Scott Westerfeld - The Last Days

“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.”

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.”