The Lottery (2 page)

The second scroll showed up in English. Sal might not have noticed it — English was her last class for the day, her brain was set on Anticipation, and she’d managed to claim butt rights to the back corner desk next to an open window. Obviously, she was not destined for A+ status in English. Accepting her fate, she’d been investing heavily in the Pony Express, a system of note-passing that extended from one end of the classroom to the other, detouring the academic snobs who refused to participate in such petty pastimes. Many of these notes were intended as collective salutations, and most became chain letters en route, but those addressed to individual recipients were generally respected, especially if marked Open and You Die. It was a matter of honor to all Pony Express members to get each note to its intended destination. If caught, it was understood that your execution was your personal problem — the best solution was to drop dead and keep your mouth shut.

The note that spun whirlybird-style onto Sal’s desk was heart-shaped with white lace glued around the edges, and Sally Hanson written across the front. Lunging to prevent the valentine from sliding off her desk, she glanced up to see if Ms. Demko had noticed. Fortunately, the teacher’s back was turned, the flesh on her arm jiggling as she wrote furiously on the chalkboard — something about plot development. Synchronicity was in the air as Sal scanned the valentine suspiciously for signs of plot development. Heart-shaped notes were rare on the Pony Express — you’d have to be several dimensions past crazy to advertise romantic intentions on this party line. So far, she’d received a few skull and crossbones, and one lovely drawing of bats exiting a belfry. Sketches of Ms. Demko were frequent. Yesterday, someone had sent her a yellow
sucker. It had been anonymous but unpoisoned, and she’d masticated it all the way home.

Was the heart a sequel to the sucker, or had some bozo gotten the steps reversed? Carefully, Sal flipped the valentine and read the back, skipping the chain-letter comments that had grown lewder as the note progressed across the classroom. The original message was printed in capital letters: LOOK INSIDE YOUR DESK. She sat staring at it, her face on pause while her brain made various quantum leaps. Eleven years of classroom espionage had not gone to waste — without looking up, she knew there were approximately twenty faces gawking surreptitiously in her direction, waiting for her enthusiastic dive into her desk. This had to be done right. Last year, a girl had found a dead rat stuffed behind her books. Packages of condoms and sanitary pads were common gifts. And there was that ancient rumor about a kid who’d found a finger in his pencil case.

Keeping her face poker straight, Sal slid down in her seat and peered into the desk’s shadowy storage compartment ... and there it was — a white oblong shape tied with a black ribbon. Her heart thudded, deep and painful, digging its own grave. Slowly she inched the scroll toward herself. Both hands deep inside the desk, she untied the ribbon, broke the red candle-wax seal, and unrolled the scroll. The guy across the aisle kept faking a stretch, trying to gain a better perspective, but Sal casually slid her desk backward until she came up against the wall. This placed her in a small nook between a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and the window, giving her a tiny pocket of privacy. Slumping in his seat, Mr. Yawn-and-Stretch gave up.

The scroll was blank. Sal took her time, examining
it centimeter by centimeter inside the shadowy cave of her desk, but there wasn’t a word, not even a mysterious hieroglyph or symbol.

Give me a break, she thought. At least make this nervous breakdown worthwhile.

If anyone saw this, she was done for. At S.C., a scroll with a black ribbon meant one thing only, regardless of what was written or not written on it. Lottery winners became lepers, social outcasts. No one remained their friend for long. Sal had to get rid of the evidence. If she picked off the red wax, the scroll could be flattened and slid into her duotang — it would pass for normal paper — but the black ribbon was a dead giveaway. She couldn’t leave it in the desk, and she couldn’t let it be found on her person.

Could she swallow it? When she was in grade four, her older brother Dusty had dared her to swallow a green licorice string lengthwise, and she’d tried. Halfway through, she’d started to choke and he’d yanked it back up. Then he’d chug-a-lugged the entire licorice string himself. He was an efficient garbage can. If he’d just materialize next to her right now, mouth stretched to greatest capacity, she’d happily drop in the ribbon of doom.

Was it possible these scrolls were from Shadow Council? Anyone could win that goddam lottery.

Balling the ribbon tight in her fist, she worked up a good spit, gagged, and got it down.

She didn’t go to her locker after school but headed straight for her bike, tucked her books under her left arm, and rode home one-handed. The house was empty, her mother still at work, Dusty at the U of S, supposedly studying. Somehow
Sal doubted it. Traveling the stairs to her room two at a time, she chucked her books in the general direction of the floor and took a dead man’s fall onto the bed. Her aim was perfect — one wriggle and the body-shaped hollow at the center of the mattress shifted to cradle her like a hand, like sleep, a comfortable wrap-around dream. As silence settled into its customary places, she lay staring at the dust motes she’d set whirling in the window light. At certain angles, they became sparkle dust — purple, green, gold. The clock on the dresser ticked with manic precision, filling the quiet with tiny even sounds, slowing Sal’s breathing until her eyes began to glaze. Sometimes, after moments like these, she’d wake to find herself sucking her thumb, or there’d be a large drool mark on her pillowcase and she’d be sleeping in it. People did disgusting things while they slept. She was never getting married. She’d have a boyfriend, he could come over and they’d have mad passionate sex, and then he could go home again. No way was she sleeping in a bed with two mouths slobbering away all night. Guys were probably ten times worse than girls if her brother was any example of what could be expected.

She lay for over an hour, wrapped in silence and the interminable ticking of her clock. Nobody knew she did this — spaced out, complete zombie zone. She had a way of stretching the tiny pocket of space between each tick of the clock and crawling into it, depositing part of her mind there, then crawling out again and letting the next tick come. It took a lot of concentration, digging the invisible hole, then stuffing it full of the parts of herself she didn’t like. If the house was empty and quiet, with just the ticking of the clock and herself, she could get rid of a lot of junk. After twenty minutes she’d feel better, full of energy, the
broken glass that had been scraping at her brain completely gone.

Of course, there was always that large drool spot hanging around on her pillowcase afterward. Sitting up, Sal flipped her pillow and patted the dry surface. There, there — another crisis averted, and she’d handled it on her own. No one else knew, no one needed to know. Just give her an hour a day alone in her bed, and she could be her own psychiatrist. It was cheap, effective, with a little private drooling on the side. Who could ask for less?

Grabbing the half-eaten bag of Doritos on her dresser, Sal headed for the backyard and stretched out under a poplar. Above her, restless leaves pattered like rain. The tree was deep in the throes of September yellow, and spinning leaves settled with small touches onto her throat, chest and ankles. Sal licked a Dorito, then sucked it to a pasty mess in her mouth. The poplar was giving off a thick scent that came at her in waves, almost as if the tree was breathing, or thinking. Did trees send out scent waves instead of brain waves?

Sal patted the poplar’s trunk. “You’re a genius, tree.”

The backyard, with its solid pine fence, patio swing and endlessly rustling trees, seemed far removed from scrolls, black ribbons, or any of your basic doom scenarios. Sucking on another Dorito, Sal worked it with her tongue until it caved and began to dissolve. Two blank pieces of paper tied with black ribbons — as far as she knew, Shadow Council delivered one scroll and one scroll only, and that scroll had fate spelled out in very clear English. Shadow Council had a reputation of getting straight to the point. She’d never heard of them jerking anyone around like this. No, the source of the blank scrolls had to be someone
with a brain of the lowest reptilian order, which eliminated Brydan — and he wasn’t in her English class anyway.

Maybe Shadow Council had started sending out decoy scrolls to keep everyone guessing. The true lottery winner had probably already received the real message, and several others were being strung along for some psycho’s entertainment. Yeah, that made sense. Sal breathed in slowly, following the poplar’s dreamy scent deep into her lungs. There, she had her head on straight again. No more panic grenades or gagging down unsanitary black ribbons. Whatever had possessed her to swallow it anyway? Why hadn’t she shoved the ribbon into her pocket like an average normal sane person instead of being microwaved with fear, her brain dissolving into tiny white-hot waves?

Well, it wasn’t going to happen again. She couldn’t make a habit of losing her mind like that. But more importantly, what was the identity of the idiot who’d tied the ribbon onto that scroll? How long had it been since he’d washed his hands? Her brother never washed his hands. She would never, ever, consider getting into a handshake with him — he was always confusing his orifices. Not a pretty picture.

Chapter Two

“We’ll burn her,” hissed Kimmie Busatto, hunched foward on her knees. “I cut every one of her pictures out of the yearbook. We’re going to pass all her dark and evil molecules symbolically through the flame and watch her go up in smoke.”

“Too bad it’s just symbolic.” Sprawled on the floor, Sal took in the details of her best friend’s darkened bedroom — the closed curtains, the ravaged S.C. yearbook on the bed, the gleaming rectangle of tinfoil spread across the floor with the lit candle at its center. A terse phone call had summoned her partway through washing supper dishes with her mother, and she’d biked the four blocks to the Busatto’s house to find Kimmie kneeling beside her tiny carpet of tinfoil and staring into a candle flame, a pair of scissors in one hand and a pile of jagged-edged clippings at her knee.

“We’re not, uh, going to sic demons on her or anything like that, are we, Kimbo?” Sal asked carefully, studying her friend’s face. Kimmie’s makeup was smudged, her eyes puffy and heavy-lidded. “Summer’s over, what can she do to you now?”

Kimmie’s chubby face contorted. “She’s a vampire queen, she’s constantly sucking blood out of everyone. Maybe she had problems with toilet training when she was a kid. Heck, maybe she’s still having problems with toilets and that’s why she’s so vicious, but she went after me again today. I’m telling you, it’s this or physical violence.” Raising the scissors above the candle flame, she made a few ominous snaps.

“Okay, let’s get this burn on the road.” Dragging herself out of her sprawl, Sal mirrored her friend’s position facing the candle flame. “But we’ve got to make it quick — I have a driving lesson with Dusty at 7:30.”

“Fire’s quick,” Kimmie said grimly. “1,500° Celsius quick.” Pulling a pair of tweezers from her shirt pocket, she clamped the top clipping and held it dramatically over the flame.

“Want to chant something?” Sal asked. “Deep and spectral?”

“Just watch,” Kimmie said. “Enjoy.”

The edge of the clipping blackened and curled, whispering under a hot rush of flame. “Yessss,” Kimmie crooned as she picked up another clipping and extended it toward the candle.

“Too bad it’s too dark to see her face,” Sal mused.

“We know what she looks like,” muttered Kimmie as the second clipping flared. “Everyone knows Linda Paboni’s malicious face. She’s crawled deep into my psyche. I feel like she watches me from the inside out. This
is a soul-cleansing ritual for me. My soul feels dark and heavy-laden.”

“Linda Paboni, bitch supreme,” Sal murmured sympathetically. Never having experienced a direct encounter with the vampire queen, she knew her only as one of the elite, popular, senior, S.C. students. Very popular — Linda Paboni had sucked the blood out of so many student clubs and social groups that her face appeared on every other page of last year’s yearbook. The pile of clippings beside Kimmie’s left knee was a sizable, if extremely vulnerable, monument to success.

“Why did I have to work with her this summer?” Kimmie rubbed soot across her face, giving herself a black eye. “Why would Sunshine Happy Day Camp hire someone like her?”

Kimmie had just completed a two-month job working as a counselor at a Saskatoon day camp where Linda Paboni had been the assistant supervisor. This meant Sal had put in the same two months listening to her best friend’s hissed and tearful stories about Linda’s split personality. By now, she had as much invested in a soul-cleansing ritual as Kimmie.

“Remember when Linda made me clean up Frankie Penner’s vomit on the bus,” Kimmie muttered through clenched teeth, “even though I had to clean up Rita Yahyahkeekoot’s vomit the day before?”