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 anything, 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. . . .”