Beckoners (12 page)

“I'd rather not wonder about Russian prisons at all,” Teo said.

In the back seat, Zoe had tuned out everything except the name Lisa Patterson. Lisa Patterson, Lisa Patterson. Would her name join the legend? Lisa Patterson and Zoe Anderson. There was a certain, disturbing, lyrical ring to it.

“You won't tell anyone, will you Simon?”

“What?”

“That I was a Beckoner?”

“Most people know, Zoe.”

“Central is huge. Not everybody knows.” Zoe put her hands on his shoulders. “Promise not to tell? And don't tell Beck what I think of them either. Promise?”

Simon patted her hands. “I promise.”

Zoe looked at him imploringly.

“Zoe.” Simon gripped her hands in his. “I promise, okay?”

Zoe told the Beckoners
that she had to spend lunch hours in the library working on her science project as well as looking after Cassy after school every day. That amounted to a couple of days in the clear. It could only last so long, though. On Friday, in English class, Beck slapped a flyer for a rave on her desk.

“Surely Cinderella must get a day off, right?” Her voice was tight, challenging. “We'll pick you up around midnight tomorrow.”

“I'm going to Chilliwack,” Zoe blurted. “For the weekend. With Cassy. To visit our grandparents. We made plans ages ago.”

“You don't get out much, do you?” Beck snatched the flyer back. “How about you call me when you can come out and play.”

At dinner that evening,
Alice announced she was an alcoholic again. Zoe hated it when her mother did that. Alice went through long self-righteous phases of not drinking at all, and then she'd get to a place where she was damned sure she could handle a beer or two, and then a beer or two became a two-four, with a major two- or three-day binge to follow shortly. The binges were guaranteed to end in tears, and one time in lock-up with a Driving Under the Influence charge. Then she'd get all fresh and clear and determined to stop again. Which meant she'd spend as many of her waking hours as possible at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, leaving Zoe to babysit Cassy for free. However, Alice got way grumpy whenever she quit drinking, so at least she was grumpy somewhere other than home.

This time, oddly enough, Alice was bypassing the binge stage altogether. She plotted her AA route around town, mapping out how she'd keep herself at meetings until midnight in the same way she might've planned a night of barhopping before. Zoe changed into her pj's just before Alice left for her first meeting on Friday night and was still wearing them when she put Cassy to bed Saturday night. They were baby blue flannel bottoms, with white sheep with little black numbers on their bums, and an old
Mountain Film Festival
T-shirt stained with chicken soup and hot chocolate, the bottoms mucked with ketchup from Cassy getting her mac and cheese hands all over them at lunch. Alice was out for night two of meeting hopping, and there was nothing on the two channels they got except stockcar racing and newsmagazine shows. Cable was one of those items on the when-we've-got-a-little-extra-money list.

Zoe flopped on her bed and listened to the radio until a hockey game came on, then she fiddled with the dial, looking
for something else to listen to, anything but hockey. She stopped when she heard the familiar haunting theme song of “Suspense,” the mystery radio play from the forties, come through the static like an old favorite song she'd forgotten she loved. She used to listen to “Suspense” in Prince George, on Tuesday nights, when Alice was at Bingo and there wasn't anything on the one fuzzy channel they got up there.

The reception came in clear for a moment, but then it got choppy. It was a little better once she set the radio on the window ledge, but it was still crackly. She climbed out the window with the radio, careful not to knock the cracked glass with her knee. The reception was nearly perfect out there on the carport roof. Zoe kicked aside the garbage and sat under her window with the radio in her lap, antenna pointed west, towards Vancouver. Then she heard a voice.

“I thought I recognized you the other day.” Leaf Morrison, editor of the school paper, object of Zoe's assured straightness, was sitting on the roof next door. “We're neighbors.”

“You startled me.” Zoe turned the radio down, only to find he was listening to it too.

“The best reception is out here,” he said.

“Yours sounds better than mine.”

“Then come over.” Leaf pulled a plank of wood to the edge of the roof and bridged the gap.

“I'm looking after my little sister.” The one time it was true and Zoe wished it wasn't.

“You can hear her from over here just as easy. Trust me, I know.”

“Is that safe?” Zoe pointed at the plank.

“Tried, tested and true. I used to babysit Dean. He had your room. We'd come and go across it all the time. He thought it was great, like we were lost boys in
Peter Pan
. If a four year old can do it, so can you.” Leaf held out his hand.

Without looking down at the one-story drop, Zoe set one foot on the plank, then the other in front of it. The board wasn't wide
enough to stand with her feet together, not that she would've wanted to; she would've toppled over if she did. But she didn't. She made her way over like a tightrope artist, arms outstretched, eyes forward.

Leaf took her hand when she was within reach. That was the first time in the history of Zoe that she'd held a boy's hand, not including square dancing in gym class or recess lineup in kindergarten. He let go once she got her footing. Zoe lowered her hand slowly, looking at it as if it was suddenly new and improved and strangely unfamiliar.

“I think I'll go back the way everyone else does.” She just about slipped the hand into her pocket, as if to preserve its new state, but in the process caught a glimpse of her ratty, geeky pj's and crossed her arms over her chest instead, like doing that would hide the stains. There was nothing she could do about the slippers, yellow and mint green polyester hand-knit jobbies from Fraser House. With pom-poms. Red and orange pompoms. Lovely.

“If you're smart and your front door is locked, you can't go that way.”

“Then I guess I'm smart.” Zoe did not feel particularly smart at that moment. “It's locked.”

“Nice slippers.” Leaf plunked himself down on a foam cushion. He patted the space beside him.

“Thanks.” Zoe sat down, tucking her feet under her so she wouldn't have to look at the slippers, which she'd really rather toss off the roof.

She and Leaf were sitting very close to each other. She could hear him inhale, a little nasal sigh each time. They sat, Zoe stiffly, Leaf oblivious to her stiffness, and listened to the rest of “Suspense,” although Zoe wasn't paying the storyline any attention.

When it was over, Leaf turned the radio off, and slowly tuned in to the awkward silence. He looked at Zoe, waiting for her to say something. Zoe stared out at the night in front of them,
the traffic going by, a couple walking their dog along the road. She waited for Leaf to say something. She went through all her mental scripts, looking for something to say that wouldn't be stupid, or clichéd, or desperate.

“Can you believe it's October and it's so warm?” Zoe wanted to groan. Clichéd
and
stupid, straight out of a bad TV sitcom.

“I can.” Leaf nodded. “But then, I'm not from Prince George.”

“How did you—?”

“Wish told me.”

“She's your—?”

“Sister.”

“Where are your—?”

“My parents? I keep cutting you off, sorry. My dad lives in a cabin up near Lilloet.” He paused. “My mom's dead.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry.” Cliché number two.

“I don't remember her.” Leaf looked towards the mountains. “I was Connor's age. She hit black ice, went over a cliff in her car.”

“Why don't you live with your dad?”

“Me and Wish and Lionel—he's my dad, we moved down here after our old cabin burnt down. That was three years ago, but he's the only one who moved back. Wish got pregnant. She wanted to stay here. She figured we should go to school.”

“You didn't before?”

“Nope. We were way up the valley. My dad doesn't believe in school.”

“What does he think about you going to school now?”

“He's big into free will.”

“Oh.”

Zoe wanted to ask him a million questions. What did he do way up in the valley all those years? What was his father like? Wish? Leaf? Did they have middle names? He was so different, so interesting, so absolutely
not
a Beckoner, but then a girl's voice called up from below.

“Leaf? Hello?”

That would be The Girlfriend. Zoe did not want to look. She was probably tall and graceful, like Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany's
, only less manic, more calm. She would be carefully made-up to look carefully not made-up at all. She would not be wearing slippers and jammies.

“Hey, April.” Leaf looked over the edge.

Only April? Zoe actually sighed with relief.

“Uh...I brought the...papers?” She spoke so softly, her voice barely reached up to the roof. “You told me to bring over those... the columns I edited?”

“Sure,” Leaf said. “Come on up. Wish'll let you in.”

Leaf showed April exactly
how to climb out the window, move by move, but even though she tried to copy him exactly, she caught her foot on the sill and toppled onto the gravel. Zoe couldn't help but laugh at her sprawled there on all fours. Not because it was funny, well, okay, it was funny in a thank-god-itwasn't-me way, but also because she was nervous, and when she was nervous she tended to laugh at inappropriate moments.

“Sorry.” Zoe helped her up.

“I brought the columns.” April handed a folder to Leaf.

“I'll look at them later.” Leaf dropped the folder inside. “Have a seat, relax. Welcome to my love pad.”

April was sitting in the square of light coming from the room. Zoe saw her blush, and then frown, trying to cover up her embarrassment.

Leaf looked at Zoe and then April. “I was joking.”

Zoe was glad she wasn't sitting in the square of light, otherwise Leaf would've seen her blush too.

“This is nice.” April surveyed the gravel before gingerly setting herself down, legs straight out in front of her, hands folded in her lap. She chewed her lip. “Up here, I mean. Above everything.” She laughed abruptly, a kind of half giggle, half gulp. “Balcony seats.”

Leaf and Zoe glanced at each other behind her, eyebrows raised.

The conversation lurched along in short awkward bursts for a while, about the paper mostly, until Wish brought up a tray of hot chocolate.

“Not so fast,” she said when Leaf reached to take the tray from her. “You only get this if I can come out and join you.”

“Suit yourself,” Leaf said.

“I always do.” Wish arranged herself against the wall under a blanket with two pillows behind her back and two under her butt.

“Hey, April,” she said. “Can you take Connor at your place next Friday? We've got a gig.”

“Wish is in a band,” Leaf whispered while Dog and Wish chatted easily about Connor and Lewis and recipes for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and homemade Play-doh. “They're called The Fist Amendment. They suck, but they've only been together for a month. She's all, ‘We've got a gig,' like it happens all the time, when really, Friday is their first gig ever.”

“That guy who drives the tow-truck?” Zoe had noticed him and the truck around a lot. “Is he in the band?”

“T-Bone, yeah. He plays bass. He's in love with Wish.”

“Oh.” Again, Zoe blushed, and again, she was thankful for the shadows. “Is she in love with him back?”

“Getting there, I think.”

For the next while, Zoe and Leaf talked. Later, Zoe would have no idea what about. She was so focused on getting the words out without stuttering. Why the hell was she stuttering? Shock and horror—since when did Zoe stutter?

April was getting up. She brushed off the bum of her pants.

Wish patted her knee. “See you next Friday?”

“Sure. Bye.” April waved at Leaf and Zoe, took three tries at climbing back through the window, and left.

Wish waited until April had disappeared up the path to her house before she erupted all over Leaf.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“What?”

“The way you're treating April. I am totally ashamed of you.”

“Treat her how? I didn't do anything.”

“That's right, you totally ignored her!”

“She's impossible to talk to, Wish.”

“I don't seem to have a problem talking to her.”

“Yeah, but everybody else does.”

“Since when do you have anything to do with ‘everybody else'? I bet ‘everybody else' doesn't even bother to try.” Wish poked Leaf's chest. “She's not that bad. She's just unique. You're all for unique, right? Mr. Iconoclast? Or is it Mr. Hypocrite now? You didn't even say good-bye.” She wagged her finger at Zoe. “And you, if this is your influence on my brother, then I don't want you in my house.”

“No, it's just—I...I...” Zoe shut her mouth and wondered if she would be plagued with the stutters from here on in.

“We didn't—”

Wish held up her hand. Leaf shut his mouth too.

“I don't care what excuses you two think you have.” Wish shook her head. “I really don't. What I care about is that everyone treats each other with a little respect. That girl is a brilliant writer, and she's great with kids, and she's sweet and caring and more of a human than either of you two are right now.”

“That's not fair,” Leaf said.

“Then act human.”