The Last Days p-2 Read online

  “Anyway,” Moz said. “What does that have to do with Pearl playing guitar?”

  “Can’t remember. All I know is that this sucks. I mean, what good is it being the third-best guitarist in a band? Or does Minerva play guitar too?”

  He laughed, jumping up beside me. “Listen, Zahler. You’re important to the band. You give us energy.”

  “What, like a puppy?”

  “Don’t you remember that first day? If you hadn’t been there, me and Pearl wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes.”

  “So what? You two are past all that stuff. You don’t need me anymore.” I looked at him, frowning. “So what’s this plan of Pearl’s?”

  “Well, she figures it’s not really New Sound, having more than one guitar.”

  “Oh.” My throat closed up, and my feet stopped swinging, freezing in midair.

  I was toast. Gone.

  “Pearl was going to tell you this, but I guess I have to now. Um, the thing is… we want you to play bass.”

  “What?”

  “We need a bassist. And with this band, anytime we add somebody, everything goes haywire.” He shook his head. “I mean, I don’t want to have to explain Alana Ray to someone new.” His voice dropped. “Or Min, for that matter.”

  One of my heels hit metal. A soft boom. “But Moz, I’ve spent the last six years playing guitar.”

  “Zahler, you’ve spent the last six years playing guitar like a bass.” He moved his fingers all spastically. “You never noticed that every part I’ve ever written for you is on the bottom four strings, with hardly any chords? You could switch over in about five minutes. I would’ve told you to change years ago, except you and me didn’t have a bass.”

  “But Moz,” I said, my world crumbling. “We still don’t have a bass.”

  “Yeah, we do. Pearl’s got one under her bed.”

  I yelled, pounding both heels against booming metal. “But doesn’t that mean she plays? Better than me, probably, seeing as how I never even touched one except one time in a music store?”

  “Don’t you worry about her.” He smiled and half-turned, held out his palm toward me. “Come on.”

  I stared at his hand. “Come on what?”

  “Put your hand up to mine.”

  I frowned, then did it. My fingers stuck out almost an inch longer than Moz’s. Big, fat, clumsy fingers.

  “Whoa,” he said. “That is fawesome. You should try this with Pearl sometime. She’s got really tiny hands.”

  “She does?” I remembered playing the bass that time in the store, slapping at strings thick as steel worms. The frets were miles apart.

  “Yeah. She can hardly get her left hand around the neck.”

  I looked down at my big, fat, fawesome fingers and laughed.

  “Can’t even hold a bass, huh? Some musical genius.”

  15. THE NEED

  — MOZ-

  It felt weird, waiting for one A.M. exactly.

  I’ve always hated clocks and schedules, but this felt different—more like the sensation I’d gotten just before the TV had shattered on the street in front of me. My magic powers were screaming that something was about to happen.

  As if I didn’t know that already.

  I sat there in the kitchen with no lights on, the window wide open and trying to suck in some late September coolness. My parents’ apartment is on the sixth floor, and all night long leftover heat filters up from the rest of the building, like we live in the top of a steam cooker. The ancient refrigerator was humming, rattling mightily as it tried to keep beer cold and milk from going sour. An occasional whoop of siren leaped up from the street, along with the staticky pops of police radios.

  The darkness was buzzing around me, my skin tingling, fingers drifting over my unplugged Stratocaster’s strings, pulling small noises from them. I imagined the notes amplified and her voice singing over the lines I played.

  The whole one o’clock thing didn’t make sense. Minerva had said something about not waking her parents up, but if they were the problem, why call in the middle of the night?

  I wondered if her mom and dad were some kind of religious freaks, the kind who didn’t let her talk to boys on the phone. Was that why she only went out on Sunday mornings? Did they think Pearl was taking her to church?

  Wouldn’t that be perfect? If rehearsal was our church, Minerva was the high priestess.

  I skidded one fingernail down my lowest string, making the sound of a tiny jet plane crashing to the ground. I was always edgy calling a girl the first time, even a normal girl with normal parents. Even one who’d never screamed holy sacraments while I played guitar.

  Minerva had handed me her number when no one else was looking, had whispered her instructions. She knew this was a bad idea, and I knew too—the sort of thing that broke up bands. The badness of it was all over me in the darkness, hovering an inch from my skin, like a cloud of mosquitoes getting ready to bite.

  And one A.M., which had seemed, like, forever away fifteen minutes ago, was almost here…

  I placed the Strat on the kitchen table, took the phone from the wall, and pulled out the number she’d given me. Her handwriting was sloppy, almost as bad as Zahler’s, the paper crumpled from ten days in my pocket, crammed against keys and coins and guitar picks.

  I dialed slowly, telling myself it didn’t really count until I pressed the last digit. After all, I’d gone this far a few other nights, only to choke.

  But this time, five seconds before the hour, I finished the spell.

  She picked up before it even rang.

  “Ooh, no dial tone,” she said softly, which didn’t make any sense at first.

  “Minerva?”

  “You finally did it, Mozzy,” she whispered.

  I licked my lips, which felt as dry and rough as burnt toast. “Yeah, I did.”

  “I’ve been sitting here waiting, ten nights in a row.”

  “Oh. Sorry it took so long.” I found myself whispering back at her, even though my parents’ room was at the other end of the apartment.

  “I’ve been really good every night, picking up exactly at one.” She sighed. “And every time… buzzzz.”

  “Oh, a dial tone.” I cleared my throat, not sure what to say.

  “A dial tone instead of you,” she said, her voice slipping out of its whisper. Minerva talked like she sang, low and growly, a tone that penetrated the rumble of the fridge and the whir of cars down on the street.

  I reached over to the Strat and plucked an open string. “Doesn’t your phone have a ringer?”

  “Yes, it has a ringer.” I heard a distant clank on her end, like she’d kicked something. “But it rings in my parents’ room and downstairs too. Only Pearl and Luz are supposed to know this number.”

  “That sucks.” I wondered who Luz was. Another friend?

  “And the worst thing is, Luz took all my numbers away.”

  “Took your numbers? You mean she stole your address book?”

  Minerva giggled. “No, silly Moz. The little buttons with numbers. There’s no way for me to dial out.”

  “Crap. Really?” What was the deal with her parents? Or Luz, whoever she was?

  “Smelly phone.” Another soft clank. “So I’ve been sitting here waiting every night, hoping you would call. Wanting you to, but all nervous in case a little ring squirted out. Picking up exactly at one, and all I get is buzzzz… like some horrible bee.”

  “Sorry about that.” I shifted my weight on the kitchen chair, remembering staring at my own phone at one o’clock, wishing I’d had the guts to call. “Well, I’m talking to you now.”

  “Mmm. It’s yummy too. We finally get to talk with no one else around.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool.” My throat was dry, and the badness was clinging to my skin now, like an itch all over me. It reminded me of hiding in the closet when I was little, excited but scared that someone would open the door. “So, can I ask you something, Min?”

  “Sure. You get to ask me anyth
ing, now that no one’s listening.”

  “Um, yeah.” The fridge turned itself off, leaving me in sudden silence. My voice dropped as I asked, “So, when you and Pearl leave early? You’re not really going to Spanish lessons, are you?”

  She giggled softly. “No. We have to get back before Luz knows I’m gone.”

  “Oh. Luz again.” I noticed that my right hand was all twisted up in the phone cord, my fingers strangled white and bloodless. I started to unwind it. “But that’s, like, a Spanish name, right?”

  “It means light. ‘Let there be Luz.’”

  “So she’s your Spanish teacher.” Or whatever.

  “Sí. Y un problema grande.”

  Even I could figure out that bit of Spanish. Luz was a big problem. But what was she? A nanny? Some sort of religious homeschooling tutor? A shrink?

  “What are you thinking?”

  I shifted around on my chair, skin itching again. “I’m wondering about you.”

  “Mmm,” she purred. “If I’m crazy? If I’m bad?”

  I swallowed. “No. But I don’t really know you, outside of practice.”

  “I think you do know me, Mozzy. That’s why I wanted you to call. Because you know things.”

  “Um, I do?”

  “Sure. Just close your eyes.”

  I did, and she started humming, the sound barely carrying over the wires. I imagined her singing in the practice room, drawing me into her slipstream as we played. Fragments of her songs echoed in my head. It felt like I was being pulled somewhere.

  She stopped humming, but her breathing still reached my ears.

  “Where do you get those words, Min? For our songs?”

  She laughed softly. “From underneath.”

  “Like, from underneath your conscious mind or something?”

  “No, silly,” she whispered. “Underneath my house.”

  “Uh, really?” With my eyes closed, she seemed so close, like she was whispering in my ear. “You write in your basement?”

  “I did at first, back when they let me go down there. I had fevers and could feel something under the house. Something rumbling.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I know what you mean. I can feel something kind of… underneath us when you sing.”

  “Something in the ground.” She was breathing harder now. “You do know things.”

  “Sometimes I feel like my music’s just buzzing around in the air. But you pull it down, tie it to something that’s real.”

  “Mmm. It’s realer than you think.” She breathed slowly for a while, and I just listened until she said, “Do you want more, Moz?”

  I swallowed. “How do you mean?”

  “Do… you… want… more? I can give you the rest of it. You’re only tasting a little tiny fraction.”

  I opened my eyes. The darkness in the kitchen was suddenly sharp. “A fraction of what?”

  “Of what I have. Come over, and I’ll show you.”

  The table seemed to tremble: my heart beating in my fingertips. “Come over… now?”

  “Yes, Mozzy. Come rescue me and Zombie.”

  “Um… Zombie?”

  “He’s my undead slave.”

  I swallowed. “Yeah?”

  She let out a giggle, just above a whisper. “And his breath smells like cat food.”

  “Oh.” I let out a slow breath. “Zombie has whiskers too, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, and he also knows things. But… Moz?”

  “What?”

  “I’m hungry.”

  I laughed. She was so skinny, I never thought of Minerva getting hungry. She ate a lot of beef jerky at rehearsal, but I figured that was for her voice or something.

  “You want to go and get something? I’ll wait.” I wanted to sit there in silence for a minute or two, just to recover. Just to scratch myself all over.

  “Can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “See, here’s the thing. The door of my room has this smelly lock. On the outside.”

  “Really?” I blinked. “Like, your parents keep you locked in at night?”

  “Daytime too. Because I was sick before.”

  I closed my eyes again. A new layer of hovering badness sprang up all around me, filling the room with a buzzing sound.

  “That’s why you have to come rescue me,” she said. “Come let me out and I’ll show you everything.”

  I bit my lip. “But you live in… Brooklyn, right?”

  She groaned. “Don’t be lame. Just take the F train. Half an hour.”

  Just half an hour. Plus however long it took the train to come, maybe an hour total. Not forever; I wasn’t afraid of the subways yet.

  And if I didn’t go see her, how long would it take to fall asleep in my room all alone? A thousand hours, at least.

  Every time I’d watched her sing, her songs moving through my hands as I played, I’d gone to bed that night with her cries still echoing in my brain. Every time, I’d imagined a thousand ways of following her back to Brooklyn, and now she was inviting me.

  If I said no, this itch would never leave my skin.

  “Everyone’s asleep here,” she was saying. “And I can show you where my music comes from.”

  “Okay, Min. I’ll come.” I stood up, like I was heading out the door right then, but my head started to spin. I sat back down. “But how are you going to get out?”

  “You’re going to rescue me. It’s easy. Pearl does it all the time.”

  “Um, am I supposed to climb up to your window or something?”

  “No, silly. Just walk up the stairs.” She giggled. “But first, you have to find the magic key…”

  16. LOVE BITES

  — MINERVA-

  Mozzy was taking forever.

  I was dressed up so pretty, it was killing me just sitting here at my desk, staring at myself in the mirror. Zombie was pacing, knowing from the tinkle of my earrings that we were going out.

  “Not long now,” I said softly. My stomach rumbled.

  The thought of Moz coming over had changed the balance inside me—the hungry thing had woken up, stirred from the sleep Luz had forced upon it. I’d already chewed through all my emergency beef jerky, trying not to think of the way he smelled. So yummy and intense.

  I took a bite of pork rind, letting its unctuous texture coat my mouth. Zombie wandered over and mur-rowed, so I gave him my fingers to lick.

  “You can go play with your little friends soon.”

  I looked at the clock: after two. Smelly Moz. What if he’d chickened out? I wanted to get closer to the earth. Singing felt wonderful, but I needed to feel the dirt under my fingernails, to smell and taste the things down there.

  I needed to learn more, to put flesh on the words in my notebooks.

  My stomach rumbled again, and I felt funny in a way I hadn’t for a while. Like before Luz came along—kind of… inhuman. That wasn’t good.

  Mustn’t eat Mozzy, I thought, and peeled a clove of garlic. It was fresh, the way Luz said was best, the papery skin still flecked with purple. The clove split between my teeth, sharp and hot as fresh chicken blood. My next breath sucked the flavor into my lungs, and my nerves steadied.

  “That’ll teach you,” I whispered to the hungry thing inside me, then took a swig from the little bottle of tequila Pearl had smuggled in, swishing it around my mouth. Didn’t want to taste funny for Moz.

  In the clarity of my garlic buzz, I took off my dark glasses and stared into the mirror, wondering in which direction I was headed tonight.

  Some things, like Luz’s teas and tinctures, made me better, more boring and sensible. Others, like singing with Pearl’s band, brought out the magnificent beast inside me and summoned the big things underground. It was the same old balancing act—how far to go with boys, with booze, with dangerous places—but magnified until the whole earth shook.

  I wasn’t sure yet which way Moz was going to take me. I knew that both halves of me wanted badly to take him under the ground, but I wa
s pretty certain they had different ideas about what to do with him down there.

  I gnashed another clove of garlic, swilled another shot of tequila, just in case.

  The stairs creaked… Moz.

  I stood up, crossed to the door, and pressed my ear against it. He was down at the very bottom, making his slow way up. My thirsty hearing swept through the house: Max’s heart beating in the room next door, Daddy snoring low and even, no pages turning from my mother reading late in bed. Silence, except for the slow, cautious feet creeping up the stairs, the occasional crinkle of the house cooling down.

  Zombie did figure eights around my feet.

  “No purring,” I hissed. “Mommy’s listening.”

  I slid my cheek along the door, put my nose up to the crack. Sniffed.

  Moz was still too far downstairs to smell. I counted my own heartbeats to a thousand, spread my palms out on the door, pressed my anxious weight against it, groaning. Even shiny Pearl didn’t climb the stairs this slowly.

  Finally he reached the top floor and I caught his scent, nervous and unsure.

  And hungry. I smiled.

  He turned the hasp free, the faint vibrations traveling through wood and into my thirsty skin. The metal bolt slid across.

  I took a step back, dizzy. Being rescued was much better when it was Mozzy doing it.

  The door opened the tiniest crack.

  “Min?” On a little puff of air, smelling of yummy Moz breath.

  I didn’t answer, just stood there behind the door, Zombie warm against my ankle. Everything was tingling.

  The door pushed open another nervous inch. “Minerva?”

  “Mozzzz,” I buzzed.

  “Jesus.” His face peeked through, shiny in the candlelight, expressions squirming across it.

  I put my hand out to stroke his cheek. Brought it back and licked my fingers. Nervous-tasting, but Mozzy.

  He pushed through into my room, leaned back to softly shut the door. Closed his eyes. “Jesus, Min. Those are some creaky-ass stairs.”