The Lottery (6 page)

“We’ve saved a chair for you. Come and sit down,” Willis continued, his voice gentle and insistent. Sal watched her hand slide off the doorknob as if it belonged to a stranger. It did belong to a stranger — she was a stranger, she’d never met the person she was becoming, walking woodenly toward the footstool Willis was indicating at the center of the group.

“Sit down,” he said and she sat facing him, her eyes on his sloppily laced Reeboks.

“Give me the scroll.”

Automatically, she handed it to him, his voice the key that unlocked her movements.

“Thank you,” he said and a silence ensued, a silence of eyes and breathing. All about her she felt it — a soft-breathing circle of watching eyes. She wasn’t looking up, no way was she making eye contact with the horde of predators that pressed so close, she could have touched any one of them without stretching. She might have to be here, trapped in this room, there might be no physical escape, but she knew how to squeeze her mind small and run off into cracks and crannies. They could stare at her body for as long as they wanted, she was already gone, crawled into a hole in the baseboard or deep into the wall — The Wall Live, her favorite CD, the classic album of all time and the one she and Dusty pumped to top volume in the rec room when their mother wasn’t home. “Don’t be a brick!” they would yell at each other, twitching and convulsing to Gilmour’s achingly gorgeous guitar chords and Waters’ heartbeat bass, throbbing at the core of the universe. “Don’t be a brick!”

“You know why you’re here,” Willis said after a long pause.

Eyes fixed on the double knots in his shoelaces, Sal jerked out a nod.

“Tell us why you’re here,” said Willis.

“The scroll,” Sal croaked faintly. The girl beside Willis giggled and Sal fumbled for her name — Ellen Petric, a girl who had mixed success with Nice’n Easy. One day she’d be honey-blonde, the next, a vibrant carroty sheen.

“The scroll?” probed Willis.

“... told me to come,” faltered Sal.

“And why did it tell you to come?”

“Because I won the lottery.”

“That’s right,” Willis said approvingly. “Tell me, Sally Hanson — what does it mean to win the lottery?”

The words were automatic, unthinking, her brain dulled by fear. “It means I’m your dud for the year.”

Willis’s eyebrows rippled. A look of amusement crossed his face.

“Demerit,” said a voice directly behind Sal.

“Reason for the demerit?” asked Willis mildly, looking past Sal to the girl who’d spoken.

“Victim showing disrespect to Shadow Council president,” replied the girl, her voice clipped and flat.

“Rolf, record one demerit,” said Willis, nodding at a lanky blond guy on the couch.

“Sally Hanson, one demerit,” murmured Rolf, marking an X in the binder on his lap.

Not even five minutes had passed, and there was already an X beside her name. “What’s a demerit mean?” Sal blurted, her voice a small explosion in her throat, scaring her.

“Second demerit,” snapped the girl.

“Reason for demerit?” asked Willis, his face expressionless.

“Victim speaking without permission,” said the girl.

“Record second demerit,” said Willis, and Rolf’s hand marked another X.

Sal’s lips parted slightly, as if trying to speak without sound. Jagged waves skittered across her brain, coming and going — nothing that made sense, nothing to hang onto.

“If you wish to ask a question,” Willis said softly, “raise your hand and wait until you’re given permission to speak.”

Slowly Sal’s hand rose.

“Yes?” asked Willis.

“I’m not a victim,” said Sal.

“Demerit,” the girl behind her snapped again. “That’s not a question.”

“Record demerit,” said Willis.

Fear was a large dry tongue, filling Sal’s mouth. Again, her hand went up.

“Yes?” prompted Willis.

“Do I get to give demerits?” she asked.

For a moment, Willis’s face seemed about to break into a laugh. Then he leaned forward and took her chin in his hand. Sal stopped breathing. Touched — she hadn’t expected to be touched.

“Listen to me, little sis,” Willis Cass said quietly. “We know you better than you think. In fact, we knew you before you entered this school. We were waiting for you to start S.C., and we’ve been watching you since you got here. Maybe it’s a coincidence you won this year’s lottery, and maybe it isn’t. Whatever — your name got drawn, and you’re the lottery victim. You know what that means. Everyone knows what that means.”

He paused, letting the silence gloat. Sal stared at the network of blue veins on his upturned wrist.

“You ever talk to last year’s victim?” he asked finally.

Knowing descended upon her. Motionless, she sat without speaking.

“I asked you — did you talk to last year’s victim?”

Sal shook her head.

“So, you know how it works. Everyone cooperates. Everyone wants a victim, Sally — even you. So how can you complain? Did you protest when it was someone else?
No, you watched, you enjoyed, and now it’s your turn. Now you’re Shadow’s victim, Shadow’s dud for the year. We’ll assign you duties, and you’ll perform them. When we pull your leash, you’ll come. We whistle the tune, and you dance. Listen up now while we introduce ourselves, so you won’t confuse us with the masses that dwell under our guiding light.

“I’m Willis Cass, Shadow Council president.” Releasing Sal’s chin, Willis raised his right hand, the middle three fingers pointed upward, the fifth and the thumb tucked in.

“Ellen Petric,” smirked the carrot-blonde beside him, also raising the middle three fingers of her right hand.

“Rolf de Regt, Shadow Council secretary,” said the guy with the binder, giving her the same hand signal.

“Fern O’Brien,” said the girl next to him, and so it went, the circle introducing itself one by one, pausing longest at Linda Paboni, Shadow Council vice president and demerit enthusiast sitting directly opposite Willis Cass. Jesus, thought Sal, I left my back wide open. Several runaway glances were enough to match the girl in front of her to Kimmie’s vampire queen stories — the power smirk, the knowing eyebrows, the direct hazel gaze sharpened to a killing edge. Slightly giddy, Sal continued to rotate on the footstool, obediently receiving each name and three-fingered salute until she found herself once again facing Willis, another lengthy pause, and a long swallowing silence.

“Four demerits,” Willis mused, stroking his chin. “Punishment begins at five, Sally. You’re lucky I didn’t give you two for your last indiscretion, but we’re going easy on you today. We’re not brutes, we know you’re learning the ropes, but we have to follow the traditions that were set in place long before any of us started at this school. We all have
our parts to play. You play yours, and you’ll find out we’re really on the same side. Friends.”

Sal’s stomach lurched, and she fought the neon urge to throw up all over his double-knotted Reeboks.

“In fact, we’re the only friends you’ve got now.” Willis’s voice faded to a whisper and the circle around Sal sighed and rustled as if some kind of epiphany had been achieved, something beautiful released.

Straightening in his burgundy throne, Willis’s demeanor changed. “Okay, listen up, folks. Wroblewski and McCormick are dropping by in five to give us the rundown on our prospective duties. Everyone tighten your asses. Fake respectable.” His glance trailed across Sal as if he’d forgotten her presence. “Victim dismissed,” he said. “When we want you, you’ll know.”

She stumbled to her feet, muscles stiff from gripping panic in one position for so long. Ellen Petric snickered and the circle parted, defining her escape route. At the door she fumbled for the knob, breath locked in her lungs until she reached the hallway, until she was free.

“One more thing,” said Willis, as her hand tightened on the doorknob. “Shadow business is dead secret. No one outside hears about it. Ever.”

She felt the leash about her throat, tightening like the silence in the room. Then someone coughed, the doorknob turned, and she was stepping into a hallway that echoed with a long, indifferent emptiness.

Chapter Five

When she walked into English, she knew the word was out. Her first class after lunch had been Music — there’d been the usual grimaces and sideways glances as instruments squeaked and lips grew puffy and raw, but nothing conspicuous, nothing that loomed out of people’s eyes and said they knew. Now, as Sal walked into English, the clue was the sudden silence that followed her across the room, a force field turning faces down and away as she blundered along the aisle toward her desk. Collapsing into her seat, she banged a thigh and felt again the absence of pain, though her joints were disintegrating and cold waves traveled her gut. Then, suddenly, sensations loomed, her cheeks throbbing with heat, her skin a slow gloating fire. With a loud sucking sound, her sweaty hand slid across the varnished surface of her desk. Biting her lower lip, she swiveled to face the window.

Outside, the sky was a flawless blue, arcing up and away. She stared at it, part of her rising into its blueness, a part that no longer belonged to her because it couldn’t live within anyone as trapped as she was. For she was well and truly trapped. There was no way out. She remembered last year’s winner — Jenny Weaver, a grade eleven student. Brainy, popular, Jenny had decided the whole thing was bogus and hadn’t responded to the summons. Instead, she’d gone on with her life as if nothing had happened. Rather, she’d tried to go on with her life, and some of her friends had initially gone along with the charade, pretending right along with her. Shadow Council had left Jenny alone — completely alone — focusing instead on her friends, applying their quiet, behind-the-scenes, persuasive tactics. One by one, Jenny’s friends had dropped off her phone-call list. No one would sit with her in the cafeteria, and as long as she defied Shadow Council, nobody had signed out books when she’d worked at the library checkout counter. Sal remembered Jenny’s face, how she’d refused to give in, keeping her chin up, her smile bright and hard, and meeting everyone’s eyes, giving each person she encountered the chance to redeem themselves by returning her smile.

No one had smiled back. By Thanksgiving Jenny’s smile had begun to waver, but her face had continued to fight off doubt. Sal could still feel the weight of the other girl’s eyes sliding across her own one afternoon in late October — desperately sure of herself, resolutely carrying a flag for the possibilities of human nature — and the way her own gaze had dribbled away, leaving the lottery winner to stumble on to the next pair of eyes. By Hallowe’en, Jenny Weaver had given up her mask of hope, and on the Day of the Dead had finally presented herself at Shadow Council’s door.

Her term as lottery winner was now over. People were talking to her again, she sat with a circle of friends at lunch time, Jenny Weaver was as popular as she’d ever been. Last year, and the hell it had brought her, seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth, unless you looked directly into her eyes. Just this afternoon on her way to English, Sal had passed the former lottery winner in the hall with two of her friends. Jenny had been talking a mile a minute, her eyes darting like a dragonfly, here, there, landing nowhere, as if everything she saw was an illusion, a shifting hologram of smiles and laughter, and beyond this stretched the long ache of a truth she’d have to carry alone for the rest of her life.

At the front of the classroom, Ms. Demko began to write the day’s assignment on the chalkboard. As usual, the Pony Express broke into a wild gallop as soon as her back turned. Out of the corner of her eye, Sal saw a note progressing along the back row, hand to hand. As it approached, something fierce and painful fluttered in her chest. She dug her teeth savagely into the inside of her lower lip, telling herself she didn’t care and if she did, it was of no consequence — emotions were trash, should be firebombed and tossed into the dustbin of history. The note slid into the hand of the guy to her right. He read the name written on the front, then slowly, deliberately, leaned across the aisle and tapped the shoulder of the girl sitting ahead of Sal. Slipping the note up her sleeve, the girl waited as Ms. Demko fussed through some papers on her desk, before passing it to the student in front of her.

The note should have come through Sal. The Pony Express followed an established route of dependable couriers, and Sal was definitely on it. She’d taken a giddy pride
in her elaborate note-passing skills, riding the communal current that sang through the network of note-passers as each message reached its intended destination. It was a small pleasure, a silly one, something so ordinary she’d never noticed the assumption in it.

Everyone loves a victim. There was no arguing with the words of Willis Cass. Ask the Pony Express. Ask Jenny Weaver, or any one of her so-called friends. Sucking a steady flow of blood from the tear in her bottom lip, Sal realized that if she tried to catch Jenny’s eyes at any point during the rest of this year, the other girl would look away.

She didn’t know whether to show for her after-school rendezvous with Kimmie. They were supposed to meet Tina Wong at the bike racks, then head downtown and cruise Midtown Plaza for Tori Amos CDs. But those plans had been made at mid-morning break, just before Sal had received the third scroll and the world had turned its face inside out, displaying the other side of its mask. Since then, everyone’s eyes had been sliding over and around her as if she was made of Teflon, and no one had spoken to her. Which side of the mask did Kimmie belong on? What would her true face reveal?