I held the tubes up to the light, one at a time.
"Not clean enough. Not by a long shot," Knacke said, glaring at the tubes.
Alone with him, I got a solid whiff of his smell. Even with the cigarette goo and the nasty soap, I could smell the stinking essence. It wasn't pit stink, though sometimes his shirts got pretty dark under the arms. It wasn't unwashed clothes. Or liquor, like Mr. Bittmeyer. Or cheap deodorant, like every football player there ever was.
No, it was more like a dead animal. That's the closest thing to his stench. Something that had been dead for a while.
"I've been looking forward to this little time together," he said, leaning in close. Grabbing one of the tubes, he gave it a good rinse. He nodded, and I went on to the next one.
"We're well aware of your friendship with Relly."
My hands went kind of dead. I watched the water run out of the faucet. I listened to the millions of little soap bubbles popping.
"He's not like the other students here, is he?" His voice changed, like somebody else was talking through his mouth. "Nor are you. That's quite plain to see. We know everything there is to know about you."
Maybe I should've just run out. No doubt about it, I'd be in even worse trouble. I thought real hard about it, picturing myself tearing down the hall with Knacke behind yelling.
But no, I just sat there and waited.
Knacke watched me, waiting for my reaction. When I said nothing, and did nothing, he smiled his big shiny bogus grin. "Since I've been back, I've had my eye on the two of you. And before then too."
I kept my mouth closed. He was toying with me, trying to get me to squirm. I just stood there, waiting.
"You're not like the others. That's quite apparent."
Still I kept silent, like I was a good soldier getting tortured but telling no secrets.
He shrugged after a while, as if I was making him sad. "Perhaps another time you'll want to talk more. We have so much to discuss." Then he put back on his plastic smile. "You're excused now. I can finish up."
He took the bottle brush and I was out the door with my hands still dripping black ooze.
Seven
I GOT A CALL the next day at home.
"Hey," a gritty voice said. "How you doing?"
"Who is this?"
"Who do you think?"
For a second I was afraid it was Knacke. He's not only the king of evil scumpacks at school, I thought, he's a pervert too, calling girls at home. But I was wrong.
"I was at Waterstreet. I saw your show. All the girls were hot for Jerod and Relly. But I was watching you."
"That's just great. Now what do you want?"
He kind of laughed, but it sounded mean and dirty too. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Listening to some slimeball on the phone."
"Funny. Real funny."
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Just to talk. Get to know you better."
"Well I don't know who you are. And I don't want to know. So goodbye." I hung up. The phone rang again. "Die, all right? Why don't you just die?"
"Zee, what's going on?" It was my dad. "You answer the phone with 'die' now?"
"Some pervo was harassing me a minute ago. I didn't know it was you."
"Well, I'm just calling to say I'll be late tonight. I'm going out with Donna Lee after work, all right?"
"Sure, whatever."
Two seconds after I hung up with my dad, the phone rang again.
I picked it up but didn't say a thing. Neither did he, whoever he was. We played a game of chicken, seeing who'd hang up first. Silence stretched, and stretched even thinner. I could feel him on the other end, even if I could-n't hear a thing. I think the silence was even worse than his voice. But I didn't back down. I didn't say a word.
I won the game. He hung up after a while. I won, but it didn't make me feel any better.
Eight
WE WERE IN THE attic, just the two of us. The wind was moaning in the eaves. Wet snow spattered the tiny windows.
"I got a call last night."
"Yeah?" Relly said.
"It was some sicko. He said he saw our show at Waterstreet. I hung up on him."
"Enemies. They're gathering."
"What are you talking about?"
"Soon, soon. When you're ready, you'll know."
I was scared and angry. And I'd had enough of his mystery talk. "This is so stupid!" I yelled at him. "What is it with all these secrets?"
Only then did he look right at me. "After what you saw, you've got to ask me that?"
"I didn't see anything."
"Now who's being stupid?" he asked.
"All right, all right. I saw you burst into flames and a minute later you were perfectly OK. Is that what you want me to say?"
"Well, is it true or isn't it?"
"I don't know!" I shouted.
"Yes, you do," he whispered back.
We were quiet a long time, listening to the wind coil around the house, slow and powerful as a boa constrictor.
It was like we were playing the same stupid game as I had on the phone. Who would talk first? Who would give up and break the dead air between us?
As it turned out, we both won that night. Or maybe we both lost.
Butt came clomping up the steps.
He banged the door open and announced, "I got a great idea. How about a song called 'Message from Uranus'? That would be cool, right? You could write the words." He was looking at me. "Like a science fiction thing only it's about Uranus, get it? Your anus! Get it?"
"Yeah, I get it," I said. "Maybe later."
He climbed behind his set and got both his feet going, whaling the kick drums fast and loud. That was the way he showed he was happy. Laughing, sure. Still, that pounding kick-drum roll was the real sound of Butt's delight.
Nine
THE BEST RUMOR about Knacke, or, I guess, the worst one, was about the dog's head. I heard different versions. But it always had to do with some dog that barked too much down the street from Knacke's house. So he lured it over, or went in the middle of the night and grabbed it. "And he cut off the head and he's got it floating in a bucket of chemicals." That's how kids usually finished the story. "It's been alive for years, floating there all hooked up to tubes."
Somehow he figured out a way to keep the dog's head alive and somewhere in his basement he still had it. A big black cauldron. A glass bowl. A vat. Different stories had different details. Tubes into the neck. Or up the nose. Floating in clear chemical broth. Or bubbling green goo.
So when it got really bad in bio class, I thought maybe I'd end up like the dog. I mean, I knew that teachers didn't usually kill kids and cut off their heads, but sometimes it felt like that was the next step after detention.
I was there in the bio classroom again, just me and Knacke.
For three days straight I hadn't done any homework. So he told me I had to stay late.
He had everything set up for me when I arrived. The Marlboro Man's lungs were fine this time. So instead of scouring tubes, I was supposed to completely clean out a big glass display case. Inside was something ten times grosser than tobacco lungs. It was an old piece of meat that maggots had been eating for a week. I guess he was trying to show cycles of nature. You know, how everything returns to the earth and the plants and animals use it up. But this wasn't a little compost pile with carrot peelings and dead leaves. No, Knacke went straight for the gross-out. A hunk of meat all swarmed over with white fly larvae.
"We're done with that project now," he said. "Take everything out, dispose of it, and then scrub the equipment."
I just stood there, staring.
"You see there the end of all flesh. All living creatures—from humans to worms—return to just such a state. Beyond death there is only decay. Do you understand?" He pointed. "Now clean it up."
I didn't move.
"Did you hear me?" he said.
"I'm not sticking my hand in there," I said.
"
I didn't ask you. I told you. Now get to work." He wasn't exactly smiling, but I could tell he was enjoying this.
"No way. It's disgusting. Do it yourself." I didn't care what he did to me. A letter home, sending me down to the assistant principal's office for a yell-at from Frankengoon, suspension, even. "I'm not doing it."
He glared at me. When he got mad, his face looked shiny and swollen. His eyes were red around the edges, like a drunk's. And his breath came in panting sniffs.
"Get to work, young lady." He was holding a pair of rubber gloves.
I didn't take them. "Forget it," I said. "You can't make me do it."
He started into one of those "Who do you think you are?" speeches. But I'd made my choice and I wasn't backing down.
"Look," I said after a while. "What do you want from me? Just tell me why I'm the one you're picking on."
"Picking on? What do you mean? You show much promise. I merely hoped that a little discipline would turn you around. Make you a better student. Perhaps bring out your best qualities."
"You hated me the minute you saw me. I just need to know why."
"I don't hate anyone," he said. "I merely noted the traits that set you apart. I want to see my students succeed to the best of—"
I headed for the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" he snarled.
"Home. You want to call Frankengoon and have me thrown out of school, fine. But I'm not putting up with this anymore."
"Get back here!"
I kept going.
Ten
THE SCHOOL WAS EMPTY at that hour. Endless ranks of lockers, shiny floors reflecting the red exit lights, a far-off hum.
I went straight for the main entrance. And even though I'd been going to that school for weeks, still I got kind of lost. I mean, I knew where I was, but it seemed like the distances were all wrong and the doors weren't where I expected.
It was dark in some of the hallways. A couple hours before, there were crowds of kids, yelling and talking and hanging around. Now it was like I was trapped in some Egyptian tomb and couldn't find my way out.
Turning around, I went back the way I'd come. Only I ended up in another hallway where one fluorescent light bulb was buzzing and throbbing with sickly white light.
Then I heard a metallic squeak. It came. It went. It came back. I don't know why, but I headed toward the sound.
I passed the main Admin suite, where Frankengoon had his office. Maybe it was him, rocking back and forth in his chair, squeaking up and down.
But then I found myself in the gym wing and thought, It's somebody using the workout equipment. Weights or a Nautilus or a rowing machine.
I went round the corner and saw the source of the squeak. It was a janitor, doing the floor. He stuck his mop in the squeezer and yanked down the handle. He moved real slow, like he was trying to get every drop of dirty water out of the mop.
As I came down the hall, he looked up and let go of the squeezer handle. "It's you," he said, and I felt a sick rising in my stomach. I'd never seen him before. Not that I paid much attention to janitors, but this one I would have remembered.
He was kind of hunched over, and his left eye seemed to be bigger than his right. When he talked, there was a hissing sound too, like air escaping from a tire. "You all done with our friend?"
"What are you—"
"Mr. Knacke," he murmured. "Our mutual friend." He set the mop down. A shiny slick covered a swath of the floor, like he was mopping with black coffee.
"Look, I just need to get home, OK? I'm all turned around. Which way is the main entrance?"
"What's your rush?" he said, straightening up as best he could. As he moved, light from behind shone on the dark wet floor. And I saw myself there, reflected, but all bent and smeary. "What do you got waiting for you at home, Zee?"
Hearing him say my name was way too freaky. I panicked, I guess. I had to get out of there and away from him. And so I ran. Fast.
Maybe I needed that jolt of cold fear. Because after seeing the guy with the mop, my mind was all clear and I went straight for the right doorway. It wasn't till I'd gotten off the school grounds, panting and trying to get my heart to slow down, that I realized where I'd heard that voice before. The guy with the mop was the disgusting guy on the phone the other night. He knew my name, he knew my number, and he knew where I lived.
Eleven
"OK, NOW YOU'RE GOING to tell me everything," I said. "What is going on, Relly? You've got to tell me."
We were walking along a gravel path in Mount Hope Cemetery. My first real date. Other girls get a movie and dinner. I got The Beautiful City of the Dead, as Relly called it. Other girls got small talk about school or TV or bands coming to town. Not me.
"We're gods," he said.
"Right. We're gods."
"I'm not kidding."
"I know you're not kidding," I said. "That's what scares me."
"It's true, Zee. You saw me. You saw the fire come, right? That was no lie."
"And I'm going to burst into flames, too? That's what you're going to tell me next, right?"
"No. Not flame. Not you."
"Then what are you talking about? Gods? I'm about as godlike as a ... as a ... You're talking like a looney! You know that?"
"Just because you're looney doesn't mean you don't tell the truth."
We walked along, silent, for a while.
The cemetery really is a beautiful place, with winding paths and little ponds, hills overgrown with tall grass, endless ranks of gravestones. I didn't put up any fuss when he said he wanted for us to go there. I knew we could be alone there, just the two of us and a quarter million dead people. I like the quiet. I like the weeping maidens, angels, draped urns, crosses, and obelisks. I guess it was kind of romantic, even. Just the two of us, walking on a cold afternoon.
I'd brought along my notebook and copied down some of the gravestone poetry.
Weep not for me, my friends so dear.
I am not dead, just sleeping here.
My grassy bed, my grave you see.
Prepare in life to follow me.
"We're gods. Both of us," Relly said again after a while.
"You mean, like, I'm Venus and you're Jupiter?"
"Not planets, gods. The real thing. Gods that once were and will be again." I hated it when he talked this way. And I loved it too. Until that minute, scuffing through the dead leaves in Mount Hope, I would have just said I couldn't stand it when Relly talked like he was insane. But something had changed. In me maybe, in him, or in the whole world. I don't know. Whatever it was, it gave me a feeling like I'd never had before.
Right, me, the bass player hidden back behind Relly and Jerod. Right, the girl who never talked. I was a god. Me, Zee, lousy at school, sniffling with colds half my life, the one nobody noticed. I was a god now. Or maybe I always had been.
I wanted to laugh. And I guess if I'm being honest, I wanted to cry too. "It's all a lie," I whispered. "But go on, keep talking."
"It's not a lie. We've got the power, Zee. Real power like hardly anyone in the whole world. Gods don't die. Think about it, Zee. You'll never have to die."
We stopped, looking down on a pond in a little steep-sided valley. The water was utterly still and inky black. It was strange, what I felt. Peaceful and terrified at the same time. The quiet of the cemetery gave me a sense of peace. And Relly beside me, talking about gods, made me want to run and never turn back.
The strangest thing was not that I'd have these feelings, but that I'd have them at the same time. How could I hold such opposites in my heart? But I did. I hated Relly for the way he made me feel. And I never wanted to say goodbye. I loved being in the graveyard with him and I wanted to escape like a drowning swimmer wants air.
"OK, we're gods," I said. No point in arguing with him. He was so matter of fact. "So what does that mean?"
"First, we're not like everyone else." That was almost funny. Me and Relly like other people? A couple of Ghost Metal kids on a da
te in the cemetery. How could anyone think that was normal?
"I mean that the same rules don't apply to us. Because we're gods."
"So I can skip school and I won't get in trouble? Secret gods don't have to take final exams?"
"I'm serious, Zee. Serious as a heart attack."
"All right. So we're different and the rules don't apply to us. What else?"
"They'll do anything to get what they want from us. From you."
"Who's they?" I asked.
"Knacke, for starters. And Frankengoon. He's part of it, too. And Scratch. That's the one who called you, the guy with the big eye."
"OK, so the bio teacher, the assistant principal, and the janitor are going to get us somehow?"
"You can laugh all you want, Zee. But sooner or later you're going to understand. You're going to believe."
"I'm trying to understand!" I was almost yelling now. "But this is all totally insane. You get that, right? This is not the way things are supposed to work."
"Yeah, I get it. And it's still the truth. They'll do anything to get what they want. There's a war coming, Zee. A battle to the death."
"A battle between a teenage heavy metal band and a high school janitor?"
"That's what it looks like on the outside. But on the inside, it's a lot bigger, a lot scarier, and way more important. And anyway, Scratch isn't really a janitor. He just was there yesterday to see you, to get at you. He won't be back with the mop and bucket. He'll take some other form."
"Like what? An evil librarian? The lunch lady from hell?"
"Making jokes won't change anything, Zee. What I'm saying is true. When the four true elements come together—fire and water, air and earth—then there's power like you can hardly imagine. Then it's real."
"What's real?"
"Think about it, Zee. What do gods have that mortals don't?"
"Funny names."
He scowled. "What else?" I thought of the Ghost Metal sound, the crowd at Waterstreet going nuts for us. "What else?" he demanded.
"You mean like people worshiping, making offerings?"
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