looks so upset I suddenly feel like some kind of brutal she-rapist in my clingy blue dress.

  “Um. Can we sit down for a minute?” says Lukas, his cheeks reddening. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Now I’m going from wondering if Lukas thinks I’m an oversexed maniac to wondering if He’s Just Not That Into Me and has been too nice to tell me until now. When we sit on my bed, my heart breaks a little. This is how I had imagined us sitting. But if everything was going according to my imaginings, Lukas’s hands would be under my dress, not lying in his lap, and we’d be exploring each other, not having another sure-to-be-lengthy discussion about why we shouldn’t date.

  I can hear the music playing downstairs, bright and dreamy and so utterly inappropriate for the moment we’re having, I want to smash my iPod.
Lukas blurts out what he has to say in a single suffocating sentence:

  “Don’t-get-mad-I-hooked-up-with-Kelsey.”

  I look away before he can see the hurt and embarrassment that streak across my face like a pair of mice running out from under the stove. Kelsey Bartlett. Of course he’d choose her over me. I know I’m not that attractive, especially to someone like Lukas, who has a perfect body—I have a big mouth and too much hair and I don’t pluck my eyebrows often enough even though I come from a family of Eyebrow People and have what is basically a single unbroken line of fur across my forehead. In five seconds I’ve gone from feeling like a sleek, warm love-otter to a cold, untouchable frog.

  Ribbit.

  “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, Kiri. I didn’t know you still felt that way about me.”

  Lukas is peering at me like I’m a puzzle, some complex piece of machinery he didn’t realize was broken, but there it is, the missing spring, the snapped wire. I can’t stand it when people look at me that way. So I do what I know how to do. Smile and secure the perimeter.

  I take a long, ragged drink of my wine and reach for the bottle to pour myself some more. A million questions push at my brain.

  When did you start liking her?

  Did you kiss her first or did she kiss you?

  When you say you hooked up, exactly how much hooking do you mean?

  But I can’t ask. I can’t show him I care that much. Instead, I give him a casual shrug. “That’s okay, Lukas. It’s not like we were dating.”

  I think Lukas can tell it’s not okay just by watching my efforts to pour myself more wine. First it runs down the neck of the bottle instead of pouring out, then I swing the bottle down too close and break the glass. There’s a high-pitched chink. Wine leaking all over my dress.

  “Shit.”

  “I’ll get paper towels.”

  “Crap.”

  Lukas hops up, flees my bedroom, and all but vaults down the stairs.

  “Where are your paper towels?” he calls from the kitchen.