کتاب 02-12

12

On the night of the first lottery to see who would eat and who wouldn’t, Harper pulled kitchen duty. Norma planted Harper just beyond the serving window, behind a folding table set with thermoses and mugs and a big rectangular tin of sugar.

“You can sweeten the coffee for the losers. One spoonful each, no more. And let ’em see that belly of yours, remind ’em what they’re skippin’ lunch for: your precious little miracle,” Norma said.

This did not make Harper feel better. It made Harper feel fat, entitled, and lonesome. Of course she wasn’t fat, not really. Yes, all right, she could no longer button the top of her jeans, a fact she hid by wearing loose hoodies. But it wasn’t like the furniture shook when she crossed the room.

Lunch was watery porridge with a side of peaches, dished out from yet another can. It fell to Nelson Heinrich to dispense the lottery tickets, and he turned up to do the job wearing one of his Christmas sweaters: dark green with gingerbread men dancing across it. He wore a Santa cap, too, an obscene touch in Harper’s opinion; as if he were handing out candy canes and not taking away meals.

The tickets were piled in a woman’s brown leather purse. The losing tickets had black X’s marked on them. Harper thought that purse was some kind of karmic opposite to the Sorting Hat. Instead of being sent to Slytherin or Gryffindor, you were sent off to go hungry with a cup of sweet coffee. You wouldn’t even be allowed to stay in the cafeteria with the others.

I don’t think that would be a good idea, Ben Patchett had explained. If we let the losers stay, folks will take pity and start sharing. Normally I’m all for share and share alike, but in this case, it would defeat the whole purpose of the lottery. There’s so little to split, if people begin dividing their portions, it’ll be like no one’s getting fed at all.

Then he said there would only be twenty-nine losing tickets in the purse. He had decided to take the thirtieth, to show he wasn’t asking anyone to do anything he wasn’t ready to do himself.

At 2:00 A.M.—their normal lunchtime—Norma slid back the bolt on the cafeteria doors and stood aside as people began to push in, snow dusting their caps and shoulders. It was coming down again, in a fast, light, powdery flurry.

Don Lewiston was at the head of the line and he made his way up to Nelson Heinrich. Nelson blinked at him in surprise. “Don, you’re sixty-three! You don’t need to draw a ticket! I didn’t and I’m only sixty! Go on and get your peaches. I already had mine. Gosh, they were yummy!”

“I’ll draw a ticket, same as any t’others here, thank you, Nelson. I’ve never been a big eater anyway and would almost rather a cup of coffee with some sugar.”

Before Don could stick his hand in the purse, Allie slipped up alongside him and grabbed his wrist.

“Mr. Lewiston, I’m sorry, if you could just wait a minute. We’ve got a mess of Lookouts who have been out in the cold all night, sweeping off the boards between houses. Father Storey said it would be all right if they drew first,” Allie said.

She looked away from Don, down along the line, and gestured with her head. Teenagers began to shuffle toward the front.

Someone shouted: “Hey, what’s with the cutting in line? Everyone here is hoping to get some lunch.”

Allie ignored him. So did Michael, and the kids coming along behind him. Michael eased around Don Lewiston with a nod, reached into the purse—and came up with a white stone, the size of a robin’s egg.

“Huh,” he said. “Look at that. I think I drew a loser!”

He popped the stone in his mouth and walked past the line of serving windows, on to the coffee bar. There he silently poured a cup of coffee for himself and held out his ceramic mug so Harper could dump in his sugar.

Nelson Heinrich stared after him, mouth lolling open in a rather witless way. He looked down into the purse, trying to figure out where the stone had come from.

Allie began to whistle a jaunty little tune.

Gillian Neighbors drew next. Another stone.

“Just my luck!” she said happily, and plopped the stone in her mouth. She walked on to Harper, poured a coffee, and waited for her sugar.

Behind her, her sister, Gail, was reaching into the purse, and this time Harper could see she already had the stone in her palm, even before she began to dig around among the tickets.

Harper wanted to laugh. She wanted to clap. She felt like a girl filled with helium, so light she might’ve come free from the floor and bumped up against the ceiling like a balloon. She ached with happiness—a fierce, bright happiness of a sort she had not felt in all the time she had been sick with Dragonscale.

She wanted to start grabbing the kids, the Lookouts, Allie’s friends, and squeezing them. And not only because of what they were doing: forgoing the lottery and simply volunteering to do without, taking it upon themselves to skip lunch so others could eat. It was just as much what Allie was whistling, a song Harper recognized from the first three bars: a melody so sweet she felt it might break her in two, just as a glass can be shattered by certain musical tones.

Allie was whistling “A Spoonful of Sugar,” the very best song from the very best movie ever.

Gail Neighbors drew the white stone, made a clucking sound, and walked on to get her coffee. All of the kids were doing it: Allie’s kids. All the teenage girls who had shaved their heads to look like her and all the teenage boys who had signed up for Lookout duty just to be around her.

Don Lewiston pushed back his Greek fisherman’s cap and scratched his forehead with his thumb and began to whistle himself. He nodded as each Lookout walked past to collect a stone and skip lunch.

Father Storey was whistling, too. Harper had not seen him enter, but there he was, standing to one side of the door, smiling enormously, but blinking at tears. Aunt Carol stood beside him, her head resting on his shoulder, whistling with the rest of them, and her eyes were gold coins. Almost a dozen people were whistling the song now, the melody as lovely as the first warm perfumed breath of spring, and their eyes shone like lamps. Burning gently on the inside. Burning with song, with the Bright.

Gail Neighbors held out her mug for sugar. As Harper dumped it in, she began to sing.

“Just a spoonful of sugar,” Harper sang, her voice thick with emotion, “makes the medicine go down, makes the medicine go dow-own . . .”

She sang and for a moment forgot all about being pregnant, being fat, being lonely, being covered in some kind of flammable spore that was ready to ignite. She sang and forgot Jakob’s awful book and Jakob’s awful gun. She forgot the world was on fire.

A spoke of heat flashed up from the base of her spine and spread over the ribbons of Dragonscale on her skin, in a sweet, shiver-inducing rush. She swayed on her heels without being aware of it. The world possessed a new, liquid quality. She was conscious of a tidal rocking in her blood, as if she were afloat in a pool of warmth and light, as if she were an embryo herself, not the carrier of one.

The next time she poured sugar, the glittering grains seemed to fall in slow motion: a cascade of riches. Brightness cascaded along the Dragonscale around her wrists and throat, a silvery-white trill. She was a kite, filled and rising with song instead of wind. She was as warm as a kite in the sun, too, her skin blazing—not painfully, but with a flush of pleasure. Her hand wore a glove of light.

The Lookouts came and nodded to her and took their coffee or tea and went on and they all shone; they were all lit up like ghosts. She was glad for each of them, in love with each of them, although she could not remember who any of them were. She could not remember anything that had come before the song. She could not think of anything that mattered more than the melody. She did not believe that any spoonful of sugar, no matter how sweet, could be as fine as the melting sweetness running through her then.

Father Storey was the last to come up for coffee. He had drawn a stone himself, of course. He hadn’t put it in his mouth yet, was just holding it.

“There is Miss Willowes!” he cried. “Happy at last. Happy and looking well!”

“Miss . . . Willowes?” she asked, her voice as slow and dreamy as sugar spilling from a spoon. “Who’s Miss Willowes?”

“It’ll come back to you,” he promised.