Mrs. Henley smiled at Dog. “And how does that arrangement work for you, Miz Anderson?”
“Will we have to leave class to do the extra work?” Zoe imagined long hours in the library, stuck with Dog.
Mrs. Henley shook her head. “You'll work on them in class, and on your own time. Does that suit you?”
“Yeah.”
“You mean to say âyes.'”
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Why do I get the impression that this is bothersome to you?”
“No, it's not. It's fine.”
“Fine?” Mrs. Henley glanced at the papers in her hand. “Why don't I believe you? Would you like to let me in on why this is problematic for you? Does it have anything to do with Lindsay and Jazz?”
Dog swallowed hard, waiting for Zoe to spit it out that she'd rather stick with the regular curriculum than spend time with her and get extra credit.
Mrs. Henley waited for her answer, but Zoe didn't know what to say. “I'll assume your silence indicates that this arrangement will work for you.” She handed them each a notice with the school paper's letterhead at the top. “These are the rules for the essay contest. Your first extra assignment is to enter it. That will be all. You may leave.”
On the way out, Dog whispered to Zoe, like there was anyone to hear, “The winner gets to be the assistant editor for the whole year, you know.”
Didn't she get it? Do. Not. Talk. To. Zoe. Zoe would've said that, but Mrs. Henley was at the door watching them leave.
“Wow. Really.”
Dog couldn't even take the hint of Zoe's flat, sarcastic response. On the contrary, she accepted Zoe's words as a free-for-all to let her rip. “Yeah, you get your own desk, in the Dungeonâthat's the newspaper roomâand you get to have a by-line on anything you write. And the editor is totallyâ”
Lindsay and Jazz were waiting at the stairs. That shut her up. She stopped in her tracks, jaw slack.
“What's the matter?” Lindsay faked a lunge at her. Dog reeled back, as if Lindsay had hit her for real. “Are you afwaid of wittle ole me?”
Dog turned and ran in the other direction, Lindsay and Jazz barking after her until Mrs. Henley popped her head out of the room.
“I suggest the three of you find somewhere else to behave like preschoolers.”
Lindsay and Jazz pretended not to hear. They went ahead, still barking, but not so loud.
“Yes, ma'am.” Zoe kept her eyes down as she passed.
“Zoe?” Mrs. Henley stepped into the hall, hands on her hips.
“Yes, Mrs. Henley?”
“I expect more from you.”
Zoe didn't know what to say in reply, so she just nodded and stood there until Mrs. Henley went back into the room and shut the door.
Zoe had no idea
it was coming. One night, Lindsay showed up at her door and escorted her, silently, down the driveway to Brady's truck. Nobody said a word, all the way to Mill Lake. Janika stayed behind with her at the truck while the rest of them went ahead, and then Janika walked her across the field towards the bandstand, where the rest of the Beckoners were waiting, still silent.
“I was scared too,” Janika whispered when they were halfway across the damp grass.
“I'm not scared.”
“Liar.”
“Okay, I'm scared. Is it a dare?”
“No questions, Zoe.”
“Tell me if it's going to hurt, Janika. That's not a question.”
Janika shook her head and sped up, walking ahead of Zoe, like she was supposed to be doing in the first place.
In a corner of the bandstand, Brady held a fork over the flame of a small butane torch. The end was wrapped thick with masking tape, so it wouldn't get too hot to hold. Zoe took one look at that and knew it was going to hurt. The others stood in a tight circle until Beck nodded; then they stepped aside and Janika led Zoe into the middle.
Beck stepped forward. “You will not speak, understood?”
Zoe nodded.
“Roll up your sleeve,” Beck instructed. “Up to your shoulder.”
Zoe took off her jacket and pushed up her left sleeve.
“No, your right one. We all have it on the right arm.”
Zoe rolled up her other sleeve. What on the right arm?
“Arm out, palm up. Lindsay will hold you steady.”
The fork glowed a fierce orange. Beck took off her jacket and pushed up her own sleeve. On the fleshy inside of her arm, just below her shoulder, were four raised scars, lined up like the prongs of a fork. “This is the Beckoner mark.”
Zoe sucked in her breath.
“Rule number one.” Heather stepped into the circle, grinning. “No speaking, at all, unless we give you permission.” Zoe saw Beck frown. “Unless Beck gives you permission, I mean. Rule number two: keep your eyes open.” Heather sounded happier than Zoe had ever heard her, yet she couldn't want this. This was going to make Zoe a real Beckoner. This meant she was one of them, as much as Heather was. Surely, she didn't want that? “Rule number three: if you cry or yell or scream or even close your eyes, it's over. You don't get another chance. Rule number four: once it's done, there's no turning back. You're one of us, forever.”
Suddenly, Zoe understood. That stuck-up prima donna thought Zoe couldn't hack it. She thought Zoe would chicken out. She thought Zoe would fail. There she was, ticking the rules off her fingers, all the while thinking Zoe couldn't handle it. Zoe narrowed her eyes at Heather.
“It's ready,” Brady said, still holding the fork over the flame.
“Are you ready, Zoe?” Beck asked.
“You never asked me that,” Heather said. “You never asked any of us that. Just get on with it. She's not going to make it, are you, Zoe? You're going to scream so loud someone's going to think you're being raped. So long, Zoe.” She gave Zoe that little fake wave, that billboard-bitch wave that might as well be mechanized. “Been a splash, sweetie.”
Bad move, Heather, Zoe thought. Don't ever tell Zoe that she can't do something. Don't tell her how she's going to react. Don't presume to know her, when you don't. Don't think for one nasty little slice of a second that you're so almighty you've got her figured out. Go home, Heather, and rot in your palatial princess suite, with its antique sleigh bed and in-floor heating and dedicated phone line. Zoe forgot all her doubts about being associated with the Beckoners. In that moment, she just wanted to prove Heather wrong.
“I'm ready.”
“So what, now we do it when she says so?” Heather looked to the others for support. “We need her permission?”
“Shut up, Heather.” Beck didn't look at her. “I decide when I do it.”
“Great, glad to know there's still some element of surprise.”
“Shut up, Heather.”
“Fuck you, Beck. Tell me to shut up one more time and I'm leaving.”
There was a silence, carefully loaded by Beck, a long pause that made it clear that Beck was thinking that might not be such a bad idea. Heather folded her arms and stepped back into the circle. Zoe had to fight back a smile.
Zoe stood in the middle of the circle, shivering. She tried to stop by taking deep breaths, but that didn't work. She looked at the floor instead, trying to see past the wood slats, to the ground below. She imagined being there, huddled in the damp dark, looking up at this scene. She imagined she was not this person who was about to be branded.
Then a sour stench hit her nose like a full-force fist. Pain sliced through her as if she was being cut in half by it. Lindsay was holding her shoulders so tight Zoe couldn't move, even if she had wanted to bolt. She clamped her free hand over her mouth and bit down hard on the fleshy skin below her thumb. She opened her eyes as wide as they'd go and stared up at the starless sky, slivers of smoke slipping into sight. That was her skin, burning, the smoke shifting into the atmosphere, particles of her joining the universe. Beck watched her face while the others counted.
“One, one thousand, two, one thousand...”
Silently, Zoe named the constellations she couldn't see: Ursa Major, Big Dipper...Orion...Andromeda. She couldn't think of any more. They tumbled around in her head with the same chaotic velocity as her heartbeat. Then Beck lifted the fork away and it was over.
Zoe was one of them. She was a Beckoner. She meant to look at her arm right away, but she looked for Heather instead, who was halfway to the parking lot, swearing like a drunk. Janika hurried after her, calling for her to wait up.
The only thing Zoe
could compare it to is when she got her first period.
She and Alice had been camping in the Rockies, the summer Alice was massively pregnant with Cassy. They were in the provincial campground, surrounded by convoys of German tourists in rental campers. After a week of trading English swearwords for German ones, Zoe woke up sticky and damp
between her legs. She knew what had happened. The same thing that landed Alice on the couch three days every month, clutching the hot water bottle to her belly, talk shows turned low so they wouldn't make her headaches worse. She moaned and groaned, but through it all insisted that your monthly was Mother Nature's way of announcing your womanhood and it was nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, no matter how excruciating your cramps might be, or what a bitch you were the week before.
After Alice gushed all over her, grabbing her cheeks in her hands and blinking back tears as she soaked Zoe's face with kisses, they left to drive into Banff to get the sleeping bag cleaned and to buy tampons. Zoe made Alice pull into the first gas station on the highway so she could get a good look at herself in a decent mirror. There were three people ahead of her in line for the bathroom. While she waited, she braced herself for the new Zoe. She was a woman now. Yesterday, she hadn't been. She would have to expect to look completely different, right?
When it was her turn at last she stood in front of the mirror and wept. She looked exactly the same, only dirtier and pimplier after a week of camping.
That's how she felt the morning after the initiation. She looked exactly the same as the day before, except now she also had a seeping wound she'd been ordered not to doctor, because it scarred better if she didn't put anything on it.
Zoe didn't see her
mother the night of the initiation. She didn't see her all the next day, either, which was a Sunday. Zoe woke to find Cassy asleep beside her, on her belly, diapered bum sticking up, fists under her chin. A note on the fridge thanked Zoe for looking after Cassy for the day. Zoe had not been informed that that was what she was doing with her day, and while she was mad at Alice for presuming that she'd have nothing better to do, she was thankful for an excuse to stay home and hide from the Beckoners. Zoe packed Cassy into the stroller and walked to the video store for a load of movies, which she watched one after
the other while Cassy carefully and repeatedly dumped out and refilled her dinosaur cup with grapes.
“Eat them, bratscicle,” Zoe said when the grapes started to get slimy.
Cassy shook her head.
And that was the extent of their conversation for the day.
She finally saw Alice on Sunday night, but if Alice noticed anything different about Zoe, like how she favored the arm with the scar, or how she skulked around holding on to a secret, she didn't mention anything.
“When am I going to get paid for all this babysitting?” Zoe said when her mother walked in the front door.
“We all have to do our part, Zoe.” Alice looked haggard, as if she'd had a long hard day at work. However, it was her day off, so it was more likely she'd found someone to party with. She smelled of the bar, although all the bars in Abbotsford were closed on Sundays.
“In other words, I'm never getting paid for it?” Zoe scooped Cassy away from her pile of blocks and started stuffing her into her jacket. “I'm donating my time so that you can go and party?” Zoe headed for the door, Cassy in tow.
“You know, you're lucky to have a roof over your head.” Alice sunk onto the couch, her coat bunching up to her shoulders. “Maybe you should come donate some of your precious time at Fraser House, so you don't go losing perspective on how good you got it, a roof over your head and food in the cupboards. That's a hell of a lot more than some, you know.”
“You had a look at the cupboards lately?” Zoe took down four boxes of macaroni and cheese, a half empty box of soda crackers and three chicken noodle soup mixes. “That's all there is.”
Alice held up a finger. “Watch where you're going with that, missy.” She closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the couch.
It had to be a new man. Even Alice was pretty good about keeping food in the house. She might not be the kind of mother
who was very organized about it, but she'd usually come home with a couple of bags every other night or so, and it had been almost a week since she'd done any shopping at all.
“Cassy and I'll go to the store.” Zoe fished in her mother's purse for her wallet. Her hand landed on a letter. Zoe checked that Alice's eyes were still closed before she peeked at it. It was a love letter, written by someone who was trying hard to write neatly. The words sloped down to the right, “Sweetheart, Even the thought of your firm...”
“Get the hell out of my purse!” Alice cleared the space between the couch and the table in two steps. “What the hell you digging in there for?”
“Money! For food?”
“Well, Jesus, Zoe, don't go snooping.” Alice handed her a twenty and took her purse back to the couch with her. “Get me a pack of cigarettes out of that, would you?”
Zoe let Cassy walk
the whole way to the store, which meant the trip took nearly an hour, rather than the fifteen minutes it would have if Zoe had gone on her own. Cassy stopped to look at everything that caught her eye. She collected pebbles, squatting down and dropping them into her dinosaur cup. Zoe walked behind her, wondering about this man, this love letter writer, this somebody who was thinking about Alice's firm whatever.