The Lottery (10 page)

“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.

“Excuse me,” she said, lurching forward. “Brent?”

He turned toward her, his face flickering with recognition, then fear.

“I’m supposed to deliver this to you.” She jabbed the tab awkwardly into the soft warmth of his palm. Slowly his fingers closed over it, his eyes staring vaguely past her right shoulder. Then, incredibly, a tiny smile crept across his mouth.

“Okay, well, bye now,” she said idiotically, backing away from the dreamy statue he’d become.

Fortunately the next two targets hadn’t yet reached homeroom, and she was able to leave their tabs with their teachers, but the final one had definitely arrived. No one had to point him out. She would have recognized those ears anywhere. Entering S23, she spotted Brydan immediately by the window. As she approached, his eyes lifted from a conversation with the girl seated behind him and locked with hers. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, the weight too heavy, a ton of raw pain. Then she was coming to a halt in front of him and depositing the tab onto the duotang lying in his lap.

“Just don’t expect me to tell you what the hell it means,” she said in the voice of an utter stranger, then turned and left the room.

She saw the girl with the black lipstick ahead of her, drifting down the hall. Thin body curved protectively inward, hands empty at her sides, the girl seemed unconnected to anything she passed. Other students walked alone, but their faces turned continually to watch what went on around them — they grinned and called out to the jostling, joking throng that surrounded them as if everyone in the vicinity was tuned in to the same set of brain waves, the same basic thoughts. Only the girl with the black lipstick followed the beat of a different drummer, only she tuned in to a vibe so unique it didn’t register within this reality, giving her the appearance of floating without purpose, going nowhere.

Falling into step behind her, Sal took on the same drifting gait. It was lunch hour; she’d fulfilled her Shadow Council duties and had nothing to fend off absolute loneliness but a stack of algebra homework. Ahead of her, the girl turned into the west hall, freezing as several guys charged en masse around the corner and clipped her arm. Oblivious, the guys rushed onward and the girl collapsed against the nearest wall, momentarily inert. Then she straightened and began to bounce herself gently off the wall, making contact only with her shoulder blades. Her face remained expressionless and she seemed zoned-out, with no sign of the fear she’d shown at Wilson Park.

Ten lockers down, Sal slumped against the wall, studying her. What was it with this kid? Was she on drugs? Was she an alien from another planet? Why would she plaster her mouth with black lipstick when she didn’t wear any other makeup? Dressed in an oversized gray t-shirt and leggings, the girl displayed no visible body piercing or tattoos. The black lipstick and hair dye didn’t fit. Nothing
about the girl fit. She was the missing part of a jigsaw puzzle — the hole left by the absent piece. The girl was an absence.

Pushing out from the wall, the girl started off again, head down, arms wrapped protectively around her chest. Sal picked up the pace and slipped in close behind. There seemed no need for secrecy, the girl showed no awareness of her presence. Sal was just another absence. Together they were two girl-shaped phantoms drifting through a hallway of solid human objects.

The girl was muttering under her breath. Sal pressed closer, listening.

“Don’t walk into the wall, walls hurt,” the girl whispered fiercely to herself. “Walk into the door, not the wall. Doors open, walls don’t.” Putting out a hand, she trailed it along the nearest wall, as if using it for some kind of radar. “Don’t walk into the water fountain,” she mumbled, tracing the outline of the drinking fountain. “Don’t walk into the garbage pail. Don’t walk into the ... object.” Without raising her head, the girl veered abruptly around an approaching teacher and continued on. “Okay, now find your feet, find your feet.”

Turning into the library, she paused for a second as if bracing against something and pushed through the turnstile. Then she headed straight for the science fiction shelf, pulled out several paperbacks and disappeared into the non-fiction stacks. A minute later Sal found her in a study carrel, feet tucked onto her chair, chin on her knees, and reading. What had Brydan said her name was? Tauni Morrison — a weird kid, a loner. Sal paused, tasting the nervous acid of her thoughts. So, was Tauni Morrison weird enough to consider responding to a question from the lottery victim?
Or was she too spaced-out to even know what a lottery victim was?

“Excuse me,” said Sal, leaning over the front of the carrel.

Giving no response, the girl continued to read. Was she deaf? No, she couldn’t be — she’d obviously heard Sal playing the clarinet at Wilson Park. Sal glanced at the title of the book propped open in the girl’s hands: The Space Swimmers. A second paperback lay beside her arm: This Alien Shore. More character sketches, Sal thought wearily.

“Excuse me,” she said again, and when the girl continued to give no response, repeated it a third time, loudly.

A shudder ran through the girl. Without taking her eyes from her book, she leaned backward, away from Sal.

“Please,” Sal said quietly, pulling back so that she was no longer leaning into the other girl’s space. “Tauni?” She knew better, now, than to touch.

The girl gave her a quick sideways glance without the slightest hint of recognition. “Yeah?” Her voice wobbled, tight and high in her throat, as if rarely used.

“I was wondering,” said Sal, “why you wear black lipstick.”

Slowly the girl’s face turned toward Sal, her blue eyes not quite focused as if her brain was between radio stations, picking up Sal’s voice through a lot of distortion.

“For my mouth,” she said vaguely. “So I know where it is.”

“You wear black lipstick so you’ll know where your mouth is?” Sal asked cautiously.

“So I’ll know where my face is.” The girl began to speak more quickly, as if gradually tuning in.

“Why don’t you know where your face is?” Sal was definitely getting muddled.

“In the mirror,” said the girl, watching the space above Sal’s head.

Carefully, Sal added up the girl’s fragmented comments. “You can’t find your face in a mirror without black lipstick?”

“And black hair,” the girl said slowly. “In the mirror ... it doesn’t make sense. I see things ... but I don’t know what they are. What’s me, and what isn’t me? Black helps me ... find things. The black stands out. So that’s where my face must be.”

“Oh,” said Sal, and the girl returned to her book, outer space, other planets, wherever it was she went to escape the reality of here.