9. FEAR

— PEARL-

I took the subway to Brooklyn, so Mom wouldn’t find out from Elvis.

Skittering sounds wafted up from the tracks as I waited for a train, the shuffling of tiny feet among discarded coffee cups and newspapers. The platform was empty except for me, the tunnels murmuring with echoes. The subways sounded wrong these days, almost alive, like there was something big down here. Something breathing.

I hated facing the subway on Sunday mornings, with no rush-hour crowds to protect me, but we didn’t have much choice about when to rehearse. Minerva said that church was the only thing that kept Luz away till after noon.

This would all be much easier when we didn’t have to sneak Minerva out of her room, but she needed to join the band now. Lying around in bed all day was never going to cure her. She had to get out of that dark room, meet some new people, and, most of all, sing her brains out.

Moz, Zahler, and I had rehearsed together four times now—we had a B section for the Big Riff and two more half-formed songs. We were better every time we played, but we needed structure: verses and choruses, a drummer too. We didn’t have time to wait for Min to get completely well. The world was in too much of a hurry around us.

Except for the F train, of course. Ten minutes later, it still hadn’t come, and I hoped it wasn’t broken down again. The subways were having some kind of weird trouble this summer. Minor earthquakes, they said on TV—Manhattan’s bedrock settling.

That was also the official explanation for the black water infecting the pipes. They said it wasn’t dangerous, even if they didn’t know exactly what it was—it evaporated too quickly for anyone to find out. Most people were drinking bottled water, of course. Mom was bathing in Evian. I wasn’t sure I believed any of it, but in any case, I didn’t have time for earthquakes today. The rehearsal space was reserved in my name, on my credit card—the others couldn’t get in without me. If I was late getting up to Sixteenth Street, everything would fall apart.

I fished out my cell phone. It searched for a signal, until a tremulous 7:58 A.M. appeared. One hour to get to Brooklyn and back.

Still hovering on the screen was the last number I’d called the night before—Moz’s—to remind him again about this morning.

Lonely and nervous on the empty platform, I pressed send.

“Yeah?” a croaky voice answered.

“Moz?”

“Mmm,” came his annoyed grumble. “Pearl? Crap! Am I late?”

“No, it’s only eight.”

“Oh.” He scratched his head so hard I could hear it over the cell-phone crackle. “So what’s up?”

“I’m on my way out to Brooklyn to pick up Minerva. I was wondering if… you wanted to come.”

“To Brooklyn?”

That’s how he said it: Brooklyn? Like I wanted to drag him to Bombay.

I should have given up. For two weeks now I’d been trying to connect with Moz, but he always kept his distance. If only I hadn’t messed up that first rehearsal, the one where I’d pulled the Big Riff apart. I should have gone slowly, respecting what had been conjured between us when the Strat had fallen from the sky. But instead I’d decided to dazzle him with nine kinds of brilliance. Clever, Pearl.

Eight A.M. was probably not the best time to break my losing streak, but for two seconds I’d imagined that maybe this morning—the morning we became a real band—might be different.

I kept talking, trying to make it sound fun. “Yeah. I didn’t explain this before, but it’s kind of a ninja mission, getting her out of there.”

“Kind of a what?”

“Kind of tricky. Her parents have this thing about…” Insanity? Abduction? “Well, let’s just say I could use your help.”

I hadn’t said much about Min to anyone yet, except what a lateral singer she was. It wouldn’t hurt if Moz got used to her weirdness before she met the rest of them. And it would be nice just having someone beside me on the way out there, even if he only waited outside while I snuck in to get her.

“Look, uh, Pearl…” he said. “I just woke up.”

“I sort of figured that. But I’m at the F station down from your house. You could get here in five minutes.”

Silence crackled in my ear; a breeze stirred newspapers on the tracks.

I sighed. “Look, it’s no big deal. Sorry to wake you up.”

“That’s okay. My alarm’s about to go off anyway. See you at nine.”

“Yeah. You’re going to love Minerva. And a drummer! It’s going to be fawesome, huh?”

“Sure. Totally.”

I felt like I was supposed to say more, something to get him revved up for our first real rehearsal. “Don’t forget your Strat.”

“It’s not mine. But yeah, see you soon.” Click.

I slipped the phone back into my pocket, letting another sigh slip through my teeth. I’d let him take the Stratocaster home after the second rehearsal, but that hadn’t changed anything between us. I was still Boss Pearl.

The newspapers stirred on the tracks again, one rolling over restlessly. I felt the platform rumbling under my feet, and my stomach tightened. As the sound steadily grew into a roar, it pushed all the thoughts from my head, thundering across me as if something huge was about to burst from the tunnel, overpowering all my plans.

But it was just the F train pulling in.

In the past two weeks, Minerva’s block had gotten worse. The garbage had been massed into a few huge, leaking mountains. Like how you deal with snow: push it into piles, then wait for the sun to make it go away.

Except garbage doesn’t melt, and snow doesn’t smell bad.

It was more than weird. Mom always bitched about this or that neighborhood going to seed, but I’d figured that took decades, longer than I’d been alive anyway. Until this summer, New York had always looked pretty much the same to me. But this part of Brooklyn seem to change every time I saw it, like someone dying of a disease before my eyes.

Luz always talked about “the sickness” like it wasn’t just Minerva but the whole city—maybe the whole world—that was afflicted, all of it a prelude to the big struggle. Only she never said what the struggle was actually about. Good versus evil? Angels versus demons? Crazy versus sane?

Crazy Versus Sane. Now there was a band name that fit us like a glove.

The early morning shadows stretched down the block, sunlight spattering the asphalt through the leaves, dancing with the breeze. I crept past the garbage mountains, trying not to listen to the things inside them and wishing I didn’t have the Taj Mahal of hearing. No people were on the street, not even any dogs. Just the occasional red flash of cats’ eyes watching me from overgrown front yards.

The front-door key was where Min had told me her mom kept it, under an iron boot-wipe by the door. It was covered with grime and stained my fingertips a red-brown rusty color when I tried to wipe it off. But it fit smoothly into the lock, the bolt sliding across with a soft click.

The door swung open onto a silent audience of skulls.

I took slow, careful steps into the darkness, listening for any noise from the wooden planks underfoot. According to Minerva, her parents were deep sleepers—her little brother, Max, was the one we had to worry about. I just hoped Min was awake and dressed, not surfing some nightmare that would make her scream when I opened her door.

I took the stairs slowly, my soft-soled fencing shoes pressing on the edges of the steps, not in the creaky middles. As a little kid, I’d once gotten up at midnight and pushed down every key of our baby grand from top to bottom, pressing so delicately that the hammers never struck the strings, making not a whisper of sound the whole way. Once you’ve managed that, you can pretty much do anything without waking the grown-ups.