by Beth Goobie
Sal endured the long ache of her next class, wondering what she could have said to change the situation. Should she have challenged Kimmie and begged her to dig into some hidden reserve of courage? But wasn’t that something that happened only in novels and war movies? Who kept hidden reserves of anything for daily living, unless it was a few bucks to invest in the next lottery ticket? And after the way she herself had treated Jenny Weaver last year, did she have the right to say anything to anyone else?
Somewhere deep within, a calm voice kept repeating, You don’t deserve this. Keep your chin up and it’ll pass. They’re idiots, don’t waste your time on them. But the fact was she did care, and it was the small ridiculous things she cared about — like drawing Bic tattoos on someone’s arm while waiting for french fries and gravy in the cafeteria lineup, or joining the rest of a class in shooting paper airplanes at a preselected human target every time a teacher’s back was turned. She longed to add her comments to the colloquial archives of the Pony Express. A lightning-bright pain ripped through her each time she was bypassed by a note, as if the hands passing that note had also reached into her chest and torn out her heart — and then the damn thing grew back again, fresh, naive, and ready for the next death.
Friday noon found her standing at her locker, putting off the desolation of yet another solitary lunch as students standing on either side of her bantered back and forth.
“Yeah, I got suspended,” said the guy opening the locker to her left. “For four days. It was like a vacation. I watched the soaps with Mom. She took me grocery shopping. You should see her at the baked goods section, man.” His voice arced, false and high, imitating his mother. “‘Oh, look at these donuts. Doesn’t this one look good?’ And then,” he continued, his voice returning to normal, “she poked her finger right through the jelly filling, licked it off, smiled at me and walked away.”
“No way, man.” The guy pawing through the locker to Sal’s right straightened and grinned. “That’s your mom?”
“My mom,” said the first guy, “never took mom lessons.”
Sal laughed. Forgetting the invisible barrier that had been constructed around her, she turned to the guy on her left and said, “That is so cool. I wish my mom was like that.”
The guy looked like Dusty, with his long thin hair, Pink Floyd t-shirt, and scattered constellations of forehead zits. For the briefest of seconds their eyes connected and she was alive among other humans as an answering grin started across his face. Then his expression went blank and his eyes shifted away. Behind her, the second guy cleared his throat.
“What say we go check out McDonald’s?” he said and they slammed their lockers, catching Sal in a vise of sound. Stunned, she had to fight the urge to dive into her own locker as the two guys walked away. The body did such strange things when it was afraid. There was no arguing with it — weakness hijacked every joint and all it wanted was to go fetal, crawl into the nearest bed and suck its thumb.
Head down, she traveled the labyrinth of school halls, veering to avoid oncoming students as if the briefest body contact would send her up in smoke. The crowd thinned as she entered the tech wing where music classes were held. Junior Band practices took place every Monday and Wednesday at noon, and the music room was always open for extra practice, but only the most dedicated could be found, lips pressed to a mouthpiece, on a Friday lunch hour. Turning into the hall that led to the music room, Sal watched the linoleum pattern swirl beneath her feet. This corridor showed no signs of life, no oncoming rabbity eyes or hastily averted faces to avoid. Still, she didn’t look up. Over the past few days, she’d been developing a hefty visual preference for floors. They were a comforting architectural structure, always there when you needed them. In fact, the floor was a great friend that never betrayed you or suddenly took off, leaving you standing on thin air.
Further down the hall a door opened and two figures emerged from a tech classroom. With a brief comment the teacher headed in the opposite direction, while the guy in the wheelchair popped a graceful 90° turn and came coasting rapidly toward Sal. Focused on a metalwork object in his lap, Brydan didn’t look up until he was approximately ten meters away. When he did, she was close enough to watch his next thoughts flash across his face — he could make a quick one-eighty and take off the other way, or continue grimly toward her, blanking the inside of his head until he was safely past and escaping around the corner.
He continued to approach. They were seven meters apart, then five. Each spoke in Brydan’s wheels whispered into the enormous silence. Would he speak to her? Would he? Brydan was an unpredictable guy, sidestepping all stereotypes and at the same time fitting in everywhere. You were as likely to see him smoking with the metalheads as grabbing a quick game of chess with the brown-nosers. Wasn’t this what she’d always liked about him — he wasn’t locked into any particular way of seeing things, turning every situation instead into an opportunity?
Head lowered, his hands traced his wheels slowly, as if reading his options there in braille. Then, two meters from her, he began to arc to the left and she realized he was going to do it, he was going to pass her like a stranger. No, less than a stranger — simply a hallway object to avoid.
With a moan, she stepped in front of him. Caught by surprise, he ran into her. She lost her balance and had to brace herself against his shoulder. For a moment, everything was the scent of her hair tangled with his, the sound of quick warm breathing. Then he backed up and veered to the right. Again, she stepped in front of him, her eyes narrowed to slits, her body shuddering with deep breaths. It was crazy, she knew she couldn’t win, but some raw mad fist was squeezing her brain and she couldn’t think. Again, Brydan veered to the right and again she rammed herself, a stubborn desperate wall, into his path.
“Sal,” he said finally, his voice gusty and frightened. “Let me past, please.”
She hadn’t meant to frighten him. Stepping aside, she let her hair swing across her face and listened to Brydan’s wheelchair take him slowly down the hall.
The music room was empty except for a disheveled-looking Pavvie who sat huddled at his desk, marking papers. He was wearing her favorite outfit — a yellow-and-black checked blazer and the infamous yellow pants. At her entry, he looked up with a pleased nod as if he’d been expecting her, had been secretly waiting for her to discover her hidden reserve of talent.
“I thought I’d get some extra practice in,” Sal mumbled, suddenly exhausted at the prospect of another human interaction, no matter how brief. “Is a practice room free?”
“Sure, sure.” Pavvie nodded approvingly. “Room B.”
“Thanks.” Grabbing clarinet #19, she headed into one of the two soundproofed rooms that had been built onto the music room’s west side. In the small enclosed space, several chairs and music stands stood at various angles. Through the adjoining wall came the muffled sounds of a brass player warming up in Room A. Slumping into the nearest chair, Sal let the full weight of solitude press down upon her.
It wasn’t going to change. Forty-eight hours had gone by, two full days of living inside a transparent tomb and staring out at the living. Nine and a half months of invisible exile remained before her sentence would be lifted — at least 270 days. Sal’s mind buckled at the thought. And after that? How was she going to feel when the year ended and everyone started talking to her, pretending none of this had taken place? Would she and Brydan be able to ignore what just happened in the hall? Could she pick up again with Kimmie without ever mentioning a full year of torment as the lottery winner? Wouldn’t that just make the whole thing worse?
Dully, Sal opened the clarinet case and began to fit the instrument together. Pavvie had looked at her with such hope. She should at least spew forth a few squawks and toots. Flipping through her music folder, she pulled out “Dixieland Jamboree” and putted through it half-heartedly. She gave it her best, trying to focus, but she sounded like a pair of copulating dachshunds. Bleary notes rose and fell, disintegrating into a wave o
f sadness. Who was she trying to kid? Since when had she given a hoot about “Dixieland Jamboree”? Why should she? No one ever noticed if she actually played or not. She could sit through next Tuesday’s practice faking it, playing silence as she often did, and no one would catch on. Wasn’t this exactly what she’d been doing for the past forty-eight hours — performing a role of silence, except this one had been assigned?
The door to Room B opened and her eyes instinctively dropped, seeking to avoid the incoming face that would go blank upon seeing her and begin backing out. But as she stared at the floor, there came the soft sounds of someone settling into the chair beside her, placing a music folder onto a stand and opening it. Darting sideways, her eyes fixed on a pair of sloppy Reeboks and flew upward into the careful wolfish face of Willis Cass.
“I wondered who was in here,” he said casually, fiddling with a valve on his trumpet. “I thought maybe we could take a run through “The Call of Fate.” The second page is a bitch for first trumpets.”
She stared as if expecting to see him explode into nuclear fusion, a devil-red mushroom cloud, but he continued to sit beside her, a casual grin on his face, faking humanity.
“I am not playing with you,” she blustered. “No way!”
“Why not?” Fluid, relaxed, he leaned back in his chair and studied her. She wanted to scream and launch herself at him, shove that trumpet anywhere she could make it fit.
“Because you’re despicable, that’s why.”
“I’m no different than you.”
“Look,” she spat, leaning toward him. “Maybe I didn’t talk to Jenny Weaver last year, but I didn’t know her. It wasn’t like I was betraying a friend. And I am not like you — forcing this whole lottery thing on everyone.”
“How could Shadow force fifteen hundred students?” shrugged Willis. “We’re giving them what they want, or they wouldn’t be going along with it.”
“They’re doing it because they’re afraid!”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of you. You and your popular ... monsters.”
“Are you afraid of me, Sally?”
Words dissolved in her throat and she retreated into silence, her eyes sinking to the floor.
“Not too afraid to lambast me.” Willis’s voice was thoughtful. “You’ve got more guts than most kids at this school.”
Her heart leapt at the compliment, leaving her nauseous at its betrayal. Who did this guy think he was, twitching her this way and that like a piece of dental floss? “You’re just saying that,” she accused. “For some hidden purpose.”
“Actually,” he said, “I’m not. And what have you got to lose by spending one lunch hour practicing with me?”
“My self-respect.”
He blinked, his mouth tightening. So she could affect him, tilt the ground slightly beneath his feet.
“I’ll tell you something, Sally Hanson,” he said softly. “If you want to succeed in life, you’ve got to be a jerk. So I’ve decided to be a nice jerk.”
They sat watching each other, and in this odd moment of truth Sal realized that Willis Cass wanted something from her. Exactly what this was she couldn’t figure out, but she could feel it — a vague insistent question that pulsed between them.
Why shouldn’t she step into this new game for a while and try out whatever he was offering? It wasn’t as if she’d be breaking any of Shadow Council’s rules by joining Willis Cass in a brief trumpet and clarinet fling, not if their president was asking her. And if she was betraying her self- respect by associating with the highest form of scum S.C. had to offer, none of the lower scum were currently begging for her attention. Surely some scum was better than no scum at all?
“I hardly ever play real notes,” she confessed. “The only reason Pavvie hasn’t kicked me out is because he never actually hears me.”
Willis’s grin was effortless as the sky was blue. “This could be the beginning of a beau—” He paused, then lifted the trumpet to his mouth. “Well, something.”
The weekend passed, a marathon of lonely rollerblading along Saskatoon’s bike trails. If Dusty or her mother had asked, Sal would have been ready with a list of phantom friends she’d been spending time with, but neither did. Her mother was absent all day Saturday and half of Sunday, rushing to beat a deadline at the office, while Dusty worked late at the university, researching for a group presentation. Sal returned home both evenings, windburnt and drenched from sudden downpours, to an empty house and a silent phone.
Monday morning she once again walked her solitary exile through the crowded school halls. The walls buzzed with the early morning rush, comments and catcalls reverberated in every direction. Reaching her locker, she found students swarming the lockers to either side, their backs turned to her, their voices pitched unnaturally loud. She asked three times to be let through, but no one moved, and it wasn’t until she began pushing her way into the group that a path finally opened. Eyes slid toward her, then away. Up and down the hall, no one was obviously watching but everyone tuned in as the path before her widened, displaying a white rectangular object taped to her locker. The envelope was blank, without black ribbon, red wax, or identifiable markings of any kind, but she knew immediately what it contained — her first duty from Shadow Council. She wondered briefly who’d taped it there — Willis? Rolf? Ellen? No matter. Once the envelope had gone up, word would have spread rapidly, the hall filling with students eager to watch the historic moment she walked up to her locker, accepted the duty, and her role as lottery winner began.
Every one of the watching students now thought of her as the lottery winner. Only the inner elite, the actual members of Shadow Council, called her what she really was. And yet it was obvious, so obvious — the lottery winner was a victim. At some level everyone knew this, so why did they call the poor sucker a winner? To make it worse for the victim? To make it easier on themselves?
Inside she was shutting down, a city of water faucets turning off one by one — a private trick she’d picked up somewhere along the line that had probably seemed meaningless at the time. Now she realized that the whole of her life had been a rehearsal for this moment. She’d been so well prepared for her fate that she could be run at top speed into a brick wall and feel nothing. Stepping up to her locker, she tugged at the envelope. The tape resisted, ripping the envelope before it gave, a flicker of muted pain as the last illusion died. Then she was tearing open the envelope and sliding a pile of plastic circles into her hand, the kind of color tabs used to identify players in a board game. On the inside of the envelope she found the word “Targets,” and a list of names with a homeroom written beside each one. Across the top of the list, someone had scrawled the word “DELIVER.” Obviously she was expected to deliver the tabs to the targets in their homerooms.
She had twenty minutes. Saskatoon Collegiate’s classroom doors were identified by a number and a compass direction. The closest on her list was E32 — east side of the school, room thirty-two. Without opening her locker, Sal turned right and headed numbly toward the east hall. The main body of the school was laid out as a one-storey rectangle, with the auditorium in the center and the tech wing and gym added to the north end. Room thirty-two loomed quickly, the door open, a male teacher standing just inside, flicking a ruler absentmindedly against his palm.
“Excuse me.” She had to try several times before she got her voice out of her mouth. “I need to talk to Peter Fleck.”
“Pete?” said the teacher, scanning the class. “I don’t think he’s here yet. Hey Calvin, you know where Pete is?”
Slouching deeper into his desk, a boy with long camouflage hair slid his eyes across Sal. “No sir,” he said with a small grin.
Sal felt a whiplash of fear. How was she supposed to deliver the tabs to the targets if they weren’t in their homerooms? Wait a minute, she thought, sucking the tremble in her lower lip. It doesn’t say I have to put them in their sweaty little hands.
“Would you like me to give Pete a message?�
�� asked the teacher.
“Yes,” said Sal, handing him a tab. “Please give him this.”
The teacher grimaced, nonplused. “From whom shall I say it came?”
“It’s not important.” Backing out the door, Sal booted it to the next room on her list. S8’s door was closed, but a peek through the window showed Ms. Ferwerda, her math teacher, sitting at her desk. As Sal entered, she felt a current surge through the room, plugging each student into awareness. In response her own body stiffened, fighting off the unspoken.
“Excuse me.” She paused at Ms. Ferwerda’s desk. “Could you tell me who Norma Lotz is?”
“Good morning, Sally,” said Ms. Ferwerda. “Norma is over there — third from the back, fourth row in.”
“Thanks.”
Sprawled and hunched in their desks, the class surreptitiously watched Sal progress across the room. The only person who seemed oblivious to her presence was Norma Lotz. Leaned into an animated conversation with another girl, Norma looked like the kind of girl who could easily juggle being beauty queen and high-school yearbook editor — certainly not the exemplary candidate for an assassin that Sal herself had always been. Avoiding the startled eyes of the girl across the aisle, Sal placed a tab on Norma’s desk, then quickly turned and walked to the front of the room, still carrying the gaze of the class.
“Have a nice day, Sally,” said Ms. Ferwerda.
“You too.” As Sal exited, she ran a finger lightly along the doorframe. Yes, it was solid, and her hand didn’t pass through it, so that meant she was solid too. This wasn’t a dream. Everything that had just taken place was unbelievably, staggeringly real.
Both the name and the face of the third target were familiar — he’d been the star of last year’s spring drama production. As she approached classroom N17, Sal spotted Brent Vandermeer standing outside his homeroom, joking with friends. There didn’t seem to be any way around it this time. Direct contact looked unavoidable. She was going to have to walk up to one of the most popular guys in the school and place a tiny plastic bomb in his hand.