get yourself together."
Great. I was being told to chill out by a guy who looked like he was dying of Ebola fever. Maybe Moz was about to collapse, and then we could do this whole Special Guest thing after he recovered - and I got some more practice in.
Alana Ray was still staring at her hands. She'd hardly moved the whole time, like some kind of kung-fu Zen master contemplating destiny. I was thinking how maybe I should have worn something Japanese - then I'd at least look fool. Well, actually, I already looked fool. In the usual sense of the word.
"Time is a strange thing, Zahler," Alana Ray said. "If you focus your mind, thirty minutes can seem like five hours."
But it didn't. It seemed like five seconds.
Then Astor Michaels came in and said that it was showtime.
A thousand of them waited out there, all just looking at us.
Random shouts filtered up from the audience - they weren't heckling us exactly, just bored and ready for another band to start. We didn't have any fans yet - the few friends Moz and I had invited were too young to get in. The sight of the unfriendly crowd made me realize one big thing missing from my rock-star dreams:
In all my fantasies about being famous, I was already famous, so I never had to get famous. I never had to walk out in front of a crowd for the first time, unknown and defenseless. In my dreams, this awful night had already happened.
I looked over at Moz, but he was staring down at his feet and still trembling, like he was having a seizure. Behind her paint buckets, Alana Ray's eyes were shut, and Pearl was peering down at her keyboards, flicking switches as fast as she could, like she was about to take off in a spaceship. Nobody looked back at me, like they were all suddenly embarrassed to be in the same band.
It's not my fault! I wanted to shout. I never wanted to play the bass!
Minerva was the only one who looked happy to be onstage. She was already leaning over her mike stand, talking to a bunch of tattooed guys down in front, flirting with them, flicking at their grasping hands with spike-heeled black boots. Even through her dark glasses you could see that her eyes were scary-wide and glowing, sucking energy from the crowd before she'd sung a single note.
Pearl gave me a low E, and I took a deep breath and tuned up. The sound boomed out from my bass like a foghorn, rumbling through the club. A few howls from the audience answered the noise, as if I'd interrupted someone's conversation and they were pissed.
The guys flirting with Minerva had big muscles and tattoos on their shaved heads. I'd read the night before about a big riot in Europe, a whole crowd at some soccer game going crazy all at once, attacking one another. Hundreds had died, and nobody knew why.
What if that happened here, right now? The whole crowd turning into deadly maniacs? I knew exactly who everyone would choose to kill first.
The half-assed bass player in the lame T-shirt. That's who.
When we were all tuned up, the stage lights lowered. Total darkness, like I'd suddenly gone blind from freaking out. More impatient shouts filtered up from the crowd, and someone yelled, "You suck!" which people laughed at, because we hadn't even started yet.
We were so dead.
I swallowed, waiting to begin...
"Zahler!" Pearl hissed.
Oh, right. We were doing the Big Riff first. I was supposed to start.
My fingers groped for the strings, and I heard the amps squeak with the sweat on my fingers. I tried to remember what to play.
And I couldn't.
Chapter 18
No, this wasn't happening...
I'd been playing this riff for six years, and yet it had somehow disappeared from my brain, from my fingers, from my whole body.
I stood there in silence, waiting to die.
25. MASSIVE ATTACK
- MOZ-
Zahler had frozen up.
Perfect.
My head was burning, sweat running into my eyes, heart pounding like something in a cage. But it wasn't stage fright; it was the beast gone wild in me. I'd been anxious all day, too nervous to eat, and now the hunger had caught up with me all at once.
Garlic and mandrake tea wasn't cutting it. I needed flesh and blood.
"Play, Zahler!" I heard Pearl hiss, trying to get him going.
The crowd was growing impatient, a restless hum building before us, but at least the delay gave me a few