She nodded, still stroking the guitar case’s neck. “At least I’m still on a full scholarship. So I can switch to guitar before—”

“But you’re a great cellist. You can’t give up on civilization yet. I mean, New York City’s still around.”

She nodded. “Mostly. There are still concerts and classes and baseball games going on. But it’s kind of like the Titanic: there’s really only enough lifeboats for the first-class passengers.” She scanned the room. “So when I see people not showing up, I sort of wonder if those passengers are already leaving. And then the floor’s going to start tilting, the deck chairs sliding past.”

“Um… the what?”

Ellen turned to me with narrowed eyes. “Here’s the thing, Pearl. I bet your friends are already off in Switzerland, or someplace like that.”

I shrugged. “They mostly just graduated.”

“I bet they’re in Switzerland anyway. Most people who can afford it are already gone. But my friends…” She shook her head, then shrugged. “They don’t have drivers or bodyguards, and they have to ride the subway to school. So they’re in hiding, sort of.”

“You’re here.”

“Only reason is that we live around the corner. I don’t have to ride the subway. Plus…” She smiled, touching the case in the seat next to her. “I really want to learn to play guitar.”

We talked more—about her father, about all the stuff we’d seen that summer. But my mind kept wandering to the band.

Listening to Ellen, it had occurred to me that bands like ours needed a lot of infrastructure too, as much as any symphony orchestra. To do what we did, we needed electronic instruments and microphones, mixing boards and echo boxes and stacks of amplifiers. We needed night-clubs, recording studios, record companies, cable channels that showed music videos, and fans who had CD players and electricity at home.

Crap, we needed civilization.

I couldn’t exactly see Moz and Min jamming around a campfire, after all.

What if Luz’s fairy tales were true, then, and some big struggle was coming? And what if Ellen Bromowitz had it right, and the time for orchestras was over? What if the illness that had ripped apart Nervous System was going to bring down the infrastructure that made having our kind of band even possible?

I straightened up in my chair. It was time to get moving. I had to quit patting myself on the back just because Moz was happy and Minerva was relatively noncrazy and rehearsals were going well.

We needed to become world-famous soon, while there was still that kind of world to be famous in.

14. REPLACEMENTS

— ZAHLER-

We churned out one fawesome tune after another—me, Moz, and Pearl, meeting two or three times a week at her place. After we’d used up all our old riffs, we started basing stuff on Pearl’s loopy samples, and the Mosquito didn’t even buzz about it. Ever since the band had gotten real—with a drummer, a singer, even separate amps for Moz and me—he’d finally realized that this wasn’t a competition.

What he hadn’t realized was how hot Pearl was or that she had a major crush on him.

All I could do was shake my head about that last part. The problem for Pearl was, she’d really given Moz something. She’d stripped away his shell, had shown him a way to get everything he really wanted, had helped him find a focus that he’d been too lame to discover for himself.

He was never going to forgive her for that.

Me, I still thought Pearl was hot. But for now, there was nothing I could do about it. And actually, I was happy with things the way they were. My best friend and the foolest girl in the world had finally quit fighting, the music was fexcellent, and Pearl loved the band, which meant she wasn’t going anywhere without me tagging along.

It was all going so good, I should have known something was about to explode.

We were working on the B section of one of the new tunes, called “A Million Stimuli to Go.” It was totally complicated, and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t play it. Moz kept showing me how on his Strat, but for some reason it didn’t work on my fingers.

At least, it didn’t until Pearl jumped in. She swept aside the CD cases and a harmonica scattered across her bed and sat down next to me. Unhooking the strap of my guitar, she pulled it over into her lap.

“Let me, Zahler,” she said.

Then, like it was no big deal, she started playing the part.

Normally, sitting that close to her would have been pretty fool. But at that moment I was too dumbfounded to appreciate it.

“See?” she said, her fingers practically smoking as they cruised across the strings. “You’ve just got to use your pinky on that last bit.”

Moz laughed. “He hates using his pinky. Says it’s his retarded finger.”

I didn’t say anything right then, just watched her play, nodding like a moron. She was dead on about how to make the part work, and now that I could see it from behind the strings, it didn’t even look that hard. When Pearl handed me back my guitar, I managed to get it right the first time.

She stood up and went back to her keyboards, tweaking her stacks while I ran through it a dozen more times, pushing the riff deep into my brain.

I didn’t say anything more about it till later, when it was just me and the Mosquito.

“Moz, did you see what happened back there?”

We were wandering through late-night Chinatown, surrounded by the clatter of restaurant kitchens. The thick sweat of fry-cooking rolled along the narrow streets, and the metal doors of fish markets were rumbling down, the briny smell of guts lingering in the air.

It was pretty quiet at night since the pedestrian curfew had been imposed. Moz and I always ignored the curfew, though, so it was like we owned the city.

“See what?” Moz twisted his body to peer down the alley we’d just passed.

“No, not down there.” Since that day with my dogs, I didn’t even glance into alleys anymore. “Back at Pearl’s. When she showed me that riff.” My hands lifted into guitar position, fingers fluttering. The moves were in me now, too late to save me from humiliation.

“Oh, the one you had trouble with? What about it?”

“Did you see how Pearl just did it?”

He frowned, his own fingers tracing the pattern. “That’s how it’s supposed to be played.”

I groaned. “No, Moz, not how she played it. That she played it, when it was driving me nuts!”

“Oh,” he said, then waited as a garbage truck steamed past, squeaking and groaning. For some reason, there were six guys hanging onto the back, instead of the usual two or three. They watched us warily as the truck rumbled away. “Yeah, she’s pretty good. You didn’t know that?”

“Hell, no. When did that happen?”

“A long time before we met her.” He laughed. “You never noticed how her hand moves when she calls out chords?” His left hand twitched in the air. “And I told you how she spotted the Strat, same as me.”

“But—”

“And that stuff in her room: the flute, the harmonicas, the hand drums. She plays it all, Zahler.”

I frowned. It was true, there were a lot of instruments lying around at Pearl’s. And sometimes she’d pull one down and play something on it, just for a joke. “I never noticed any guitars, though.”

He shrugged. “She keeps them under the bed. I thought you knew.”

I looked down and swung my boot at the fire hydrant squatting on the curb, catching it hard in one of its little spouty things. It clanked and I hopped back, remembering I didn’t mess with hydrants anymore. “That doesn’t bug you?”

“Bug me? I don’t care if she keeps them in the attic, as long as I get to play the Strat.”

“Not that. Doesn’t it bug you that I’m supposed to be our guitarist, and I don’t even play guitar as well as our keyboard player?”