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  “Excuse me,” she said, lurching forward. “Brent?”

  He turned toward her, his face flickering with recognition, then fear.

  “I’m supposed to deliver this to you.” She jabbed the tab awkwardly into the soft warmth of his palm. Slowly his fingers closed over it, his eyes staring vaguely past her right shoulder. Then, incredibly, a tiny smile crept across his mouth.

  “Okay, well, bye now,” she said idiotically, backing away from the dreamy statue he’d become.

  Fortunately the next two targets hadn’t yet reached homeroom, and she was able to leave their tabs with their teachers, but the final one had definitely arrived. No one had to point him out. She would have recognized those ears anywhere. Entering S23, she spotted Brydan immediately by the window. As she approached, his eyes lifted from a conversation with the girl seated behind him and locked with hers. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, the weight too heavy, a ton of raw pain. Then she was coming to a halt in front of him and depositing the tab onto the duotang lying in his lap.

  “Just don’t expect me to tell you what the hell it means,” she said in the voice of an utter stranger, then turned and left the room.

  She saw the girl with the black lipstick ahead of her, drifting down the hall. Thin body curved protectively inward, hands empty at her sides, the girl seemed unconnected to anything she passed. Other students walked alone, but their faces turned continually to watch what went on around them — they grinned and called out to the jostling, joking throng that surrounded them as if everyone in the vicinity was tuned in to the same set of brain waves, the same basic thoughts. Only the girl with the black lipstick followed the beat of a different drummer, only she tuned in to a vibe so unique it didn’t register within this reality, giving her the appearance of floating without purpose, going nowhere.

  Falling into step behind her, Sal took on the same drifting gait. It was lunch hour; she’d fulfilled her Shadow Council duties and had nothing to fend off absolute loneliness but a stack of algebra homework. Ahead of her, the girl turned into the west hall, freezing as several guys charged en masse around the corner and clipped her arm. Oblivious, the guys rushed onward and the girl collapsed against the nearest wall, momentarily inert. Then she straightened and began to bounce herself gently off the wall, making contact only with her shoulder blades. Her face remained expressionless and she seemed zoned-out, with no sign of the fear she’d shown at Wilson Park.

  Ten lockers down, Sal slumped against the wall, studying her. What was it with this kid? Was she on drugs? Was she an alien from another planet? Why would she plaster her mouth with black lipstick when she didn’t wear any other makeup? Dressed in an oversized gray t-shirt and leggings, the girl displayed no visible body piercing or tattoos. The black lipstick and hair dye didn’t fit. Nothing about the girl fit. She was the missing part of a jigsaw puzzle — the hole left by the absent piece. The girl was an absence.

  Pushing out from the wall, the girl started off again, head down, arms wrapped protectively around her chest. Sal picked up the pace and slipped in close behind. There seemed no need for secrecy, the girl showed no awareness of her presence. Sal was just another absence. Together they were two girl-shaped phantoms drifting through a hallway of solid human objects.

  The girl was muttering under her breath. Sal pressed closer, listening.

  “Don’t walk into the wall, walls hurt,” the girl whispered fiercely to herself. “Walk into the door, not the wall. Doors open, walls don’t.” Putting out a hand, she trailed it along the nearest wall, as if using it for some kind of radar. “Don’t walk into the water fountain,” she mumbled, tracing the outline of the drinking fountain. “Don’t walk into the garbage pail. Don’t walk into the ... object.” Without raising her head, the girl veered abruptly around an approaching teacher and continued on. “Okay, now find your feet, find your feet.”

  Turning into the library, she paused for a second as if bracing against something and pushed through the turnstile. Then she headed straight for the science fiction shelf, pulled out several paperbacks and disappeared into the non-fiction stacks. A minute later Sal found her in a study carrel, feet tucked onto her chair, chin on her knees, and reading. What had Brydan said her name was? Tauni Morrison — a weird kid, a loner. Sal paused, tasting the nervous acid of her thoughts. So, was Tauni Morrison weird enough to consider responding to a question from the lottery victim? Or was she too spaced-out to even know what a lottery victim was?

  “Excuse me,” said Sal, leaning over the front of the carrel.

  Giving no response, the girl continued to read. Was she deaf? No, she couldn’t be — she’d obviously heard Sal playing the clarinet at Wilson Park. Sal glanced at the title of the book propped open in the girl’s hands: The Space Swimmers. A second paperback lay beside her arm: This Alien Shore. More character sketches, Sal thought wearily.

  “Excuse me,” she said again, and when the girl continued to give no response, repeated it a third time, loudly.

  A shudder ran through the girl. Without taking her eyes from her book, she leaned backward, away from Sal.

  “Please,” Sal said quietly, pulling back so that she was no longer leaning into the other girl’s space. “Tauni?” She knew better, now, than to touch.

  The girl gave her a quick sideways glance without the slightest hint of recognition. “Yeah?” Her voice wobbled, tight and high in her throat, as if rarely used.

  “I was wondering,” said Sal, “why you wear black lipstick.”

  Slowly the girl’s face turned toward Sal, her blue eyes not quite focused as if her brain was between radio stations, picking up Sal’s voice through a lot of distortion.

  “For my mouth,” she said vaguely. “So I know where it is.”

  “You wear black lipstick so you’ll know where your mouth is?” Sal asked cautiously.

  “So I’ll know where my face is.” The girl began to speak more quickly, as if gradually tuning in.

  “Why don’t you know where your face is?” Sal was definitely getting muddled.

  “In the mirror,” said the girl, watching the space above Sal’s head.

  Carefully, Sal added up the girl’s fragmented comments. “You can’t find your face in a mirror without black lipstick?”

  “And black hair,” the girl said slowly. “In the mirror ... it doesn’t make sense. I see things ... but I don’t know what they are. What’s me, and what isn’t me? Black helps me ... find things. The black stands out. So that’s where my face must be.”

  “Oh,” said Sal, and the girl returned to her book, outer space, other planets, wherever it was she went to escape the reality of here.

  Chapter Eight

  “Ready for a higher gear?” Dangling his car keys, Dusty lounged in the bedroom doorway. “Learner’s permit heaven, coming right up.”

  “Where’s Lizard?” Sprawled on her bed, Sal regarded her brother over a Batman comic.

  “Sucking Slurpees somewhere else,” he replied. “C’mon, I drove all the way home with my windows open, airing out my car for your supreme nostrils.”

  “Mmm,” said Sal. “I’ll need a Slurpee.”

  “Slurpees are essential to a learning driver’s focus,” agreed her brother.

  “And a bag of Doritos.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, fair lady.” Dusty clapped a hand over his heart. “But moonlight hath no pleasure without your fair company.”

  “That’s two ‘fair’s’ in two sentences,” Sal pointed out severely. “You’re going to have to work on your adjectives.”

  “And you could use some work on your gratitude.” Dusty tossed her the car keys. “You’re taking us on a back-alley tour to the 7-Eleven for Slurpees.”

  “Back alleys!” wailed Sal. “Give me Broadway Avenue, the Lawson Heights Mall!”

  “Back alleys,” scowled her brother, “at a top speed of ten klicks. Come along, little roadrunner.”

  Ten minutes later she was putt-putting up and down central Saskato
on’s back-alley garbage route while Dusty lounged in the passenger seat, subjecting her to his creative instruction techniques. “Watch out for the baby crawling out from behind that garbage bin,” he said casually, his head resting against the back of the seat.

  “What baby?” screeched Sal, slamming on the brakes.

  “Not a real baby,” grumbled Dusty, peeling himself off the dash. “A metaphorical baby. Always drive past every parked car as if a baby was about to crawl out from behind it. Metaphorical babies should always be on a good driver’s mind.”

  “I wish I had a metaphorical brother,” muttered Sal, edging her foot off the brake. An uneasy silence descended as she practiced U-turns in the parking lot of a Mennonite church. Dusty was pulling at his lower lip, extending it like a wad of chewing gum. Something was definitely brewing in her brother’s psych-major brain — Sal could feel him peering at her through a metaphorical hedge, trying to figure her out. Sudden understanding flared through her. This wasn’t a casual off-the-cuff driving lesson, it was a setup. As she nosed the car out of the parking lot and down the alley, Dusty emitted a delicate sigh. She braced herself.

  “Sally-Sis,” he asked softly, “what’s wrong? What’s got you lower than a carpet?”

  He looked deeply stressed, as if asking the question broke some cosmic privacy rule. Avoiding her pointed glance, he squinted straight ahead, his eyes rescuing metaphorical babies from every imaginable catastrophe. When Dusty was fifteen, the family dog Spot had died of overdone old age. Dusty had cried for weeks, until their mother had flat-out refused to get another pet. Dusty had a heart like a cooked beet — soft, the color of a deep bruise.

  “Nothing’s wrong.” Sal’s voice was unnecessarily loud, a thick shoulder of a voice. “You’re taking too many psych courses, okay?”

  Dusty cleared his throat tentatively. “Look Sal, maybe you think I don’t pay attention, but I have noticed that Kimmie hasn’t been around lately. I’ve ... been watching you, and you seem different. Quieter. It’s not like — ”

  “I’m quieter tonight because of you and all your goddam metaphorical babies!” Sal was a capped volcano about to explode, her fury so sudden she felt dizzy. “How d’you expect me to learn to drive if I’ve got to worry about babies crawling out of everywhere? Don’t you remember what happened to me in a car? D’you think it’s easy — ”

  Her brain tilted and the scene in front of her changed, the back alley swerving into darkness, headlights making their fateful brilliant arc across a two-lane highway. Screaming, there was that screaming again, the sound of high-pitched terror.

  “Sal. Sally-Sis, it’s okay, you’re okay now.” Dusty’s arm tightened around her shoulders and she hunched over the steering wheel, locked into dry heaves. “It’s okay,” he kept repeating, a soft mantra in her ear. “Everything’s okay now.”

  “What?” she asked, groggy as if coming out of deep sleep, the right side of her brain split with pain. She wished someone would pull the axe out of her head. “What happened?”

  “It’s me,” Dusty said softly. “I’m a stupid ass, that’s all. You want me to drive?”

  She noticed his foot rammed on the brake. “Did I hit something?”

  “No, everything’s fine. You just need a break.”

  “My head hurts. Right here.” She touched her right temple.

  “Just a headache. All those metaphorical babies, like you said.”

  “I guess.” Sal climbed in the passenger door completely exhausted, as if she’d been swimming through mud. Giving Dusty her back, she curled into the upholstery’s familiar sag — it cradled her like a friend, the kind who’d never desert her, never go wrong. Warm tears slid down her cheek and she wanted to suck her thumb. How could Dusty ask such dumb questions when it was obvious she was stressed out about a landscape teeming with crawling infants? Babies could really scoot when they got going. What if she hit one of them? Even metaphorical babies bled. Dusty should know better than to stress her out with metaphors that had anything to do with car accidents and blood.

  Nuzzling the upholstery, she was asleep before the car reached the end of the alley.

  “What the hell d’you think you’re doing?” snapped Linda Paboni.

  Sal stood before them a second time, one hand on the doorknob, half in, half out of the open doorway. Facing her was the full circle of Shadow Council’s power, nine of the most influential students in the school. Members of Student Council, Athletic Council, and the prominent clubs, they’d all been chosen for the respect they commanded from their peers. Each one maintained a B+ average or higher — there were no slackers here, no third clarinetists. Linda Paboni had been one of last year’s Citizenship Cup recipients.

  Sal opted for a numb silence. She had no idea what she was doing, why she’d been summoned, if she could answer this question without demerits, or if her stomach would survive its current battery-acid state.

  “Come in,” said Willis, his voice picking up her feet and moving her into the room. Somehow the door closed behind her.

  It was Tuesday morning, 8:10. Five minutes late for band practice, she’d arrived to find Rolf waiting outside the music room. Raising the three fingers on his right hand, he’d said, “Follow,” then turned and started off down the empty hall.

  She’d followed.

  “Come sit down,” said Willis, and she walked the tightrope of his voice toward the footstool at the center of the circle. Seated, she watched his long hypnotic fingers stroke his chin.

  “Yesterday,” said Willis, “you received your first duty.”

  Sal hesitated. It wasn’t exactly a question, but he seemed to expect a reply. Keeping her eyes on his chin, she nodded.

  “And what was this duty?”

  “To deliver the plastic tabs.”

  “Deliver them where?” asked Willis.

  She was beginning to get it. One side of her brain took a sickening lurch into the other. “To the names on the list.”

  “Exactly!” snapped Linda Paboni.

  An electric current was lifting tiny hairs up and down the length of Sal’s back, but she fought the urge to swivel around and face the vampire queen. So this was the reason she’d been placed at the center of a circle — no matter which direction she faced, she was in a position of weakness.

  “Then why the hell did you give three tabs to teachers?” This voice came from Sal’s left. If she turned her head slightly, she could just see the guy. He looked jockish. What was his name — Mark? No, Marvin Fissett.

  “But they weren’t in their homerooms,” Sal protested faintly. “How was I supposed to find them? I didn’t even know who most of them were.”

  “Ask around,” hissed the girl seated beside Willis. Not, Sal noted, Ellen Petric. Today it was Judy Sinclair — another drama star.

  “But no one will talk to me,” said Sal. “No one’s allowed to talk to the lottery winner.”

  “That doesn’t mean you go handing Shadow business to teachers,” snapped Linda. “You never, ever, involve teachers.”

  Sal swallowed acid and took a chance. “But how do I find out who a target is if I can’t ask anyone for help?”

  The room settled into a pause as everyone digested her question.

  “She is in grade ten,” Rolf said finally, doodling in his secretary’s binder. “Jenny was in grade eleven — she knew just about everyone.”

  “What did they do other years when the victim was in grade nine or ten?” asked Judy.

  “Before Jenny, the victim was Carlos Ferraro. He was in grade twelve. Before that it was Ian Ecott, grade eleven.” Rolf shrugged. “Before that was before my time. Anyone else remember?”

  “There was a grade nine victim five years ago,” said Willis.

  “Oh yeah.” Linda sounded thoughtful. “How did Shadow handle that one?”

  “Before my time,” Willis shrugged.

  “We’ll have to give her the sign,” Rolf said suddenly.

  “I don’t think so.” Linda’s tone
made her distaste for the suggestion obvious.

  “Why not?” asked Rolf.

  “We shouldn’t be handing out signs to victims,” said Linda.

  “It’s just one victim,” said Willis, “and one sign.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Linda.

  “Got any other suggestions?” Willis asked softly.

  “No,” said Linda huffily. “I don’t.”

  “Rolf, teach her the sign,” said Willis.

  “Victim, turn to receive the sign,” said Rolf.

  Sal’s stomach was about to give up the biscuit big time. She swung a dizzy quarter circle toward Rolf, and Linda Paboni came into view, her long red hair scooped into a utilitarian ponytail, her thin body hunched like a ferret’s. If anyone was typecast for Shadow Council, it was Linda. She was on the yearbook and cafeteria committees as well as Athletic Council, and had joined various teams and clubs, even Masks and Selves, the creative writing group. The entire school cringed before her presence. Wherever she went she left a trail of blood.

  “This is the Sign of the Inside,” said Rolf, raising his left index finger and rubbing the left side of his nose. “When you use this sign, anyone who knows it will offer you assistance.”

  Sal raised her hand.

  “Victim may speak,” said Rolf.

  “How will I know who knows the sign?” asked Sal.

  “Use it and you’ll find out,” snapped Linda.

  Sal raised her hand again.

  “Victim may speak,” said Rolf.

  “What if no one around me knows the sign?”

  “Someone will,” said Rolf. “Like Linda said, you’ll find out.”

  “But you use it only for Shadow business,” Linda said sharply. “If we find out you’ve been using it for anything else, there’ll be retribution. Just like there should be for delivering those tabs to teachers. One demerit, at least.”

  “No demerit,” said Willis.

  All eyes swung toward Willis, Sal traveling her footstool until she once again faced Shadow Council’s president.