“Wish, you know sometimes you're just...no. Forget it. Whatever. Sorry.” The way Leaf said “sorry” was the same way Zoe said it to Alice when she didn't really mean it, as if he'd said “fine” instead.
“You're not sorry. You think I'm so out of touch that I can't possibly know the inner workings of your little world, all the rules and taboos and shit? I know it. All that girl needs is a couple of friends and a little help. She tells me the shit you people put her through.”
“Us people?” Leaf shook his head. “Uh-uh. I never laid eyes on her, or said one word to her before last week. I didn't even know who she was.”
Wish put a hand on his shoulder. “And if you had, would you've still picked her essay?”
“It's the Beckoners who do all that shit,” Leaf said. “Not us.”
Zoe instinctively covered her scar with her hand, although neither of them could see it under her sleeve.
“If you had known it was her...” Wish gripped his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Would you have picked her?”
Leaf picked up a handful of gravel.
“Answer me.”
He shrugged her off. “No, I wouldn't have. Okay?” He threw down the handful of gravel. “So, I'm not you. I'm not perfect.”
“I don't expect you to be.” Wish stood. “But I do expect you to be
you
, and not one of those brainless little sheep who can't think for themselves.”
“I'm sorry,” Leaf said. “Okay? I'm sorry.” That time it sounded very real.
“Baaa,” Wish said.
Leaf grinned. “Baaaaaaaa.”
“If you're going to be a sheep, Leaf, be the bellwether. Be a leader at least.”
Wish gathered up her blanket and pillows and dumped them inside. Then she said, as though she'd been rolling the thought around her head for a long while, “I wish she had more guts. I wish she'd stand up to them, you know?”
“She tried, in English the other day.” Zoe was careful not to call her Dog. “But I bet you it's going to cause her more trouble than it was worth.”
“She'll get over it.” Wish gathered the mugs. “She'll survive.”
“Who, Beck or April?” It was the first time since the Beckoners that Zoe had said Dog's real name out loud.
“Both,” Wish said. “We all grow up and pretend we were never teenagers. Except people like you, Leaf.”
“Hey, I'm as miserable as anybody.”
“No you're not, babe. You're loved, and you do what you want, and no one hassles you. You're a teenage oasis.” Wish pushed a chunk of hair out of his eyes. “Untouchable and perfect.”
“Don't deny me my teenage angst, okay?” He grinned at her, a lopsided grin, eyes squinty, a little gap between his front teeth. Zoe had a bizarre urge to touch it; she had to clasp her hands tight together not to. “It's my constitutional right as an adolescent to be miserable.”
“Whatever you say, babe.” Wish cocked her head toward Zoe's house. “Cassy's awake.”
“Ears like a superhero,” Leaf said.
“Mama ears.” Wish grinned. “Off you go, Zoe.”
As she unfolded her legs to stand, Leaf reached for her other hand. Now he'd held both.
“Why don't you work on the paper too?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, then I wouldn't be alone with April. It would be much easier.”
“Easier for you, maybe.” Wish shook her head. “But it'd be worse for April. Three's a crowd, Leaf. Everybody knows that.”
“Give me a break, Wish. I don't know what to talk to her about. It's easy talking to Zoe.”
It was? Zoe the suddenly stuttering mess? Easy to talk to?
“If you ostracize her, I'll make your life hell,” Wish said. “Promise me you'll be nice. But not condescending niceâreal, genuine, human-style nice.”
“Promise.” Leaf crossed his heart.
Zoe didn't even try to sleep that night. She lay awake, hands behind her head, imagining the Dungeon, a bustling newsroom like in
Superman
, Leaf at the helm, pencil tucked behind his ear, winking suggestively across a bank of computers at her.
The next morning, Zoe
was up early to beat the rush in the laundry room. She had just begun sorting the lights from darks
when Beck strolled in on her way home from the rave. She was dressed in a long narrow black skirt and clunky silver boots, her eyes rimmed with heavy eye makeup, heroin junkie chic. She leaned against the doorjamb.
“Well, well, well. Having a good time with the grandparents?” If she'd had any Ecstasy earlier, it had long worn off. She was anything but ecstatic.
“We came home early.” Zoe made a quick mental note of the exits. Beck was blocking that one, but there was a fire door beside the bathroom in the back.
“Yeah, and Heather's a virgin.” Beck cocked her head to the side. “Why are you hiding from us? Why are you hiding from me?”
“We just came home early.”
“Look, if you've got something to say to me, say it to my face, okay? I don't like being lied to. Or avoided.”
“I'm not avoiding youâ”
“Shut up, you are so. You never went to Chilliwack, did you?”
Zoe shook her head.
Beck stepped inside and shut the door. Zoe lifted Cassy out of the wagon full of laundry and took a step back. Beck slowly nodded.
“You're afraid of me.”
“No.” Zoe looked past Beck and out the window, praying someone would come to put their laundry in.
“Then why're you acting like I'm about to rip your throat out?” Beck nodded at the door. “Go, if you want. Nobody's stopping you.”
“I'm not going anywhere.” Zoe steeled herself, a hot flare of anger straightening her spine. This was just Beck. This wasn't the Beckoners. Just Beck, all by herself. Alone. Beck was just a girl, like her. She wasn't a monster. She had no superpowers. She was mortal like everybody else. Zoe hardened her expression.
“As you can see, I've got laundry to do.” Zoe set Cassy down by the basket of toys in the corner and continued sorting the
clothes, although what she really wanted to do was pour a jug of bleach down Beck's throat.
“What the hell is your problem?” Beck lifted herself onto the counter.
“I didn't want to go to the rave.” Zoe loaded one of the machines. “That's all.”
“You could've said that.” Beck pulled a black bra out from the light pile. “What's wrong with you? You're acting all fucked.”
“Nothing is wrong with me. I just felt like being alone.”
“You could've said that too.”
“Could I?” Zoe dumped the soap into the machine and let the lid slam.
“That's a stupid question, Zoe.” Beck lit a cigarette. “You can say whatever you want.”
Zoe wanted to say she wanted out of the Beckoners. She wanted to tell Beck that she was the one acting all fucked. She wanted most of all to ask why her? Why choose her? Of everyone in the world to pull into their mess, why her?
“I'm just used to being alone more. I like being alone.”
“That's it?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“That's it.” Beck stared at her, mouth in a tight line.
“Yeah, Beck. That's it.” Zoe turned to start the machine, but Beck grabbed Zoe's arm and twisted it so the scar faced up. “This
means
something, Zoe.” She squeezed hard. “Don't make me regret it any more than I already do.” She threw down Zoe's arm. “You're on seriously thin ice.”
Beck pushed herself off the counter and stalked out into the misty morning light, her silhouette fading long before her finger marks on Zoe's arm.
For days, Zoe dreamt
of thin ice. She dreamt Mill Lake was frozen, and she was stranded in the middle, ice cracking around her, chunks tipping into the water, until she was left teetering on a small wedge; and then that too slipped under the water, and so did she, falling and falling and never reaching the bottom. She told Alice about the dreams, but Alice wasn't really listening.
“Maybe you're afraid of something,” was all she said, eyes on the phone, waiting for another call she'd take in her bedroom, door closed.
“You could say that.” Zoe tried to laugh.
“You can handle it. What is it? A test? Term project?”
“No, it's nothing like that. It's just thatâ”
The phone rang.
“Let it ring.” Alice sprinted up the stairs. “I'll get it in my room.”
Zoe pretended she didn't hear her. She picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, babe.” It was a man's voice. “How you doing?” He sounded like a smoker.
Alice cut in from the upstairs phone. “Put down the phone, Zoe.”
“I just want to know whoâ”
“Hang up,
now
.”
Zoe set down the phone and fought the urge to sneak up the stairs to try to listen at the bedroom door. It seemed that her mom's maternal instinct only ever kicked in when it suited her lately. Just the week before Zoe had tried listening with a glass against the door. All she could hear was mumble-mumble this, and mumble-mumble that, and the occasional full-on laugh Alice used whenever she was on the make. Zoe listened for only a moment before Alice flung open the door and snatched away the glass.
“You want me to start eavesdropping on your private calls? Right, I didn't think so. I catch you one more time and I'm taking away your phone privileges.”
Not that that would've mattered. There was no one Zoe wanted to call, and no one who would call her besides one of the Beckoners, who she'd rather never hear from again as long as she lived.
That soon changed, though.
Leaf stopped her in the hall a few days later during lunch, one of the rare times she set foot in the hallway during peak times, for fear of running into the Beckoners.
“I was beginning to wonder if you'd dropped out or something.” His hand felt heavy and hot on her shoulder. “What do you have next?”
“A spare,” she said, although she had Math.
“Perfect. Come with me.” He led her to the Dungeon, a reclaimed janitor's closet at the end of the Industrial Arts wing. Inside was a sagging couch in front of a wall of shelves stacked with file boxes, two computer desks forming a square that took up most of the center of the tiny room, and a long layout table, above which was suspended the only light in the windowless room, a single shivering fluorescent tube.
“Those are the archives.” Leaf pointed to the boxes as he led her to the layout table. “And this is all yours.” He gave her a quick lesson on how to do the layout on the computer and then showed her how to do it by hand, arranging articles and columns and photos and headlines to fit within the structure of each page.
When April came in after the bell rang, Leaf made a great show of stopping and including her in the lesson. Zoe watched April lean over the table, inching closer to Leaf as he demonstrated how to justify margins.
“What do you do if you want to add something at the last minute?” April asked. It was about the fortieth question she'd asked in ten minutes. She hadn't shut up since she walked in. If Wish was worried about her not feeling included, she didn't need to. It was Zoe who was feeling left out.
“That's easier done on the computer.” Leaf moved to the computer and showed the girls how to rearrange blocks of text, tightening things up to squish in a new block of space.
Zoe was acutely aware of the lack of air in the tiny room. It was stuffy and smelled of hot computers and old newspapers. Three people seemed too many for the space. She watched April babble on at Leaf. He looked like he was listening, giving intelligent, relevant answers, but he can't have been that interested. Every third question or so he looked across the computer at Zoe. She
wasn't sure what his looks meant, or if they meant anything at all. He was definitely looking at Zoe, and Zoe alone, that much was for sure.
Unlike Zoe and April,
Simon did not have a crush on Leaf, but as the weather got colder and the rain still ever constant, Simon took over the Dungeon as his personal living room whenever Teo was busy with football practice. Zoe had to get used to there being four bodies in that claustrophobic space, five if you counted Shadow, who April snuck in through the Industrial Arts bay door after school, even though Simon was allergic. He loved Shadow, though, so he never complained about the sneezing fits or how often he had to leave the room to wash his hands after touching him. He might have warmed up to Shadow after so many years of lumping him into the same pathetic space April occupied in the world, but he did not warm up to April, nor did she warm up to him.
“Don't put that there. Do it like this.” He nudged April and Zoe aside and began rearranging the photo spread Zoe was putting together for the basketball tournament Central had won two days before. “Ta da!” He stood back and admired his work.
“Very artsy, Simon.” Zoe winked at him.
April shook her head. “Too much white space.”
“Less busy.” Simon frowned at her. “The eye needs a rest.”
“It looks vacuous.” April turned away.
“Ooo, such a big word for such a little girl.”
Zoe gripped Simon's wrist. “Leave it, Simon.”
Simon cupped his hands around Zoe's ear and whispered, “That loser is pushing my buttons. I'm just about ready to hissy fit all over her.”
“She
has every right to be here.”
“So do I. I'm your friend.”
“Yeah, but she's the assistant editor.”
“Yeah, so what? I'm your friend. If she had any friends, they could be in here too. But she doesn't have any friends, poor thing.”
“Leave her alone, Simon. She has way more right to be here than you do.”
Simon feigned being stabbed in the heart. He stumbled back to the couch, where he sat in silence, flipping through magazines, ignoring Zoe altogether.