For a second, it lifts its head and stares offscreen. Then its eyes widen with fear, and its head shakes violently. It pins its head between its knees.
“It doesn't want to pick the last number,” a student whispers.
“I told you,” my teacher says, “these hepers are smarter than they look. It somehow knows these numbers are for the Hunt.”
The screen blacks out. The next shot is of the newsroom.
The anchors are caught off guard. “Looks like we're having technical diffi culties,” the male anchor says, quickly wiping his chin.
“We should be back on air shortly.”
But it takes more than a few moments. Video of the heper picking the fi rst three numbers is looped over and over.
Word spreads around school about me; more students crowd the classroom. Then more news: Another student in the school is still in the running. As I pump out more saliva down my chin and jerk my head in staccato fashion, I make some rough math calculations in my head. The odds that I have the last winning number are 1 in 97. That's just a little over 1 percent. A comfortingly low chance, I tel myself.
“Look!” someone says, pointing at the deskscreen.
The TV channel has shifted away from the newsroom to an outdoor location. The male heper is gone. In its stead is a female heper, young. This heper is sitting outdoors in a chair, a hemp sack and glass bowl on the ground next to it.
The image is glassy and shiny, as if a glass wal stands between the heper and camera. Behind the heper, distant mountains sit under the few stars that dot the night sky.
Unlike the other heper, this female heper is looking not nervous ly offscreen, but directly at the camera. With a col ectedness in its gaze, a self- possession that seems odd in a captive heper.
Some of the boys lurch up on desks. A female heper is known to be the choicer morsel of the two genders. The fl esh meatier, fattier in parts. And a teenage one— as this one appears to be— is the most succulent of all , its taste beyond compare.
beyond compare.
Before the hissing and drooling kicks up again, the heper is already reaching into the sack. It calmly removes a bal , holds it with outstretched arm toward the camera. But it's the eyes I'm looking at: how focused they seem to be on mine, as if they see me in the camera lens.
I don't need to see the bal to know the heper has picked number 87. An explosive hiss curdles out from classmates, fol owed by a phat- phat- phat of smacking lips. The congratulations begin: ears brought down to mine, rubbing up and down, side to side. A minute later, between ear hugs, I glance down at the deskscreen.
Amazingly, the heper is still holding the numbered bal up to the camera, a look of quiet defi ance imprinted on its face.
The picture starts to fade out. But in the moment before it does, I see the heper's eyes moistening, its head slanting forward ever so, hair bangs fal ing over its eyes. Its defi ance seems to melt into a sudden, overcoming sadness.
Before too long, they come. Even as my classmates are stil congratulating me, I hear their offi cious boots thumping along the hal way.
By the time they open the door to my classroom, every student has taken his or her seat, standing up at attention as the team of four walks in. They are all immaculately dressed, silk suits with tight, clean lines.
“F3?” the squad leader asks from behind the teacher's desk.
Like his suit, his voice is silky, pretentious, but with undeniable authority.
I put my hand up.
all four pairs of eyes swivel and fasten on me. They are not hostile eyes, just effi cient.
“Congratulations, you have the winning lottery combination,”
the leader murmurs. “Come with us now, F3. You will be taken directly to the Heper Institute. Your ride is awaiting you in front of the school. Come now.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.
But I need to pick up a few items from home, clothes.” And my shaver and scrubber and nail clipper and fang cleaner — “No. Clothing will be supplied at the Institute. Come now.”
I've never been in a stretch carriage, much less one drawn by a team of stal ions. The stal ions are sleek black, merging seamlessly with the night. They turn toward me as I approach the carriage, their noses sniffi ng me out. I climb inside quickly. Students and teachers spil out of the school from the east and west wings, rushing over to gawk. But they all stand a respectful distance away, silent and still .
Because of the darkly tinted windows, it's unnerving how pitch-black it is inside. I restrain the urge to stretch out my arms or to widen my eyes. Head bent down, I slide my body forward slowly until my knees hit the soft front of the leather seat. I hear more bodies fol owing me in, feel the seat sag under the weight of their bodies.
“Is this your fi rst time inside a stretch?” a voice next to me asks.
“Yes.”
Nobody says anything.
Then another voice: “We will wait for the other winner to get here.”
“Another student?” I ask.
A pause. “Yes. Shouldn't be long now.”
I stare out the tinted window, trying not to give away the fact that I can't see a thing in here.
“Some papers to sign,” says yet another voice. A faint rustle of papers, the unmistakable snap of a clipboard.
“Here you go.”
My eyes still trained outside, I swing my right arm in a wide arc until I hit the board. “Ooops, I'm such a klutz sometimes.”
“Please sign here and here and here. Where the Xs are.”
I stare down. I can't see a thing.
“Right where the Xs are,” yet another voice chimes in.
“Can we just wait a bit? I'm kind of caught up in the moment —”
“Now, please.” There is a fi rmness in that voice. I sense eyes turning to look at me.
But just then, the limo door opens. “The other lottery winner,”
someone whispers. A faint gray light from the outside spil s inside.
Not a moment to lose. I whip my eyes down, barely catch sight of the Xs, scribble my name down. The carriage tilts with the added weight. Then, before I can see who entered, the door swings shut and the interior is plunged into blackness again.
An ankle jams into my shin.
“Would you watch where you put your legs!” a voice snaps at me. It's a girl's voice, somewhat familiar.
I stare out the window, not even trying to meet her eyes.
“Do you two know each other?” a voice asks.
I decide the safest action is to shrug and scratch my wrist.
Something ambiguous that could be interpreted a number of ways.
The sound of wrists scratching in response. I'm safe for now.
“Please sign these papers. Here, here, and here.”
There is a momentary pause. Then she speaks with command.
“My friends are outside. The whole school is outside. This is the best moment of my life. Can you please rol down these windows so they can see me? It'd be good for the school, for the community, to join us in this wonderful time.”
For a long time, there is no response. Then the window rol s down and the gray outside light ambles in.
Sitting across from me is Ashley June.
We ride in silence and darkness, the offi cials dispensing with smal talk. The stal ions stop at a stoplight; the click- clock of their hooves comes to a momentary cease. The muffl ed, rumbling sounds of the crowd outside fi lters through: bone snaps, teeth grinding, the crackle of joints and ankles. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people line the streets, watching our passage.
Ashley June is silent but excited. I can tel . Snaps of her neck crack out in the darkness in front of me. I throw in a few snaps of my own, cracking my knuckles once or twice.
This is not the fi rst time Ashley June and I have been in the dark in close quarters. It was a year or two ago, before I became the re-cluse I am today and just as Ashley June was beginning her mete-oric rise in the ranks to the Desirable club. It was raining that night and the class was cloistered inside the school gym. Our gym teacher never showed, and nobody bothered to let the offi ce know.
Somehow— these things just have a way of happening— everyone started playing spin the bottle. The whole class, all twenty or so of us. The class divided into two circles by gender. The words— This is so lame, I'm outta here— were on my lips when the guys suddenly spun the bottle and got things going.
It whirled around in a blur, then slowed, coming to a stop at the boy sitting across from me.
Then it continued to inch forward slowly, as if through glue, until the bottle mouth, like the gaping mouth of a dying goldfi sh, came to a stop. Pointing right at me, dead center, no question about it.
“Suck fest,” the boy next to me said bitterly. “So close to me.”
And it was as though an electric jolt shot through the girls' circle. They started whispering, heads huddling together, casting me luring, excited looks. In a fl ash, a girl reached forward and spun the bottle. The bottle twirled fast, then broke into a slower blur. When it was crawling through its fi nal rotation, girls leaning back in dis-appointment as the bottle passed them, and just as it was slowly passing by Ashley June, she reached forward and stopped it with her foot, the mouth of the bottle pointing at her.
“Wow,” she said, “fi gure that.” And because it was Ashley June, they let her get away with it.
A minute later, Ashley June and I were inside the closet.
We stood mere inches apart, the wal s enclosing us tightly.
The smel of pine was thick inside, the darkness complete.
Neither of us moved. I heard the others talking outside the door, their voices miles away. I stared down at my feet, breathing through my nose in long, control ed breaths.
I thought to speak to her, this being the perfect— the only— opportunity to express what had been bottled up in me for years.
Ashley June, I've had feelings for you for a long time.
Since the fi rst time I ever saw you. You're the only one I've ever been drawn to, the only one I think of every day.
“Should we get a move on?” she asked in the darkness, her voice whispery and surprisingly low. My opportunity, so fl eeting, gone.