by Beth Goobie
Friday noon found her once again in the almost-deserted music room, nodding to Pavvie’s approving smile as she pulled clarinet #19 from the shelf. At the door to Room B she paused, flooded by a wave of unexpected hope that left her breathless and panicky. Biting her lip, she tugged open the door to find the room empty, nothing but a half circle of chairs and music stands. She entered, the wave of hope turning ugly, a wall of acid crashing in on itself. What had she expected, a weekly event? Some kind of mutual attraction? And what kind of attraction would that be, between a tyrant and his victim? What exactly had she come here looking for, anyway?
Behind her the door swung open and Willis entered, carrying trumpet #4. “Good, you’re here,” he grinned. “I signed the room out, so we won’t be disturbed.”
She was suddenly shaky, her mouth stretched into a stupid grin. Parking her butt, she began fumbling with her clarinet.
“So what kind of practice rituals d’you have?” asked Willis, sitting beside her and snapping the latches to his case.
“Practice rituals? As in practice often?” Sal asked carefully, slipping her reed into her mouth.
“As in scales, arpeggios, warm-up drills.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Okay,” said Willis, not blinking. “We’ll start with C major scale. Quarter notes. One, two, three, four.” Launching into the scale, he left Sal openly staring, her reed dangling from her lips. “C’mon,” he said, lowering the trumpet. “I’m lonely here.”
Slowly Sal tightened the ligature around the reed, then slid the clarinet into her mouth. C major scale — no sharps, no flats. It shouldn’t be too bad, if she played real quiet.
“You use cigarette papers?” asked Willis.
“Huh?” What was he on about now? Here she’d just psyched herself up for a wavering run at middle C, and he wanted to talk about smoking?
“Your lower lip gets sore from biting on it while you play, n’est-ce pas?” Willis asked mildly.
“You got that right,” she said emphatically.
Willis grinned. “My sister plays clarinet in a chamber orchestra. She folds roll-your-own cigarette papers over her bottom teeth for padding. That way she can play for hours.”
“For hours,” Sal said slowly.
“C major scale,” said Willis. “One, two, three ...”
He led them through various warm-up drills until Sal’s bottom lip ached and she was blowing air out of both corners of her mouth. Pleading mush mouth, she sat and watched him sail effortlessly through several more keys. Trumpet to his lips, eyes closed, he lost some of his wolfish look. Notes poured out of him, fluid as thought. Listening, Sal felt the jagged gears of her mind begin to dissolve.
“That’s more like it,” he said, clearing his drain valve. “Now we’re ready to start playing.”
“Have you had the nerves pulled from your lips?” Sal asked suspiciously.
“Never,” crooned Willis. “I’ve got other uses for these lips. How about we have a go at Choppin’ Ettood?” Pulling the music from his folder, he set it on his stand.
“How about first you tell me why I’m handing out those plastic tabs?” Sal countered, leaving her own folder closed.
She held her breath while he held his. The room went into a long pause, Willis staring into the middle distance while she watched the pulse beat in his throat.
“Recruits,” he said finally. “For next year. The tabs indicate who we’re considering.”
“I thought anyone could apply,” she said, confused.
“Three or four positions open a year.” Willis fiddled with his valves, not looking at her. “Anyone can apply, but we decide who gets in. The tabs are just to let certain kids know we’re watching them. They’re possibilities.”
“Do they know the tabs mean that?”
“They might, they might not. Not knowing keeps them on their toes. If we like what we see in them this year, they’ll get a more direct invitation to apply later on.” He gave her a quick glance. “You’ll deliver it.”
Sal thought of the sick twist in Brydan’s expression and the double-studded girl’s moody laughter. There had been fear in that laugh, though she’d covered it well.
“How come so many kids know the Sign of the Inside?” she asked slowly.
“It’s built up over the years,” Willis said easily. “Shadow has its buddy system, but if you abuse it once, the next time you use it you’ll be left to drown.”
Sal stared, wordless, at her clarinet. How was it possible things had gotten this complex? Last year she’d been aware of Shadow Council’s reach — who wasn’t? — but only as an ugly kind of vibe, vague and undefinable. The closer she looked, the more tangled its tentacles became, and they were everywhere. “Does the Celts’ staff supervisor know what you’re doing?”
“Darryl McCormick?” Willis laughed softly.
“Who?”
“Head of maintenance. He’s pretty slack — lets us know when he wants a couple thousand chairs unstacked and pretty much lets us hang out otherwise.”
“And no one supervises you in that room?”
Willis shrugged. “Teachers and club reps drop in with duties for us to perform. We’ve passed out a schedule that lets them know when the clubroom’s officially open and the Celts are in business. Shadow operates around the Celts’ schedule. The only club member who gets a key to the room is the president, and I call meetings for both the Celts and Shadow. Usually our meetings overlap. We keep a low profile, there’s no reason for administration to get suspicious.” He blew a breathy riff of notes, his eyes fixed on his musical score. “Don’t worry, that room’s just a place for mind games. It’s all virtual reality — Shadow never gets into any actual violence.”
Thoughtfully, Sal opened her music folder and pulled out the Chopin Étude. Talk about mind games — so far she’d distributed twelve tabs and only four vacancies would be opening next year. Shadow Council sure liked to jerk people around. Gingerly, she placed the clarinet in her mouth and bit down on her puffy bottom lip.
“Start signing your clarinet out on weekends,” said Willis. “A month from now, you won’t recognize your embouchure. Okay, Choppin’ Ettood, here we come. One, two — ”
He launched flawlessly into the trumpet’s silvery introduction to Chopin Étude.
Dusty and her mother were both out, the house holding another empty Sunday afternoon. Sal had been practicing the clarinet in her room, but C major scale just hadn’t done it for her. Now she was down in Retro-Whatever, rocking to solid sonics, The Wall Live pumped so loud every carpet shag vibrated in orange ecstasy. Turning the volume up, she slammed herself through a reverberating bass line, then sent her soul arcing along electric shimmering notes. The music was a shape-shifter, invading her body and transforming every movement. The jab of an arm released the fury of the unspoken, the whip snap of her body emitted wordless groans, the long drag of her torso across the floor was the snake ache of loneliness.
Whipping and spiraling around the room, she dug into her own breath and muscle, the gut-singing fear where nothing could be touched by words. At some point she looked up to see Dusty in the room with her, whipping his body in parallel contortions, his thin hair vibrating about his head. Though they didn’t speak or watch each other, their movements fell into an odd synchronicity — not mirror images, but conversations. She’d twist the question of an arm, he’d spin a mad reply. He’d snap his head, she’d convulse into a long gut groan. Finally, Dusty staggered to the stereo, shut it off, and sank to his knees. Across the room, Sal echoed him. For a moment they looked like two penitents at evening prayer.
“Shit, that was good,” gasped Dusty, collapsing onto the floor.
“Yeah.” Crawling toward him, Sal rested her head on the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “You get your essay done?”
“Nah. Soccer with a bunch of guys. You practice your clarinet?”
“Three or four notes.”
They lay, gulping long passageways of air.
Sal’s clothes were pasted, she ached in every possible way, felt like lying on the cradle of her brother’s lungs for the rest of her life.
“Dusty?” She counted the steady body-wide thuds of his heart. “I like talking to you like this.”
“Me too, Sally-Sis,” he whispered, clumsily patting her sweaty head. “Nothing better than you, little sis. Nothing better.”
Hours later, their mother found them in the same position, fast asleep.
The bike racks were full. Unwrapping the chain-lock from her seat, Sal locked her front wheel to the mesh fence that surrounded the school practice field. Monday morning, back to the same old grind, she thought, her eyes tracing the silver links that crossed and crisscrossed the length of an entire city block without a break. As she turned toward the school’s east entrance, the full strength of the nearest wall hit her — thousands upon thousands of red bricks cemented firmly together. In that silence, nothing moved. The building was over a century old, and none of its bricks had shifted a millimeter. Even the windows took the morning light and threw it outward, letting nothing in.
But that was only the way it looked on the surface, Sal told herself. When you were inside, the windows let in light. It was only a trick of perspective that made it look as if the windows also functioned as a solid wall, opaque bricks of glass.
As she came down the hallway toward her locker, Marvin Fissett stepped out of the crowd, flashing the three-fingered salute. Even in the cacophony of the busy corridor, it came at her like a vivid electric current. Nodding once, Marvin continued down the hall and she followed, an obedient puppy held tight by an invisible leash. At the library he pushed through the turnstile and headed for the stacks, pausing midway into the geology section.
“Brad Carter,” he said, handing her an envelope. “Homeroom S18.”
“That’s next to my homeroom,” Sal said surprised, as if this was somehow relevant, gave the transaction some kind of meaning. Without a word, without even a shrug, Marvin walked off, leaving her standing with her mouth still holding the shape of her words.
Speaking without permission, one demerit — she could hear him thinking it as he exited the library. Staring down at the blank envelope, she repeated the name to herself: Brad Carter. She’d never heard of him. It looked like this one called for another nose-rubbing job.
That afternoon, envelope delivered, she filed through the crush of packed hallways toward the auditorium with the rest of the student body. Everyone, including the teachers, looked to be in sleepwalking mode — the scheduled assembly promised to be a snorer, an easily forgotten hour spent listening to the Leader of the Opposition, a federal politician touring western Canada, who’d decided to include several Saskatchewan high schools in his itinerary. Entering the auditorium, Sal joined the fifteen hundred students crowding into tight wall-to-wall rows of chairs. So, Shadow Council had been busy, contributing to the official side of its existence. Off to one side, members of the Celts could be seen lounging against the stage, watching as students filled the chairs.
Behind the podium sat the school principal, Mr. Wroblewski, and a second man who was studying the packed audience with an amused expression. Balding and double-chinned, he didn’t look like a worthwhile reason to hold fifteen hundred adolescent minds hostage for an hour. Reluctantly, Sal wormed her way past a dozen jam-packed knees, sinking into a chair just as Mr. Wroblewski walked to the mike and began reciting the Leader of the Opposition’s personal accomplishments in education, business, politics and charitable activities. Slouching lower in her seat, Sal wondered how much time this charitable politician intended to expend on his speech. A short speech, she figured, would be a charitable and much-appreciated donation to the frenetic lives of fifteen hundred high-school students.
Make it ten minutes and I’ll vote for you when I get old enough, thought Sal. Make it five and I’ll vote for your party every election for the rest of my life.
Mr. Wroblewski stepped back from the mike, and the amused-looking Leader of the Opposition stood and approached the podium. Leaning into the mike, he opened his mouth, about to begin speaking, just as a piercing scream cut the air and a tall, skinny, naked male student with a paper bag over his head came tearing out of the wings. Running at top speed, he passed the gaping men at the podium and disappeared backstage. For two beats of a conductor’s wand, there was absolute silence. Then a tidal wave of laughter engulfed the auditorium. For the next five minutes, pandemonium reigned as wave after wave of hysteria rolled over the student body. Every time a pocket of calm appeared, someone would hazard another guess.
“Eddie Langlotz?”
“He’s over there, man.”
“Joe Rosencrantz!”
“Impossible — Joe has too much hair on his chest.”
Students collapsed onto one another. They rolled off their chairs and lay gasping on the floor. Sprawled in her seat, Sal gasped with the others until a scattering of harried-looking teachers managed to restore a relative calm. Eyes narrowed, she watched the Leader of the Opposition once again lean into the mike.
Yeah, Mr. Politician, she thought. Follow that one. Follow us.
The man wore a broad grin. Glancing toward Mr. Wroblewski, then back at the student body, he drew a deep breath and said, “Reminds me of my youth.”
Sal rode the second fifteen-hundred-strong eruption of laughter. Around her, students kept forgetting who she was, turning toward her with faces that ached with mirth. Invisible bricks dissolved, the air filled with shimmering waves of light.
“Did you catch who that was?” they kept demanding. “Did you recognize him?”
“Sorry, didn’t recognize that particular paper bag,” Sal replied, but she had a feeling she knew the streaker’s identity. Brad Carter was tall and skinny as a toothpick. Brad Carter wouldn’t know chest hair if it was tattooed on. In fact, remove Brad Carter’s clothes and pull a paper bag over his head, and he’d be a dead ringer for the tall skinny streaker who’d just run screaming across the stage. A massive grin waylaid Sal’s face. Shadow Council had just pulled off a genius move, and she’d been part of it. She’d delivered the message that had triggered an event that would become legend to every S.C. student in succeeding years. The Pony Express was dribble compared to this — the Pony Express ate Shadow Council’s dust. For one glimmering, soul-singing moment, Sal wouldn’t have traded anything for the privilege of being Shadow Council’s shadow.
Up at the mike, the Leader of the Opposition cleared his throat and fifteen hundred students leaned forward, ready for any details he was willing to let fly about his naked screaming youth.
Mister, you can take all afternoon, thought Sal. You can take the rest of my life.
The music door stood open, the sounds of early morning voices and warm-up drills pouring through it. Out in the hallway, Sal stood hesitating. For once, she was on time — just a fluke, it hadn’t been intentional, and it meant she was going to have to sit silent and isolated as a wooden post while everyone around her exchanged morning breath and the requisite jokes. Of late, Brydan had been developing a chipper relationship with the female oboist to his right. His conversation had a desperate edge, and he turned himself in his wheelchair so that he sat at a forty-five-degree angle to the front of the room, presenting Sal with his back until Pavvie gave a preliminary rap of the baton. Sal knew there was nothing personal in this; Brydan was simply talking at the girl because she happened to be there. Still, a steel rake clawed her gut every time she remembered that a week ago he would have been hard-pressed to remember the oboist’s last name.
Coming through the door, her eyes flicked dangerously toward the back row of risers. Most of the trumpet players were seated, a kaleidoscope of notes streaming from their instruments. At the center of the row sat Willis, trumpet on his knee, consulting with his music partner about a particular passage. As she entered, he looked up. Their eyes met, and she saw him the way he appeared to everyone else — dark shaggy hair, thick sideburns that begged to be stroked,
intelligent eyes on the alert for every potential joke, and so tall that even sitting he loomed above the back row of trumpet players, drawing the Concert Band to its peak.
He saw her, and another level opened fleetingly in his face. For a second, it was there — a smile that opened inward, a window letting in light. Then his eyes dropped, and he was again consulting with his trumpet partner. Just inside the door, Sal stood alone in an uproar of saxophones, trombones, and a long unmitigated drumroll, bewildered at what had just come and gone. How could something that lasted a millisecond take her on a spin halfway around the world, its shimmering ache more real than anything she could touch with her hands?
Fetching clarinet #19, she maneuvered through the music stands and into her seat. Beside her, Brydan stiffened and launched into yet another scintillating conversation with the oboist. This morning, however, it hardly seemed to matter. This morning she floated above it all, caught in the ephemeral web of Willis Cass’s smile.
Snapping the latches on her clarinet case, she reached for her reed. There, tucked beside her cleaning swab, was a blue package of Zig-Zag cigarette papers.
Chapter Ten
The girl was always alone, like Sal. No one spoke to her, she drifted through the rush and shove of school hallways as if she was on an alternate plane of reality, visible only to those as lonely as she was. Tauni Morrison never looked at anyone, never began a conversation, never initiated contact in any way. Every noon hour she sat in a back corner of the cafeteria, eating her bag lunch in short quick bites, then disappeared into the library to bury herself in yet another book. Like Color to the Blind, Sal had seen her reading. Sensation and Perception. Shadow Syndromes. What could a kid like her possibly want with books like that?
She was a good student. When Sal racked her brains, she remembered Tauni’s name being called at last year’s award assembly. The MC had spoken her name several times into the mike, and polite applause had rippled across the auditorium, but no one had come forward to receive the plaque.
