The Lottery (23 page)

“You got some more lottery tickets to cash?”

There was a short pause. “I stopped buying them.”

She spun on a Frisbee of happiness. “Meet me by the bike racks, okay? Or maybe Wilson Park — no one’ll see us there.”

“I’ll meet you at the bike racks,” Brydan said carefully. “So, see you tomorrow?”

She hadn’t used the phrase in so long, it felt awkward.

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

Chapter Sixteen

Room B stood open, the notes from “Inside the Question” dreaming their way through the doorway. For once Pavvie was nowhere to be seen, the empty music classroom holding itself still and silent, as if listening to the hawk’s reverie. Sliding clarinet #19 from its shelf, Sal hummed along, then stopped in surprise as she realized that the melody she was singing differed from the one Willis had assigned her — more urgent, it dug into her throat with a short insistent pulse.

Abruptly the trumpet cut off and Pavvie’s voice could be heard, rushed and excited. “It is good, very good. I have been listening to you practice. The girl, Sally Hanson, she is getting much better. You are ready for an audience — I think the assembly next week. The band is playing and I will introduce you as a surprise duet. What do you think?”

Riveted to silence, Sal stood waiting for Willis’s reply. The two of them, Shadow president and victim, playing
a duet in front of the entire student body — sheer panic must be blasting Willis’s brain at the prospect. How was he going to ooze his shadowy self out of this one?

Willis’s voice emerged carefully out of the long pause. “I think that’s a great idea, especially if we keep it a complete surprise. But I’ll have to ask Sally first. I don’t know if she’s played a duet in front of a large audience before.”

Stepping into the doorway, Sal gaped at him open-mouthed. Dark eyes inscrutable, Willis returned her gaze, one eyebrow quirked upward.

“Yes, yes, here she is.” Pavvie smiled benevolently from a chair in the opposite corner. “We were talking about you and Willis playing at the assembly next week. Practice now, and I will listen when you are warmed up.”

Without waiting for her response, he nodded himself enthusiastically out of the room. The door shut behind him, closing Sal and Willis into a watchful silence.

“In front of the whole school?” Sal said weakly. “Do we have to?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Won’t you get demerits?”

“No rule says Shadow can’t interact with you,” Willis said easily, tilting his chair back. “In fact, you’re supposed to interact with us on a daily basis.”

“Oh c’mon,” Sal moaned, collapsing into the chair beside him. “This is different.”

“So am I different.” A stubborn look closed Willis’s face. “No one tells me what I can do. You can’t let other people dictate your existence.”

Easy for you to say, Sal mused. Who was it crawling under everyone’s asses at the last assembly, and now you want to put me center stage? Then she thought, And stand
beside me. Because that was what he would be doing-standing beside the victim, in front of the entire school. Whatever his motive, it was an obvious statement.

And her, standing beside him — what kind of statement would that be? Desperation? Kissing ass? She was only the victim, did her motive matter?

Ducking her head, she muttered, “What if I squeak?”

“You get nervous at the beginning, but it goes,” Willis said. “The music will take you in and you’ll forget the audience. You’re playing a lot better than I thought you could. And we’ll be warmed up from playing with the band, don’t forget.”

Nodding, she stared at her closed clarinet case. A bleak numbness seeped through her, and she felt like a wooden puppet. Was that what she was? Was she always going to let fear pull her strings?

“All right,” she said, “but we’ve got to practice extra. At least a couple of times.”

“Give me your address and I’ll come over,” Willis agreed. “Then we can practice as long as we want.”

They warmed up, then slipped into the slow floating notes of “Inside the Question,” Sal’s new reed squeaking several times before releasing her into clear singing sound. She played, the melody starting somewhere deep in her body, then flowing out through the clarinet, and when the sound left the instrument she was still part of it, suspended mid-air in a moaning breathless pulse.

“Beautiful, yes beautiful!” came Pavvie’s voice and she looked up to see him smiling in the doorway. “I will sit now and listen,” the band teacher said excitedly. “You play again, yes?”

They played several more times, Pavvie leaned forward,
chin on hands, his face so intent Sal could feel him mid — air, floating with the sound and the dream.

“Right here,” said Pavvie, pointing to Willis’s page. “You need to pull back a little, give the clarinet more room — it is her moment, yes?” Leaning forward, Willis nodded slowly. “And here,” said Pavvie, pointing to Sal’s musical score. “Here you let go and let your soul sing. You know how to sing, let it sing!” His eyes beamed directly into hers, then skittered shyly away. “Yes, yes, you two will play this surprise, and we will not tell a soul in advance, eh? Not even the band. We are supposed to play three pieces for the assembly, so the band will play “In the Mood,” then you will play “Inside the Question,” and the band will finish with “Call of Fate.” Not even the band will know until you get up to play.”

“Great.” Willis’s voice walked the tightrope of his thoughts. “Thanks for your comments, Mr. Pavlicick. You’re right about giving Sal more room.”

“You don’t need much help.” Pavvie rose to his feet, still beaming. “Well, classes in five minutes. I must go.”

“Shit!” hissed Willis, losing his guarded demeanor as Pavvie exited. “I’ve got Physics in the north hall at one.” Packing his trumpet, he stood to leave. “The assembly’s on Wednesday. How ‘bout we practice Sunday afternoon and Wednesday morning before school? Sunday at two?”

“Yeah, sure.” Hastily, Sal wrote down her address and handed it to him.

“Great,” said Willis, pocketing it. At the door, he hesitated and turned back. “Oh — about the Chris Busatto thing. I took care of it. It won’t happen again.”

“Okay.” Sal blinked rapidly, unsure where to look. “Whatever.”

“See you Sunday.” With a wink he was gone, and Sal was left staring at the empty doorway, wondering what the hell they thought they were doing. Just exactly how did one go about laying out the delicate beauty of one’s soul in front of fifteen hundred predatory peers? How could she expose and protect herself at the same time, how was she going to survive inside that question? And how would Willis? He would be prey then, just as she was.

As she stood to go, her eyes fell on a small spiral-ring notebook that lay beside Willis’s chair. Wondering if it was his, she flipped it open to see every line filled with his familiar intense scrawl. Though no title identified the contents, she knew immediately what she held.

Sign of the Inside — brush left side of nose. We are the gods — ripple right hand through the air. Report for duty — raise middle three fingers of right hand. As she scanned the first few pages, phrases leapt out at her. I am the master — stroke chin. Outsider — crook left index finger. Low level — grunt and slap knee. Here it was, line after line — Shadow Council’s secret language, the body code she’d been watching them play out between themselves for over a month. Did Willis know he’d dropped this notebook? Had he left it intentionally for her to find?

Somehow, she doubted it.

Swallowing Javex, she slid the notebook into the back pocket of her jeans.

The after-school crowd poured jubilantly through the exit, leaping headlong toward the weekend. Pushing her way through the melee, Sal paused inside the doorway, gnawing the raw mush of her lower lip. Private confessions on the
phone were one thing, a public encounter in the middle of several hundred potential spies something else entirely. Brydan had had all day to stew in regret. Would he be out there waiting, or would she find herself unlocking her bike and pedaling off into the familiar desolation?

The bike racks buzzed with the usual banter, students exchanging weekend plans, slipping on knapsacks and cycling off down the sidewalk. Keeping her head down, Sal fumbled with her chain-lock, unlocking and relocking it as the racks gradually emptied. Her heart ticked off seconds like a clock, the voices that surrounded her faded down the street and she stood alone with just two unclaimed bikes. Still Brydan didn’t show. Why would he do this to her, set her up for a day-long torture of expectation, then leave her to dissolve into absolute loneliness?

“Sal!”

Glancing up, she saw him cruising toward her, his face flushed but determined. “Sorry I’m late, my math class got held back.”

The late afternoon sunlight dusted his hair with gold, and she could see every pore in his face. Leaned against the closest bike rack, she tried to disguise a massive adrenalin rush. “How come?”

“The class next door ended up on the front lawn — someone’s idea of a practical joke when the teacher got called out. A kid coming in late told us about it, so we swarmed the windows to watch.”

“Could you see anything?” She’d delivered the envelope to Ken Goodwin on Wednesday. Obviously it had taken him some time to work out a game plan.

“Nah, too many trees in the way. Couldn’t see a thing, but we got held back fifteen minutes for disrupting the
class.” He gave her an apologetic smile, his eyes flicking nervously across her face. “Hey, what d’you say we blow this popsicle stand?”

As they started off down the sidewalk, she ducked her chin against the wind and tried to ignore the startled glances coming their way. Someone across the street gave a wolf howl, and a long low whistle from the school lawn reverberated sickeningly through her gut. Beside her, the quiet slap of Brydan’s gloves on his wheels kept them moving grimly forward.

“So,” he said finally, as they turned the corner toward Wilson Park. “How was your day?”

It was, she thought, a heroic, if plastic, effort at conversation. “I’ve been drinking a lot of Javex. You?”

“ODed on Javex. Then I switched to Drano. I thought about trading in my stomach for a toxic waste container.”

“God, I feel like such a catastrophe.” The words burst out of her, agonized and astonishing. She tried to choke them off, but they kept coming. “Every time I turn around, I bring more shit into someone’s life.”

“It’s not you,” Brydan said quickly. “It’s Shadow.”

“But it’s been like this for years.” How did she explain about her father, her hit-and-miss relationship with her mother, and the fact Dusty couldn’t grow up and get a life because he was stuck worrying about his kid sister’s problems? All her life she’d been a problem to other people — the evidence was stacked sky-high around her.

Brydan paused at the entrance to Wilson Park. Curving his body around the flick of his lighter, he dragged deeply on a cigarette. “Okay, brace yourself,” he said. “Here it comes, the deep-six meaningful philosophy of my life.”
He wheeled across the dry crackle of leaves, following the logarithm of his thoughts. “When I was in the hospital after the accident, I got pretty low. I mean, what a way to come down off acid — stuck in a hospital bed, Christmas lights everywhere, your body sawed off below the knees. I kept staring at those stumps and thinking, This is you, man. From now on, you are nothing more than what you haven’t got. I wouldn’t do rehab or talk to anyone — the doctors, my parents, even my sister Cheryl. Hell, she was the one who was driving — I blamed her for the wreck of my life.

“Then Christmas Eve, after my family gave up on me and went home, this old lady came and sat down beside my bed. She was a volunteer. You know the type — looks like somebody exploded a pack of rouge in her face. She must’ve been at least eighty, cheerful as a Hallmark card for over eight decades. She was wearing a Santa’s hat and carrying a bag of presents. Oh swell, I thought, the great-great-GREAT-granny from hell.”

Coasting beside him, Sal dragged her toes through the withered grass. Brydan’s words were comforting, a relaxed thoughtful flow, but they weren’t taking her where she wanted to go, away from the ache inside herself.

Blowing a wobbly smoke circle, Brydan continued. “‘Isn’t that a nice tattoo you’ve got there, sonny,’ the old lady said to me, and then she started fishing enthusiastically inside her Santa’s bag of presents.”

“Tattoo?” asked Sal, picking up interest.

Brydan shot her a sideways grin. “You know hospital pyjamas. I was wearing mine backwards — another way to bitch, I guess. Anyway, I had the string ties across my front and it showed off the dragon I’ve got tattooed on
my chest. It’s small, but it’s got a rose in its teeth. I call it Harry Potter. Sometime I’ll show you.”

“Yeah, sure.” Sal flushed, thinking more about chests than dragons. “Must be a great character reference.”

“Depends what you’re applying for,” Brydan grinned. “Anyway, this old lady handed me a little wrapped present, all pretty with a big red bow. ‘Merry Christmas, sonny,’ she said, and I was so mad and pissed off, I yelled, ‘Go to hell, you old bag. Can’t you see I just want to die?’“