Wild Awake by Hilary T. Smith Read Free Book Online

strong-looking arms gripping his crutch handles and a sagging belly.
    I’m still sitting on my bicycle. I warily dismount and lift it onto the sidewalk, already preparing my defense: No, I don’t have any spare change, I don’t want to answer a personal question, no, no thank you, no .
    He catches up with me and I manage to sneak a quick glance at his face before looking back at the road, which I am pretending to scan for a friend’s car. He has grizzled cheeks, lips so stained from smoking they’re almost gray, and eyes too big for his head, like golf balls stuffed into sockets intended for marbles. When he speaks, his breath is sour with beer.
    “You the kid came down here on the bike Tuesday night?”
    I blink at him uncomprehendingly. He wobbles closer, his eyes flitting over my face, my clothing, and lingering on my earrings.
    “I’ll be damned,” he mutters. “You are Sukey’s sister, aren’t you?”
    When he says her name, my nerves light up. Those two syllables coming from a stranger’s mouth, coming from this stranger’s mouth, disorient me completely.
    “Doug Fieldgrass,” he says, extending a petrified claw. My ears ringing, I reach out and shake it.
    “Kiri Byrd.”

chapter eight
    I don’t like the way Doug smells, or the tattoo on his left arm identifying him as a member in good standing of the Hells Angels. I don’t like the tallboy of Coors Light sticking out of his pocket, or the fact that he’s as tipsy as a turtle at eleven a.m. I don’t like the way he stands too close to me, breathing into my face like a boy at an eighth-grade dance. I don’t like the reproachful tone of his voice, as if I’ve done something shameful and I don’t even know what it is.
    This is not the Doug I came here to find.
    The Doug I came here to find is an artist who’s been running razzle!dazzle!space for years, who knew Sukey back in the day, who will lead me through the white door to the echoey gallery and hand me a stack of canvases wrapped in brown paper that he just happened to find in the storeroom the week before.
    This Doug lets a loud fart rip and says, “It’s about goddamn time.”
    We shuffle down the street together, Doug with his crutches and me with my bike. I feel agonizingly conspicuous, like the sole, towering twelve-year-old at a day camp overrun by seven-year-olds. I can feel people looking at me, wondering what I’m doing here, what I’m doing with him. He has some kind of rash on his neck, the mottled purple-blue of uncooked sausage. As we walk, he talks nonstop.
    “They’re closing down the building, and I can’t hold on to her stuff no more. We’ve all gotta move out by the middle of July. I say it’s horseshit.”
    He cracks his Coors Light and takes a swig. I smell the warm, watery beer and struggle to keep my voice conversational.
    “Are you from razzle!dazzle!space?”
    “Razzle what ?”
    I try again: “How did you know Sukey?”
    Doug swallows his beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “We were neighbors, eh. She was down the hall from me.”
    The knot in my chest unclenches. Sukey’s art studio. It all makes sense. But why would he wait five years to call? And why does he have stuff that belonged to her, anyway? Didn’t Mom and Dad clear out her studio themselves?
    Questions flit around the corners of my mind, but I bat them away. Stop being such a Lukas , I tell myself.
    “Are you an artist too?” I babble, eager to make the pieces fit together.
    “Whassat?”
    “Sukey said there were lots of other artists in the building.”
    “She did, eh?” Doug chuckles, a rusty sound like a pair of scissors left out in the rain. “Good old Sukey. What a kid.”
    Doug jerks his chin at the brick building to our right. “This is the one. I saw you down there with your bike the other night, eh, but you ran off before I could come down and meet ya.”
    We’re back at the intersection of Columbia and East Pender, across from MONEY FOOD ENTERPRISES,