“Never mind,” April said. “You don't have to leave. I wasn't sure if you were really alone, that's all. I thought it was a trap. I just thought that maybe after last night you and the Beckonersâ”
“Don't worry.” Zoe pulled her jacket under her bum and sat on the damp edge of the sandbox. “I'm done with the Beckoners.”
“Done?”
“Sick of them. Finished. Done.”
“Done, huh?” April set Cassy down beside Lewis, who had resumed his parking project. “How'd you manage that?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can't just walk away from the Beckoners.”
“Well,” Zoe shrugged. “That's what I did.”
“You might think you did.”
“I did. I'm finished with them.”
April laughed. “But they're not finished with you.”
“We'll see about that.”
“Yeah, we will, won't we?” It was bizarre, the two of them using “we” like that, like they were in something together, other than Mrs. Henley's Private Club for the Bright and Bullied.
April moved the line of cars forward, beeping and putt-putting for Lewis. Zoe considered telling her about the party, but the couple of times she opened her mouth to start, whatever she had to say fell out onto the wet sand and flopped there like a dying fish.
Zoe watched them play; Cassy driving a red fire engine up and down the edge of the sandbox, Lewis parking his cars, April handing out the cars like she was God of Small Four-Wheeled Things. In the moment, Zoe wished she were Cassy and the only thing on her mind was keeping all her wheels on the ground. Shadow stood and stretched. He came over and rested his grizzled chin on Zoe's knee. He smelled sour and old and wet. Zoe stared into his cloudy brown eyes, feeling her weight leaving her in a trickle, until she was thin air, hovering above everything, watching from a safe, untouchable place.
There were three other
high schools in Abbotsford. On the Monday morning after the party, Zoe tried to convince Alice to drive her to the one furthest away from Central and sign her up as a transfer.
“What the hell for?”
“I just don't like this one.”
“You're not in trouble, are you?”
Zoe shook her head.
“Zoe, I don't have time for this crap.” Alice fought with Cassy's zipper. “Central's practically out the front door. You are not transferring. No way.”
“I could take the bus.”
“You could, but you won't, because you're staying put and that's that.” Alice steered Cassy towards the door. “And if I hear you're skipping, you'll be sorry.”
So Zoe hid in
the Art room until well after the first bell rang, and then she walked very slowly to English. Mrs. Henley wasn't there yet. Neither was Beck or Lindsay or Jazz or April. Zoe had just about decided, with indescribable relief, that Beck was skipping, but then in she straggled, wearing sunglasses and nursing a bottle of water. Lindsay and Jazz followed her.
“That is the last time I drink that much.” Beck sunk into her seat. “I feel like shit.”
“You always say that,” Lindsay said. “The trick is to stick to one kind of drink. That's what I do, and I'm fine.”
Lindsay did not look fine. She looked pasty and bloated. Jazz looked the worst by far, though. She seemed smaller to Zoe, like she'd shrunk three inches and lost ten pounds since Saturday night. Jazz folded herself into her seat, legs tucked under her, hands clasped in her lap. Zoe tried to catch her eye across the aisle, but Jazz just stared at her hands.
“Where did you disappear to anyway?” Beck looked over her sunglasses at Zoe. “Did you seduce some unsuspecting film student from the college?”
“I got sick,” Zoe replied, eyes fixed on Jazz.
“Yeah, I heard you put on quite the puke show on the patio.”
Zoe willed Jazz to look up and give her some kind of sign that what Zoe had seen wasn't what she thought she'd seen.
“I don't know what's wrong with her.” Beck looked at Jazz too. “She went home early too, or so Janika and Lindsay say. I don't really remember much. Janika said she was looking for you everywhere. Why didn't you tell us when you left?”
“I didn't want to wreck the party.”
“It would have been impossible to wreck that party. It was the best.” Beck stopped talking as April came into the room. She smiled at Zoe as she headed to her seat. Zoe smiled back.
“What are you looking at?” Beck stuck her leg out, blocking April's way. “Got a problem, bitch?” April ducked her eyes to the floor and shook her head. “Say the magic words and I might let you pass.”
April shook her head. She backed up and started down the next aisle, but Beck swiveled in her seat and blocked her that way too.
“Let me go,” April whispered.
“Those are not the magic words. Neither is woof-woof, bow-wow or arf-arf. I know those are your favorites.”
April glanced up at Zoe.
“Don't look at her. She doesn't have the answer.” Beck nudged April's white pants with her boot, leaving a nasty dirty streak down her calf. “Look at me, bitch.”
“Please,” April mumbled. “Please?”
“That's not it either.”
“Pretty please?”
“Try again.”
April stared at the pile of books she gripped in her arms. Her notebook was on the top. “Just let me go?”
“Dog doesn't know the magic words, class.” Beck raised her voice. “Can anyone help her remember them?”
“Yes, teacher,” Lindsay piped up in kindergarten falsetto. “I can.” She stood behind April.
“Repeat after me...” Beck stood too, sandwiching April between them. “Dog. Smells. Like. Shit.”
April shook her head.
“Say it.” Lindsay smacked the back of her head.
“Beck,” Zoe said. “Leave her alone.”
“Stay out of this, Zoe.”
Lindsay smacked April again, harder.
Zoe winced. “Don't hit her, Lindsay.”
“I don't take orders from you, Zoe.”
“Come on, Beck.” She put her hand on Beck's arm. “Tell Lindsay not to hit her.”
“All she has to do is say the magic words and I'll let her pass.” Beck was nearly nose to nose with April, her glitter gloss lips just inches away from April's lips haloed with too much Chapstick. “Isn't that right, Dog? You know how this works. This is one of Dog's best tricks, isn't it?”
“Just say them,” Zoe pleaded. “They're just words.”
“Dog smells like shit,” April mumbled.
“I didn't quite hear you.” Beck cupped her hand to her ear. “Again. Loud enough for the whole class to hear.”
They'd all heard her the first time. It was so quiet they could hear Mrs. Henley coming up the stairs, her high heels click-clicking. “You're running out of time, bitch.”
“So are you.” April lifted her chin. She looked Beck right in the eye. “Rebecca Alexandra Wilson smells like shit.”
Beck balled her fist. She lifted it just as Mrs. Henley pushed open the door.
“Good Monday morning to you all.”
Mrs. Henley assessed the silence that followed. She lowered her glasses to evaluate the scene in front of her. She glared pointedly at Lindsay and Beck.
“Sit.”
Lindsay looked at Beck.
“Now,” Mrs. Henley said. She shifted her eyes to April. “April?”
April swallowed. She shook her head and sat down, back ramrod straight.
When class ended, April raced out of the room before Beck had even put her pen down.
“Whatever.” Beck winked at Lindsay. “She can't hide forever.”
That was Zoe's plan,
to hide forever. First step: steer clear of the smoke hole. At lunch she headed for the ravine, hoping Simon
and Teo might be there. She took the long way around the back of the gym, down a trail she'd only been on once before. Halfway down, the rain splattering on the canopy of trees, she saw Jazz sitting on the bench at the bottom. She didn't have a jacket on, and her shirt was soaked right through to her bra. She'd undone her black braid. Her hair was plastered down her back like a long ink stain.
“Jazz?” Zoe sat on the bench beside her. “Are you okay?”
She looked up, her brow furrowed in anger. “I'm fine.”
“You don't look fine.”
“Well, I am.”
“Where's your jacket?”
“In my locker.”
“Why aren't you wearing it?”
“Because I don't want to. Is that a crime?”
“No.” Zoe's heart pounded. She studied her zipper, trying to calm herself. She decided to take a leap. She had to say something. “So, did you have a good time at the party?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“It just sucked.”
“But why? Did something happen? Do you want to tell me anything? You can, you know. Tell me anything, I mean. You can trust me.”
“Trust you.” Jazz stared at her.
“Yeah. You can trust me.”
Rain fell between the girls, filling the silence with its white noise.
Jazz pulled her hair over her shoulder and braided it again, slender fingers deftly twisting. She snapped an elastic on the end.
“Nothing happened, Zoe. Understand?”
“But you can tell me ifâ”
“If
nothing
.” She pushed herself off the bench. “There's nothing to tell.”
“Jazz, Iâ”
“Leave me alone, Zoe!”
Jazz ran up the steep hill, her tiny figure disappearing in the gray light at the top. Zoe stayed where she was, wishing the day were over with. Hell, she'd just as soon the week, the year, this life was over with.
When she went up later, Zoe could not resist the urge to see if Jazz had joined the others at the smoke hole. She had. Zoe watched her from behind a tree, ignoring the rain running down her jacket and soaking her thighs. Jazz was laughing with the Beckoners as if nothing bad had ever happened to her in her whole life. She'd changed into her gym gear and was wearing her jacket. She glanced over her shoulder, across the steaming hut, and caught sight of Zoe before she could duck out of sight behind the tree. Or maybe Zoe wanted her to see her. She held Zoe's gaze for a long, loaded second, and then looked past her like Zoe had suddenly vanished, or had never existed in the first place.
That afternoon, when Zoe
told Simon that she wasn't a Beckoner anymore, he laughed so hard he got the hiccups. They were in Blouise, driving across town to the college library to research a science project.
“Zoe, you're talking about the Beckoners, not the freakin' Girl Scouts of America. It's not like you have any choice in the matter.” Simon rolled his eyes at Teo. “Do you believe this girl?”
Teo nodded. “Some people resort to delusion as a way of avoiding shit.”
“Well, this particular shit is not going to avoid
her
. It's like this, Zoe.” Simon grabbed the Princess Leia and Darth Vader figurines from the line of
Star Wars
toys stuck to Blouise's dash. He twisted in the passenger seat. “And now, the dramatization.” He wiggled Princess Leia. “This is you.” Darth Vader bowed.
“This is the Beckoners.” He set the two of them apart, facing each other.
“Okay, bye!” he said in pure Valley Girl, waving Princess Leia's stiff arm. “Thanks for initiating me into your vicious little girl-gang and everything, and like, I realize that hardly never ever in a million years it happens, but now I totally hate you, okay? So like, no hard feelings, right? Um, okay. Bye-eee.” As Princess Leia teetered off, he lowered his voice. “NOT SO FAST. NOW YOU MUST DIE!” Darth Vader chased Princess Leia back and forth across the top of the seat until he caught her and pinned her to the vinyl with his boot. “No, no!” Princess Leia tried to wiggle free. Darth Vader sawed at her throat with his light saber. “Take that, you traitor!”
“You're exaggerating, Simon. I was hardly ever a Beckoner in the first place. The scar isn't even healed yet.”
“Doesn't matter, Zoe. Once a Beckoner, always a Beckoner. You get that scar, you owe them something.”
“I don't owe them anything. I changed my mind, that's all. Why should that piss them off? I just don't want to hang out with them. I don't like them, and anyway, Heather hates my guts. She'll be happy that I'm gone. That's what she wants. That's what she's wanted all along.”
“You'll notice they're not named after Heather.”
“But she's one of them. She's practically second in command.”
“Heather couldn't command anything more complicated than wiping her own ass.”
“What she thinks counts, though.” Zoe failed to hear the conviction in her own voice. “I can tell she has some say with Beck.”
“Whatever you say.” Simon tugged one of Zoe's braids. “It's a shame about your hair.”
“What about it?”
“Two words. Five syllables. Lisa Patterson.”
“It's not like that.” Zoe fingered her braids.
“Hey, Zoe?” Teo studied Zoe in the rear view mirror. “Simon and I are here for you if you need us, okay?”
“Speak for yourself.” Simon turned to the front. “I'm on Beck's good side, remember?”
“Gee, thanks, Simon.”
“Yeah, well, you make your own bed, now you lie in it, blah, blah, blah.”
Teo looked at Simon.
“What?”
Teo said nothing. Simon looked out the window. After a couple blocks, he turned and looked at Zoe again.
“Sorry.”
“It's okay,” Zoe said, although she did not feel that way in the least. Her life felt the least okay ever.
“I wonder about Lisa Patterson every now and again.” Simon said into another silence. “She disappeared before the ink wore off. She was really pretty, in a kind of gymnast sort of way. Really little and compact, but pretty. But it's hard to remember what she normally looked like. I always picture her with the ink all over her, and her shaved head, like some kind of freak from the future. That'd be a good way to mark prisoners, come to think of it. You know, in Russia, in the prisons, they've made up their own language of tattoos. A whole language made out of pictures on their bodies.” Simon put his hand to Teo's Gemini tattoo at the back of his neck. “I wonder whatâ”