The Lottery (27 page)

Listlessly setting the cap onto her mouthpiece, she walked toward the auditorium beside Brydan, then followed him up the stage’s side ramp. There was the usual uproar as band members climbed the risers and adjusted their chairs and music stands. Off to one side stood two extra music stands, ready for the duet. Whispers and giggles erupted from the wings — the purpose of today’s assembly was a pep rally in support of the soccer semifinals, and the teams were psyching themselves up. Beyond the stage lights, the auditorium stretched into darkness, empty except for the endless rows of chairs. Soon every teacher and student would be parking their butts in a chair that had been set in place by a member of the Celts. The club had probably also set up the risers and chairs for the Concert Band. Shadow touched you everywhere, Sal mused. Wroblewski thought he ran things? Just wait until he saw the updated version of the school motto planned for the auditorium wall.

A low rumble echoed through the building as class-
room doors opened and students began filing toward the auditorium. Suddenly Sal’s heart was thudding painfully, the clarinet slipping in her sweaty hands. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Willis staring pale and expressionless at his knees. Gone was the wolfish grin, his mouth sucked into itself, tasting dread. The rumble coming down the halls crescendoed as students jammed into the auditorium. Chairs scraped and creaked, ripples of laughter rode the crowd. Stepping out of the wings, Mr. Wroblewski strode to the mike and began speaking, his comments a distant static in Sal’s head. Then the stage lights were focusing on the band, Pavvie stepping onto the conductor’s podium and rapping his baton. The band took a collective breath and launched into “In the Mood.” Notes lurched, frightened and scattered, from Sal’s clarinet. No, she wanted to say, I never asked for this. I never asked to be lifted out of insignificance and mediocrity, I never wanted to be more than what I am.

Chris Busatto’s face flashed through her head, and her thoughts veered after it. What did his arms look like now? What was he thinking, what could he be thinking with the drugs they must be pumping into him? Did anything she had to face today, did anything Willis had to face, come close to the moment when Chris had placed that sharp edge against his forearm and decided to dig his grave inside his own body?

“In the Mood” ended with a flare of trumpets, the band lowering their instruments and reaching for the second piece of music. With a quick nod to Sal and Willis, Pavvie walked to the mike, his shy clipped voice resonating throughout the auditorium.

“This morning we have a surprise, a duet composed by
Willis Cass and performed by Willis Cass and Sally Hanson. It is called ‘Inside the Question’.”

Incredulous, Brydan twisted toward her, and the auditorium filled with an immediate buzz. Sal’s next breath opened endlessly, like an accordion. As she stood with her copy of “Inside the Question,” the stage lights faded in and out. Beyond them, darkness loomed like a huge swallowing mouth. Then a slight tug came at her sleeve. Glancing down, she saw Brydan’s grinning face. “Ghost of Benny Goodman,” he hissed. “Let ‘er rip.”

She walked toward Willis, who was shifting the extra music stands to the front of the stage. He picked up his trumpet, and she took her place beside him, facing the dense silence. “Ready?” he whispered, his eyes briefly making contact, an unreadable glint that left her as alone as she’d ever been.

Alone, she realized suddenly, but not the same. The inner wall had crumbled, and she was no longer staggering under seven years of inexplicable guilt. She didn’t have to feel unworthy — the air was hers to breathe, this clarinet was hers to play any goddam way she wanted. Whatever Willis or Shadow Council had planned for this duet, they couldn’t control the way air and sound passed from her body into a musical instrument. That was hers.

First language, she thought.

The first eight bars were Willis’s solo. Lifting his trumpet, he took a deep breath and climbed a slow arc of notes. Sal slid her clarinet between her lips, listening and waiting, and then it came to her — an opening deep within herself, and from it, a line of pure longing that rose swiftly to greet her. Dreaming and insistent, the first notes passed her lips, and her fear of squeaking vanished. Sound filled her, she
was riding the slow pulse of the wind in the grass, she was the hawk’s reflection rippling across water — a second hawk at ground level, broken-winged yet dreaming of the possibility of sky. Oh, how she longed to soar, lift out of her skin and sing with the sun. Closing her eyes, Sal sent herself wishing into sound and it became the song of her father she was playing, the song of Chris Busatto, Tauni Morrison, Diane Kruisselbrink, and Jenny Weaver — all those who couldn’t find the mouth in their face, yet would not be silenced. She played on, their voices rising through her, demanding an existence that was free of the hawk soaring above, and more than a low-level reflection. The music lifted through her, taking the shape of their faces — Diane Kruisselbrink, arms lifted for a mighty shove; Jenny Weaver’s eyes darting here, there and everywhere, still searching for one true friend; Chris Busatto glaring over a copy of The Chocolate War and saying, “Maybe I should get you an appointment”; Tauni Morrison whispering, “Find your feet, find your feet”; and her father’s gaze, hurt and staring, just before he gave that final twist to the steering wheel — all of them fighting back in their own way, saying, I cannot live with this, it is not enough.

And it wasn’t enough, not for them, not for her — no one could live as the reflection of someone else’s contempt. Longing twisted through Sal, calling her out of the expected. Leaving behind the part she’d been given to play, she soared into her own song, a smoky melancholy splendor. Beside her, the trumpet line faltered. Then Willis had also leapt free of his composition, and they were freewheeling together through sound, the glory and the ache. There were no words for this kind of knowing, it sang through the rise and fall of their lungs, the thud of
their hearts and the sweating of their palms, sending its question into the S.C. student body: Are you there, do you hear me, are you inside the questions of your heart?

Then from the dark auditorium came an answering voice, the blue voice lifting out of the endless rows of chairs and dreaming its way toward them. It came to Sal the way it had always come — as if it knew her, as if it had always known her and the way her heart needed to sing. Pulsing with her clarinet, Sal let the blue voice fill her, she let all things become the timbre and resonance of deep evening blue. When the exquisite longing finally faded from her body, she opened her eyes and stood blinking in the stage lights, wondering where she was. A movement caught her eyes, pulling them downward, and she saw Tauni Morrison leaned against the front of the stage, black lips smiling, pale gaze fixed directly on her own.

With a gasp, Willis lowered his trumpet. Tumultuous applause and foot-stomping began, opening the air to praise. Amazement flooded Sal — they’d heard, they’d listened, and they were speaking back. But as she grinned at the crowd, Tauni raised both hands against the thundering noise. Stumbling toward the nearest exit, she bumped into the doorframe.

“Find your feet, find your feet,” Sal whispered as the girl fumbled with the push-handle. “Doors open, walls don’t.”

Then Tauni was through and gone, in search of the solitude she needed to piece her reality together again. Throughout the auditorium, the S.C. student body was quieting, the applause dying out, only the odd whistle still piercing the air. Turning toward her seat, Sal paused as Willis touched her arm.

“Sally,” he said quietly, his eyes faltering across hers. “Whatever you think of me, whatever comes next — thank you for this.”

He hadn’t betrayed her, Sal realized. He hadn’t told Shadow about their surprise duet. So, not everything was etched in stone.

“Yeah,” she said, breathing and breathing the great good air. “Thank you too, for helping me to live inside the question.”

For two days, they left her alone. No further envelopes were presented to her for delivery, and no one signaled her in the halls. From the time Sal entered the school until the time she left, the only student who spoke to her was Brydan. Then, Friday evening around nine, the house erupted into a clamor of phones. Coming down the stairs she answered without thinking and picked up the front — hall extension to hear Willis’s careful voice at the other end.

“Sal, is that you?”

She knew immediately and shrank into the tight cave of her breathing. Without waiting for her response, Willis continued, as if he was aware Dusty and her mother were out, leaving Sal the only one present to answer the phone. “It’s the duty, we’ve scheduled it for tonight. I’ll come by at one-thirty, in the back alley. Can you be outside waiting?”

“One-thirty,” Sal whispered, the words creeping up her throat.

“There’s no other time to do this.” Willis seemed uncomfortable, his voice strained. “It has to be done at night. Make sure you bring your house key to get back in.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“See you then.”

She spent the intervening hours walking an invisible blueprint of fear. Stupidly, she’d fooled herself into believing she was safe in her own house, that Shadow Council ruled Saskatoon Collegiate but it ended there. Now it felt as if the school halls and classrooms had been superimposed over her home, a transparent nightmare that followed her as she paced the solid reality of her bedroom, the kitchen, and the long lonely halls. Even Retro-Whatever could do nothing to blast the images of dread growing so strong in her mind that her mother and Dusty, when they finally came home, seemed distant and unreal, a mere fantasy of safety.

At 1:25 she crept down the back stairwell, pausing at the door to the basement. She could hear Dusty and Lizard ensconced in Retro-Whatever, immersed in Led Zeppelin. Snatches of their conversation floated toward her. For a moment she considered hurtling down the basement stairs and revealing all, but what was the point of dragging a look of concern back onto her brother’s face? Since that night at the school wall he’d been so different, relaxed and proud of her, as if the main problem had been solved and everything else she had to face was mere technicalities. And perhaps he was right. Whatever’s coming ... Who knew what tonight would bring? Maybe she would paint her own version of the school motto onto the auditorium wall: Shadowus, Celtus et Bullshittus. What could they do to her, after all? They couldn’t actually force her to paint the words they wanted, and they weren’t likely to beat the crap out of her. Shadow Council never incriminated itself directly, and Willis would be there to protect her.

The night sky arced clear and cloudless, dreaming with stars. Beyond the back gate purred the outline of Willis’s car, a newer model that left Dusty’s several decades in the dust. Opening the passenger door, Sal slid into the acrid smell of hash and Radiohead’s hypnotic drone.

“So the victim has arrived.” Marvin saluted her from the back seat with a beer. “Give the girl a drink.”

“Can’t,” said Willis, easing his foot off the brake. “She has to be able to paint, remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Marvin snorted. “Ecstasas.”

He was echoed by a refrain of giggles. Checking the rearview mirror, Sal noted the shadowy outlines of Linda and Rolf passing a joint between them. She shot a careful look at Willis but he ignored her, keeping his gaze straight ahead.

“I think the victim should have one beer.” Leaning forward, Linda pressed an opened Coors into Sal’s hand. “Here victim, it’s on me.”

“Do I have to?” Again Sal glanced at Willis. Mouth tightening, he continued to stare straight ahead.

“Yes, you do,” Linda declared, her voice slurred and overly loud. “It’s part of your duty because I said so. Drinkie, drinkie.”

Something about this struck the other backseaters as hilarious. Snickering, Linda sank back among their guffaws. Sal shot another careful look at Willis. Without taking his eyes off the road, he gave a minute shake of his head, and she set the can on the floor.

“Nice concert you gave on Wednesday, victim,” snorted Linda, coming out of a long titter. “I really, really liked it.”

“You guys want to get focused?” Willis demanded sharply.

“Focused like you’re focused?” Marvin asked in a high giggly voice and the three were off again, collapsing into one another, choking with laughter.

“Give me that.” Swinging around, Willis grabbed the joint and tossed it out the window.

“Ooo — all work and no play makes Willis a dull boy,” sang Linda. “And tonight we just want to play.”

“Yeah, well, play later,” Willis snapped, pulling up to the curb. “Everybody out, we’re walking from here.”

Fear thrummed in Sal’s head and pounded a reggae beat through her body. Several residential blocks lay between the car and Saskatoon Collegiate, every house along the street darkened for sleep. Digging her chin into her jacket, she walked beside Willis as the three gigglers stumbled behind, negotiating their feet. Imperceptibly, Willis quickened his pace and they pulled ahead, two parallel silences.

“How are we getting in?” she asked as the school building loomed.

“Key,” Willis said shortly. “Legend has it that a Celt was helping maintenance unload supplies. One of the staff dropped a key chain and the Celt scooped it up. He got all the keys copied within the hour, then left the originals where they’d be found in the same area. The school locks were never changed, and Shadow figured out which keys were helpful.”

“Hey,” came Linda’s slurred voice. “No associating with the enemy, Prez.”

Again Willis’s face tightened, but he swallowed his thoughts. Far off, a siren wailed. They crossed the parking lot, the gravel scuffing loudly in the quiet.

“The door’s open,” said Rolf. “They’re already in.”

“Shhh!” hissed Linda, and another round of helpless
giggling began. Staring at a slightly open maintenance door, Sal felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. Why were so many Shadow Council members present tonight? She’d assumed a few would be there — Willis, Linda, probably Rolf — but why had so many of them shown up to watch her paint a few words on a wall? Desperately she imagined herself taking a stand and refusing to enter the school, or simply turning and dashing off into the darkness. Then the doorway was looming and her body passing through it, silent and obedient as ever.