“Things are going great .”
PART III
REHEARSALS
The Black Death had a distant twin.
At the same time the Plague of Justinian was raging across the Roman world, a great empire in South America, that of the Nazca, was also disappearing. The Nazca temples were suddenly abandoned, their cities emptied of life. Historians have no clue why this vast and sophisticated culture, thousands of miles away from plague-ridden Rome, vanished at exactly the same historical moment.
Most people haven’t heard of the Nazca, after all. That’s how thoroughly they disappeared.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that the outside world discovered their greatest legacy. Airplanes flying over the arid mountaintops of Peru spotted huge drawings scratched into the earth. Covering four hundred square miles were pictures of many-legged creatures, vast spiders, and strange human figures. Archaeologists don’t know what these drawings mean. Are they images of the gods? Or of demons? Do they tell a story?
Actually, they’re a warning.
It is often noticed how they were built to last, cut into mountaintops where rain hardly ever falls and where there’s almost zero erosion. Amazingly, they’re still clearly visible after fifteen hundred years. Whatever they’re trying to say, the message is designed to last across the centuries.
Maybe the time to read them is now.
NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:
282-287
13. MISSING PERSONS
-PEARL-
The halls of Juilliard seemed wrong on that first day back to school.
This was my fourth year here, so the place was pretty familiar by now. But things always felt strange when I returned from summer break, as if the colors had changed slightly while I was gone. Or maybe I’d grown some fraction of an inch over the last three months, shifting everything imperceptibly out of scale.
Today I couldn’t get used to how empty the hallways felt. Of course, it made sense. All my friends in Nervous System (or ex -friends, really, thanks to Minerva’s meltdown) had graduated last year, leaving the school full of acquaintances and strangers. That was what I got for hanging out with so many seniors when I was a junior.
I picked up my schedule from the front office and checked over the signs saying which classes and ensembles had been canceled due to lack of interest. No baroque instruments class this year. No jazz improv group. No chamber choir ?
That was kind of lateral.
But all my planned classes were still scheduled. They made you take four years of composition and theory, after all, and my morning was full of required academics: English, trig, and the inescapable advanced biology.
So it wasn’t until lunch that I began to see how much had really changed.
The cafeteria was the biggest room at school. It doubled as a concert hall, because even fancy private schools like Juilliard couldn’t take up infinite space in the middle of Manhattan. My third-period AP bio class was just next door, prime real estate for getting to the front of the food line. Walking in ten seconds after the lunch bell, I was happy to see all the vacant tables. The familiar floury smell of macaroni and cheese à la Juilliard , one of the nonfeculent dishes here, made me smile.
Even if the System was gone, it was good to be back.
I got a trayful and looked around for anyone I could sit with, especially someone with useful musical skills. Moz and I might want to bring in backup musicians one day.
It only took a few seconds to spot Ellen Bromowitz all alone in the corner. She was in my year and a fawesome cellist, first chair in the orchestra. We’d been temporary best friends in our early freshman days, back when neither of us knew anyone else.
I took a seat across from her. Cellos could be cool, even if Ellen sort of wasn’t. Besides, there was hardly anyone else there.
She looked up from her macaroni, a little puzzled. “Pearl?”
“Hey, Ellen.”
“Didn’t expect to see you here.” She raised an
PART III
REHEARSALS
The Black Death had a distant twin.
At the same time the Plague of Justinian was raging across the Roman world, a great empire in South America, that of the Nazca, was also disappearing. The Nazca temples were suddenly abandoned, their cities emptied of life. Historians have no clue why this vast and sophisticated culture, thousands of miles away from plague-ridden Rome, vanished at exactly the same historical moment.
Most people haven’t heard of the Nazca, after all. That’s how thoroughly they disappeared.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that the outside world discovered their greatest legacy. Airplanes flying over the arid mountaintops of Peru spotted huge drawings scratched into the earth. Covering four hundred square miles were pictures of many-legged creatures, vast spiders, and strange human figures. Archaeologists don’t know what these drawings mean. Are they images of the gods? Or of demons? Do they tell a story?
Actually, they’re a warning.
It is often noticed how they were built to last, cut into mountaintops where rain hardly ever falls and where there’s almost zero erosion. Amazingly, they’re still clearly visible after fifteen hundred years. Whatever they’re trying to say, the message is designed to last across the centuries.
Maybe the time to read them is now.
NIGHT MAYOR TAPES:
282-287
13. MISSING PERSONS
-PEARL-
The halls of Juilliard seemed wrong on that first day back to school.
This was my fourth year here, so the place was pretty familiar by now. But things always felt strange when I returned from summer break, as if the colors had changed slightly while I was gone. Or maybe I’d grown some fraction of an inch over the last three months, shifting everything imperceptibly out of scale.
Today I couldn’t get used to how empty the hallways felt. Of course, it made sense. All my friends in Nervous System (or ex -friends, really, thanks to Minerva’s meltdown) had graduated last year, leaving the school full of acquaintances and strangers. That was what I got for hanging out with so many seniors when I was a junior.
I picked up my schedule from the front office and checked over the signs saying which classes and ensembles had been canceled due to lack of interest. No baroque instruments class this year. No jazz improv group. No chamber choir ?
That was kind of lateral.
But all my planned classes were still scheduled. They made you take four years of composition and theory, after all, and my morning was full of required academics: English, trig, and the inescapable advanced biology.
So it wasn’t until lunch that I began to see how much had really changed.
The cafeteria was the biggest room at school. It doubled as a concert hall, because even fancy private schools like Juilliard couldn’t take up infinite space in the middle of Manhattan. My third-period AP bio class was just next door, prime real estate for getting to the front of the food line. Walking in ten seconds after the lunch bell, I was happy to see all the vacant tables. The familiar floury smell of macaroni and cheese à la Juilliard , one of the nonfeculent dishes here, made me smile.
Even if the System was gone, it was good to be back.
I got a trayful and looked around for anyone I could sit with, especially someone with useful musical skills. Moz and I might want to bring in backup musicians one day.
It only took a few seconds to spot Ellen Bromowitz all alone in the corner. She was in my year and a fawesome cellist, first chair in the orchestra. We’d been temporary best friends in our early freshman days, back when neither of us knew anyone else.
I took a seat across from her. Cellos could be cool, even if Ellen sort of wasn’t. Besides, there was hardly anyone else there.
She looked up from her macaroni, a little puzzled. “Pearl?”
“Hey, Ellen.”
“Didn’t expect to see you here.” She raised an
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