Beautiful City of the Dead

A N
OVEL BY
L
EANDER
W
ATTS

An imprint of the Houghton Mifflin Company
Boston

Copyright © 2006 by Leander Watts

All rights reserved Published in the United States by Graphia, an imprint of
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts Originally published in
hardcover in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, in 2006

Graphia and the Graphia logo are registered trademarks
of Houghton Mifflin Company

For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

www houghtonmifflinbooks com

The text of this book is set in ApolloMT
Illustrations by Sammy Yuen Jr

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watts, Leander
Beautiful city of the dead / by Leander Watts
p cm
Summary After joining a heavy metal band, high school student
Zee learns that she is a god of water and is called upon to fight
sinister forces that want her powers for their own
ISBN-13 978-0-618-59443-6 (hardcover)
ISBN-13 978-0-618-59499-x (paperback)
[1 Supernatural—Fiction 2 Heavy metal (Music)—Fiction
3 Bands (Music)—Fiction 4 High schools—Fiction
5 Schools—Fiction ] I Title
PZ7 W339Bea 2006
[Fic]—dc22
2005020993

Manufactured in the United States of America
HAD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

I
T STARTS WITH FIRE.

Scrape a match on the rough sandpaper side of the box. Snap back the little tongue on a Bic. Hold a lens in strong sunlight and wait for the hot beam to set a scrap of paper ablaze.

A burning whisper, a tongue of fire, a screaming mouth of flames.

Yeah, that's where it starts.

I'm not a pyro. That's what people think when I talk about fire. They figure I'm some messed up pyro-girl who gets off on burning burning burning. First it's matches, then the candles, then a torch made of gas-soaked rags.

Truth be told, I'm actually afraid of fire. I mean, I've always been drawn to it. I can't hardly keep my eyes away. There's definitely something there that pulls me closer. But at the same time, it makes me feel weak. And afraid.

A roaring red wind. A swirling current of flames.
Heat, raw heat. And the buzz and the crackle and the moan of pure fire.

I know about pyros. Those kind of people are sick, and they're crazy. And it's not like that for me. Not at all.

But still, it starts with fire.

S
O IT WAS THE FIRST DAY
at a new school and I didn't know anyone. There's thousands of kids all rushing and pushing and yelling and I had a fever of 102°. I should have been in bed I guess. But my dad said I needed to be in school. I was up all night going from sweats to chills, watching the little orange dial of my clock. 3, 4, 5, 6. And the fever got worse just about when the sun came up.

Burning red, cold September light. I rolled out of my sweat-drenched bed and an hour later I was standing in line for something, it doesn't matter what now. Just a line. A hundred kids, shoving and grumbling.

And me, burning up. The Amazing Fever Girl. Weak, wet, and woozy.

"You into Brain Hammer, too?" a kid asked me. I'd drawn band logos inside one of my notebooks. Kind of secret. The cover was perfectly plain. Not a mark on it. But inside, in bold, hard lettering: Brain Hammer, the Fabulous Rectotem, Breather Hole, Little Black Pills.

No one had ever seen inside before. No one had ever bothered to look, when I was writing in it.

"Yeah," I said. It felt weird to have him peeking at my gallery of band names. But I didn't close the notebook. "Saw them last year at Waterstreet. Put on a good show."

He was skinny, with long black hair and eyes like a night creature's. Big and and shiny and red. Some people have beautiful blue or green eyes, like gemstones. But this kid's eyes were deep red, almost purple. Mine are the exact opposite, kind of washed-out watery brown. "Real good show," he said. "My ears were ringing for a week."

The fever was making everything blurry. The kid kind of shimmered there in front of me, like when you see something through waves of heat. "My name's Relly," he said, almost in a whisper. I had him repeat it.

"Relly?"

"That's right," he said. He didn't exactly smile. In fact, I never saw him smile. But he stayed there with me. And he kept talking.

"I'm Zee."

"What?"

I spelled my name for him. "It was my dad's idea. I think he got it from an old mystery novel. Least, that's what he says."

So we both were into Brain Hammer. And we both were members of the Weird Name Club. If you're a John or
a Sarah or a David or an Emily, you just don't know what it's like to have people look at you funny every time you say who you are. "How do you spell that? Does that mean something? That's your full name?"

I was feeling so weak I had to lean against the wall or I'd end up in a heap. "You in Bio this period?" I asked.

"Yeah." He edged in closer and looked at me like he was trying to see through a foggy window. "You look awful," he said.

"Thanks."

"No, I mean you look kind of sick."

"Just the flu. I should be home in bed."

He said some more, but it was all a blur. Names of people I didn't know, words I didn't understand, bands I'd never heard of.

I made it to the end of the day in my fever fog. I didn't remember anything but Relly. Those big eyes staring into me, like he saw something nobody else could see.

T
URNS OUT THAT
I
WAS
together with Relly in two classes. Bio and art.

I missed the second day of school. But then the fever broke and my dad said I'd have to go back.

In art, the teacher said he wanted everybody to do a project about something they didn't understand. It could be technical, like perspective or shading. Or it could be a subject. There was the usual stuff: racism and abortion and God and eating meat. "I don't understand," one whiny-voiced girl said, "cruelty to our fellow creatures."

I went a little more specific. I brought in an old
Look
magazine I'd found at my grandparents'. It was from the Vietnam War days, all warped and wrinkly and stinking of their moldy basement. The thing I didn't understand was a picture of three Buddhist monks sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, wrapped up in fire. Their faces shone through the billowing flame, like skulls seen
through wispy veils. The real thing from the olden days. Full page, full color.

The teacher was clearly freaked out. But he tried to be cool and ask me what I didn't understand.

"They did it to themselves," I said. "It was a protest against the war. Get it? But why? How would anyone do it?" There were a couple of gas cans to one side, surrounded by a pool of liquid fire.

He made some lame suggestions about "the triumph of the human spirit." And he said I could make a collage, like I was a fourth grader. And went on to talk with Heather Potts about her collection of Kalico Kitten pictures.

Relly came over and looked at my burning monks. "Crot Almighty," he said. He made up words like
crot
and
draghole
and
poxy
and used them even if you didn't understand. "Where'd you get this?"

"Old magazine."

"And you want to understand it?"

"That is so messed up," a guy named Nick Byers said, looking over Relly's shoulder. "Why would you bring that to school?" I guess he thought girls shouldn't be into such flat-out freakout stuff. Makeup, soccer, TV, baby-sitting. Those were OK for girls. But burning monks, Brain Hammer, playing the bass. Those were supposed to be just for guys. And weird guys at that.

Relly looked close at the picture. "They look almost happy," he whispered.

"Yeah. Not quite. But almost. Maybe it's better than happiness," I said.

That should have been enough to scare him off. But it didn't. He kept asking me about the picture. And he was really listening to my answers.

S
O THAT'S HOW WE MET
. And that's why he started telling me all about his band.

"You know how if you turn the volume all the way up till your ears almost bleed, how when it's so loud there's a quiet place inside the noise? Loud enough to shake your teeth loose but in there somewhere is a ghost voice, like silence singing."

Relly kept going, testing me. If I just walked away, shaking my head, then he'd know I was like all the rest. But I stayed there and listened, and maybe even tried to understand. "That's the sound I want to get. So loud it almost crushes your skull flat and inside the noise is a ghost, a candle flame burning inside a fiery furnace." He said he was inventing a whole new kind of music, something he called Ghost Metal. Screaming guitars, crusher bass, drums like a ten-car pileup. But inside the noise, a ghost voice, something almost silent but still you can hear it.

"You want to know something?" We were eating
lunch. Or I guess by then we were poking at the wreckage of lunch. "They call me Freak Boy and they're right."

His voice was way low, like he was telling me some evil secret. "I am the Freak Boy. And that's totally OK. Freak Boy conquers the universe. Freak Boy burns like a meteor whipping through the atmosphere. Freak Boy and his band defeats the power of Uberwanks. Freak Boy gets a thousand girls and makes them scream." He was all cranked up, still whispering, but his eyes were shining and the words came out fast.

"So I don't care what they call me. Freak Boy is just fine. It means that they see me for what I am. They're afraid of what I'll do. They know that some day I'll be out of this poxhole and killing the crowd every night ten thousand at a time with my guitar."

I guess I should have been afraid of him. And maybe I was. Afraid and still I wanted to be near him. Afraid and still I wanted to hear him go on about Ghost Metal and the King Cruncher Riff, and how he'd be on top some day, all the way on the top.

A
BOUT A WEEK INTO
the new school year, I saw a wrecked car by the side of the road. My bus had to slow down to get around the police. And everybody was gawking out the windows. The car was burning, thick greasy smoke churning up from the motor. I guess the people were out and safe. So the police just stood there watching the car burn.

I may be weird in some ways. But like everyone else, I had to look. And I kept looking as long as I could, craning my neck to get a last glimpse of the black cloud and the crimson flames.

So what? You don't see a burning car every day. But it wasn't like a flying saucer had landed at the mall or Elvis came back from the dead on Sesame Street. So why should it make any difference?

Only because of what I was feeling when I saw it. I've read a lot about pyros and how they get off on fires. Most of the times it's loser guys who've got something twisted and rotten inside themselves. And fire is supposed to be an
outlet for this messed-up part of them. I've read a ton about it. Psycho stuff, medical and police stuff. I even found a little booklet they gave out to junior high kids in the olden days. "Arson Is No Joke."

What you've got to understand is that I never, ever played with matches. I didn't even try smoking when the other girls were. I didn't start all four burners on the stove and stand there staring into the blue hissing flames. I didn't even like campfires and toasting marshmallows.

So when I talk about fire, it's not the standard pyro stuff.

In fact, sometimes I think I'm drawn to fire because it's the opposite of who and what I really am. Do I feel the pull, I used to wonder, because it's the thing I don't have? The thing I need to make me complete? I heard a guy on TV say that when people really fall in love it's two opposites fitting perfectly together, like the north and south ends of a magnet. They're totally different, but they need each other. Like night and day. Like burning sun and drenching rain to make green things grow.

So maybe that's why the fiery car really got to me. I wanted to know what the smoke smelled like and what the tongues of flame felt like, licking out of the wreck.

I told Relly about it the next day. "All the seats and plastic and dashboard burning: that's the dangerous part. The smoke is poison. Not the fire itself. That actually makes things pure. You know, like heating up
a needle when you got to get a sliver out of your finger."

He nodded. "Totally," he said. "Or at the dentist's office, you know, they put the tools in the machine to sterilize them. Boiling water to kill all the germs."

"To make it pure, right?"

"Yeah. Fire and water. You need them both. Together."

"W
E THREW OUT OUR BASS PLAYER,
" he told me the next day. "He cared more about his hair than the music. I should've known. He was such a poser with those black leather pants. Butt never liked him." Butt was the drummer. "Jerod did. That should've been a sign too. What does a singer know about bass?"

So there it was: my big chance. I didn't believe in fate. I didn't think that the planets lined up and shaped our lives. Or secret forces were working. I'm not sure I even believed in genes and DNA. People just are. Things just happen.

"So you're looking for somebody? I mean for the band?" I asked.

"Yeah, I guess. But it's such a pain trying out new guys. They come in trying to impress you with their awesome chops." He kind of sneered, saying that. "I mean, you got to be able to play. But just wiggling your
fingers fast is nothing. It's worse than nothing. Pure crot."

"It's got to be a guy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe I should try out for the band." There, I said it. Let him laugh, or snicker. But I said it.

"What are you talking about?"

"I play bass. I've been in some bands." This second bit was sort of a lie.

"You never told me that." We were hanging around by his locker. He closed it, real quiet. He looked at me in a different way than before. And I liked it.