THE GOOD LUCK JUST kept coming. Knacke was out sick again, and the sub didn't make us do any work. Smoking Man didn't reappear in the classroom. Nobody got dragged down to the office and grilled about the wreckage we'd left in the hall. I guess the janitor had found the burned-up dummy the next day and tossed him in the dumpster.
And almost as good, both Jerod and Butt got their own wheels that week.
Jerod had been driving his dad's BMW. But for his birthday he got his own car, a brand-new Acura.
Butt took the driver's test again and finally passed. So now he could actually drive the beat-up van he'd been working on since he was twelve. It was a heap, held together with bungee cords and duct tape. Still, it ran. And he was happy to give me and Relly rides in the Buttmobile whenever he could.
I even felt healthy, for the first time that school year. A whole week with no runny nose. No more fevers. No more heavy pressure in my chest, like someone was standing on me and squeezing out all my breath.
And with the notebook back, it was like I'd reclaimed some part of myself. There were my first versions of the Scorpio Bone logo. There was the page where I'd written Relly's name about a hundred times. I wasn't even embarrassed now to see it. Most important, there were all the lyrics for our songs. Some were mine, and some were copied straight from stones in Mount Hope.
It bothered me a little, to think that Knacke and Frankengoon had been poking around in the notebook. Still, I had it back. It was all there, unharmed.
I sat with Relly in his attic, reading through the poetry, enjoying again the creaky rhymes and strange images. Who were these people, I wondered, who had such words of doom carved above their heads? I mean, I had names and dates for them, but still they seemed as alien as if they'd come from another planet.
Though worms my poor body
may claim as their prey,
'Twill outshine when rising
the sun at midday.
Again and again the poems talked about "rising." At the end of the world, I guessed, these people thought they'd come up from the ground. But not as crumbling, poxy old bones. No, I pictured them as pure light, beautiful, shining, happy. It wasn't all doom and gloom. No, there was real hope there on some of the stones. Hope and a weird kind of joy.
"Hey, what do you think about this one?" I asked Relly.
Be wise ye living while you may
Prepare against the coming day
When you as low as I must lay
Your souls from hence be called away.
We'd been back to Mount Hope and collected more inscriptions. I had this idea that some day we'd cut an entire CD with songs based on the gravestone writings.
"You think this one is about going to heaven? 'Your souls from hence be called away.'" I read aloud.
"Maybe."
"Maybe what?"
"Maybe heaven or maybe right here on earth. Didn't you ever know anyone who heard a call? It's mostly people who go to church. But not always."
"So you did? You heard a call?" I asked.
He pointed to his Strat in its half-opened case. The finish was beautiful amber red. The strings shone like silver veins. "Sure. I heard it loud and clear. The monster riff, the Ghost Metal noise. Spirits screaming through the amps."
When he talked this way, I felt myself falling, like I was out in the ocean and forgot how to swim. I was going down, down, down. Soon enough the waves would close over my head and I'd be lost forever.
I read girl magazines sometimes, though I didn't want anyone to know it. Makeup tips, dating, weight loss, workout routines. I tried to find somebody in those slick pages who was like me. I tried to find something I might care about, and then maybe I'd be a tiny bit normal. It embarrassed me, actually. Why should I care? I had Scorpio Bone. I had Relly and my Ibanez and my notebook full of weird old sayings. Why should I care about such trivial stuff as boyfriends and new fashions?
But I even thought of writing to an advice column.
"I have this problem. I'm the only girl in a band. And we're gods too. We have secret powers. Water and fire and air and earth. And there's these old creepy guys who want to destroy us. Only I'm not sure why. My main problem is knowing if the lead guitarist loves me or if he just likes the way I play bass. He also bursts into flames sometimes. So what should I do? Play it cool like I don't care, or be myself and let him know what I feel? Any advice would be a big help. Thanks."
Yeah, they print a lot of letters like that. Right in with the four-page spreads on new mascara shades, there's usually an article about teenage heavy metal gods and the evil forces they face.