The Last Days

Ever hear this charming little rhyme?

Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100 million people. Here’s the theory: “Ring-around-the-rosy” was an early symptom of plague: a circular rash of red skin. In medieval times, people carried flowers, like posies, with them for protection against disease. The words “ashes to ashes” appear in the funeral mass, and sometimes plague victims’ houses were burned.

And “we all fall down”?

Well, you can figure that one out for yourself.

Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense. A red rash isn’t really a plague symptom, they say, and “ashes” was originally some other word. Most important, the rhyme is too new. It didn’t appear in print until 1881.

Trust me, though: it’s about the plague. The words have changed a little from the original, but so have any words carried on the lips of children for seven hundred years. It’s a little reminder that the Black Death will come again.

How can I be so sure about this rhyme, when all the experts disagree?

Because I ate the kid who made it up.

NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:

102–130

1. THE FALL — MOZ-

I think New York was leaking.

It was past midnight and still a hundred degrees. Some kind of city sweat was oozing up through the sidewalk cracks, shimmering with oily rainbows in the streetlights. The garbage piled up outside the restaurants on Indian Row was seeping, leftover curry turning into slurry. The glistening plastic bags would smell jaw-droppingly foul the next morning, but as I walked past that night, they still gave off the perfumes of saffron and freshly thrown-out rice.

The people were sweating too—shiny-faced and frizzy-haired, like everyone had just stepped out of a shower. Eyes were glassy, and cell phones dangled limply on wrist straps, softly glowing, spitting occasional fragments of bubblegum songs.

I was on my way home from practicing with Zahler. It was way too hot to write anything new, so we’d riffed, plowing through the same four chords a thousand times. After an hour the riff had faded from my ears, like it does when you say the same word over and over till it turns meaningless. Finally, all I could hear was the squeak of Zahler’s sweaty fingers on his strings and his amp hissing like a steam-pipe, another music squeezing up through ours.

We pretended we were a band warming up onstage, slowly revving the crowd into a frenzy before the lead singer jumps into the spotlights: the World’s Longest Intro. But we didn’t have a lead singer, so the riff just petered out into rivulets of sweat.

I sometimes feel it right before something big happens—when I’m about to break a guitar string, or get caught sneaking in, or when my parents are this close to having a monster fight.

So just before the TV fell, I looked up.

The woman was twenty-something, with fire-engine red hair and raccoon eyes, black makeup streaming down her cheeks. She pushed a television through her third-floor window, an old boxy one, its power cord flailing as it tumbled toward the sidewalk. The TV clipped a fire escape, the deep ringing sound swallowed seconds later by the crash on the pavement twenty feet ahead of me.

A spray of shattered glass skittered around my feet, glittering and sharp, tinkling like colliding chandeliers as shards rolled and skidded to a halt. Fragments of street-light and sky reflected up from them, as if the television had split into a thousand tiny screens, all still working. My own eye stared back at me from a Manhattan-shaped sliver. Wide and awestruck, it blinked.

The next thing I did was look straight up. You know, in case everyone was throwing out TVs that night, and I should roll under a parked car. But it was just her—she was letting out long, wordless screams now and throwing out more stuff:

Pillows with tasseled edges. Dolls and desk lamps. Books fluttering like crash-landing birds. A jar full of pens and pencils. Two cheap wooden chairs, smashed first against the window frame so they’d fit through. A computer keyboard that sent up a splash of keys and tiny springs. Silverware glittering as it tumbled, ringing on the pavement like a triangle when dinner’s ready… a whole apartment squeezed out one window. Somebody’s life laid bare.

And all the while she was shrieking like a beast above us.

I looked around at the gathering crowd, most of them getting out late from Indian Row, addled by curry. The rapt expressions on their upturned faces made me jealous. The whole time Zahler and I had jammed, I’d been imagining an audience like this one: flabbergasted and electrified, yanked out of the everyday by their ears and eyeballs. And now this crazy woman, with her rock-star hair and makeup, had them mesmerized. Why bother with riffs and solos and lyrics when all the crowd wanted was an avalanche of screams and smashed Ikea furniture?

But once the shock wore off, their rapture faded into something uglier. Soon enough, people were laughing and pointing, a gang of boys shouting, “Jump, jump, jump!” in rhythm. A camera flash popped, catching a satanic flicker in the woman’s eyes. A couple of faces glowed with blue cell-phone light—calling the police, or nearby friends to come and join in? I wondered.

One of the spectators slipped into the impact zone, running half-crouched to snatch a black dress from under a rain of computer cables and extension cords. She backed away, holding it up to her body as if she’d pulled it off a rack. Another ducked in to snag an armload of magazines.

“Hey!” I yelled. I was about to point out that this wasn’t exactly Dumpster diving—the woman might want her stuff back after this psychotic meltdown was over—but then the CDs started flying. Glittering projectiles spattered on the street like plastic hail, each one impelled from the window by a shriek.

The looters retreated—the woman was aiming now, and the CDs were deadly. I mean, compact discs don’t hurt much, but these were still in their cases, giving them extra weight and corners.

Then I saw it: the neck of an electric guitar emerging from the window, then the whole instrument—a mid-seventies Fender Stratocaster with gold pickups and whammy bar, a creamy yellow body with a white pick-guard.

I took a step forward, holding one hand up. “Wait!”

The madwoman glared down at me, mascara smeared across her face like black blood, clutching the Stratocaster to her chest. Her hands found the strings, as if she was about to play, and then she let out one last terrible howl.

“No!” I shouted.

She let the guitar drop.

It spun in the air, delicate tuning hardware glittering in the streetlights. I was already running, tripping on smashed plastic and tangled clothes, thinking that there were four hundred bones in my two hands, wondering how many of them that lacquered hardwood would break after a thirty-foot fall.

But I couldn’t just let it smash…

Then the miracle: the guitar snapped to a halt in midair. Its strap was caught on a corner of the fire escape, where it hung, spinning perilously.

I skidded to a halt, looking straight up.

“Over here!” someone shouted.

I glanced down for a split second: a girl my age, with short black hair and red-framed glasses, yanking something big and flat from under the clutter, sending silverware scattering in all directions.

“Watch out,” I said, pointing up toward where the Strat was untangling itself. “It’s about to fall.”

“I know! Take the other side!”

I glanced back down at her, frowning. The girl was holding two corners of a blanket she’d rescued from the pile. She unfurled its plaid expanse toward me with a flick, as if we were making a bed. I grabbed for the other corners, finally understanding.

We stepped back from each other, pulling the blanket taut, looking up again. Above us, the guitar spun faster and faster, like a kid unwinding on a swing set.

“Be careful,” I said. “That’s a nineteen seventy-three… Um, what I mean is, it’s really valuable.”

“With gold pickups?” she snorted. “Nineteen seventy-five, maybe.”

I looked down at her.

“Incoming!” she yelled.

The guitar slipped free, still spinning, hardware glittering, strap flailing. It landed heavy as a dead body between us, almost jerking the blanket from my fists. Its momentum pulled us both forward a few skidding steps, suddenly face to face.

But there was no awful thud; the Stratocaster hadn’t struck pavement.

“We saved it!” Her brown eyes were glowing.

I looked down at the guitar, safely swaddled in plaid. “Whoa. We did.”

Then the fire escape rang out again. Both of us flinched as we looked up. But it wasn’t more stuff falling—it was a pair of human figures, six stories above, descending toward the crazy woman’s window. They weren’t climbing down the metal stairs, though—they were practically flying, swinging from handhold to handhold, graceful as headlight shadows slipping across a ceiling.

I watched them, awestruck, until the girl next to me shouted two terrifying words:

“Toaster oven!”

It was tumbling out the window directly over our heads, glass door hanging open, scattering crumbs…

We bundled the Stratocaster into its blanket and ran.

2. TAJ MAHAL — PEARL-

“You know what the weird thing was?”

The cute guy frowned, still wide-eyed and panting. “The weird thing? I can’t think of anything that wasn’t weird about that.”

I smiled, holding out both palms, weighing the weirdness. It was all relative, these days. You had to take your normal where you found it. People went crazy all the time; it was how they went crazy that mattered.

We’d taken the Strat and run around the corner—around a couple of corners, actually—until I’d led the guy to my street without saying so. My building was right across from us, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him knowing where I lived—even if he was the sort of boy to consider catching a Fender Stratocaster with his bare hands. And I certainly didn’t want my mom coming home late and finding me out on the front steps huddled with some random cute guy and a secondhand plaid bedspread. She might get the wrong idea. In fact, she would make a point of getting the wrong idea.

The stoop we sat on was darkened by scaffolding, protected from the streetlights, invisible. The Strat lay between us, still wrapped in its bedspread, partly to protect it and partly because the guy looked guilty, like he thought someone was going to chase us down and make us give it back.

Like who? Not that crazy woman: she was gone by now. I’d seen angels coming to collect her. That’s what happens when you lose it these days: real-life angels, just like Luz had told me about, though I hadn’t quite believed her until tonight.

But I didn’t want to sound crazy myself, so I said, “Here’s what was weird. That was girl’s stuff she was tossing. The clothes coming out the window: dresses and skirts. Her stuff.”

He frowned again. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Because there’s no story that way.” I paused and pushed my glasses up my nose, which makes people focus on my eyes, which are dark brown and, frankly, fabulous. “I could understand if she was throwing all her boyfriend’s crap out the window, because he cheated on her or something. That’s more or less nonweird: people do that on TV. But you wouldn’t throw your own stuff out like that, would you?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” He thought about it for a few seconds, frowning at someone laughing as she walked past, hands full of CDs in spiderweb-cracked cases. I thought he was about to tell me we should give back the guitar, but instead he said, “Girls have girlfriends too, you know. And roommates who don’t pay the rent.”

“Hmm,” I said. I’d sort of thought the guy was thick, because he’d taken forever to understand my brilliant guitar-saving plan (the way firefighters used to save jumpers). But this answer demonstrated lateral thinking.

Cute and lateral. And he knew a Strat when he saw one.

“Maybe a girlfriend,” I admitted. “But your roommate’s stuff?” I’d never really had a roommate except my mom, which doesn’t count. “Wouldn’t you sell their crap on eBay?”

He laughed, dark eyes sparkling in the shadows. Then he got all serious again. “Probably. But you’re right: I think it was hers. She was throwing her whole life away.”

“But why?” I asked softly.

“I don’t know, but right before she threw the Strat out she was holding it the right way. The way you really hold a guitar.” He put his hands in air-guitar position, his left fingers playing delicate scales along an imaginary neck.

“Not like some model in a video,” I murmured. “That drives me crazy.”

“Yeah.” He paused, then shrugged. “So it was her guitar. And she looked sad up there, not angry. Like someone losing everything she had.”

Whoa. This guy was totally lateral, like he knew something he wasn’t saying. “Wait. You’re just guessing, right?”

“Yeah.” He opened his hands and looked down at his palms. “Just looked that way to me.”

“Well, then…” I put my hand on the plaid bundle between us. “If she wanted to throw it out, it’s not like we stole it.”

He stared at me.

“What?” I said. “You want to take it back and toss it on the pile?”

He shook his head. “No. Someone else would take it. And they’d carry it around unprotected, pretend they were playing it.” He shuddered.

“Exactly!” I smiled. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Moz.”

I must have made an uncomprehending expression.

“Short for ‘Mosquito,’” the guy said.

“Oh, of course.” He was kind of small, like I am. Have you ever noticed that small people are cuter? Like dolls. “My name’s Pearl. Not short for anything, despite its shortness.”

Moz pulled his serious face. “So, Pearl, don’t you think she might want her guitar back after she…” His voice drifted off.

“Comes back from wherever they lock her up?”

He nodded, and I wondered if he knew I didn’t mean the generic “they” who lock crazy people up, but the two angels we’d seen on the fire escape. Did he understand what was happening to the world? Most people seemed to know even less than I did—all they saw were the garbage piling up and the extra rats, didn’t even notice the rumbling underfoot. But this guy talked like he could sense things, at least.

“We could find out who she is,” he said. “Maybe ask someone in her building.”

“And hang on to it for her?”

“Yeah. I mean, if it was just some crappy guitar it wouldn’t matter, but this…” His eyes got sparkly again, like the thought of a homeless Strat was going to make him cry.

And right then I had my brain-flash: the realization that had been screaming for my attention since I’d seen Moz running to catch the Stratocaster bare-handed. Maybe this was the guy I needed, a guy with raw heart, ready to throw himself under a falling Fender because it was vintage and irreplaceable.

Maybe Moz was what I’d been waiting for since Nervous System had exploded.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll keep it for her. But at my place.” I put my arm around the bundle.

“Your place?”

“Sure. After all, why should I trust you? You might go and pawn it. Three or four thousand dollars for you, when it was my idea to use the bedspread.”

“But I’m the one who wants to give it back,” he sputtered cutely. “A second ago you were all, ‘It’s not stealing.’”

“Maybe that’s what you want me to think.” I pushed my glasses up my nose. “Maybe that was just a cover for your devious plans.” It hurt to see his wounded expression, because I was being totally unfair. Moz might have been lateral, but I could already tell that he was nine kinds of nondevious.

“But… you were just…” He made a strangled noise.

I hugged the Strat closer. “Of course, you could come over and play it anytime. We could play together. Are you in a band?”

“Yeah.” His wary eyes didn’t leave the bedspread. “Half a band anyway.”

“Half a band?” I smiled, knowing now that my brain-flash had been right on target. “A band in need of completion? Maybe this is fate.”

He shook his head. “We’ve already got two guitarists.”

“What else?”

“Um, just two guitarists.”

I laughed. “Listen, a drummer and a bass player is half a band. Two guitarists is just a…” He frowned, so I didn’t finish. “Anyway, I play keyboards.”

“You do?” He shook his head. “So how do you know so much about guitars? I mean, you called the year on that Strat when it was still in the air!”

“Lucky guess.” And, of course, I do play guitar. And keyboards too, and flute and xylophone and a wicked-mean harmonica—there’s practically nothing I don’t play. But I figured out a while back not to say that out loud; everyone thinks we nonspecialists are amateurs. (Tell that to the nonspecialist currently known as Prince.) I also never show off my perfect pitch or mention the name of my high school.

His dark and gorgeous eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you don’t play guitar?”

I laughed. “I never said that. But trust me, I absolutely play keyboards. How’s tomorrow?”

“But, um, how do you even know we’d…” He took a breath. “I mean, like, what are your—?”

“Uh!” I interrupted. “Not that word!” If he asked me what my influences were, the whole thing was off.

He shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

I sighed through clenched teeth. How was I supposed to explain that I was in too much of a hurry to give a damn? That there were more important things to worry about? That the world didn’t have time for labels anymore?

“Look, let’s say you hated graves, okay?”

“Hated graves?”

“Yeah, detested tombs. Loathed sepulchers. Abhorred anyplace anyone was buried. Understand?”

“Why would I do that?”

I let out a groan. Mozzy was being very nonlateral all of a sudden. “Hypothetically hated graves.”

“Um, okay. I hate graves.” He put on a grave-hating face.

“Excellent. Perfect. But you’d still go to the Taj Mahal, wouldn’t you?” I spread my hands in explanatory triumph.

“Um, I’d go where?”

“The Taj Mahal! The most beautiful building in the world! You know all those Indian restaurants around the corner, the murals on the walls?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, I know the one you mean: lots of arches, a pond out front, with kind of an onion on top?”

“Exactly. And gorgeous.”

“I guess. And somebody’s buried there?”

“Yeah, Moz, some old queen. It’s a total tomb. But you don’t suddenly think it’s ugly, just because of its category, do you?”

His expression changed from tomb-hating to lateral-thinking. “So, in other words…” Brief pause. “You don’t mind if you’re in a band that plays alternative death-metal< cypherfunk, as long as it’s the Taj Mahal of alternative death-metal cypherfunk. Right?”

“Exactly!” I cried. “You guys can worry about the category. All the death metal you want. Just be good at it.” I picked up the Stratocaster, wrapped it tighter. “How’s tomorrow? Two o’clock.”

He shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Let’s give it a shot. Maybe keyboards are what we need.”

Or maybe I am, I thought, but out loud I just told him my buzzer number, pointing across the street. “Oh, and two more questions, Moz.”

“Sure?”

“One: do you guys really play death-metal cypherfunk?”

He smiled. “Don’t worry. That was hypothetical death-metal cypherfunk.”

“Phew,” I said, trying not to notice how that little smile had made him even cuter. Now that we were going to jam together, it didn’t pay to notice things like that. “Question two: does your half a band have a name?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“No problem,” I said. “That’ll be the easy part.”

3. POISONBLACK — MOZ-

The next day, Zahler and I saw our first black water.

We’d just met outside my building, on our way to Pearl’s. A gang of kids across the street was gathered around a fire hydrant, prying at it with a two-foot wrench, hoping to get some relief from the early afternoon heat. Zahler stopped to watch, like he always did when kids were doing anything more or less illegal.

“Check it out!” He grinned, pointing at a convertible coming down the street. If the hydrant erupted in the next ten seconds, the unwitting driver was going to get soaked.

“Watch your guitar,” I said. We were twenty feet away, but you never knew how much pressure was lurking in a hydrant on a hot summer day.

“It’s protected, Moz,” he said, but he stood the instrument case upright behind himself. I felt empty-handed, headed to a jam session with nothing but a few guitar picks in my pocket. My fingers were itching to play their first notes on the Strat.

We were sort of late, but the car was a BMW, its driver in a suit and tie and talking on his cell phone. Back when Zahler and I had been little, soaking a guy like that would have been worth about ten thousand fire-hydrant points. We could spare ten seconds.

But the kids were still fiddling as the convertible passed.

“Incompetent little twerps.” Zahler sighed. “Should we give them a hand?”

“It’s already after two.” I turned and headed up the street.

But as I walked I heard the cries behind us change from squeals of excitement to shrieks of fear.

We spun around. The hydrant was spraying black water in all directions, covering the kids with a sticky, shimmering coat. A thick, dark mist rose into the air, breaking the sunlight into a gleaming spectrum, like a rainbow on an oil slick. The screaming kids were stumbling back, bare skin glistening with the stuff. A couple of the little ones just stood in the torrent, crying.

“What the hell?” Zahler whispered.

I took a step forward, but the smell—earthy and fetid and rotten—forced me to a halt. The dark cloud was still rising up between the buildings, roiling like smoke overhead, and the wind was shifting toward us. Tiny black dots began to spatter the street, closer and closer, like a sudden summer rain starting up. Zahler and I backed away, staring down at the pavement. The drops were as luminous as tiny black pearls.

The hydrant seemed to cough once, the gush of black water sputtering, and then the water turned clear. Above us, the cloud was already dissolving, turning into nothing more than a shadowy haze across the sky.

I knelt on the sidewalk, peering down at one of the black drops. It glimmered unsteadily for a moment, reflecting sunlight as the shadow from the cloud overhead faded. And then it boiled away before my eyes.

“What the hell was that, Moz?”

“I don’t know. Maybe somebody’s heating oil leaked into the pipes?” I shook my head.

The kids were staring at the hydrant warily, half afraid the water would turn black again, but also eager to wash themselves. A few stepped forward, and the oily stuff seemed to slide from their skin, dark stains disappearing from their soaked shorts and T-shirts.

A minute later they were all playing in the spray, like nothing weird had happened.

“Didn’t look like any oil I’ve ever seen,” Zahler said.

“Yeah. Probably just old water in the hydrant,” I said, not wanting to think about it. It had disappeared so quickly, I could almost imagine it hadn’t happened at all. “Or something like that. Come on, we’re late.”

Pearl’s room looked like a recording studio had mated with a junkyard, then exploded.

The walls were lined with egg cartons, the big twelve-by-twelve ones that you see stacked outside restaurants. Sinuous hills rose between the egg-shaped valleys, curving like the sound waves they gobbled.

“Whoa, you’ve got a ton of gear!” Zahler exclaimed. His voice was echoless, rebounding from the walls with less bounce than a dead cat.

I’d always told Zahler that we could soundproof his room this way so that his parents would stop yelling at us to turn it down. But we’d never had enough motivation to make it happen. Or enough egg cartons.

The floor was covered with spare cables, effects boxes, all the usual fire hazards—we stepped lightly over the spaghetti-junctions of power strips, dozens of adapters squeezed into them, all labeled to show what was plugged in where. Two racks of electronics towered at one end of the room, the cables gathered with twist-ties. The modules were organized neatly into tribes: black and buttonless digital units; flickering arpeggiators; a few dinosaur synths with analog dials and needles, like old science-fiction movie props ready for takeoff.

Zahler was looking around nervously, probably wondering if his cheap little electric was going to get squashed under all that gear. I was wondering why Pearl, if she owned all this keyboard stuff, had risked falling toaster ovens just to save a vintage guitar.

“Where do you sleep?” Zahler asked. The bed was covered with scattered CDs, more cables, and a few harmonicas and hand drums.

“The guest room, mostly,” Pearl said proudly. “I suffer for my art.”

Zahler laughed but rolled me a look. Pearl wasn’t exactly suffering. She hadn’t showed us all of her mom’s apartment, but what we’d seen was already bigger than his parents’ and mine put together, the walls crowded with paintings and glass cases full of stuff from all over the world. Stairs led to more floors above, and we’d passed a pair of armed security guards down in the lobby. Pearl had probably seen the Taj Mahal in person.

So why had she contemplated helping herself to the Strat, when she could obviously afford to buy one of her own?

Maybe she was used to everything falling from the sky. She’d looked pretty annoyed when we weren’t on time, like this was a job interview or something.

I sifted through the CDs on the bed, trying to peg her influences. What was Pearl really into, besides old Indian tombs, punctuality, and soundproofing? The discs left me clueless. They were hand-labeled with the names of bands I’d never heard of: Zombie Phoenix, Morgan’s Army, Nervous System…

“Nervous System?” I asked.

Pearl groaned. “That’s this band I was in. Bunch of Juilliard geeks and, um, me.”

I glanced at Zahler: great. Not only did Pearl have lots of real gear, she also knew some real musicians, which meant she might not be too impressed with us. We weren’t exactly into virtuosity—we hadn’t taken any lessons since sixth grade. This jam session was going to be a bust.

“Did you guys play any gigs?” Zahler asked.

She shrugged. “We did, at their high school, mostly. But the System had no heart. Or it did, I guess, but then the heart exploded. You guys want to plug in?”

The Stratocaster soothed my nerves.

It swung from my shoulder, featherlight, lacquered back side cool against my thigh. The strings were six strands of spiderweb, with the easiest action my fingers had ever felt. I strummed a quick, unplugged E-major chord and was amazed to hear that even a three-story fall hadn’t knocked the Strat out of tune.

Pearl pushed in the power button on a Marshall amp, a hulking old beast with tubes inside. (Why did a key-boardist have a guitar amp handy? Had it also fallen from the sky?) The tubes warmed up slowly, the hiss fading in like a wave breaking.

“You guys have to share this amp,” Pearl apologized. “Nonoptimal, I know.”

Zahler shrugged. “That’s fool.”

She raised an eyebrow. Zahler says fool instead of cool, which is kind of confusing. But at least he didn’t mention that I’d never owned an amp, so we shared one over at his place too.

Pearl tossed us cords, and I plugged in—a sizzle-snap of connection, then the familiar hum of six open strings. I dampened five of them and plucked a low E. Zahler tuned up to it, booming through his strings one by one, setting off a little plastic chorus of CD cases shivering against one another on the bed.

The Marshall was set to 7, a volume we never dared in Zahler’s room, and I hoped Pearl’s egg cartons worked. Otherwise, her neighbors were going to feel us in their bones. But I was ready to risk someone calling the police. The Strat was squeaking impatiently as I slid my fingers along its neck, like it was ready too.

Finally Zahler nodded, and Pearl rubbed her hands together, sitting down at the little desk jammed between the two racks of electronics. A computer waited there, cabled to a musical keyboard, the kind with elegant black and white keys instead of the usual jumble of letters, numbers, and symbol-junk.

She rested one hand on the keys, the other on a mouse. At her double-click, dozens of lights on the towers flickered to life. “Play something.”

My fingers were suddenly nervous. It was important to get these notes right, to make a solid first impression on this accidental guitar. Pearl thought that “fate” had brought us together, but that was the wrong word for it. Fate hadn’t made that woman go insane. People had been edgy this whole weird summer, what with the crime wave, the rat wave, and the crazy-making heat. That was bigger than Pearl and Zahler and me.

This guitar wasn’t destiny. It was just another symptom of whatever bizarre illness New York City was coming down with, something strange and unexpected, like that spout of black water on the way over.

For a moment the Strat felt awkward in my hands.

But then Zahler said, “Big Riff?”

I smiled. The Big Riff went back a long time, as long as we’d been playing. It was simple and gutsy, and we didn’t bother practicing it too much anymore. But the Strat was going to make it new all over again, like playing baseball with bottle rockets.

Zahler started up. His part of the Big Riff is low and growly, his strings muffled with the flesh of his right hand, like something trying to sizzle up out of a boiling pot.

I took a slow, deep breath… then jumped in. My part’s faster than his, fingers roaming in the high notes halfway up the neck. My part skitters while his churns, blowing sparks from his embers. Mine darts and mutates, keeps changing, while Zahler’s stays level and even and thick, filling in all the gaps.

The Strat loved the Big Riff, sliced straight into it. Its spiderweb strings tempted my fingers faster and higher, weightless against Zahler’s firmament. If the Big Riff was an army, he was the infantry, the grunts on the ground, and the Strat had turned me into orbital ninjas dropping from the sky, black pajamas under their space suits.

Pearl sat there listening, fingers flexing, mouse twitching, eyes closed. She looked ready to pounce, waiting restlessly for an opening.

We kept going for ten minutes, maybe twenty—it’s hard to tell time when you’re playing the Big Riff—but she never jumped in…

Finally Zahler gave a little shrug and let the Riff peter out. I followed him down, wrapping up with one last plunge from orbit, the Strat skittering into reluctant silence.

“So, what’s the matter?” he asked. “You don’t like it?”

Pearl sat silently for another few seconds, thinking hard.

“No, it’s excellent. Exactly what I wanted.” Her fingers stroked the keys absently. “But, um, it’s kind of… big.”

“Yeah,” Zahler said. “We call it the Big Riff. Pretty fool, huh?”

“No doubt. But, uh, let me ask you something. How long have you guys been playing together?”

Zahler looked at me.

“Six years,” I said. Since we were eleven, playing our nylon-string loaners from school. We’d electrified them with the mikes from his older sister’s karaoke machine.

Pearl frowned. “And all that time, it’s been just the two of you?”

“Um, yeah?” I admitted. Zahler was looking at me kind of embarrassed, maybe thinking, Don’t tell her about the karaoke machine.

She nodded. “No wonder.”

“No wonder what?” I said.

“There’s no room left over.”

“There’s no what?”

Pearl pushed her glasses up her nose. “It’s totally full up. Like a pizza with cheese, onions, pepperoni, chilies, sausage, M&M’s, and bacon bits. What am I supposed to do, add the guacamole?”

Zahler made a face. “You mean it sucks.”

“No. It’s big and raw…” She let out a hiss through her teeth, nodding slowly. “You guys made a whole band out of two guitars, which is very lateral. But if you’re going to have a real band—like, one with more than two people in it—you’re going to have to strip your sound way down. We have to poke some holes in the Big Riff.”

Zahler glanced at me, eyes narrowed, and I realized that if I decided to blow this off right now, he would march out of there with me. And I almost did, because the Big Riff was sacred, part of our friendship from the beginning, and Pearl was talking about tearing it up just to make room for her towers of electronic overkill.

I glared up at all those winking lights, wondering how she was supposed to squeeze that much gear into anyone else’s sound without squishing it.

“Plus, it’s not really a song,” she added. “More like a guitar solo that doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Whoa…” I breathed. “Like a what?”

“A guitar solo that doesn’t go anywhere,” Zahler repeated, nodding. I stared at him.

“I mean, you guys want to do songs, right?” Pearl continued. “With verses and choruses and stuff? Don’t you think the Big Riff could use a B section?”

“Fool idea,” Zahler said. Then he scratched his head. “What’s a B section?”

4. NEW ORDER — ZAHLER-

The new girl was intense. And kind of hot.

She could pull a tune apart like it was nothing. Not like Moz, who always talked in circles. Pearl could just hum what she meant, fingers waving little patterns, like she was seeing air-notes at the same time. I watched carefully, wishing my fingers could do that.

She was one of those girls who looked better in glasses—all smart and stuff.

The way she stripped down the Big Riff was totally fawesome. Like I knew would happen, she didn’t touch my part. My part is basic, the foundation of the Riff. But Moz’s jamming could get kind of random, like she’d said about pizza. You know when they have the sundae bar at school where you make your own sundae? I always add toppings until the ice cream disappears, and it winds up kind of disgusting. Give him enough room, and Moz’s playing can get like that.

Don’t get me wrong—the Mosquito’s a genius, a way better player than me, and there was some pretty fool stuff in his Big Riff zigzags. But it took Pearl to pick out his best threads and weave them back together in a way that made sense.

She explained that a B section was a completely different part of a song, like when the chorus has a different riff, or everything slows down or changes key. Me and Moz didn’t do that too much, because I’m happy playing the same four chords all day long and he’s happy buzzing around on top of them.

But when you think about it, most songs do have B sections, and we sort of hadn’t noticed that ours almost never did. So the moral of the story is, you shouldn’t be in a band with just two people for six years. Kind of saps your perspective.

Moz was all buzzy at first, like the Big Riff was his pet frog that Pearl was dissecting. He kept looking at me and making faces, but I eyeballed him into submission. Once he saw that I thought Pearl was okay, he sort of had to listen to her. It hadn’t been my idea to drag my ax all the way down here, after all.

In the end, Moz was no idiot, and only an idiot would mind listening to a smart, hot girl telling him something that’s for his own good. And for the good of the band, which is what the three of us were already turning into.

It was fawesome to watch. All the years Moz and I had been jamming, it was about adding more to the riffs. So it felt great to see stuff getting erased, to sweep away all the mosquito-droppings and get back to the foundation.

Which, like I said before, is where I’m happiest.

Once the Big Riff was cleaned up, Pearl started playing. I’d figured she was going to blow us away with some kind of thousand-note-a-minute alternafunk jazz, because she’d been in that Juilliard band. But everything she played was sweet and simple. She spent most of her time poking around with her mouse, diluting the tones flowing from her synthesizers until they were thin enough to sneak through the folds of the Big Riff.

In the end, I realized that Pearl was playing some of the lines she’d erased from Moz’s part. Even though she’d simplified them, the whole thing wound up bigger, like an actual band instead of two guitarists trying to sound like one.

And then came the moment when the whole thing finally clicked, totally paranormal, falling into place like an explosion played backwards.

I yelled, “You know, we should record this!”

Moz nodded, but Pearl just laughed. “Guys, I’ve been recording the whole time.” She pointed at the computer screen.

“Really?” Moz skidded us to a halt. “You didn’t say anything about that.”

I eyeballed him to calm down. The Mosquito is always afraid that someone’s going to steal our riffs.

Pearl just shrugged. “Sometimes people choke when you press the red button. So I just keep my hard disk spinning. Here, listen.”

She fiddled with her mouse, popping in and out of the last two hours, little snatches of us, like we’d already been turned into cell-phone ringtones. In a few seconds, she pinned down the one-minute stretch where the New Big Riff had somehow flipped inside out and become perfect.

We all sat there, listening. Moz’s and my mouths were open.

We’d finally nailed it. After six years…

“Still needs a B section,” Pearl said. “And drums. We should get a drummer.”

“And a bass player,” I said.

She looked at me. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Moz said. “What kind of band doesn’t have a bass?”

She shrugged. “What kind of band has only two guitarists? One thing at a time. You guys know any drummers?”

Moz shrugged.

“Yeah, they’re hard to find,” Pearl said, shaking her head. “The System had a couple of percussionists but no real drummer. That’s part of why we sucked. But I know a few from school.” She shrugged.

“I know this girl,” I said. “She’s great.”

Moz looked at me, all buzzy again. “You do? You never told me about any drummer.”

“You never told me we were looking for one.” I shrugged. “Besides, I don’t really know her, just seen her play. She’s fawesome.”

“Probably not available, then,” Pearl said, shaking her head. “There’s never enough drummers to go around.”

“Um, I think she might be available,” I said. What I didn’t mention was that she didn’t exactly have real drums and that I’d never seen her playing with a band, only in Times Square, asking for spare change. Or that she might also be sort of homeless, as far as I could tell. Unless she really liked playing in Times Square and wearing the same army jacket and pair of jeans every day.

Totally fool drummer, though.

“Talk to her,” Pearl said. She shot a mean look at the egg-carton-covered door to her room. “Listen, I think my mom’s home, so maybe we should quit. But next time, we’ll write a B section for the Big Riff. Maybe some words. Either of you guys sing?”

We looked at each other. Moz can sing, but he wouldn’t admit to it out loud. And he’s too genius a guitarist to waste in front of a mike.

“Well,” Pearl said. “I know this really lateral singer who’s free right now, sort of. And in the meantime, you can talk to your drummer.”

I smiled, nodding. I liked how in a hurry this girl was, how she was motivating us. And she looked pretty hot doing it, all focused and in charge. Six years of jamming, and all of a sudden it felt like a real band was falling into place. I was looking at the posters on Pearl’s wall, already thinking of album covers.

“Drums? In here?” Moz said.

My gaze swept across all the amps, cables, and synths. There was about enough room for us, all this crap, and maybe someone playing bongos. No way could a whole drum kit fit in here, even if they weren’t exactly drums. And with egg cartons jammed into the windows, the place was already reeking of rehearsal sweat. I could imagine what a hardworking drummer would do to that equation.

That was another reason I’d never bothered to mention her to Moz before. Drummers are way too big and loud for bedrooms.

“I know a place where we can practice,” Pearl said. “It’s pretty cheap.”

Moz and I looked at each other. We’d never paid to rehearse before. But Pearl didn’t notice. I guessed she’d shelled out money to rehearse in lots of places. I just hoped she was paying for this one too. I had some money from my dog-walking gig, but Moz was the tightest guy I’d ever met.

“The other thing is, before we start adding a bunch more people, we need to figure out a name for the band,” Pearl said. “And it has to be the right name. Otherwise, it’ll keep changing every time someone new jams with us.” She shook her head. “And we’ll never figure out who we are.”

“Maybe we should call ourselves the B-Sections,” I said. “That would be fawesome.”

Pearl looked at me, kind of squinting. “Fawesome? Do you keep saying fawesome?”

“Yeah.” I grinned at Moz. He rolled his eyes.

She thought about it for a minute, then smiled and said, “Fexcellent.”

I laughed out loud. This chick was totally fool.

5. GARBAGE — PEARL-

“One of those boys was rather fetching.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, Mom. Thanks for pointing it out, though, in case I missed it.”

“A bit scruffy, though. And that dirge you were playing was making the china rattle all afternoon.”

“It wasn’t all afternoon.” I sighed, staring out the window of the limo. “Maybe two hours.”

Getting a ride with Mom was nine kinds of annoying. But deepest Brooklyn was such a pain by subway, and I had to see Minerva right away. Her esoterica kept saying that hearing good news helped the healing process. And my news was better than good.

“Besides, Mom, ‘that dirge’ is totally fexcellent.”

“It’s feculent?” She made a quiet scoffing sound. “Don’t you know that feculent means foul?”

I giggled, reminding myself to tell Zahler that one. Maybe we could call ourselves the Feculents. But that sounded sort of British, and we didn’t.

We sounded like the kind of band that rattled the china. The Rattlers? Too country and western. China Rattlers? Too lateral, even for me. The Good China? Nah. People would think we were from Taiwan.

“Will they be coming over again?” my mother asked in a small voice.

“Yes. They will.” I played with my window buttons, filling the limo’s backseat with little bursts of summer heat.

She sighed. “I’d hoped that we were past all this band practice.”

I let out a groan. “Band practice is what marching bands do, Mom. But don’t worry. We’ll be moving our gear to Sixteenth Street in a week or so. Your china will soon be safe.”

“Oh. That place.”

I peered at her, pushing my glasses up my nose. “Yes, full of musicians. How awful.”

“They look more like drug addicts.” She shivered a little, which made her icicles tinkle. Mom was all blinged out for some fund-raiser at the Brooklyn Museum, wearing cocktail black and too much makeup. Her being dressed up like that always creeps me out, like we’re headed to a funeral.

Of course, I was creeped out anyway—we were in Minerva’s neighborhood now. Big brooding brownstones slid past outside, all tricked out like haunted houses, turrets and iron railings and tiny windows way up high. My stomach started to flutter, and I suddenly wished it was both of us going to some dress-up party, everyone drinking champagne and being clueless, and next year’s budget for the Egyptian Wing the big topic of consternation. Or, at worst, talking about the sanitation crisis, instead of staring out the window at it.

Mom detected my flutters—which she’s pretty good at—and took my hand. “How’s Minerva doing, poor thing?”

I shrugged, glad now that I’d scrounged a ride. Mom’s minor annoyances had distracted me almost the whole way. Waiting for the subway, staring down at the rats on the tracks, would’ve totally reminded me of where I was going.

“Better. She says.”

“What do the doctors say?”

I didn’t even shrug. I wasn’t allowed to tell Mom that there were no doctors anymore, just an esoterica. We stayed silent until the limo pulled up outside Minerva’s house. Night was falling by then, lights going on. The brownstone’s darkened windows made the block look like it was missing a tooth.

The street looked different, as if the last two months had sapped something from it. Garbage was piled high on the streets, the sanitation crisis much more obvious out here in Brooklyn, but I didn’t see any rats scuttling around. There seemed to be a lot of stray cats, though.

“This used to be such a nice neighborhood,” Mom said. “Do you need Elvis to collect you?”

“No. That’s okay.”

“Well, call him if you change your mind,” Mom said as the door opened. “And don’t take the train too late.”

I slipped out past Elvis, annoyance rising in me again. Mom knew I hated the subway late at night, and that Minerva’s company didn’t exactly make me want to dally.

Elvis and I traded our funny little salute, which we’ve been doing since I was nine, and we both smiled. But then he glanced up at the house, lines creasing his forehead. Something skittered in the garbage bags by our feet—stray cats or not, rats were in residence.

“Are you sure you won’t be wanting a ride home, Pearl?” he rumbled softly.

“Positive. Thanks, though.”

Mom likes all conversations to include her, so she scooted closer across the limo’s backseat. “What time did you get in last night anyway?”

“Right after eleven.”

She pursed her lips the slightest discernible amount, showing she knew I was lying, and I gave her the tiniest possible eye-roll to show I didn’t care.

“Well, see you at eleven tonight, then.”

I snorted a little for Elvis. The only way Mom was coming home before midnight was if they ran out of champagne at the museum, or if the mummies all got loose.

I imagined old-movie mummies in tattered bandages. Nice and nonscary.

Then her voice softened. “Give my love to Minerva.”

“Okay,” I said, waving and turning away, flinching as the door boomed shut behind me. “I’ll try.”

Luz de la Sueño opened the door and waved me in quick, like she was worried about flies zipping in behind. Or maybe she didn’t want the neighbors to see her new decorations, seeing as how Halloween was more than two months away.

My nostrils wrinkled at the smell of garlic tea brewing, not to mention the other scents coming from the kitchen, overpowering and unidentifiable. These days, New York seemed to disappear behind me when I came through Minerva’s door, as if the brownstone had one foot in some other city, somewhere ancient and crumbling, overgrown.

“She is much better,” Luz said, ushering me toward the stairs. “And excited you are visiting.”

“That’s great,” I said, but I hesitated for a moment in the foyer. Luz’s take on Minerva’s illness had always been a bit too mystical for me, but after what I’d witnessed the night before, I figured the esoterica was at least a little noncrazy.

“Luz, can I ask you a question? About something I saw?”

“You saw something? Outside?” Her eyes widened, drifting to the shaded windows.

“No, back in Manhattan.”

“Sí?” Luz said. The intensity of her gaze was freaking me out as usual.

I usually understand where people fit, organizing them in my head, like arranging Mom’s good china in its case. But I was totally clueless about Luz—where she came from, how old she was, whether she’d grown up rich or poor. Her English wasn’t fluent, but her accent was careful, her grammar exact. Her unlined face looked young, but she wore these old-lady dresses, sometimes hats with veils. Her hands were calloused and full of wiry strength, and three fat skull rings grinned at me from her big-knuckled fingers.

Luz was all about skulls, but they didn’t seem to mean to her what they meant to me and my friends. She was more gospel than goth.

“There was this woman,” I said. “Around the corner from us. She went crazy, throwing all this stuff out the window.”

“Sí.” Luz nodded. “That is the sickness. It is spreading now. You are still careful, yes?”

“Yep. No boys for me.” I put my hands up. Luz believed everything was because of too much sex—part of her religious thing. “But it looked like her own stuff. Not like when Minerva broke up with Mark, hating everything he’d given her.”

“Yes, but it is the same. The sickness, it makes the infected not want to be what they were before. They must throw away everything to make the change.” She crossed herself—the change was what she was trying to prevent in Minerva.

“But Min didn’t trash all her stuff, did she?”

“Not so much.” Luz fingered the cross around her neck. “She is very spiritual, not joined to things. But to people, and to la musica.”

“Oh.” That made a kind of sense. When Minerva had cracked up, she’d thrown away Mark and the rest of Nervous System first. And then her classes and all our friends, one by one. I’d stuck with her the longest, until everyone hated me for staying friends with her, and then she’d finally tossed me too.

That meant Moz had been right: the crazy woman had been getting rid of her own stuff, throwing her whole life out the window. I wondered how he’d known.

I thought about the mirrors upstairs, all covered with velvet. Min didn’t want to see her own face, to hear her own name—suddenly it all made sense.

Luz touched my shoulder. “That is why it is good you are here. I think maybe now, Pearl, you can do more than I.”

I felt the music player in my pocket, loaded up with Big Riff. I couldn’t do anything myself—I wasn’t some kind of skull-wielding esoterica—but maybe this fexcellent music…

Luz started up the stairs, waving for me to follow.

“One more thing: I think I saw angels.”

She stopped and turned, crossing herself again. “Angeles de la lucha? They were fast? On the rooftops?”

I nodded. “Like you told me to watch for around here.” “And they took this woman?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I got the hell out of there.”

“Good.” She reached out and stroked my face, her fingers rough and smelling of herbs. “It is not for you, the struggle that is coming.”

“So where do the angels take you?” I whispered.

Luz closed her eyes. “To somewhere far away.”

“What, like heaven?”

She shook her head. “No. On an airplane. To a place where they make the change firm in you. So you can fight for them in the struggle.” She took my hand. “But that is not for you—not for Minerva. Come.”

The rest of the way up, there were lots of new decorations to check out. The stairway walls were covered with wooden crosses, a thousand little stamped-metal figures nailed into each one. The figures were nonweird shapes—shoes, dresses, trees, dogs, musical instruments—but the wild jumble of them made me wonder if someone had put normality into a blender, then set it on disintegrate.

And of course there were the skulls. Their painted black eyes stared down at us from the shadows, every floor a little darker as we climbed. The windows up here were blacked out, the mirrors draped with red velvet. Street noises faded as we climbed, the air growing as still as a sunken ship.

Outside Minerva’s room, Luz bent to pick up a towel from the floor, sighing apologetically. “It is only me tonight. The family are more tired every day.”

“Anything I can do to help?” I whispered.

Luz smiled. “You are here. That is help.”

She pulled a few leaves from her pocket, crushing them together in her hands. They smelled like fresh-cut grass, or mint. She knelt and rubbed her palms on my sneakers and the legs of my jeans.

I’d always kind of rolled my eyes at her spells before, but tonight I felt in need of protection.

“Maybe you will sing to her.”

I swallowed, wondering if Luz had somehow divined what I’d been planning. “Sing? But you always said—”

“Sí.” Her eyes sparked in the darkness. “But she is better now. However, to keep you safe…”

She pressed a familiar little doll into my hands, stroking its tattered red yarn hair into place. It stared up at me, smiling maniacally, one button eye dangling from two black threads, setting my stomach fluttering again.

The doll was the creepiest of Luz’s rituals of protection. But suddenly it made sense. It had always been Min’s favorite back when we were little, the only object she’d ever really been attached to, besides the ring she’d thrown at Mark in front of the whole System. I was glad to have the doll tonight, even if Minerva hadn’t been violent since her family had given up on drugs and doctors and had switched to Luz.

I wondered how they’d found her. Were esotericas listed in the phone book? Was Esoterica a cool band name, or too lateral? Was the Big Riff in my pocket really a kind of magic—

“Don’t be afraid,” Luz whispered. Then she opened the door with one strong hand, the other pushing me into the darkness. “Go and sing.”

6. MADNESS — MINERVA-

Pearl was glowing. Her face shimmered as the door swung closed, setting the candle flickering jaggedly.

“You’re shiny,” I murmured, squinting.

She swallowed, licking her upper lip. I could smell her nervous saltiness.

“It’s hot out.”

“It’s summer, right?”

“Yeah, middle of August.” Pearl frowned, even though I’d been right.

I closed my eyes, remembering April, May… all the way up to graduation. Pearl was jealous because she had to go back to Juilliard next year, though everyone else in the Nerv—

The thing inside me flinched.

Zombie made a grumpy noise and rolled over on my belly. His big green eyes opened slowly, surveying Pearl.

“I have good news,” she said softly. When I first got sick, I hated the sound of her voice, but not anymore. I was getting better—I didn’t hate Pearl, or anyone human. All I hated now was the Vile Thing she brought every time she visited. It hung from her hands, one eyeball dangling, leering at me.

I tried to smile, but the lenses of Pearl’s glasses caught the candlelight, bright as a camera flash, and I had to turn away.

She raised her voice a little. “You okay?”

“Sure. It’s just a little bright today.” Sometimes I blew out the candle, but that made Luz cross. She said I’d have to get used to it if I was ever going to leave this room again.

But my room was nice. It smelled like Zombie and me and the thing inside us.

“So I met these guys,” Pearl said, talking fast now, forgetting to whisper. “They’ve been playing together for a while. They’re nine kinds of raw, not like Nervous—”

I must have flinched again, because Pearl went quiet. Zombie mur-rowed and dropped heavily to the floor. He started toward her, winding his way through my old toys and clothes and sheet music, all the objects on the floor that crept closer every night while I slept.

“We weren’t so bad,” I managed to say.

“Yeah, but these guys are fawesome.” She paused, smiling at herself. Pearl always liked silly, made-up words. “They’re sort of New Sound, like Morgan’s Army, but more raw. Like when we started, before you-know-who messed up your head. But without six composers trying to write one song. These two guys are much more…”

“Controllable?” I said.

Pearl frowned, and the Vile Thing in her hands glared at me.

“I was going to say mellow.”

Zombie had tiptoed up behind Pearl, like he’d been planning to wind through her legs. But he was slinking close to the floor now, sniffing at her shoes suspiciously. He didn’t like the smell of anyone but me these days.

“But I was thinking, and maybe this is stupid.” Pearl shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “If these guys work out, and you keep getting better—”

“I’m already better.”

“That’s what Luz says. The three of us aren’t ready yet, but maybe by the time we are…” Her voice wavered, sounding fragile. “It would be great if you could sing for us.”

Her words made me close my eyes, something huge moving through my body, half painful, half restless. It took a moment to recognize, because it had been gone for so long.

To twist and turn, spreading out and surrounding people, drowning them—my voice seething, boiling, filling up the air.

I wanted to sing again…

A slow sigh deflated me. What if it still hurt, like everything else that wasn’t Zombie or darkness? I had to test myself first.

“Could you do something for me, Pearl?”

“Anything.”

“Say my name.”

“Crap, no way. Luz would kick my ass.”

I smelled Pearl’s fear in the room and heard Zombie’s soft footfalls retreating from her. He jumped up onto the bed, warm and nervous next to me. I opened my eyes, trying not to squint in the candle-brightness.

Pearl was sweating again, pacing like Zombie does because Luz never lets him go outside. “She said that singing might be okay. But your name? Are you sure?”

“I’m not sure, Pearl. That’s why you have to.”

She swallowed. “Okay… Min.”

I snorted. “Shiny, smelly Pearl. Can’t even do the whole thing?”

She stared at me for a long moment, then said softly, “Minerva?”

I shuddered out of habit, but the sickness didn’t come. Then she said the name again, and nothing swept through me. Nothing but relief. Even Luz had never managed that.

It felt outlandish and magnificent, as naughty as a cigarette after voice class. I closed my eyes and smiled.

“Are you okay?” she whispered.

“Very. And I want to sing for your band, Pearl. You brought music, didn’t you?”

She nodded, smiling back at me. “Yeah. I mean, I wasn’t sure if you… But we have this really cool riff.” She reached into her pocket for a little white sliver of plastic, then began to unwind the earphones wrapped around it. “This is after only one day of practice—well, six years and a day—but there’s no chorus or anything yet. You can write your own words.”

“I can do words.” Words were the first thing I’d gotten back. There were notebooks full of scrawl underneath the bed, filled with all my new secrets. New songs about the deep.

Pearl had an adapter in one hand. She was looking around for my stereo.

“I broke it,” I said sadly.

“Your Bang and Olufsen? That’s a drag.” She frowned. “Say, you didn’t throw it out the window, did you?”

I giggled. “No, silly. Down the stairs.” I reached out my hand. “Come here. We can share.”

She paused for a moment, glancing back at the door.

“Don’t worry. Luz went downstairs already.” She was working in the kitchen now, preparing my nighttime botanicas. I could hear the rumble of water through the pipes and smell garlic and mandrake tea being strained. “She trusts you enough not to listen in.”

“Oh. That’s good, I guess.” Pearl put the adapter back in her pocket and took a step closer, the Vile Thing leering at me from her hand.

“But you have to put that thing down,” I said, waving one hand.

She paused, and I could smell her start to sweat again.

“Don’t you trust me, shiny Pearl?” I squinted up at her. “You know I would never eat you.”

“Um, yeah.” She swallowed. “And that’s really non-threatening of you, Minerva.”

I smiled again at the sound of my own name, and Pearl smiled back, finally believing how much better I was. She knelt, placing the Vile Thing carefully on the floor, like it might explode.

Taking a deep breath, she began to cross the room with measured steps. Zombie padded away as she grew closer, and I smelled the catnip on Pearl’s shoes. That’s why he was being so edgy. She smelled like his old toys, which he hated these days.

He went over to sniff the Vile Thing, which suddenly had turned into just some old doll. It looked lifeless and defeated there on the floor, not nearly as vile as it had been.

More relief flowed through me. Just the thought of singing was making me stronger. Even the shiny candlelight didn’t seem so jagged.

Pearl sat next to me on the bed, the music player in her hand glowing now. I saw the apple shape on it and flinched a little, remembering that I had thrown something out the window—eighty gigs of music that smelly boy had given me.

Pearl reached across, pushing my hair back behind one ear with trembling fingers. I realized how greasy it was, even though Luz made me shower every single Saturday.

“Do I look horrible?” I asked quietly. I hadn’t seen myself in… two months, if it was August.

“No. You’re still beautiful.” She grinned, putting one earphone in her own ear. “Maybe a little skinny. Doesn’t Luz feed you?”

I smiled, thinking of all the raw meat I’d eaten for lunch. Bacon cold and salty, the strips still clinging together, fresh from between plastic. And then the chicken whose neck I’d heard Luz wring in the backyard, its skin still prickly from being plucked, its living blood hot down my throat. And still I was hungry.

As Pearl leaned forward in the Apple glow, I saw the pulse in her throat, and the beast inside me growled.

Mustn’t eat Pearl, I reminded myself.

She gave the other earphone to me, and I put it in. We looked into each other’s eyes from a few inches away, tethered by the split white cord. It was strange and intense—no one but Luz had dared get this close to me since I’d bitten that stupid doctor.

I could smell coffee on Pearl’s breath, the clean sweat of summer heat, the separate scent of fear. Her pupils were huge, and I remembered that to her eyes, my room was dark. My life was spent in shadows now.

There was a hint of moisture between her upper lip and nose, in that little depression the size of a fingertip. I leaned forward, wanting to lick it, to see if it was salty like the bacon had been…

Then she squeezed the player, and music spilled into me.

It started abruptly—a rough edit, not even on the downbeat—but the riff was too gutsy to care. One guitar rumbled underneath, simple as a bass part, someone playing with three untutored fingers. Another guitar played up high, full of restless and cluttered energy, seductively neurotic.

Neither was Pearl, I could tell.

Then she entered on keys, spindly and thin but fitting perfectly. She was even leaving room for me, laying low, like she never had back in the System.

That thought made me jealous—little Pearl growing up a bit while I’d been lying here in shadows. Suddenly, I wanted to get up and put on clothes and sunglasses, go out into the world.

Soon, I thought, still listening. The music had me humming, venturing into the spaces Pearl had left open, finding lines to twist and turn. She was right—it was New Sound-ish, like all those indie bands we’d loved last spring. But less frantic, as smooth as water. My whole body wanted to jump into this music.

But when my lips first parted, only random curses spilled out, verses from the earliest, most unreadable scrawl in the notebooks under my bed. Then they sputtered to a halt, like the fading geyser from a shaken beer bottle, and I gradually gained control. I began to murmur a jagged, wordless song across the music.

For a few moments it was beautiful, a savage version of my old self, though with new spells in it. The sound of my own singing made the beast inside me burn, but clever Pearl had cheated it for a few moments: I could only hear myself with one ear. The other was filled with the riff, a dense and splendid protection.

But soon enough the sickness closed my throat, the song choking to a stop. I looked at Pearl, to see if I’d imagined it. Her eyes, inches from mine, glowed like her music player’s screen.

Catching my breath, I concentrated on the riff again, listening. She was right: They were way outside the System, this oddball pair of guitarists. They had pulled something out of me, slipped it right past the beast.

“Where did you find them?”

“Sixth Street. Totally random.”

“Hmm. The one who can really play, he sounds…” I swallowed.

“Yeah,” Pearl said. “He’s lateral and raw, like I always wanted Nervous System to be. No lessons, or at least not many, and no theory classes. He fills up whatever space you give him. Almost out of control, but like you said, controllable. He’s the Taj Mahal of random guitarists.”

I smiled. All those things were true, but I hadn’t been thinking them.

To me, he sounded more like… yummy.