Beckoners (7 page)

When she and Cassy got home, Alice was upstairs in her bedroom on the phone with the door shut. Her purse was on the couch. Zoe rifled through it, looking for the thick cream colored paper, but it was gone.

The pain of the
branding was much worse on Monday. It had only really throbbed all day Sunday. That hadn't been so bad; but by mid-morning Monday, Zoe couldn't remember what it was like
not
to be in pain. It ached, it throbbed, it seemed to have developed its own voice and was now screaming in agony. The throbbing was a constant soft thud. When Zoe closed her eyes the thudding got louder. “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” it seemed to pound in her head and Zoe couldn't disagree. She ducked into the handicapped bathroom between classes and locked the door. She looked at it in the mirror. It was festering, probably writhing
in the clutches of some gross infection. Before she headed out, Zoe rinsed it with cold water, wincing back the tears.

Science was next. Just after Mr. Turner had taken off after attendance and most of the class was gone, Zoe showed Simon the scar and told him about Saturday night.

“You didn't!” Simon's lips curled in disgust at the sight of the wound. He lowered his voice so that the few others who'd stayed behind wouldn't hear. “You are in so deep. I don't think there's anything left for me to even
say
.”

“But I had to—”

“I don't see any puppet strings.”

“You don't understand.”

“Don't give me that shit. I completely understand.” Simon grabbed her wrist. “Come with me.” He dragged her into the hallway. “Okay. I'm all ears. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I didn't get a chance to think.” Zoe pulled her sleeve gingerly back over the wound. “It just kind of happened.”

“Bullshit.” He folded his arms and frowned. “You want this?”

Zoe shrugged. She'd just wanted to wipe that smile off of Heather's face, which she'd accomplished beautifully. She opened her mouth to say that, but then she decided she didn't want him to know that about her.

“You would've done the same thing if you were me, Simon.”

He took an extra long drawn-out breath before answering. “Um, no, Zoe. I would not have done the same thing if I were you.”

“What would you have done?”

“Told them in no uncertain terms to get that cow brand away from my perfect, blemish-free skin, thank you very much.”

“Oh, sure. As if.” Zoe wanted to tell him that would not have worked. She wanted to tell him that he had to be there to understand why she went through with it. He had to have seen the way Heather gloated. Zoe wanted to tell him about how Heather thought she couldn't do it. How she was just so bloody
sure Zoe wouldn't go through with it. She wanted to tell him it was no different than Teo's Gemini tattoo at the base of his neck. She wanted to take his hands and make him stay there until he'd tell her he didn't think less of her.

The look on Simon's face made perfectly clear just how much less he thought of her. He turned on his heel and went back into the lab, leaving her out in the hallway feeling as if she'd lost her virginity to some loser she'd thought was cool when they were alone together, but in the light of day turned out to be a freak nobody else wanted to be in the same room with.

One thing didn't change
after the initiation; Heather still acted as if Zoe did not exist. Well, even that did change a little; before, Heather had looked right through Zoe. Now, she didn't even bother doing that. If they were anywhere near each other, Heather ever so slightly turned her face away in a carefully executed gesture of dismissal. Lindsay, Janika and Jazz didn't know how to act.

“It's kind of weird,” Janika confided in her when they were alone together in gym. “We don't really bring in new people. Or, we did once, but she didn't really work out.”

Zoe figured Lisa Patterson would put it a little more emphatically than that.

“Well, I didn't ask for it, did I?”

“You don't want to be a Beckoner?”

“I didn't say that either.”

“But you're acting like it.”

“It's just Heather...” Zoe wasn't sure how to end the statement. She kicked at a basketball that had escaped in their direction. “She doesn't—she's just so bitchy.”

“But there's the rest of us,” Janika said. “It's not all Heather. Heather's just extra pissed off because of what happened at the park.”

“Is she ever going to be finished being pissed off?”

Janika shrugged as the gym teacher whistled for her to get into the game.

“She's been pissed off as long as I've known her.”

Then why be her friend at all? Zoe watched Janika snatch the ball from another girl and make a basket from halfway down the court.

Simon started talking to
Zoe again towards the end of the week.

“I've been thinking,” he said as a greeting. “Come with me.” He hooked her arm with his and pulled her towards the ravine.

Teo came along, until the three of them reached the trail that lead down into the ravine.

“Aren't you coming?” Zoe called behind her as Simon pulled her down the trail.

“I've been instructed to keep watch for the Beckoners,” Teo said.

Zoe let Simon drag her all the way down to the bottom of the ravine. It wasn't likely that the Beckoners would surface any time soon. They'd gone in Janika's sister's car to hotbox at Mill Lake. As far as Zoe knew, they weren't going to be back all afternoon. Zoe had managed to get out of that little escapade. There was no way she could miss her lab quiz that afternoon. She was sure that at some point, probably pretty soon, Beck would stop buying the excuses Zoe made up to get out of going with them.

Simon led Zoe to the little clearing where he and Teo hung out when they skipped class.

“Sit.” He pointed to one of the lawn chairs drawn up to an old cable spool table. Zoe sat. Simon paced.

“Am I in for a ‘Simon Says' moment?” From her sitting postition, Zoe thought Simon looked even taller than he really was. Zoe grinned. “Bring it on. I can take it.”

Simon stopped. “This isn't funny.”

Zoe removed her grin. “Sorry.”

“This is not some joke, Zoe.” Simon sat in the other chair. “I've been thinking really hard about whether or not to tell you this.”

Zoe's heart started pounding in anticipation. “Tell me what?”

“You know my verbal seizures, as Teo puts them, what I call essential thoughts and information on important subjects?”

Zoe nodded.

“I had to think about whether or not what I'm about to tell you falls in that category. I always kept it a secret. When I promise to keep a secret, I keep it.”

“Then don't tell me.” Zoe was pretty sure she didn't want to know, judging by Simon's conflicted expression.

“I've decided I'm going to.”

“Maybe you shouldn't?”

“I am.” Simon placed his hands on his knees. “I am going to tell you.”

“Whose secret is it?”

“Beck's!” Simon rolled his eyes. “Of course it's about Beck. Isn't everything about Beck?”

“No.”

“Well, this is.” He put a hand to his stomach. “Feels weird breaking a promise.”

“Then don't tell me!”

“It's not about not telling you anymore.” Simon placed his other hand on his stomach too. “It's about me feeling guilty that I didn't tell you sooner, but I didn't know they were going to initiate you. If I had known, I would've told you. I know I would've.”

“Now you have to tell me because you're scaring me.”

Simon took a deep breath.

“We were eleven. Beginning of grade six. Beck was making scrambled eggs in one of those iron skillets. You know those really heavy ones?”

Zoe nodded.

“She was making her dad breakfast. She always made his breakfast. He worked nights and was just coming home. So I guess it wouldn't really be his breakfast, because he went to bed
right after. I remember going over there to play and we had to talk in whispers because her dad was sleeping. He was always really grumpy—” Simon stopped talking as Zoe cocked her head at him, a gesture to stick to the topic.

“Anyway, the phone rang and she answered it and it was Heather and they started talking and the eggs started burning. Mr. Wilson came in just as the smoke alarm went off. He went off too. He grabbed her and he grabbed the fork she'd left in the hot pan and he burnt her with it.” Simon pointed on his own arm, the same spot Zoe had her scar. “Branded her.”

Zoe swallowed. “How do you know that's what happened?”

“We used to walk to school together. I came to the door just after. The smoke alarm was still screaming. So was Beck. I ran home and told my mom. She phoned the police. I remember she let me stay home from school that day.”

“What about Beck?”

“She went and stayed at Heather's for a few days. A social worker checked up on them after that, or that's what they told my mom would happen anyway. I don't really know.”

“The Beckoners?” Zoe stared at her lap. “When did that start?”

“Heather did it right away. And then the others, one a year on the anniversary until they all had it and there was no one else. So last year they tried Lisa Patterson. And now you.”

“Why me?” Zoe looked up.

Simon shrugged. “The five of them have always been best friends. There's no one left, unless they were going to start doing matching ones on the other arm. I don't know why Beck wants to keep doing it.”

“How long did Lisa Patterson last?”

Simon shrugged again. “Not long.”

Zoe felt sick while
she was writing her lab quiz that afternoon. The pulsing pain in her arm was worse: dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Mr. Turner collected the quizzes and then redistributed them for the students to mark each other. Simon got Zoe's. She'd failed, but Simon erased her wrong answers and circled the correct ones so that she aced it in the end, or it looked like that anyway.

Simon made Zoe promise
never to tell Beck what he'd told her in the ravine. It was a double cross-my-heart, hope-to-die, curse-me-if-I-don't kind of promise. Zoe felt a little sorry for Beck now. She was at Beck's house one night, waiting for her in the living room with the others while she was still upstairs in the shower. Mr. Wilson was getting ready to go to work. Mrs. Wilson padded around the kitchen, putting his lunch together, the bottom of her long sweater flapping against her pale veiny calves. Mr. Wilson grumbled about his coveralls not being dry, the car needing gas, his lunch not being ready and
his cigarettes being lost. When he left, Mrs. Wilson perked up considerably.

“Do you kids want some hot chocolate?” She kept her ear directed at the door, listening to the car back down the drive. She wore too much makeup. When she smiled, her eyebrows were dark arches over blue eye shadow ponds. Zoe wanted to wet a facecloth and wipe it off. She wanted to sit Mrs. Wilson down in a chair and bring
her
a mug of hot chocolate.

Zoe had not expected
to feel sorry for Beck. It made backing away a little more difficult, because now there was the added complication of having empathy for the very person she was trying to extricate herself from. Before Simon told her about Beck's dad, Zoe's first move was going to be to tell the Beckoners about Mrs. Henley putting her and Dog together in the Mrs. Henley's Underground Program for Gifted Children. It's not that Zoe still didn't think that was a good place to start. She wanted Beck to know she was choosing to stay in it, even though Dog was the only other student. She wanted Beck to know that she cared about other things, that she was interested in other things, that she was more than someone with Beck's warped idea of an initiation scar on her arm.

But so far, Zoe hadn't told her about Mrs. Henley. She was going to; in fact, one morning she decided she was going to tell her after class, but then in came Mrs. Henley waving a copy of the school paper. The essay contest. Zoe had started and finished her entry the day it was due and hadn't given it another thought until this moment. She hoped Mrs. Henley wouldn't say anything about it that would link her with Dog.

“Seats, everyone! I have the winning essay in hand. The author of which, as you all know, will be the assistant editor at the
Central Reporter
this year.”

A couple of kids in the front row leaned forward, trying to read the name at the top. Mrs. Henley wagged a finger at them.
“I don't think so. We have a special guest coming to announce the winner. By now you've all probably guessed, unless you are in fact cretins, that the winner is a member of this very class. Beck, eyes to the front. You and Lindsay can plot your overthrow of the government later, I'm sure.”

“Just tell us who it is,” Beck said. “No one cares anyway.”

“Well, Beck—” Mrs. Henley was interrupted by a knock at the door. In walked a wiry guy with rock star yellow-tinted glasses, black hair with blue tips hanging in his face, cuffs of his black jeans folded up, a dark gray work shirt undone over a black Ramones T-shirt, a stack of the school paper under one arm and a vintage
Dick Tracy
lunchbox in the other hand.

“As I was about to say, Beck, I can think of at least one other person who cares besides myself.” Mrs. Henley waved him in. “Our esteemed editor himself, Leaf Morrison.”

In that instant, Zoe became fairly sure she was not a lesbian.

“Hey.” Leaf nodded at the class.

His voice was deep, midnight radio announcer smooth. Zoe hadn't thought that teenaged boys could sound that cool.

Mrs. Henley beamed at him. “For those of you who don't know, Leaf is in his last year here at Central and has been the editor for the past two years. Leaf, the honor is yours. Don't keep us in suspense, child.”