Beckoners (4 page)

Simon, as high as that neon cross on the Rejoice In His Name roof, rescued Zoe before she'd even finished the cigarette. He pulled her away, stealing the last half of the smoke and sharing it with Teo. He and Teo hooked Zoe's arms and escorted her past the jury members, who'd decided a verdict wasn't called for, considering Beck's involvement. They crossed the street and cut through Paradise Heights to the corner store, where they bought two ice cream sandwiches each, and one for Zoe.

“Looks like the Beckoners got their claws in you already,” Teo said through a mouthful of ice cream. “You watch out, girl.”

“Why?”

“They are some nasty bitches.” Simon pinched her butt. “You just watch your flat little ass, if you're going to play with the Beckoners.”

“The Beckoners?”

“Beck's little girly gang. You know. Beck. Beckon. The Beckoners.”

“Doesn't matter if you beckon or not, they come calling when they want.” Teo broke into giggles. He leaned over and kissed Simon on the lips. Simon kissed him back, just as a carload of
jocks drove by, hollering “faggot” out the windows. The boys and Zoe all flipped them the finger.

After they turned the corner, Simon said, “For a northern hick, you're pretty cool about queers.”

“There's queers up north too, you know.” Zoe shrugged. For a time, Zoe had wondered if she might be gay herself. She'd kissed Luisa lots of times, each sleepover ended up with Luisa suggesting they “practice.” Luisa pouted if Zoe wouldn't go along with it, so Zoe took the rather long, drawn-out sloppy opportunity to survey how she was feeling. It was okay. Kind of nice. Gross, though, that one time they'd had Caesar salad for supper. She didn't get turned on though, but then again, maybe Luisa wasn't her type.

Zoe wasn't about to tell them about Luisa, so instead she said, “Besides, who wouldn't think Teo is a catch?”

“I like this one.” Teo grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her on the lips. “Let's keep her.” Even though she knew he was into boys, Zoe couldn't help but notice her belly did an enthusiastic back flip. He was a much better kisser than Luisa, that was for sure.

On the way back
to the school they passed April, coming back from her house. She lived in Paradise Heights too, number twenty-two. Shadow, eleven years old now and with arthritic hips, trotted as best he could beside her, tail wagging. Zoe lifted her hand to wave, but Simon grabbed it.

“Nuh uh, don't even go there. That's Dog.”

“April?” Zoe squinted at her. “She's in my English class.”

“Her name is Dog.” Simon pulled Zoe along. “She's a total loser. Don't go anywhere near her, or she'll get on you.”

One thing about Simon
that set him apart from everyone Zoe had ever met, was his ability to leap on a tangent and fly away. Teo called these tangents “Simon's verbal seizures.” Simon called them “essential thoughts and information on important subjects.” Zoe called them “Simon Says” moments.

Like the one about Dog's notebook: that ratty old exercise book she carried with her everywhere, usually folded in half in her back pocket, so worn at the crease it was reinforced with duct tape twice over.

“See that?” Simon pointed it out as Dog passed them in the hall one day.

“Her butt?”

“No. The notebook.” He leaned closer and whispered. “That's
the
notebook.”

“
The
notebook?” Zoe shrugged. “The notebook I should be aware of because...?”

“You know what would be really helpful?” Simon said to Teo.

“Here we go,” Teo muttered. “I sense a verbal seizure coming on.”

“What would be really helpful is if new students got implanted with some sort of microchip that held all the gossip about their new school, so that people like me wouldn't have to go over and over it.”

“A microchip?”

“
Yes,
because if you had such a thing implanted in your head, then you would know the importance of that notebook and I wouldn't have to tell you all about it.”

“It's okay, Simon, you don't have to.”

“Good.” Simon smiled. “I'm glad.”

“No, you're not,” Teo said.

“Yes, I am.” Simon took a deep breath. “It's a relief.” He looked at Teo, who was staring at him, eyebrows raised. “What are you looking at?”

“The rest of the seizure. You're not done yet.”

Simon eyed Zoe. “You really don't want to know about the notebook?”

Zoe shrugged. “Doesn't matter.”

“You see?” He gripped her shoulders. “That's where you're wrong! How can you know about anything if you don't know about it
all
? Okay, that notebook for example. It's like Dog's inventory, of all the things people do to her. I've seen it. It's crammed with all this teeny tiny writing right out to the edges of the paper, like some kind of schizophrenic manifesto. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if she ends up being schizophrenic. She's weird like that, like who else believes all that immaculate conception, resurrection crap unless they're delusional?”

“Most of Abbotsford, Simon,” Teo said.

“My point. Anyway, little miss Christianity goes to that happy clappy church—”

“Rejoice In His Name,” Teo supplied.

“Repent for your Shame,” Simon muttered. “So, last year Cromwell starts going there too. And he sits in the pew right behind her and they do that whole shake hands, ‘Jesus loves you, my friend' stuff every Sunday. Well, guess what?” Simon didn't leave room for an answer. “Dog developed a soft spot for Cromwell and starts writing about him, in
the
notebook, how she looks forward to seeing him every Sunday, and what blue eyes he has and how he's so sweet always wearing those funny suspenders her little brother likes. She goes on and on about how kind he is, how much she likes him, what a nice man he is, even if he's so fat one less person than usual can fit in the pew. Oh! Oh, the best, the
best
is how she feels so sorry for him that he has no girlfriend. She's like, ‘He's probably a great lover and a marvelous kisser, to make up for what he lacks in physique.' Oh. My. God.”

“Her God,” Teo muttered.

“Her god? I don't know if I would call it her god, seeing as how her god did nothing to stop Lindsay from stealing the notebook right out of Dog's back pocket in the cafeteria lineup one day.
Her
god didn't stop the Beckoners from passing it around for days, using a magnifying glass to read her miniscule writing. I bet you Dog was on her knees begging Jesus for a miracle, like the book would spontaneously combust or something.”

“The whole thing is cruel,” Zoe said.

“It gets worse,” Simon said.

“Much worse,” Teo said.

Simon continued. “The Beckoners photocopied and enlarged bits of it, cutting and pasting. They made a poster that said, in Dog's own writing, with her very own signature at the bottom: ‘I love Cromwell, his soft kiss, his blue eyes, his flesh against mine.'”

“That's so mean!” Zoe put a hand over her mouth. She watched Dog disappear into a room at the end of the hallway. Poor pathetic her.

“Yeah, it is, but you know what's worse? They made two hundred copies and pasted them up beside another poster, one that showed April and Cromwell kissing. They'd taken a photo of her, side profile, and a photo of him, side profile, and doctored them on the computer so it looked like they were kissing like porn stars.”

“I would die,” Zoe said.

“Yeah, so would most people, but she didn't even transfer schools. Those things were everywhere: lining the halls, the windows, papering Cromwell's door, on the fence around the school. And she didn't even miss one class, let alone quit or transfer or bomb the school.”

“I would've killed myself,” Zoe said.

“And that would've been a very reasonable response,” Simon said.

Teo whacked him on the shoulder. “Don't even say that.”

“Well, it's true. People kill themselves over a lot less. All I'm saying is I wouldn't blame her. Would you blame her?”

Teo shook his head. “But Christians don't kill themselves, right? They go to hell if they do.”

“And I ask you, what would be worse? Being Dog here on earth or rotting in hell?”

Zoe and Teo glanced at each other.

Zoe shrugged. “I don't know much about hell.”

“At least hell's run by an ex-angel. Beck's always been Beck,” Teo said.

“No, she hasn't.” Simon's tone softened. “But that's another subject.”

“Another seizure, more like it.” Teo took Zoe's hand. “Just don't ask. If you don't ask, sometimes the seizures don't happen.”

“I didn't ask anything just now.”

Teo whispered, “Sometimes they just can't be helped.”

This time Simon whacked Teo. “Subtle.”

“Unlike you.” Teo whacked him back. “Are you done?”

Simon tilted his head to the side and considered the matter. “Yeah, I guess.”

“So she got a different notebook?” Zoe marveled, realizing. “After all that, and she got another notebook?”

“Some dogs never learn,” said Simon. “Others do. I heard Cromwell doesn't even go to Repent for your Shame anymore.”

It was Friday the
thirteenth, or early morning Saturday, really, when Zoe woke up to the sound of glass smashing, lots of it, so much that it sounded like it was pouring out the back of a dump truck. She wondered at first if she was really still asleep and this was one of those real-not-real dreams. People were shouting, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. Alice came into her room, pulling on her robe.

“What the hell is that?”

They looked out the window, but all they could see were other people looking out their windows. Cassy started fussing in
Alice's room, but Alice wasn't budging, so Zoe went to her. She picked her up and was going to take her into her room, but then she glanced out Alice's window and froze. The Beckoners were running along the trail through the brambles in the vacant lot behind Paradise Heights. They stopped under the streetlight at the far corner, the bright pink of Heather's jacket standing out in the night like a stuffed toy tossed from a car.

Earlier that day, Mrs. Henley had told them about Virginia Woolf walking into the river with her pockets full of rocks, drowning from the weight of them. When Zoe fell back asleep, Cassy warm and sweaty beside her, she dreamt of the Beckoners with their pockets sagging and stretching with stones, the five of them walking in a line down a smooth beach and into the surf of a strange violent sea, all of them drowning like Virginia Woolf, their bodies washing to shore in a jumble of bloated arms and legs.

The next morning, after
Alice left for work, Zoe put Cassy in the stroller and went to investigate. The breaking glass had sounded like it came from somewhere above the playground.

It was Dog's house. She was in the carport, picking glass off the hood of a rusting minivan with leather gloves that were too big for her. An ambulance was parked behind the van. Shadow was tied up by the front door, whining, eyes fixed on Dog.

Dog looked at Zoe for a second, eyes wounded and accusing, and then she turned back to the van. The Beckoners had made a terrible mess. All the van windows had been smashed, even the little triangle windows near the back, as well as every single window of their house. The way the curtains billowed out it looked like the windows had been flung open to let the fresh autumn air in. On the grass and pavement below, the glass sparkled with dew, glinting in the sunshine like a spill of jewels. A little boy in a gray sweatsuit and a red plastic firefighter's hat pushed a wide broom he could hardly manage down the path towards Zoe, spreading the glass along further.

“Lewis, get back here!” Barb, the pear-shaped lady who ran Cassy's daycare, chased after him. She hauled him away from the glass. “Go inside and watch cartoons, would you?” She kissed the top of his head and pushed him towards the house.

“Mom, the can's full.” Dog eyed Zoe again.

Barb was Dog's mom? Barb, who was so cotton candy happy-happy in her pastel tracksuits with appliquéd bible scenes, her fluffy hair, her apple soap scent perfuming the air around her like she was a real-life scratch-and-sniff sticker? Dog was so flat, so drippy. Everything about her was limp: her clothes, her hair, her smell, like tired lettuce left out in the heat.

“Well, dump it then,” Barb said.

Dog clutched the garbage can, eyes on Zoe like she was considering dumping the glass over Zoe's head.

“Oh, for heaven's sake, give it to me.” Barb took the can from her. That's when she noticed Zoe. She smiled wide. “Oh, Zoe! Didn't even see you there, watch out, dear.” She pushed past her. “Coming through. You know April?” Barb didn't wait for Zoe to answer. “April, this is Zoe. Alice's other girl. You know Alice. Cassy's mommy? Zoe, this is my daughter, April.” Barb dumped the glass, the clatter echoing against the metal walls of the dumpster parked on their little patch of grass.

“We're in English together,” Zoe said. It was true. It was safe. She stared at the ambulance. “Did someone get hurt?”

“Oh, thank the good Lord, no. April's daddy is a paramedic. Sometimes he comes home with it.” Barb pulled off her gloves. “He's upstairs sleeping off a night shift.” She undid Cassy's belt and lifted her into her arms, nibbling her belly, rubbing noses. Cassy grabbed a fist of Barb's sandy curls and held tight.

Dog and Zoe stared at each other. Barb kept babbling.

“Can you believe
I
had Mrs. Henley when I was your age? That was when the school was two wooden buildings in the corner of the football field. It burnt down in 1978. That was something to see. I've got pictures of it. I'll get my yearbooks.”