Beckoners (23 page)

“Mom!” Zoe shouted. “Listen to me!”

“No,
you
listen to
me
!”

Zoe hurled the pie against the wall.

“Okay.” Alice stared at the mess oozing down the wall. “I'm listening.”

Zoe told her what had just happened at Mill Lake Park.

“Start the car,” Alice said to Harris when Zoe got to the part about leaving April behind. “But I'll drive. I know the way.”

Alice pulled on her coat and stuffed Cassy into her snowsuit and herded the girls into the car.

“How the hell long has all this been going on?” Alice was driving too fast. Zoe gripped the door handle and didn't answer. “Tell me, damn it!”

“Since forever.”

“Jesus, don't you be flippant with me. Not now.” Alice screeched into the parking lot at Mill Lake. She yanked Cassy out of her carseat, parked her on her hip and waited for Zoe to lead the way. “Hurry up!”

“They might still be there.”

“Yeah, so hurry up. If they're still there I'll kick the shit out of them myself.”

The Beckoners had gone, but April was still there. She was so badly beaten that Zoe would've sworn it wasn't April huddled on the wet ground behind the bandstand. April's eyes were both swollen shut, there were several more burn marks on her face which was purple all over. April tried to speak through her split lips.

“They gone?”

“Don't move, hon.” Alice knelt beside April. “Keep your head still. Where does it hurt, baby?”

“All ober.”

“Harris...” Alice handed Cassy to Zoe. “You stay put and keep an eye out for those monsters.”

Zoe watched her mother sprint across the park to phone an ambulance. Zoe hoped April's father wasn't working that night. Zoe squatted beside April, afraid to touch her anywhere. She looked all wrong, twisted and puffy and bloody. Cassy stretched towards her, murmuring, “owie” with the solemnity only a baby can get away with.

It wasn't April's father
who came with the ambulance. It was two women, who worked silently and efficiently, loading April onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. Alice demanded to ride with her to the hospital.

“If you're not family, ma'am,” the taller of the two said, “I'm afraid we can't let you do that.”

Alice got right into her face and roared, “You let me ride with that little girl or I will put up such a stink you won't know what hit you!”

The shorter attendant nodded to the other and the two relented, stepping aside so Alice could climb in.

Zoe picked up April's jacket and one of her boots. On the ground beside the boot was one of Beck's eight ball matchbooks. It had one match left. Zoe lit it, letting the flame burn down to her fingertips as she headed back to the car behind Cassy and Harris.

“Those kids hassle you too?” Harris asked after several blocks of silence.

“Not anymore,” Zoe said.

“They give you any more trouble, you come tell me.” He glanced at her in the dark.

“You won't be here to do anything about it.” Zoe didn't bother keeping her tone civil. “You live in Whitehorse, remember?”

April's parents beat Harris
and Zoe to the hospital and were in with April and the doctors by the time they got there. Alice was sitting with Lewis in the waiting room. Lewis was driving one of his cars across the orange vinyl benches that lined the room.

“You can't go in there.” He nodded gravely at the Emergency room's swinging doors. “I can't neither. April's broken.”

“She's not broken, hon.” Alice pulled him to her. “She's hurt.”

“Mommy cried,” Lewis reported to Zoe.

“How is she?” Zoe asked. She laid Cassy, who'd fallen asleep in the car, on a wide corner bench and covered her with her jacket.

“Bad,” Alice mouthed over Lewis's head. Then she said, “Oh, she'll be just fine.”

They waited for hours. Leaf joined them, after a tearful phone call from Zoe. A while later Simon and Teo arrived. They'd just come back from Christmas dinner at Simon's father's house in Vancouver and had got the frantic message from his mother. Alice took Lewis and Cassy home to bed around nine, despite Lewis's protests that Santa wouldn't know where to find him. Teo bought coffees from the vending machine, and the four of them sat, bleary-eyed, waiting.

Just after ten, Barb emerged, still wearing the snowman apron she'd had on when she'd answered the phone earlier.

“She'll be okay,” she nodded. “Thank the good Lord. She'll be okay.”

The four of them stared at her, waiting for more.

“She's got a lot of stitches.” Barb wound and unwound an apron tie around her finger. “Too many to count. Her arm's broken. And they need to get in there to fix her knee, something with the ligaments, but that'll happen later on. She'll be fine though. Nothing that won't heal with prayer and time.”

“That's great,” Leaf said with a lack of conviction they all felt.

“Yeah.” Simon picked at a loose thread on his shirt. “That's really great.”

“Thanks be to God,” Barb said. She looked at each of the four of them and then slumped into the seat beside Zoe.

“She won't say who did this to her!” She started weeping.

Zoe put a hand on Barb's shoulder and eyed the boys. They could tell, but why hadn't April? It was the perfect opportunity. The Beckoners would be charged with assault; the police would actually be able to
do
something. But did she have a reason? They owed it to her to check with her before they said anything, didn't they?

Leaf didn't think so. He eyeballed the others, mouthing, “We have to tell.”

When Barb went back in to April, the four of them discussed the matter, or rather, the three of them convinced Leaf to wait until they talked to April before they told anyone. They weren't allowed to see her that night though, so Teo drove everyone home, with plans to pick them up at nine so they could see her first thing.

The hospital was very
quiet Christmas morning. April was awake. She was sitting up, eating porridge, the five other beds in the room empty.

“Anything else hurts to chew,” she said as a greeting.

“You okay?” Simon said.

“I guess.”

“Does it hurt?” Teo asked.

“All over.”

There was an awkward silence. The three of them looked at Zoe. They'd flipped a coin in the car to see who would ask her why she hadn't told about the Beckoners. Zoe had lost, but she didn't want to ask her yet. April looked too bruised to think.

Leaf eyeballed Zoe. Zoe shook her head.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I'll do it. Why didn't you tell the cops who did it?”

“Beck said she'd kill me if I told.”

Simon sat on the edge of the bed and took her good hand lightly in his. “You have to tell, April.”

April shook her head. “No.”

“You're going to let them get away with this?” Leaf started pacing. “You could be dead! They could've killed you! You want to be another Reena Virk?”

“I'm not going to tell.”

There was no convincing her to tell. Teo and Simon and Leaf spent nearly an hour trying to convince her otherwise, but Zoe didn't try very hard. She didn't doubt that the Beckoners would kill her. When April's parents and Lewis showed up, arms
loaded with presents, the four of them left, walking silently back to Blouise.

In the end, it
was Leaf who told. He just picked up the phone, dialed the police and told them who did it. It took less than a minute. He was proud of himself, and so was Wish, who was the one who convinced him to do it with or without April's consent. Teo was happy about it; he hadn't slept well in the two days since the attack. Simon was uneasy about it. Zoe was downright terrified, as was April.

When Leaf confessed what he'd done, April shook her head. She was too mad to cry. Too scared. Too sore.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked him.

“No.”

“You don't?”

“No, I don't.”

April closed her eyes and laid back on the pillows. “Could you pray anyway?”

For several days there
was no word from the Beckoners, no sign, no hint at retribution, which Leaf took to mean they'd been scared off for good, now that the cops were involved. April's parents insisted on pressing charges, although April tried to talk them out of it. They would not listen to her pleas to let it go.

“You're safe now, April,” her father told her as they helped her out of the car the day she was released from the hospital. “It's all over.”

The first time April
left the house after coming home from the hospital was to go with Zoe and Leaf and Simon and Teo to Simon's house for a New Year's Eve tea party, hosted by his chic public relations mother and her slick marketing exec boyfriend,
both of whom thought that Simon being gay was quaint and having him and his “little friends” there would add “panache” to the party. None of them felt particularly panache-ful that day. April was trying to give Leaf the silent treatment, but she wasn't very good at it. It was more of a cold shoulder, which Leaf understood and was gracious about, which kind of made giving him the cold shoulder pointless. Teo and Simon had had a fight before leaving, because Teo hadn't wanted to go at all.

“I feel like a gay poster boy,” he said as he yanked at his tie. “I hate that your mother calls me your ‘Nice Gay Boyfriend from Puerto Rico.'”

“Well, you are my nice gay boyfriend.” Simon tried to sooth him before they went in.

“My family's been in this country for two generations, Simon.”

Furthermore, Shadow was not allowed to come to the party. For April, the worst part about being in the hospital was being separated from Shadow. It was the first time in all her life she hadn't slept with him. When she came home, Shadow lived up to his name even more than usual. He never once left her side. When April ordered him to stay behind when they left her house on New Year's Day, no one could have guessed it would be the last time April would see him alive.

The party was barely tolerable. The five of them were on their best behavior, making polite small talk, avoiding people's indiscreet questions about April's injuries. They tugged at their fancy clothes and tried hard not to spill anything in the strictly white décor house. And then Teo “accidentally” spilled a glass of red wine—Simon's mother considered it cosmopolitan to let them drink—on the delicate lacy drapes, which is when Simon announced, in a huff, that it was time to leave. Leaf and Zoe and April glumly pulled on their coats and hurried through the rain ahead of Simon and Teo, who were stuck arguing in the middle of the driveway, oblivious to the downpour.

Barb rushed down the
walk when they pulled up to April's. She wasn't wearing a jacket and she was soaked to the bone, her thin curls plastered flat against her forehead. The wide straps of her bra and the outline of her cross showed through her wet tracksuit top.

“I can't find Shadow!”

April scrambled out of the car with her crutches. “What do you mean?”

“After you left, I put him out to pee and when I opened the door to let him back in, he was gone. The gate was open. Lewis must've left it open. But he's never taken off before, not even if it was wide open. For heaven's sake, the stupid old thing is probably out looking for you.”

“No, he's not. He wouldn't leave. Shadow!” April hobbled down the path, whistling for him. “Shadow, here boy!”

“We'll look in the other direction!” Simon hollered after her as Teo turned Blouise around.

They drove slowly up and down the streets around Paradise Heights, silent except for the
wush-wush
of the windshield wipers, and to take turns calling for Shadow every block or so. Shadow had vanished. Zoe asked everyone they saw if they'd seen the old black dog, but it was getting dark and there weren't many people out. Those that were were huddled behind umbrellas tilted into the icy wind; all they could see was their feet. They searched for two and a half hours, doubling back after an hour to collect April, who was shaking with cold and sobbing uncontrollably.

“It was them!” She wiped another spot in the fogged up window with her sleeve. “It was the Beckoners. I know it. Shadow wouldn't leave on his own.”

“What if he saw another dog?” Leaf said.

“Or he thought he saw you?” Teo offered.

“He waits on the mat by the front door.” April shook her head. “He doesn't budge until I come home. The farthest he goes without me is to the curb to watch for me after school.
That's it. Even if you dangled a steak in front of him, he wouldn't go anywhere without me.”

Back at April's, Zoe
called Janika's on the off chance that she could convince her to tell her if they knew anything about Shadow's disappearance. There was no answer. There was no answer at Beck's either. Heather's little brother picked up when she phoned Heather's house, but when she asked to speak to Heather, he said she wasn't there and neither was Beck or anybody, although Zoe would swear later that she heard voices in the background.

Zoe, Leaf, Simon and Teo sat on April's bed while she wept and sobbed and moaned. Simon kept apologizing for being allergic to dogs, even though nobody thought for one minute that his allergies made it his fault. Even if he weren't allergic, Shadow would never have been allowed in Simon's immaculate house anyway. Lewis sat in the doorway, apologizing for leaving the gate open, although they all knew it wasn't his fault either. Leaf offered an apology too, for telling the cops. No one argued with him on that one.

The guys grew restless, perched on the bed, knees jiggling, not sure what to do with themselves, except for Simon who rubbed April's back and told her everything was going to be fine, which probably wasn't the best idea and not at all true.