The Lottery (9 page)

Chapter Seven

For the rest of the week, they left her alone. No scrolls appeared in her desks and no one flashed mysterious hand signals at her in the halls. In fact, Shadow Council demonstrated such a complete lack of interest in her existence, Sal might have dismissed the entire ordeal except for one minor detail — every student at Saskatoon Collegiate now treated her as if she didn’t exist. Eyes blanked as they crossed her face, voices talked around her, she felt unsubstantial as a breath of air. Former friends were the worst, their eyes glazing with dread whenever they accidentally bumped into her. Brydan had it easiest — he simply ducked his head and treated her as part of his regular hallway obstacle course — but the rest of her friends were eye level and had to keep inventing a sudden interest in their watches or turning in the opposite direction. Feeling in some way responsible for their discomfort, Sal avoided her favorite haunts and used
out-of-the-way washrooms, but it was impossible to predict every encounter. Thursday afternoon, two days after she’d received the third scroll, she entered the girls’ washroom in the tech wing to find Kimmie Busatto coming out of a toilet stall, zipping her jeans.

“Oh my god!” Kimmie cried, her chubby face collapsing as she caught sight of Sal standing, equally stunned, in the doorway. Then her zipper caught and she refocused on it with manic relief, yanking and swearing.

The second day of classes, Sal had already memorized Kimmie’s schedule and she knew it better than her own. Kimmie had just gotten out of History and her next class was English, halfway across the school. Any other girls’ washroom in the entire building would have been more convenient than this one. “What’re you doing in this can?” she whispered, cold realization settling in.

The zipper remained static, caught on a thread and refusing to budge. Keeping her eyes down, Kimmie worked it frantically while Sal counted nuclear butterflies in her stomach. Until that zipper moved, the two of them were trapped in a washroom both of them had chosen in order to avoid encountering each other on the opposite side of the school.

“I hate this place.” Kimmie’s voice was muffled, directed into her chest. “I hate what they do to people here, I hate what they’re doing to my friend.” The thread gave, and she quickly zipped up her jeans. “I hate,” she continued softly, staring at the floor, “myself.” Without looking up, she sidled quickly and carefully around Sal’s motionless body and out the door.

Sal endured the long ache of her next class, wondering what she could have said to change the situation. Should
she have challenged Kimmie and begged her to dig into some hidden reserve of courage? But wasn’t that something that happened only in novels and war movies? Who kept hidden reserves of anything for daily living, unless it was a few bucks to invest in the next lottery ticket? And after the way she herself had treated Jenny Weaver last year, did she have the right to say anything to anyone else?

Somewhere deep within, a calm voice kept repeating, You don’t deserve this. Keep your chin up and it’ll pass. They’re idiots, don’t waste your time on them. But the fact was she did care, and it was the small ridiculous things she cared about — like drawing Bic tattoos on someone’s arm while waiting for french fries and gravy in the cafeteria lineup, or joining the rest of a class in shooting paper airplanes at a preselected human target every time a teacher’s back was turned. She longed to add her comments to the colloquial archives of the Pony Express. A lightning-bright pain ripped through her each time she was bypassed by a note, as if the hands passing that note had also reached into her chest and torn out her heart — and then the damn thing grew back again, fresh, naive, and ready for the next death.

Friday noon found her standing at her locker, putting off the desolation of yet another solitary lunch as students standing on either side of her bantered back and forth.

“Yeah, I got suspended,” said the guy opening the locker to her left. “For four days. It was like a vacation. I watched the soaps with Mom. She took me grocery shopping. You should see her at the baked goods section, man.” His voice arced, false and high, imitating his mother. “‘Oh, look at these donuts. Doesn’t this one look good?’ And then,” he continued, his voice returning to normal, “she
poked her finger right through the jelly filling, licked it off, smiled at me and walked away.”

“No way, man.” The guy pawing through the locker to Sal’s right straightened and grinned. “That’s your mom?”

“My mom,” said the first guy, “never took mom lessons.”

Sal laughed. Forgetting the invisible barrier that had been constructed around her, she turned to the guy on her left and said, “That is so cool. I wish my mom was like that.”

The guy looked like Dusty, with his long thin hair, Pink Floyd t-shirt, and scattered constellations of forehead zits. For the briefest of seconds their eyes connected and she was alive among other humans as an answering grin started across his face. Then his expression went blank and his eyes shifted away. Behind her, the second guy cleared his throat.

“What say we go check out McDonald’s?” he said and they slammed their lockers, catching Sal in a vise of sound. Stunned, she had to fight the urge to dive into her own locker as the two guys walked away. The body did such strange things when it was afraid. There was no arguing with it — weakness hijacked every joint and all it wanted was to go fetal, crawl into the nearest bed and suck its thumb.

Head down, she traveled the labyrinth of school halls, veering to avoid oncoming students as if the briefest body contact would send her up in smoke. The crowd thinned as she entered the tech wing where music classes were held. Junior Band practices took place every Monday and Wednesday at noon, and the music room was always open for extra practice, but only the most dedicated could be
found, lips pressed to a mouthpiece, on a Friday lunch hour. Turning into the hall that led to the music room, Sal watched the linoleum pattern swirl beneath her feet. This corridor showed no signs of life, no oncoming rabbity eyes or hastily averted faces to avoid. Still, she didn’t look up. Over the past few days, she’d been developing a hefty visual preference for floors. They were a comforting architectural structure, always there when you needed them. In fact, the floor was a great friend that never betrayed you or suddenly took off, leaving you standing on thin air.

Further down the hall a door opened and two figures emerged from a tech classroom. With a brief comment the teacher headed in the opposite direction, while the guy in the wheelchair popped a graceful 90° turn and came coasting rapidly toward Sal. Focused on a metalwork object in his lap, Brydan didn’t look up until he was approximately ten meters away. When he did, she was close enough to watch his next thoughts flash across his face — he could make a quick one-eighty and take off the other way, or continue grimly toward her, blanking the inside of his head until he was safely past and escaping around the corner.

He continued to approach. They were seven meters apart, then five. Each spoke in Brydan’s wheels whispered into the enormous silence. Would he speak to her? Would he? Brydan was an unpredictable guy, sidestepping all stereotypes and at the same time fitting in everywhere. You were as likely to see him smoking with the metalheads as grabbing a quick game of chess with the brown-nosers. Wasn’t this what she’d always liked about him — he wasn’t locked into any particular way of seeing things, turning every situation instead into an opportunity?

Head lowered, his hands traced his wheels slowly, as if
reading his options there in braille. Then, two meters from her, he began to arc to the left and she realized he was going to do it, he was going to pass her like a stranger. No, less than a stranger — simply a hallway object to avoid.

With a moan, she stepped in front of him. Caught by surprise, he ran into her. She lost her balance and had to brace herself against his shoulder. For a moment, everything was the scent of her hair tangled with his, the sound of quick warm breathing. Then he backed up and veered to the right. Again, she stepped in front of him, her eyes narrowed to slits, her body shuddering with deep breaths. It was crazy, she knew she couldn’t win, but some raw mad fist was squeezing her brain and she couldn’t think. Again, Brydan veered to the right and again she rammed herself, a stubborn desperate wall, into his path.

“Sal,” he said finally, his voice gusty and frightened. “Let me past, please.”

She hadn’t meant to frighten him. Stepping aside, she let her hair swing across her face and listened to Brydan’s wheelchair take him slowly down the hall.

The music room was empty except for a disheveled-looking Pavvie who sat huddled at his desk, marking papers. He was wearing her favorite outfit — a yellow-and-black checked blazer and the infamous yellow pants. At her entry, he looked up with a pleased nod as if he’d been expecting her, had been secretly waiting for her to discover her hidden reserve of talent.

“I thought I’d get some extra practice in,” Sal mumbled, suddenly exhausted at the prospect of another human interaction, no matter how brief. “Is a practice room free?”

“Sure, sure.” Pavvie nodded approvingly. “Room B.”

“Thanks.” Grabbing clarinet #19, she headed into one of the two soundproofed rooms that had been built onto the music room’s west side. In the small enclosed space, several chairs and music stands stood at various angles. Through the adjoining wall came the muffled sounds of a brass player warming up in Room A. Slumping into the nearest chair, Sal let the full weight of solitude press down upon her.

It wasn’t going to change. Forty-eight hours had gone by, two full days of living inside a transparent tomb and staring out at the living. Nine and a half months of invisible exile remained before her sentence would be lifted — at least 270 days. Sal’s mind buckled at the thought. And after that? How was she going to feel when the year ended and everyone started talking to her, pretending none of this had taken place? Would she and Brydan be able to ignore what just happened in the hall? Could she pick up again with Kimmie without ever mentioning a full year of torment as the lottery winner? Wouldn’t that just make the whole thing worse?

Dully, Sal opened the clarinet case and began to fit the instrument together. Pavvie had looked at her with such hope. She should at least spew forth a few squawks and toots. Flipping through her music folder, she pulled out “Dixieland Jamboree” and putted through it half-heartedly. She gave it her best, trying to focus, but she sounded like a pair of copulating dachshunds. Bleary notes rose and fell, disintegrating into a wave of sadness. Who was she trying to kid? Since when had she given a hoot about “Dixieland Jamboree”? Why should she? No one ever noticed if she actually played or not. She could sit through next Tuesday’s
practice faking it, playing silence as she often did, and no one would catch on. Wasn’t this exactly what she’d been doing for the past forty-eight hours — performing a role of silence, except this one had been assigned?

The door to Room B opened and her eyes instinctively dropped, seeking to avoid the incoming face that would go blank upon seeing her and begin backing out. But as she stared at the floor, there came the soft sounds of someone settling into the chair beside her, placing a music folder onto a stand and opening it. Darting sideways, her eyes fixed on a pair of sloppy Reeboks and flew upward into the careful wolfish face of Willis Cass.

“I wondered who was in here,” he said casually, fiddling with a valve on his trumpet. “I thought maybe we could take a run through “The Call of Fate.” The second page is a bitch for first trumpets.”

She stared as if expecting to see him explode into nuclear fusion, a devil-red mushroom cloud, but he continued to sit beside her, a casual grin on his face, faking humanity.

“I am not playing with you,” she blustered. “No way!”

“Why not?” Fluid, relaxed, he leaned back in his chair and studied her. She wanted to scream and launch herself at him, shove that trumpet anywhere she could make it fit.

“Because you’re despicable, that’s why.”

“I’m no different than you.”

“Look,” she spat, leaning toward him. “Maybe I didn’t talk to Jenny Weaver last year, but I didn’t know her. It wasn’t like I was betraying a friend. And I am not like you — forcing this whole lottery thing on everyone.”

“How could Shadow force fifteen hundred students?”
shrugged Willis. “We’re giving them what they want, or they wouldn’t be going along with it.”

“They’re doing it because they’re afraid!”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of you. You and your popular ... monsters.”

“Are you afraid of me, Sally?”

Words dissolved in her throat and she retreated into silence, her eyes sinking to the floor.

“Not too afraid to lambast me.” Willis’s voice was thoughtful. “You’ve got more guts than most kids at this school.”

Her heart leapt at the compliment, leaving her nauseous at its betrayal. Who did this guy think he was, twitching her this way and that like a piece of dental floss? “You’re just saying that,” she accused. “For some hidden purpose.”