Beautiful City of the Dead by Leander Watts

says it's normal to think about doing it. Not healthy, just normal. Everyone thinks about jumping in some time."
    This made me even more afraid. Had he been reading my mind?
    "What are you talking about?" I said.
    "There's some impulse—that's what she calls it—an impulse to do it—to throw yourself in. 'We all want to return to our element.' That's what she says."
    "So what happened to her?"
    "My mom?"
    "No, whoever it was that used to be Knacke's fourth."
    "We all go back to our element. Some sooner. Some later."
    We watched the silvery chain of the high falls a long time. The water came and fell and ran away. But it never ran out. It never stopped.
    "Maybe that's what Knacke is so afraid of now. Why he's acting so weird. Maybe he thinks he's got to burn up—go back to his element—now that the tetrad is missing a piece."
    "Yeah, maybe." I took a dime out of my pocket and
tossed it over the fence like I was standing at the biggest wishing well in the world. The dime turned, over and over, as it fell. It flickered like a tiny silver spark all the way to the bottom.

Twenty-five
    E VERY DAY, SCHOOL SEEMED less real. I went, I sat in classes, I failed tests, and I ate disgusting school lunches. I watched the other kids do what they always did. Fighting and gossip, flirting and goofing off, smoking in the lavs and beating up the geeks.
    It was all perfectly normal. And it was all unreal, like I was stuck inside a movie and knew everyone was just an actor.
    Kids did what they always did. Only it felt like they were just going through the motions. I swear I heard two girls near my locker talking but all that was coming out of their mouths was blah blah blah. No words, like they were extras in some crowd scene and the director had told them, "Just pretend to talk."
    So school was nothing. Knacke was still out and I didn't see Frankengoon all week before the Bug Jar gig.
    Up in Relly's attic, things were getting pretty tense.
We had three days till the gig and Butt had brought in a new tune he wanted us to do.
    He showed up with an old album by Iggy and the Stooges. "It's called
Raw Power.
And that's the tune I want to do." He put the record on the turntable and out came this crude chugging riff. He started jerking his legs and whacking the side of his head in time. "Cool, right? Totally cool. These guys were like the grandfathers of punk."
    The tune was simple. Relly and me had it down in about ten seconds. And Butt had even scribbled some of the words. The part that Jerod liked best was when he got to sing "Get down baby and kiss my feet."
    We ran through it a couple of times. "So we do it at the Bug Jar, right?"
    Relly shook his head. "I don't think so. It's getting too close to the gig. We've only got three days to go."
    "It's done," Butt said. "We're ready, right? All Jerod's got to do is learn a couple of lines. Doesn't matter if he gets it all."
    "I don't think so," Relly said.
    "Come on. We're not doing a single tune I brought in. This one's easy and I love it. Raw Power!" he yelled. "The crowd will go nuts for it when Jerod gets to the chorus. Raw Power!"
    "Let's save it for the next gig. We've already nailed down the set list."
    "Yeah," Jerod said, "and you two figured it all out without even asking me."
    "Maybe if you showed up on time once in a while, you'd get a say in the matter." Relly turned up his volume and let fly a long, fuzz-toned riff, silencing Jerod for the time being.
    We sounded good. But still, all the little things that bugged Jerod were now ten times more obnoxious to him. He swore at me when I missed my cues. He picked up an empty pop can and threw it at Relly when his top E string broke. "What are you so bent about?" Relly snarled. "Strings break, OK? That's the way it goes." He looked over at me for support. "His Highness doesn't get it."
    "Right!" Jerod yelled back. "So it's you two against me now. Well you better not forget that without me, you're just a couple of geek