Read Online Beckoners by Carrie Mac - Free Book Online Page B

school that day.”
    â€œWhat about Beck?”
    â€œShe went and stayed at Heather’s for a few days. A social worker checked up on them after that, or that’s what they told my mom would happen anyway. I don’t really know.”
    â€œThe Beckoners?” Zoe stared at her lap. “When did that start?”
    â€œHeather did it right away. And then the others, one a year on the anniversary until they all had it and there was no one else. So last year they tried Lisa Patterson. And now you.”
    â€œWhy me?” Zoe looked up.
    Simon shrugged. “The five of them have always been best friends. There’s no one left, unless they were going to start doing matching ones on the other arm. I don’t know why Beck wants to keep doing it.”
    â€œHow long did Lisa Patterson last?”
    Simon shrugged again. “Not long.”
    Zoe felt sick while she was writing her lab quiz that afternoon. The pulsing pain in her arm was worse: dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.Mr. Turner collected the quizzes and then redistributed them for the students to mark each other. Simon got Zoe’s. She’d failed, but Simon erased her wrong answers and circled the correct ones so that she aced it in the end, or it looked like that anyway.

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    Simon made Zoe promise never to tell Beck what he’d told her in the ravine. It was a double cross-my-heart, hope-to-die, curse-me-if-I-don’t kind of promise. Zoe felt a little sorry for Beck now. She was at Beck’s house one night, waiting for her in the living room with the others while she was still upstairs in the shower. Mr. Wilson was getting ready to go to work. Mrs. Wilson padded around the kitchen, putting his lunch together, the bottom of her long sweater flapping against her pale veiny calves. Mr. Wilson grumbled about his coveralls not being dry, the car needing gas, his lunch not being ready andhis cigarettes being lost. When he left, Mrs. Wilson perked up considerably.
    â€œDo you kids want some hot chocolate?” She kept her ear directed at the door, listening to the car back down the drive. She wore too much makeup. When she smiled, her eyebrows were dark arches over blue eye shadow ponds. Zoe wanted to wet a facecloth and wipe it off. She wanted to sit Mrs. Wilson down in a chair and bring
her
a mug of hot chocolate.
    Zoe had not expected to feel sorry for Beck. It made backing away a little more difficult, because now there was the added complication of having empathy for the very person she was trying to extricate herself from. Before Simon told her about Beck’s dad, Zoe’s first move was going to be to tell the Beckoners about Mrs. Henley putting her and Dog together in the Mrs. Henley’s Underground Program for Gifted Children. It’s not that Zoe still didn’t think that was a good place to start. She wanted Beck to know she was choosing to stay in it, even though Dog was the only other student. She wanted Beck to know that she cared about other things, that she was interested in other things, that she was more than someone with Beck’s warped idea of an initiation scar on her arm.
    But so far, Zoe hadn’t told her about Mrs. Henley. She was going to; in fact, one morning she decided she was going to tell her after class, but then in came Mrs. Henley waving a copy of the school paper. The essay contest. Zoe had started and finished her entry the day it was due and hadn’t given it another thought until this moment. She hoped Mrs. Henley wouldn’t say anything about it that would link her with Dog.
    â€œSeats, everyone! I have the winning essay in hand. The author of which, as you all know, will be the assistant editor at the
Central Reporter
this year.”
    A couple of kids in the front row leaned forward, trying to read the name at the top. Mrs. Henley wagged a finger at them.“I don’t think so. We have a special guest coming to announce the winner. By now you’ve all probably