by Beth Goobie
“A drowned rat,” said Sal, turning from Ms. Wallace’s welcoming smile toward the rainsoaked gloom of Saskatoon Collegiate.
For the next several days, Sal was kept busy slurping Ranitidine and working on Myra Hurgett’s terror campaign. Envelopes kept showing up in her textbooks or taped to the outside of her locker. Every time she turned around, someone from Shadow Council — Rolf, Ellen or Judy — seemed to be stepping out of a crowded hallway toward her, three fingers raised. Sal’s response was automatic, a wave of shock that reverberated through her like a languid guitar string, then a bleak vague feeling, colorless and useless as the four stone faces carved into Mount Rushmore. “Follow” was always the command, the Shadow Council member turning and starting off down the hall as if her compliance was part of the assumed order of things.
And she always followed; it seemed as natural as breathing. So did her listless unthinking manner as she scuffed along behind the Shadow Council member who was busily scouting out a quiet place to hand over the latest envelopes. She wasn’t told what these contained. Each one arrived with her instructions clipped to it, detailing the target as well as the time and place of delivery. As per Willis’s suggestion, the terror campaign was given a grassroots appearance — there was no predictable pattern to the targets, and Sal was handing out an average of five envelopes a day. She never saw any of the duties take place, but overheard students talking: “... did you see Ryan Havel trip her in the cafeteria? She was plastered with Jell-O...” Or “... she let out a scream that shattered the trophy case, man. I think she actually thought the paint was blood ...”
Twice during this time, Sal crossed paths with Myra Hurgett in the hall. The first time the girl was still her normal bubbly self, cruising with the rest of the champagne-giggles crowd, but by Thursday afternoon she was walking differently, her eyes wary and darting, books held protectively over her chest. That night Sal dreamed of bodies walking in fear down endless hallways — the bodies of everyone she knew hunched inward, protecting themselves against the envelopes that kept appearing in her hand — and silence, dense unbroken silence. Friday morning the dream remained with her, unshakeable as she entered the school. Braced for the usual eruption of stomach acid, she approached her locker cautiously but no one stepped out, three fingers raised, to meet her. As the morning passed free of envelopes to deliver, the violence in her stomach gradually settled. Perhaps Shadow Council had gotten its fill and the goddam thing was over; maybe she could finally get back to some pretense of sanity.
Then, just before lunch, she entered the seldom-used girls’ washroom at the back of the Tech wing and discovered a sobbing Myra Hurgett, her face pressed against the tampon machine. As Sal entered she whipped around, her face a cataclysm of fear. Equally startled, Sal froze, ready to bolt backwards out the door. Myra’s face was a blur of make-up, her eyes swollen and bloodshot. With a jolt of surprise, Sal realized the other girl wasn’t pretty, not really — her appeal had always been in the effortless way she carried herself, a carefree glee now defined by its absence.
“You,” Myra whispered, staring. “What do you want? Haven’t you done enough already?”
So the grassroots camouflage had been a bust. Myra had guessed the true identity of her tormenters from the beginning, and she probably thought Sal had hunted her down now to deliver some kind of ultimatum.
“Don’t worry,” Sal stammered awkwardly. “I just want to use the can.”
Myra turned, moaning, toward the sink, and Sal slipped gingerly into the closest stall. Heart thudding, she locked herself inside. Everything she touched vibrated as if about to explode, and the sound of her urine hitting the toilet water frightened her so badly she almost vomited herself inside out onto the cement floor. Crouched on the cold seat, she listened with radar — enhanced hearing, but there was no sound of anyone leaving the washroom. Reluctantly she emerged from the stall to find Myra waiting by the sink, her face washed and a tense determination shaping her mouth. The air pulsed, radioactive. Approaching the sink, Sal began to wash her hands.
Tugging two paper towels from the dispenser, Myra handed them to her. Sal hesitated. Was the lottery victim allowed to accept kindness from a target? Hell, Sal thought, suddenly furious. Was the victim allowed to own a single moment of her own mind, or was the inside of her head available only for the nauseating sludge of self — contempt?
“Thanks.” Drying her hands, Sal dropped the paper towels into the garbage. Slowly her eyes climbed the wall, brick by brick, until she met the question of Myra’s gaze. “It’s over,” she said tersely, her own eyes flitting away. “I think.”
“You mean it?” Myra’s face hesitated, afraid to leap toward hope.
“Just keep away from Linda Paboni on the volleyball court,” said Sal. “Let her score every point she wants.”
Myra nodded, her eyes vague. “The bitch.”
“The bitch has friends,” Sal said, turning toward the door. “Or whatever passes for friends in this place.”
“Do you?” asked Myra suddenly, and Sal found herself riveted to the spot, unable to will herself forward.
“Do I what?”
“Have friends.”
“Ask me a year from now.”
“But it’s not fair.”
“Nine thousand people got wiped out in an earthquake in Turkey last week,” said Sal. “Was that lottery fair?”
Myra’s mouth opened, then closed.
“Just don’t tell anyone what I told you, okay?”
“I won’t,” said Myra. “I swear on everything that’s important to me. Cross my heart.”
Their eyes held and Sal found herself looking into the beginning of friendship, a friendship that might or might not survive being put into deep freeze for the next nine months.
“Have a good year,” she said harshly, turning this time without hesitation toward the door.
“Inside the Question” suspended on lofty drawn-out notes, high above the mundane. The trumpet line arced slowly, a bird dreaming its way toward the sun, while the clarinet hummed and rippled beneath it like grass in the wind, repetitive restless sequences of notes. The two melodies scarcely seemed connected, one so high, the other breathing across the surface, each pulling its own thoughts into sound. Yet the longer Sal played, the more she felt them singing toward one another, parallel rhythms of bliss.
“That’s gorgeous,” she sighed, resting the clarinet bell on her knee and staring at her musical score. “How did you ever think of it?”
“At my uncle’s farm,” said Willis. “Lying on my back in a field and watching the enormity of sky above me. There’s a family of hawks in the area and I’d watch them hovering, the way they drifted weightless, like a mind set free. I’d lie there and watch the hawks hover and try to feel the sound of it — the song of that kind of dreaming. A hawk’s reverie. One day I brought my trumpet with me and played while I watched.”
“Did you feel like you were flying?” Sal’s voice was husky, as if she’d gone deep into the dream of it and was speaking herself awake.
“There’s a way of calling beauty into yourself,” Willis said slowly. “Of opening to it. Out in that field, I’d feel as if I was calling all the blue of the sky down into me. You ever feel like that?”
Sal nodded.
“We’re more than just this,” Willis said, touching his arm. “When I play trumpet, I can feel it.”
“Soul?”
“Soul, mind, dream — whatever you want to call it. Sometimes I can hear it in your playing too. You’ve been practicing.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t tell him the way practicing felt when she was alone — repetitive, useless. Like lifting weights, climbing stairs, bricks in a wall.
“You should try writing music.” Willis blew an experimental riff. “I’d like to hear what you’d come up with.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” He met her eyes, expressionless, and they were back to square one, the basic tension that underlay everything between t
hem — inside the question: Why are you doing this, Willis? Why are you spending time with the victim?
“Why can’t anyone in this school talk to the lottery winner?” She couldn’t say victim, not out loud. Not yet. “I could still deliver Shadow’s messages if people were talking to me. What’s the big deal with no one talking to me?”
“Your loyalties would be divided.” Willis fiddled with his trumpet valves. “What if a duty targeted one of your friends? Sooner or later, you’d squeal.”
Sal mentally ducked all thoughts of Myra Hurgett. “You could make me sign a contract. In my own blood. Threaten me with a zillion demerits if I told.”
“Uh uh,” said Willis. “You have to be set apart. Your friends have to set you apart. All connctions have to be broken. The victim exists in limbo. It’s the only way.”
“So Shadow can get its rocks off.”
“It’s just for one year. No one takes it personally. Wait and see — next year no one’ll even remember.”
“I’ll remember.”
“I know you will,” Willis said quietly. “Why d’you think I’m here?”
Sal wondered if he knew he was lying — if he was presenting this lie to make her feel better, or if it was simply to improve his own self-esteem. “Inside the Question” had two parts — the trumpet couldn’t soar as spectacularly without the low hum of the clarinet to give it contrast. Where was the astonishment of sky without the horizon line of earth to worship it? Just like everyone else, Willis Cass loved a victim. He needed her.
And she needed him. “So, why d’you think I’m here?”
For the first time he looked startled, his dark eyes faltering.
“I could blow your cover,” she continued. “Squeal to Shadow, earn you a few demerits, maybe even get you kicked off.”
A flush blew across his face, and he worked up a rueful smile. She saw it — the interest she’d piqued, the fear.
“Okay,” he said. “So why are you here?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe I like it inside the question.”
He nodded, and the same pause touched them both.
“Why don’t you try it?” he asked. “Write some music for two parts and bring it next week.” Rifling through a stack of textbooks, he handed her a book of composition paper.
“Not that much,” she said, panicky. “Just one or two sheets.”
“I’ve got lots at home.”
Sal opened the softcovered book and stared at the empty pages of musical staffs. What kind of joke was this? Until a few weeks ago, she’d never even thought of practicing.
“Up there where the hawks fly,” said Willis. “All that blue. I’m in limbo too.”
Their eyes met. No, she wanted to tell him, it’s not the same, but he wouldn’t comprehend. Willis Cass had never been forced to live her kind of truth.
Chapter Thirteen
Sal sat on her footstool in the corner, a silent pair of eyes. Today most of Shadow Council had been late in arriving, and for the first time she’d been able to observe them coming through the door. As each member entered, she’d been startled to see them give the Sign of the Inside, even Willis. Gesture completed, his eyes had flicked toward her position in the corner where they’d rested a millisecond too long on her face. Then he’d folded his body casually into the burgundy armchair and drawled, “I am calling this shadowy meeting of S.C.’s ruling elite to order. Get your brains in gear, comrades. We are now officially think-tanking.”
It was Monday lunch hour. The weekend had been a bust — one long miserable trek from Superstore to Canadian Tire to Sears as Ms. Hanson had caught up on shopping. Both Sal and her mother loathed shopping, and the experience hadn’t brought them any closer. On top of this, Dusty had decided he was no longer speaking to Sal, and the weather had been cold and rainy, keeping her indoors. Sal’s head buzzed and her eyes ached from too much TV. Hunched on the footstool, she sucked at the permanent raw spot clarinet #19 seemed to be donating to the inside of her bottom lip. The minutes dragged as the Celts’ business was discussed. Every time there was a knock at the door, she was called into the circle to sit on the couch, then summarily ordered back to the footstool when the teacher or club rep departed. Finally the air changed its pulse as the Celts took off their masks, Shadow Council emerged, and the session mutated into a general foraging session for potential targets and the best possible methods for destroying lives. Because that was what Shadow Council was, Sal thought, studying them — a predatory horde that fed on other people’s fear. What they did in this room was natural instinct for them, something they considered their right, their privilege. This session where they bartered, casually tossing malice back and forth, was like a hawk dreaming. To them, it was beautiful.
“Make Jean Maharaj strip in front of the entire cafeteria at rush hour, and make it my duty to jump her,” grinned Rolf.
“Give Brad Carter a repeat performance, only this time he streaks through a faculty meeting without a paper bag,” sang out Linda.
“Get a skinny minor niner crawling around under the chairs at the next assembly, gluing people’s shoes to the floor,” sniggered Ellen.
The hawk’s song was ecstasy to the hawk. To the prey that lived beneath it, the sound meant terror, but who had the right to tell the hawk it couldn’t be hawklike?
“Assign the chess club the duty of making a hundred toilet-paper carnations and sticking them all over Ms. Tuziak’s car with a Wish I Were Married sign,” said Marvin.
Ms. Tuziak was a front-office secretary, not Shadow Council’s usual prey. A cautious interest stole across Willis’s face. “Why Tuziak?”
“She and our esteemed Principal Wroblewski are having an affair,” said Marvin. “I saw them coming out of the Patricia Hotel together on Saturday afternoon. Real chummy.”
Thoughtful whistles pierced the air.
“The Pat?” Willis said scornfully. “Wroblewski should get some class. Okay, let’s get down to business. Who’s next on the target list?”
Rolf flipped through his binder. “Fawzia Evans, Chris Busatto, Ken Goodwin and Alexandra Horseley.”
Chris Busatto! Sal’s teeth dug into the inside of her lower lip, tearing off a flap of freshly healed skin. Kimmie’s older brother was a shy mumbler who talked inside his mouth and kept his eyes at knee level. Giving him a duty would be almost as mean as giving one to Tauni Morrison.
“Okay.” Willis stroked his chin. “Everyone focus. Fawzia Evans. Grade nine, right? Who’s been watching her?”
“I have.” Ellen squirmed nervously, tapping her knee. “She’s a library freak. Shelves books every lunch hour.”
“Why was she chosen?” asked Willis.
“Random,” said Rolf. “This was a Walk — the — Halls selection. I closed my eyes, took three steps, then opened them. Whoever I saw first went down on the list.”
“Marvelous,” said Willis, clapping several times. “Random patterning negates a single source.”
Rolf gave a contented beam.
“So we think of a library duty,” Willis continued, linking his hands behind his head. “Something in her natural biosphere. Something to do with shelving books.”
The air thickened with thought. It was obvious from Shadow Council’s overworked expressions that they didn’t spend much time in the library.
“Put the books upside down?” suggested Ellen tentatively.
Grunts met this proposal, and a disconsolate silence again took over the room. Leaned against the wall, Sal sucked a steady stream of blood from her lower lip as she sent her gaze back and forth across the group. Beneath her concern for Chris Busatto, a thought kept rippling through her brain like an underwater fish — something she couldn’t quite pull into words.
“Non-fiction,” said Linda suddenly. “Dewey decimal system. It’s got subject headings.”
“So?” asked Willis.
“So we get her to trade them around. Stack the geology section on the Shakespeare shelf, Shakespeare in the sec
ond world war section. Poetry in architecture, that kind of thing.”
“Brilliant,” said Willis, clapping again. “Understated. Subtle chaos. How about you and Rolf work out the details on that one?”
Linda nodded, her mouth twitching with satisfaction. Glancing at Marvin, she made a few chop-chop gestures. He chop-chopped back.
“Next target,” said Willis.
“Chris Busatto,” said Judy. “I studied him. He’s in grade eleven, kind of a blah kid. Puts in his time and gets the hell out.”
Sal chewed deeper into her lower lip. Was it possible they’d chosen Chris because of her friendship with Kimmie? Ex-friendship, she reminded herself bitterly. Shadow Council would have nothing to gain by trying to get at her through her ex-best friend’s brother. Besides, Rolf had said this had been a random selection. Chris had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Fawzia Evans.
“A blah kid,” mused Willis, stroking his chin. “What about the assembly suggestion? Crawling under the chairs. There’s a Future Options assembly coming up for the grade eleven and twelve students later this week.”
“And he goes around gluing shoes to the floor?” Linda asked dubiously.
“No,” said Willis. “Asking for donations — any kind of donation. To the future of Wroblewski and Tuziak.”
A grin of sheer ecstasy rippled through the group.
“How big is Busatto?” asked Marvin.
“My height,” said Judy. “Short for a guy. He’s chubby though.”
“Even better,” smiled Willis. “Next target?”
So that was it — Chris had been processed for execution as casually as a fruit fly. Nothing had been mentioned about the personal details of his life, his night terrors, sleepwalking, and frequent appointments with the school counselor. Probably Shadow Council didn’t have access to this kind of information. Should she raise her hand and say something, expose Chris’s weakness? But wouldn’t the smell of blood bring the hawks in for a quicker kill?
He’s a blah kid — all things considered, this was probably Chris’s best camouflage.