by Beth Goobie
“Uh, Liz?” This had to be done real casual — so smooth, the question would seem to be asking itself.
“Huh?”
She could feel the word form in his stomach. No surprise — that was where his brain usually hung out. “You were on Shadow Council, weren’t you?”
“How’d you know that?”
“You’re in the Celts’ yearbook picture.”
“Oh yeah.” Lizard started rolling down the rim of his Slurpee cup. “What were you doing looking that far back?”
She was keeping it cool, her voice careful as a creeping cat. Leave no obvious tracks. “You guys graduated two years ago. It’s not ancient history.”
“Guess not,” said Lizard. Dusty’s fingers continued to slap the steering wheel, a short hard staccato, full of the unspoken. “Yeah,” Lizard muttered uneasily. “I was on Shadow during my grad year.”
“So,” hedged Sal. “Exactly how does the lottery winner get informed? There’s a scroll, right?”
“Black ribbon, red seal,” Lizard said promptly. “Delivered directly to the lottery winner, and then the good times begin.”
Dusty snorted and Sal shot him a runaway glance. This was getting really interesting, but she knew her brother — if she asked him anything straight out, he’d slam the lid on everything.
“So, uh, what does the scroll say?”
“That’s a secret between Shadow and the lottery winner,” Lizard said immediately. “Internal security. Dead secret or I’m dead, even two years after I graduated.”
“But the scroll does say something, doesn’t it?” Sal probed carefully.
“Yeah, sure it does. Otherwise, why send it?”
“And there’s only one?” Sal’s heart was picking up the pace.
“Yeah, there’s only one scroll.” Lizard was beginning to sound confused. “One scroll, secret message, black ribbon, red seal. It’s legend, everyone knows it.”
“What’re you asking for, Sal?” Dusty shut off AC/ DC. They were stopped for a red light, his face turned toward hers, holding the intense scrutiny he reserved for her. They both had their father’s eyes — large, greenish-hazel. Sometimes, when Dusty looked directly at her, it was like staring straight into her own mind, the eyes of someone who could see deep inside, someone who knew. She’d choke, the air suddenly dark, the ground going into a swerve beneath her feet.
“Just wondering,” Sal said coolly, leaning against Lizard’s sticky chest and bracing her knees against the dash. “Everyone wonders, y’know. That sucker could be anyone.”
“One lucky bastard a year,” Lizard said evenly, still staring out the side window.
“Just so long as it wasn’t you, eh, Liz?” Dusty asked quietly. The light turned green and he ground the gears into first, lurching the car across the intersection.
Chapter Three
Overnight it rained, turning the house into a fragile membrane of sound. Sal dreamed of water sluicing through shadowy yellow trees, rushing down eaves and along gutters, carrying away old thoughts, ugly pain, everything that needed to be forgotten. In the morning she woke to a world heavy and water-soaked, dripping like a glad song, the sky stretching into a clear faraway blue. The kind that takes your eyes and runs away with them, she thought, standing by the garage with her bike and gulping the deep fresh air — it swooped into her as if it had wings, as if she could ride it anywhere and belong there.
A sudden breeze scattered the circle of raindrops dangling from the basketball hoop above her head, and she had to remove her glasses to dry them off. The hoop was ancient — the netting sagged and rust spots flecked the rim. Her father had nailed that hoop above the garage door for Dusty way back when Sal was still crawling around in diapers. The year he’d died, she’d been eight and Dusty twelve. That time was a vague gray smudge in her mind. She couldn’t remember much of it, just the pale blur of her mother’s face and the constant dull bounce of the basketball out back as Dusty played Terminator basketball non-stop through rain, fog, sun and snow. He’d spun pirouettes, bounced the ball backward, run at the basket for stuff after stuff until he’d dropped, gasping, to the pavement, but he’d never tried out for school teams, had dropped phys ed as soon as it was no longer a required course.
He could still swish jump shots from incredible angles up and down the alley, but right now he was splayed in bed, Snoresville. Second year university, and Dusty never got up before nine, regardless of his class schedule. Sal thought university sounded like a great improvement on high school — no one taking class attendance, responsibility that could be abused in an endless variety of ways. She could hardly wait.
Mounting her bike, she rode the clean wet streets toward Wilson Park, a route she often used as a short cut to school. Her hair lifted easily into the breeze and she raised her chin so she couldn’t see the ground, even her handlebars — an old game where she pretended she flew above the earth like the wind. This morning she wasn’t going to think about scrolls, tasteless jokes, or the jerks who played them. From what Lizard had said, it couldn’t have been Shadow Council who’d sent her the two scrolls, and anyone else was relatively irrelevant. Reaching the park, she jumped the curb, then veered through an opening in the hedge that ran around the perimeter, getting a soaker when her knee brushed the foliage. The grass was a sparkling film of droplets, broken by footprints and one double set of wheel tracks that curved in a long sinewy wave pattern. Looking up, she spotted Brydan cruising across the park. The sine wave pattern was his signature. He said he was practicing logarithms.
“Hey, brown-noser,” Sal hollered. “Getting your Trig done early?”
Brydan spun a one-eighty and waited for her to catch up. As usual he was smoking, jigging his shoulders as he listened to his diskman. Brydan was a big jazz fan — Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson, Cecil Taylor. He used a manual wheelchair and wore gloves most of the time, his upper body taut with muscle from working out in the small gym his parents had set up for him in their rec room. When he’d told Sal about the car crash, there were things he didn’t have to describe — she was already there, spinning into the darkness with him. His older sister Cheryl had been driving, fourteen-year-old Brydan beside her in the front seat, both of them wearing seat belts, both high on acid. The icy patch had surfaced just before the railway crossing; they’d slid screaming through the barrier and struck the passing train. It had been an old car with a long front end. The train had crumpled the engine like Kleenex, right to the windshield, then carried the car for two hundred meters before dropping it and roaring off into the night. Brydan had lost both legs below the knees. Cheryl had survived with black eyes, a few scrapes, and recurring migraines that had her begging for the world to end.
Sal’s father had hit the windshield with such force, his brains had been smeared from one end of the glass to the other. She’d been sitting next to him in the front seat, buckled firmly into her seat belt, and that moment of impact had ingrained itself deep into her consciousness where it lurked, hidden and waiting. If she tried to think about the accident, she couldn’t remember a thing. Then, suddenly, memory would surface while she was staring out a window, fly right past her and disappear before she realized what had hit her. Sometimes it happened when she ran into Brydan unexpectedly — her brain would open, there’d be the mad screaming rush of memory, then a thud like a door slamming, and darkness. She’d learned to squeeze these moments thin and tiny, like the ticks of a clock, and let them pass into the deep dark nothingness of her mind.
“No way!” Putting on a loud smile, she skidded to a stop in the wet grass beside Brydan. “You took your clarinet home already?”
Clarinet case #12 poked out of the large pocket attached to the back of Brydan’s chair. “My little sis wanted a go at it,” he shrugged. “I had to warm up the reed for her, so I must confess my lips did make body contact.”
He returned to his sine wave pattern and Sal coasted along behind him, converting his tracks into a double helix. “Your sister thinking of followi
ng in your musical footsteps?”
“Musical wheel tracks. I’m the footless wonder, remember?”
Brydan said it casually, but Sal flushed. To cover, she leaned over and gently whacked the back of his head. “Lucky this isn’t one of your phantom limbs.”
Brydan grinned. “Actually, it’s an apparition. There I was, car smashed to smithereens, me missing both my legs and my head. How was I supposed to become a world-class clarinetist, decapitario? So I did this deep-six new-age visualization thing where I tapped into cosmic consciousness, and presto — I visualized a new head! Lucky everyone else can see it too.”
“Too bad you didn’t visualize one that worked,” said Sal. “And did you have to visualize a muffler sticking out of your forehead? All that blood gushing out the back?”
Brydan was the only person she could joke with about car crashes. She hadn’t told him about her father, but there was an understanding between them, like shared air. Concentrating on the double helix she was creating, she matched Brydan curve for curve. It was hypnotic, made her brain go stupid. The bike wobbled, she took a sharp swerve and had to put on the brakes.
“You wouldn’t get anywhere in Special Olympics,” Brydan smirked.
She opened her mouth, about to make a quick comeback when a series of shrill short screams started up close by, as if someone was being turned on and off. Making a quick U-turn, Sal saw a small group of kids at the other end of the park, pushing and shoving somebody in their midst. Instinctively she looked toward Brydan, who’d already dumped his sine wave pattern and was making a beeline toward them. Sal put on a burst of speed to catch up, then braked as she recognized the circling toughs — five grade nine boys reputed to be collecting bonus points for their frequent trips through youth court. A girl stood hunched between them as one boy pulled her hair and another grabbed her diskman. In spite of the pushing shoving bodies, Sal knew the victim immediately — the girl from the washroom, the strange loner who’d seen her in the washroom with the first scroll.
“Losers!” Brydan screamed, running his wheelchair full tilt into the back of the nearest boy. The domino effect took over, bodies falling everywhere, Brydan careening off his chair onto the top of the heap. Swerving to miss the group, Sal landed on her knees in the wet grass. The shock was jarring but she dragged herself to her feet, wanting to help Brydan off the heap before too many others got moving. He seemed all right, his glasses lopsided, his eyes fiercely bright.
“You need a seat belt for this kind of thing, Bry.” As the groaning heap of bodies began to disentangle, she shoved the wheelchair toward him and extended an awkward hand. How was she supposed to get him from the ground into his wheelchair? What was the etiquette for this kind of situation?
“I’ve got it,” Brydan muttered, grabbing the arms of the wheelchair and swinging himself easily into the seat. “My diskman fell off. It’s in that pile somewhere.”
As the heap erupted, Sal braced herself for another attack, but the five boys took off, waving the two disk-mans and hooting loudly. Brydan stared after them grimly, hands jerking the wheels of his chair back and forth as he pounded after the thieves on phantom feet. Sal knew how tight his family’s finances were — they’d never be able to replace a stolen diskman. Heart in a dull thud, she reached for her bike, but Brydan’s voice stopped her.
“Leave it. They’d take your face off.”
Popping a wheelie, he let out a string of swear words. Unsure of his mood, Sal squatted and began picking up the books that had fallen out of his wheelchair pocket. Then a quiet whimpering made her look up. Forgotten by them both, the girl who’d been attacked was sitting nearby, hunched in the wet grass, her arms around her knees, rocking. Odd cries came out of her.
“Hey.” Tentatively, Sal touched her shoulder. “You all right?”
With a harsh scream, the girl swung at Sal’s hand, knocking it from her shoulder. Sal jerked back in surprise and the girl began pounding her own head with both fists — whack, whack, whack — quick and frantic, directly on each temple.
“Oh my god!” Sal tried to grab the girl’s hands.
“Sal, don’t.” Brydan pulled at her arm. “Back off.” “What do we do then?” demanded Sal. “Watch her hit herself?”
“I dunno.”
They watched in silence as the girl continued to pound her temples, rocking and moaning. Sal couldn’t help glancing at her watch. Twenty to nine — they were going to be late. Uneasily, she picked up the rest of Brydan’s scattered books, drying them with her sleeve before sliding them into the pocket on the back of his chair. The girl kept rocking and hitting herself, Brydan watching her dully. Then, as Sal picked up his clarinet case, the girl’s voice changed into tiny sliding cries, as if she felt helpless in her own throat.
Sal’s throat locked, she forced a swallow that went endlessly down. The way the girl was crying, that voice — she hadn’t heard it for so long she barely recognized it, but there it was, her own voice coming out of the other girl’s mouth. Suddenly she was deep in memory, her bedroom quilt twisted tight around herself, the same wild cries coming up her throat. There had been no one to help her then, her mother and brother locked into their own pain. Alone in her room, completely alone, she remembered burrowing into the inner darkness, going down, way down — past the sound of her heartbeat, past thinking, down to where there was nothing but silence. At first she’d thought she was dead, but then she’d realized she was waiting — for what, she didn’t know, just that she’d reached the end of everything she had and something had to come to her, touch her, give her what she needed to go on.
What had come to her, alone in that darkness, had been a voice, a deep blue voice that sang without words. It had come to her as if it knew her, as if it had always known her, as if it knew exactly the way her heart had once sung and the melodies it needed to hear again. For months after her father died, Sal had gone into her room, curled up alone, and waited for the blue voice to find her. Then, for some reason, she’d stopped — stopped so completely that for seven years she’d forgotten about the voice and its aching beauty until now.
If she could somehow reach into herself, find the deep peace of that voice and share it with the whimpering girl in front of her . . . But how? The voice had come to her only in dreams and daydreams, inside her head — Sal knew her physical singing voice was nothing anyone would choose to listen to. Still, there was Brydan’s clarinet. As the hunched girl continued her wavering cries, Sal dropped to her knees and fumbled with the clarinet case, suddenly feverish to get the instrument unpacked.
“Here.” She shoved the reed at Brydan. No way was she putting herself through a first-degree mastication of someone else’s germs. “Suck on this.”
Quickly she joined the clarinet’s parts, then took the moistened reed from Brydan and slid it onto the mouthpiece. His eyebrows rose and she shrugged. Neither of them were virtuosos — that went without saying. How could she explain a phantom blue voice to him, except to say she probably felt it the way he felt his missing feet.
The girl’s forehead was red with hit marks. Tentatively, Sal blew into the clarinet. It squeaked, no surprise. Then a low C caught and held. Not bad — no trembles or cracks. She thought of the blue singing voice, the way it had come to her, and sent herself into the C like a search. Then she descended into sound — B, A, G, the notes peaceful, long and even, shadows at dusk. Swinging upward, she shifted into minor intervals, the notes growing stronger, deeper into themselves — thoughts rising out of her body, a sweet blue voice stroking her mind: You’ll be okay, honey, just you wait and see. You’re a sweet child, a good child, you never meant any harm. Your daddy knew you loved him ...
Eyes closed, Sal knew when the girl slowed her hitting by the way the air unclenched and loosened into easier breathing. Opening her eyes, she saw the girl still striking at her own head but slowly, like a toy winding down. Although her eyes were closed, the girl had shifted so that she now sat facing Sal. Gradually, as Sal continued to play, t
he girl’s fists stopped connecting with her head and she rocked with her hands upheld and loosely clenched. When she finally opened her eyes, she stared about herself as if confused, her pale blue gaze not quite focused, returning again and again to Sal’s general direction as if asking a question. Sal didn’t know what the question was, much less how to answer it. Heck, from the look in those unfocused eyes, Sal wasn’t sure the girl even saw her. Resting the clarinet bell on her knees, she watched the girl rock, more gently now, both hands limp in her lap. She was thin, her coal-black hair obviously dyed and cut in ragged chunks, as if she’d done it herself. Once again, she was wearing black lipstick, but the rest of her clothes were gray. Why the black lipstick and hair if she wasn’t after the usual image? She didn’t look tough.
The girl sighed heavily, something leaving her. Then, without speaking, without even glancing in Sal’s direction, she climbed clumsily to her feet and walked away.
“Whew!” said Brydan. “Music tames the savage beast, eh?”
Startled, Sal felt his voice pull her back into the reality of Wilson Park, the scuff marks left by the grade nine toughs in the grass, and the raw throb the clarinet had imprinted into her lower lip. Everything felt dreamy and indistinct, as if she was halfway between worlds, still riding the effortless blue voice. Without replying she dismantled the clarinet, placing each piece carefully into the velour-lined case. Something deep and beautiful floated within her body, changing shape like clouds — a deep singing peace, slowly fading.
“Since exactly when have you been able to play actual music, Sally Hanson?” Brydan demanded.
Sal shrugged and slid the clarinet case into his wheelchair pocket.
“I swear you’ve been possessed by the ghost of Benny Goodman!” Brydan sat, openly staring. “No, worse, you actually practiced all summer!”
“I just visualized it.” Sal picked up her bike.
“Visualized what — a phantom embouchure? Pavvie hears you playing like that, he’ll stick you on first.”