Fifteen

SO I FELT STRANGE when I was around him. But I felt even stranger when I was alone.

Our house is pretty empty at night with my dad gone to work. Sometimes I watched TV, of course, or put on some music.

After Relly said I was in the band, I started practicing more. He gave me some tunes to listen to. He gave me some charts to work from and explained what the symbols meant. Minor and major chords, repeats and intros, that kind of thing. He even said I could bring in songs for the band, if I wanted to write some.

And this was great. It really was, to be part of the band.

Still, sometimes when I'd sit home by myself, a feeling came over me that really scared me. The nights were getting colder and I'd turn on the electric heater in my room. Behind the metal grate there were coils. And they'd glow orange-hot, like a burning snake all wound in on itself.

I'd sit there and look at those glowing coils and I'd wonder what it would feel like to touch them. I know this sounds crazy. It would hurt, and hurt bad. What more did I need to know? Why would anybody want to touch something hot enough to sear the flesh?

I know some girls cut themselves on purpose. And some guys get into fights just to feel the pain of getting hit. That's not what I'm talking about here. Not at all. I know what pain feels like and I don't like it. Not one bit.

One night, the fever came back and my nose ran like a broken faucet. It wasn't the ick and the sweat that bugged me, though. Or the thought that I'd never shake this flu. It was the feeling that I couldn't look away from the orange-hot coils.

There was power in that glow. And I don't mean electric power. Power to burn, to heat, to cook, to hurt. And feverish power to bring something out of me that I'd never seen before.

When my mind would go down that way, it really scared me. That night I thought of calling my dad at work. But he'd be mad. I could go down to the Chimes and just sit in a booth for a while. He'd be in the back, and once in a while I might see him go by the pass-through window. Still, he'd be busy and I'd be out there all by myself.

I picked up my Ibanez and played for a while, pretty loud, pretty cranked-up. But without the rest of the band, it just didn't do the job.

There was TV. There were books. There were dishes to wash and homework to do.

But no matter what I did, my brain kept dragging me back to those orange, snaky coils, burning hot.

So finally I called Relly, which I'd never done before.

"Hey," I said. "It's me. Zee." My voice was a shaky whisper.

"What's wrong?" he said.

"Nothing."

"Then why are you—"

"Does something have to be wrong for me to call?" I said.

"I don't know. You just sound weird. You OK?"

Hearing his voice calmed me down. We didn't talk about much. School, mostly. Music a little. Five minutes on the phone and I was OK again. The bad feeling was gone.

"All right, well I should finish up the laundry before my dad gets home."

"Sure. See you in Bio."

I hung up and took a deep breath. Wherever my panic had come from, it was gone now, back like a snake crawling into its secret hole.