Read The Last Days Online

Authors: Scott Westerfeld

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Performing Arts, #Music

The Last Days (2 page)

BOOK: The Last Days
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“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.”
BOOK: The Last Days
9.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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