AT FOUR THIRTY THE phone rang. I staggered down the hall and grabbed it. "Yeah?"
It was Tannis and she wanted to know where Relly was.
"He was hanging around outside the Bug Jar with Kruel and Unusual when I took off. The gig went great."
"He never came home," she said. "I called Jonathan and Jerod. He's not with them either." The panic in Tannis's voice brought me totally awake in a hurry.
"He's not with you?" she asked.
"No!" I was almost yelling. "Butt took me home about three."
"They must have got him, Zee." Though she'd never mentioned their names before, I knew she meant Knacke and the others. "They've taken him hostage."
"What are you talking about?" I shouted. It didn't matter how loud I got. My dad could sleep through an H-bomb attack.
"I know it! I just know it! They've taken him prisoner. Knacke and Franken and Scratch."
"Why would they do such a thing?" She didn't answer me. "Did you call the police? Or how about the hospitals? Maybe he was in an accident."
I felt like I was living in two different worlds at the same time. In the normal one, we were just kids in a band. In the other one, which seemed to get more real every day, the rules were all different. The police couldn't do a thing against living human fire. Teachers were maniac wizards. The assistant principal of the school was also the mastermind of a kidnapping ring.
"Relly was talking with a guy called Ray Kola. He manages Kruel and Unusual. Maybe they're still talking."
"It's almost five, Zee. The sun will be up soon. It's not this manager guy. It's Knacke and the others. I just know it."
I sat in the kitchen for an hour, watching the numbers flick away on the oven clock. Slowly, a watery dawn light filled the room. Tannis didn't call again. At six thirty I got ready for school. My dad was still sleeping when I went out to get the bus.