Free Beckoners by Carrie Mac Page A

to the frontof the room, taking a circuitous route up an aisle well out of reach of Beck.
    If only Zoe had spent more time on her essay. And why had she picked such a stupid topic? Nobody cared if there was no main entrée for vegetarians in the school café. Vegetarians were pathetic anemic losers, Zoe decided as she watched Dog leave, and she, Zoe Anderson was a complete and total idiot.
    â€œThere goes the paper,” Beck said as Dog left without so much as shaking Leaf’s reluctantly stuck out hand as she passed. He dropped his hand and looked at Mrs. Henley, who was proudly passing a newspaper to each student. The look he laid on her was one of abject disappointment, as though she’d duped him on purpose, as though she should’ve known better than to let this happen. He stared at her back, and then collected the lunchbox and left the room without another word.
    By lunchtime that day, the school was barking at Dog with a renewed enthusiasm. Simon and Teo and Zoe walked behind her down the hall as Dog headed out of the school. Dog looked like she wanted to bolt, but was resisting. Zoe had to give her credit. If she bolted, it proved they’d gotten to her. Ignoring it was a small triumph that at least suggested that she didn’t care. The barking stopped when Dog stepped outside, because of course all the barkers would look pretty stupid if there were no Dog to bark at.
    â€œThat girl is so marked.” Simon said as the door slowly shut behind her. “You’d think the air around her would be a different color.”
    Zoe stopped at her locker to grab her lunch, and then the three of them went outside. There was Dog, whistling to Shadow, who’d been waiting at the curb across the street. He bounded over to her as best he could with his stiff legs. Zoe and the boys watched Dog make her way down the path between the portables to the little strip of grass she ate her lunch on, alone with her dog, every day.
    If Zoe had Mrs. Henley’s job, she would’ve taken Dog’s essay out of the running. She would’ve slipped it out of the pile and tucked it in her satchel and fed it to the fireplace at home, because even if she was a hoity-toity English teacher at the sunset end of a fifty-year generation gap, Zoe would’ve known better than to keep Dog in the running. Never, ever, ever focus the spotlight on someone who is naked and alone and tiny in the world.
    Simon and Teo went on ahead while Zoe watched Dog take her lunch out of a paper bag and line it up in front of her on the grass: apple, cheese sandwich on brown bread, juice box, granola bar, carrot sticks in a baggie. She gave Shadow half the sandwich, looking up to see if anyone was watching. Zoe ducked. Squatting there just outside the main doors with students passing, wiping the strange looks off their faces when they realized it was a Beckoner hiding there like she was about to take a dump in the bushes, Zoe discovered she was actually a little jealous of Dog. Zoe had to admit she’d rather be Dog, sharing a quiet, private patch of grass with Shadow instead of looking forward to yet another lunch hour in the smoke hole, fending off Heather’s psychic vampirism and the general inanity of the Beckoners.

happy birthday
    The night of Beck’s sixteenth birthday changed everything.
    Zoe wasn’t going to go. She didn’t want to, and it was at Heather’s, so she’d assumed that even if Beck wanted her there, Heather wouldn’t let her through the front door.
    â€œWhat the hell do you think?” Beck had said when Zoe told her she wasn’t going. “You’re a Beckoner. You go. Don’t be an idiot.”
    Alice was covering an overnight shift at the shelter, so she’d arranged for the young mom who lived next door to babysit Cassy. Her name was Wish. Zoe expected a willowy hippie girlwith messy dreads and flowing skirts and moccasins and silver bangles on her wrists, the