The Lottery (29 page)

It was a system, thought Sal, turning onto the street. A system in which everyone played a part. And that part, she thought, walking more quickly, was defined by the people around you. In a system, you didn’t think or choose, you just tried to fit in.

She felt a curious opening in the air then, as if another invisible barrier was beginning to dissolve. For the rest of her life, people would be trying to define her, close her in with their thoughts and expectations. But, she was finally realizing, it was her perspective that mattered the most. Ultimately, it was her own fear or desire that would lock her in or allow her to open to the utter possibility of herself.

With a determined lift of her chin, Sal took another breath of the great good air.

It was, admittedly, an odd conglomeration — Tauni Morrison seated at one end of a library table, reading a book called Somebody Somewhere, and Sal and Brydan crowded into his wheelchair at the other. After Sal made several futile attempts to engage Tauni in conversation, Tauni had set down her book and begun spinning her pen, watching the rotating Bic as if it held some clue to the meaning of the universe. Recognizing the signs, Sal
had given up. Some days she wasn’t sure if Tauni even knew who she was, and it was frustrating to be treated as non-existent. On the other hand, she didn’t have to live inside Tauni’s world — a place that could blow up in your face at any moment. Watching a pen spin probably helped Tauni avoid overload.

Leaving Tauni to the whirling Bic, Sal focused on enjoying the new wheelchair seating plan. It had been worked out the previous Saturday night at Brydan’s place, somewhere between playing computer games and clipping each other’s nostril hairs. That evening had been like a song from the Cecil Taylor CD Brydan had been playing on his bedroom stereo — music that picked up a room and changed the shape of the walls. Everything transformed itself when you listened to free jazz, Sal thought, leaning against the steady thud of Brydan’s heart. Rooms took different shapes, so did people and their souls. And there was so much you could do together in a wheelchair if you put your mind to it ... and your lips and fingertips. She hadn’t seen the dragon tattoo yet, but she was planning on it. Maybe this weekend ...

“Hey, Diane!” Abruptly Brydan straightened, rocking Sal as he waved his arm. Pulled out of her reverie, Sal focused on the figure of Diane Kruisselbrink, standing at the library checkout. Hesitantly, the girl turned toward Brydan’s voice, then away again.

“Diane!” Brydan called again, waving furiously. “Over here.”

After their nostril-clipping session, she’d confessed the underwear episode to Brydan and he hadn’t condemned, hadn’t said much of anything. This, here and now, she realized, was his belated response.

“Thanks,” she whispered, as Diane warily approached.

“You don’t have to tell her you did it,” Brydan whispered back. “It might not be the best thing.”

“She probably knows.” Sal leaned forward, halfway between eagerness and shame. Maybe she couldn’t do anything about Chris Busatto, but this was a chance — a real chance — to touch someone else’s loneliness and right a personal wrong. “D’you want to join us, Diane?”

At the sound of Sal’s voice, Diane’s eyes blanked and her face sucked inward, quick-drying into a prune. Suddenly frozen, she stood several meters from the table, strenuously observing her own feet. Bewildered, Sal stared at the motionless girl until a poisonous realization snaked across her brain. Of course — she was still the lottery victim. Just because she’d stepped into another place inside her own head didn’t mean everyone else saw things from her new perspective. Diane would probably prefer to sit next to the plague. Chewing her lower lip, Sal watched the girl shuffle silently to the other end of the table and sink into the chair beside Tauni.

“Okay, so Rome wasn’t won in a millisecond,” Brydan whispered into her ear.

“Not there,” Tauni said in a tight clipped voice, without looking up from her spinning pen. “Too close.”

Without the slightest change of expression, Diane shifted one chair to the left. “Better?”

Startled, Sal realized she’d never before heard Diane speak. The girl’s voice was deep and husky, a barroom singer’s voice.

“Much,” piped Tauni, glancing vaguely in Diane’s direction before returning to the revolving Bic.

Hunched forward, Diane regarded Tauni thoughtfully. “Why are you spinning your pen like that?”

“I’m stimming.” Again, Tauni looked up from the pen, her eyes oddly focused but vividly alight.

“Stim?” asked Diane. “As in short for stimulate?”

“Yeah.” The spinning pen slowed as Tauni shot a series of runaway glances at the invisible halo around Diane’s head. “How did you know?”

“I have a cousin who’s autistic,” said Diane. “He stims on anything bright and shiny, and he loves spinning things. I take him to his therapy sessions with Dr. Verner.”

“Who?” demanded Tauni, her voice intensifying, shooting upward.

“Dr. Verner,” said Diane, watching Tauni closely. “She’s the autism specialist in Saskatoon.”

“D’you think I could see her?” Suddenly agitated, Tauni began rocking in her chair. “I have to see her, I have to. Maybe she’ll believe me.”

“Sure, she’ll believe you.” Diane’s voice slowed, growing quieter. “Don’t worry. I’ve got her phone number.”

“But I can’t use the phone.” Tauni wrapped her arms around herself, rocking more intensely, and the words poured out. “I can’t think and talk at the same time, and there’s all those strange people on the other end, and it’s always different. If I don’t know who I’m talking to, I don’t know how to talk to them. I don’t know what the structure’s supposed to be, and I don’t know where the conversation’s going. I can’t talk on the phone with strangers. I can’t, I can’t! Phones are evil!”

“I’ll phone for you,” said Diane. “Don’t worry, I know how to call Dr. Verner. I’ll call for you.”

Fascinated, Sal watched as Diane calmly talked Tauni out of her rocking state. Gradually Tauni straightened and looked around herself, as if coming out of a dream.

“I’ve started wearing ankle weights,” she said brightly, leapfrogging to an entirely new subject. “I read about it in a book. It’s supposed to help me find my feet.”

“You can’t find your feet?” Brydan’s astonished voice reverberated through Sal’s back. Suddenly she was wobbling as he jounced his legs. “Hey, neither can I!”

Tauni didn’t even blink. “I have no idea where my feet are,” she continued in her quick high voice, missing the joke entirely. “Unless I’m looking at them. Same with the rest of my body.”

The corner of Diane’s mouth tucked in, and a strange burble came out of her. Startled, Sal realized she was giggling. “Sometimes,” Diane said, her mouth tucking in deeper, “I can’t find myself in all this fat.”

Tauni’s eyes darted toward Diane, and then she threw back her head, laughing uproariously. All over the library, students turned to stare as the girl with the black lips rocked, guffawing, in her chair. After a moment Diane began a slow heaving chuckle, and the two girls floated in laughter, separate from everyone else.

Sal turned toward Brydan and shrugged, about to speak, when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Looking up, she saw Willis standing just behind Brydan’s wheelchair, three fingers raised. Their eyes met and she felt the studied vacancy of his gaze, the calculated cool that ruled every moment of his face. Then, briefly, his expression opened inward and a rare, private smile flickered across his mouth. One eyebrow quirked and he pivoted, walking swiftly toward the checkout desk.

“Don’t go.” Brydan’s arm tightened around her. “You don’t have to.”

So this was it, Sal thought, watching Willis disappear through the library exit. The moment of truth, delivered by the Prez himself. Whatever was coming, at least Shadow Council had gained enough respect to send their most illustrious emissary. Standing, she tugged gently at Brydan’s closest earlobe — once, for luck. “Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re pretty scared because of what happened to Chris Busatto. I don’t think they’ll go after anyone for a while.”

Coming out of the library exit, she was caught up in the inevitable adrenalin rush as she saw Willis standing a short way down the deserted corridor. In spite of everything that had happened, in spite of her calm, clear knowing that this was a guy who’d warned her not to drink acid — laced beer only because he thought his tiny warning shake of the head wouldn’t be noticed, still she wanted to believe the Cheshire Cat grin taking over his face. Not just believe it — trust it. Stomping on the thought, karate-chopping and stun-gunning it, she walked briskly toward him, saying, “What is it? I’ve only got a minute.”

He leaned against the wall, thick sideburns still begging to be stroked, one eyebrow carefully raised. “A message from Shadow.”

“No scrolls?” asked Sal. “No blank envelopes, no silly plastic tabs?”

“Look, we’re willing to take you back.” A flush quickened Willis’s face. “I made a deal with Shadow — they’ll lay off on extra duties and respect you like a normal victim. Everyone else in the school will continue to shun you until the end of the year, and then all will be forgiven
and forgotten. You’ll be accepted back into the fold with open arms.”

“The sheep fold?”

Willis’s flush deepened. He fidgeted, scratching a sideburn.

“And if I refuse?” Sal asked, counting heartbeats.

Willis closed his eyes, breathed, and opened them again. “A new lottery will be held and another victim selected,” he said quietly. “You’ll be shunned by everyone at S.C. until you graduate, and when you leave this place, it’ll follow you like a curse for the rest of your life.”

Sal traced out the long silence of the empty hallway with her eyes. “Willis,” she said slowly, “if I’d been a regular lottery victim, one that was chosen by the usual method, you wouldn’t have bothered with me at all, would you?”

Willis shrugged. “Shadow wouldn’t have been all over your ass. You would’ve been treated fairly, like a normal — ”

“ — victim,” interrupted Sal intensely. “You believe in the victim and the lottery, you believe in Shadow, don’t you? And you know why you believe in them? Because you need them. You need Shadow to keep you in your place.”

“And what is my place?” Willis’s eyes narrowed.

“Afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of yourself,” Sal said simply. “You’re afraid of the possibility of yourself. As long as Shadow keeps you in your place, you don’t have to think about who you could be if you were choosing. That’s what the question is, isn’t it? Who could I be if I wasn’t always so afraid?”

Willis stared, his eyes gripping her face.

“Inside the question,” Sal said softly. “It’s a nice fantasy, isn’t it?”

He nodded, his eyes closing, a tranced expression crossing his face. “See you there, Sal.”

She left him, eyes closed, standing alone in the hall. The last notes of “Child In Time” faded into a dense quiet. Sprawled on the orange shag carpet beside her brother, Sal waited, letting her ears adjust to the ringing void of sound. They’d been dancing, whip-snapping their bodies to a frenzy until they’d dropped exhausted to the floor. There they’d lain, twitching and convulsing to the odd riff or favorite guitar chord as the CD ended. Now, breathing silence, Sal felt the full length of her body breathe with her — threaded with aches and sore spots, but without inner walls. Nothing hidden, nothing to fear.

Rolling onto his back, Dusty released a long enigmatic fart, the result of curried chickpeas for supper.

Sal sniffed loudly. “My, that was a hefty one.”

“My best,” Dusty murmured contentedly.

“Yeah, well, d’you mind keeping your best up your butt?”

“Mocked, scorned and unappreciated by my own blood.”

“You got that right.”

They lay, breathing in sync, counting the orange threads that dangled from the ceiling.

“So,” Dusty said casually. “How’s it going with Brydan these days?”

Heat bloomed in Sal’s face.

“That good, eh?”

“I didn’t say anything,” she mumbled, rolling onto her stomach.

Dusty laughed softly. “I’m not color-blind.”

She tossed a throw cushion at his grinning face.

“Thanks,” he said, tucking it under his head. “So, Shadow’s not after him for hanging around with you?”

“Not yet. It’s like we’ve dropped off the face of the earth — no one talks to us, but no one bothers us either. If they’ve picked a new lottery victim yet, I haven’t heard about it.”

“You going to shun the new victim?”

“No, but I bet the victim will shun me. I’m the lowest rung on the S.C. ladder until I graduate, right?”

“We’ll see,” said Dusty. “You never know, anything can happen.”

“Yeah,” said Sal. “It’s not even Remembrance Day, and look what’s happened this year already.”

Her brother let out an emphatic sigh.

“So,” Sal continued softly, “you don’t have to worry about me anymore, Dusty. I think I’m going to be all right.”

“You think?” Dusty said, not looking at her.

“I think.”

“Geez,” Dusty said, “whatever am I going to do with all my time?”

“Study,” said Sal. “Do housework for Mom. Get your goddam muffler fixed.”

“Mmm. Not wild about those options. Think you could develop a few new problems so I can go back to worrying about you?”

“Nope,” said Sal. “You’re just going to have to grow up and stand on your own two feet. But thanks for worrying about me until I found the mouth in my face.”

“Huh?” Dusty turned a confused expression toward her.

“Never mind,” she said, grinning. “It’s a woman thing.”

“You know what the mouth in my face would like right now?” Dusty stretched into a long groan. “A cup of hot chocolate with about a zillion mini-marshmallows floating on the top.”

Sal lost herself in a temporary fantasy of marshmallow foam, the silky swim of chocolate on her tongue. It had been days since she’d tasted blood or stomach acid. Her mouth was gradually returning to her as a good place to be.

“Mom home?” she asked, getting to her feet.

“Yeah, I saw her office light on when I came in.” Dusty looked up at her quizzically and Sal grinned down at him fondly.