Free Beautiful City of the Dead by Leander Watts Page B

he wiggled a couple of strands of spaghetti over his gaping mouth and made monster noises.
    Then there was bio. I thought about skipping. I was ready to do it. But Relly was hanging around by my locker before class and said I had to be there.
    "Why? So Knacke can wave my notebook around and tell everyone I'm a cult leader? Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe he'll want to burn me at the stake like a Salem witch. I can hardly wait."
    "The witches there weren't burned. They were all hanged."
    "Enough, all right? I was just making a joke. I don't care about the Salem witch trials."
    "Well, you'd better be in class."
    So I went.
    Knacke was all excited about his new fungus. He'd brought in a big hunk of rotten wood and as soon as we all settled down, he turned out the lights. He'd already drawn the blinds and taped heavy paper over the windows. As our eyes got used to the darkness, we all saw what he was so thrilled about.
    A faint greenish glow was coming from the fungus. Knacke didn't talk for a while. He let us stare at the broken tree stump. Some kids were impressed. Some asked questions but he hushed them. Some wanted to come up to the front and look closer. This he was OK with.
    So row by row went and got up close and personal with a hunk of glowing rotten wood.
    When it was my turn, I kind of hung back. "Come on, come on, Zee," Knacke said, smiling. "This is a wonderful chance to—"
    Blah blah blah. I wasn't listening. I was looking over at the Smoking Man, who sat in the corner. His face was greenish now, like he was sick from all that nicotine and tar.
    I guess Knacke explained about how the fungus created
its own light. And he told us about some fish and slime molds that did it too. I wasn't paying attention. Any minute, I kept thinking, he's going to go off on me, yelling about my notebook and the so-called occult crowd I was hanging around with.
    Only that day it never came. He was so caught up in his glowing clump of wood that I guess he forgot about me and the phone call.
    He opened the door and the light from the hallway flooded in. Squinting against it, I followed the rest of the kids out. No sneers, no nasty comments, no threats from Knacke.
    And that made it worse. Passing by Knacke, I was sure this was just the calm before the thunderstorm, the smooth seas before the tidal wave hits and tears the boat to shreds.

Eighteen
    "I 'M GOING, WITH OR without you," I told Relly.
    "It's breaking and entering," he said. "It's against the law, you know. If you get caught—"
    "I'm getting into school tonight and I'm getting my notebook back. Are you in or out?"
    He didn't hesitate. "I'm in. But we got to make it perfect. We can't screw up, all right?"
    All through practice that night, I kept looking at Jerod and wondering what it meant that he was the god of air. Yeah, he was the singer. Only, there had to be more to it. For all his big talk and stuck-up ways, he really was a lightweight, wispy as the wind. Way more than the rest of us, Jerod acted most like a god should. Full of himself, proud and self-assured. And he looked like one too. But when it came down to it, he was just too into himself for this kind of thing. Making the band a success—definitely. Helping Zee out—forget it.
    So I didn't want him along when we broke into school.
    And I watched Butt too, while we ran through our set list.
    When he was bored, Butt would squeeze his hand under his armpit to make blapping noises or try to crush a Jolt can against his forehead. He was like a big toddler kid. Six feet tall and still he acted like a two year old sometimes. I think he went right from his baby rattle to a drum set. He wasn't stupid. That's not what I mean. He was simple. Which is different than being a feeb. He liked a couple of things and that was all he needed.
    Big-metal noise. Butt jokes. Working on his van. Pizza and wings. Girls, but only to look at, not to talk to. He wasn't quite ready for that.
    I liked Butt, and I trusted