The Lottery (15 page)

“Yeah,” said Linda, looking pleased. “Good thinking, guys.”

“But how will they get the banner up on Walter Murray?” asked Rolf. “The roof’s at least two storeys high.”

“Not off Taylor Street,” said Linda. “My dad teaches there so I know the building. There’s a side entrance that’s low, just one storey high. It’s covered by several trees so no one’ll notice them climbing onto the roof from the outside, and there are no windows anywhere along that side of the building so no one’ll see them from the inside. They’ll have to haul the ladder up with them because the roof takes a hike a couple of times, but if they’re quick they should be able to manage it.”

The three high-fived one another.

“Okay, now for the instructions,” said Willis. “Write the same thing for both of them, and don’t include any names, theirs or Shadow’s.”

A knock sounded on the door. Instantly, Shadow Council’s Executive stiffened, Linda’s eyes darting toward Sal.

“We aren’t officially open,” she hissed.

“We’re always official,” Willis replied calmly. “This just so happens to be a Celts Exec meeting and we’re working out our fall schedule. Go see who it is.”

“What about her?” asked Linda, pointing at Sal.

“Victim, come sit over here.” Willis glanced toward Sal without making direct eye contact. “We’ll say you came to deliver infomation from — ” He hesitated.

“ — Pavvie,” said Sal, sliding into the burgundy armchair. “About the fall concert publicity.”

“Yeah,” agreed Willis, closing his eyes, a smile sifting through the layers of his expression. “Good thinking, victim.”

“Fine,” snapped Linda, getting up and opening the door. In the hall stood a teacher holding a stack of post
ers. A quick conversation ensued — the posters concerned an upcoming mock United Nations assembly for high-school students that S.C. was hosting. Smiling, Linda accepted the armload of posters along with a list of delivery points. The satisfied teacher thanked the three Celts, and the door closed behind him.

“See?” said Willis. “No sweat. They want to believe, so they believe. No one ever looks further than what they want to see. Now, where were we?”

He was right. The teacher had seen the hard concrete evidence — Sal Hanson, lottery victim, sitting in the Celts’ clubroom — and had walked off without batting an eyelash. The floor heaved uneasily and Sal gripped the arms of her chair, unsure if she was expected to remain where she was or return to the footstool. She felt illegal in the burgundy armchair, as if the soft cushion beneath her butt was too good for her, but no one had ordered her back to her corner. Better to remain silent and not attract attention by moving.

“Okay, shoot.” Tearing two pages from his binder, Rolf poised his pen, awaiting Willis’s dictation.

“Time, colon,” dictated Willis. “Friday, October first, nine-fifteen AM. Place, colon, Walter Murray Collegiate. Duty, colon, use a ladder to get onto the roof from the Taylor Street entrance and drape the S.C. RULES banner across the front of the building. Note, long dash, and then write the following in capital letters, do not cover the windows, exclamation mark.”

“Gotcha,” said Rolf, writing it down, then copying it onto a second page.

“How will they get the banner?” asked Linda.

“It will mysteriously materialize somewhere in their vicinity,” said Willis.

“Locker mania,” grinned Rolf. Placing the instructions inside two envelopes, he sealed them. “Victim approach,” he ordered, without looking up.

Startled, Sal stood and took two steps toward him. She was almost brushing his knees.

“Two envelopes,” said Rolf brusquely, handing them to her. “And two locker combinations.” He placed a small piece of paper in her hand. “Make sure you put the envelopes where they’ll be seen immediately.”

Sal stared at the piece of paper. On it were written two locker numbers and two corresponding lock combinations. How many student locker combinations did Shadow Council have in its possession? “Someone’ll see me,” she protested. “I’ll get caught.”

“Not my problem,” shrugged Rolf.

Sal’s eyes flicked toward Willis, but he stared back, his face blank as the envelopes in her hand. Numbly, she started toward the door.

From behind her came Willis’s soft voice. “Pony Express.”

He was right, she realized. This was another version of the Pony Express — a little more malicious toward its targets and a lot more deadly for its courier, but it operated on essentially the same principles. How had Willis known about her Pony Express expertise?

“Victim dismissed,” said Rolf.

She left the room quickly. Except for 8 AM, the halls were emptiest at lunch hour. If she worked fast, she should be able to get this done before the one o’clock bell.

Friday morning at nine-fifteen, Sal stood holding her bike and watching from a nearby bus stop as two male figures wearing black balaclavas appeared on the roof of
Walter Murray Collegiate. Unrolling a long red-and-gold banner, they worked quickly, draping it so that it hung across the front of the building, but not so far down that it covered the windows and could be seen from inside. Stretched to full length, the banner was an easy ten meters, the letters a brilliant gold. And upside-down, Sal realized with a flash of panic. Only it didn’t look as if the balaclavaed guys had noticed. Kneeling at opposite ends of the banner, they seemed to be anchoring it. This accomplished, they would head back to the ladder and down off the roof. Once their feet touched ground, it was unlikely they would climb back up to correct their mistake.

Mounting her bike, Sal rode frantically across Taylor Street and onto the school lawn. “Hey!” She waved her arms, trying to yell quietly. “S.C., S.C.! Shadow!”

At the word “shadow,” one of the guys glanced down and saw her. Placing one hand above her head and one at her waist, Sal rotated them one hundred and eighty degrees. Upside-down, she thought maniacally at the two watching guys. Upside-down, beerheads.

Leaning forward, the first guy peered over the edge of the roof, then gave her the thumbs-up signal. As she watched, the balaclavaed figures righted and anchored the banner, then retreated swiftly across the roof, leaving the banner suspended in red-and-gold glory across the front of Walter Murray Collegiate. S.C. RULES. Sal observed it with a mixture of pride and dread. Not until that moment had she realized she’d wanted the venture to succeed, she wanted Shadow Council to rule.

No, she didn’t. She didn’t want a small group of ego-terrorists running fifteen hundred students with threats and mind games. And she certainly didn’t want them jerking her
life around for the next nine months. Then why the brilliant thread of satisfaction — no elation — that glimmered through her as she stared up at the red-and-gold banner? Why had she skipped her first-period math class, risking detention and her mother’s wrath, to watch this happen?

Suddenly she realized she was a dead giveaway, gawking gleefully upward on the front lawn of enemy turf. Mounting her bike she pedaled off furiously, glancing back several times to anchor the vision of the rebel banner firmly in her memory. Even after she turned the corner, it continued to hang gleaming across the center of her thoughts, a gorgeous claim to supremacy, a third-finger salute suspended through all that was mundane.

The luminous notes of Willis’s trumpet could be heard halfway down the hall. Entering the music room, Sal returned Pavvie’s quick nod, grateful for his reticence. The man rarely spoke unless absolutely necessary, the only person at S.C. who talked less than Sal herself, unless you counted Tauni Morrison. Maybe he was another person who needed a tube of black lipstick to find the mouth in his face.

As she opened the practice room door, Willis gave a dramatic flurry of notes.

“Everyone’s talking about it. It’s all over the school.” Sal’s face broke into an exuberant grin. “Did you see it?”

Eyebrows raised, Willis pointed to the open door. She closed it.

“Of course I saw it,” he said immediately, lifting his trumpet and releasing several glad notes. “Snapped a few Kodak memories while I was at it.”

Sal hit the nearest chair with a thud. “You were there?”

“I had a spare, so I thought I’d watch from my car. I caught you on film, making your genius tactical move. Way to go, Sally-O. I’ll make you an extra copy.”

“You will?”

“You were part of it. Part of the team.”

A delicate shyness winged across Sal’s face. Ducking her head, she began assembling her clarinet. Willis tooted softly into the silence, something low-lying and blue.

“You practice this week?”

“Couple times,” she admitted reluctantly. It wasn’t easy, surrendering her perception of herself as an eternally carefree, wimp-lipped third clarinetist. “I tried those cigarette papers you put in my case. They really helped. Thanks.”

“Good. I want to try out a new piece with you. Something I wrote.”

“You wrote this?” She stared in astonishment as he slid a sheet of composition paper onto the music stand in front of her, full of penciled-in notes and treble clefs.

“It was originally for two trumpets,” Willis said, settling back again, “but clarinet and trumpet play in the same key so I didn’t have to transpose.”

She could feel him watching her as she scanned the piece. It was in the key of G, mostly half and quarter notes, with a few eighth notes scattered throughout. She should be able to handle it, unless he wanted it in cut time.

“Willis?” She was frightened at the question that loomed through her, terrified she was about to lose the only good thing she had going in her life, but she had to ask. She had to. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Meeting me here. Practicing with me.” She kept her eyes down as she spoke, watching her fingers fiddle with the clarinet keys.

He shrugged. “Because I want to.”

“But you’re not supposed to. You never act like this at Shadow meetings.”

“It’s our secret,” he grinned.

Still staring down, she swallowed the slimy balloon in her throat. “You’ve got friends. You don’t ... need me.”

Willis shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “I don’t have friends.”

Sal snorted, choking on astonishment.

“You think Shadow’s my friends?” Willis asked. “Would you pick them for friends?”

She waved a hand vaguely. “Everywhere you go, you’re surrounded. Everyone wants to be your buddy.”

“Even you?”

“You took away all my friends. What else have I got?”

Willis’s eyes narrowed. Sal felt the danger rushing her blood.

“Were they your friends?” he asked softly. “Really?”

“They were enough,” Sal said bitterly.

“Enough for then,” said Willis, “but now? They’ll never be enough again.”

Sal thought of Kimmie’s whispered washroom confession, of Brydan sitting stiff and miserable beside her, practice after practice. She thought of Jenny Weaver’s eyes, the way they never rested within the safety of anyone’s gaze.

“What are you saying?” she asked. “Relationships are all illusions, there are no real friends? If your name had
been drawn instead of mine, d’you think everyone would be shunning you?”

“Shadow members’ names don’t go into the lottery,” said Willis. “Why d’you think I joined?”

“That’s why you joined?” Sal demanded. “So you could do to other people what you couldn’t face yourself?”

Willis stiffened, then nodded. Staring into the blunt reality of his face, she realized that he was staring back into the harsh mirror of her own, that he wanted this kind of truth.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” she said. “Why are you meeting me here? Why would you want to?”

“You figure it out,” he said softly.

“Is this another one of Shadow’s games?”

“No one knows about this except you and me. Our secret.”

She watched his careful narrowed gaze. Was this friendship he was offering her? No, friendship didn’t hide inside secrets and Friday lunch-hour practice rooms. Then what was it?

“Warm-up scale?” asked Willis. “C major?”

Did she have to have all the answers right now? Did anyone ever have all the answers? Slowly she raised the clarinet to her lips.

“What d’you think of the title of my piece?” Willis asked.

She glanced at the page in front of her. Across the top was written Inside the Question.

“Story of my life,” she said slowly.

“Me too,” said Willis. “Okay, warm-up time. C major scale, quarter notes. One, two, three, four ...”

Chapter Eleven

Voices clamored through the open doorway. It was Friday after classes, and the few students who hadn’t taken off for the S.C.-Walter Murray football game had collected in the drama room. Standing in the hallway, Sal shifted her feet hesitantly. The PA announcement had said all volunteers were welcome, and experience wasn’t necessary for building props. But did this include the lottery victim? What would happen if she walked into that room? How long would it take for silence to eat its slow acid through every conversation as head after head turned in her direction? Which one of the students in that room wouldn’t go into paranoid convulsions if she sat next to them? She would have to sit beside someone, and teachers were always big on assigning group activities. How could she request to work on a stage prop by herself? What excuse could she invent — syphilis? Insanity? An allergic reaction to being treated like a normal human being?