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would ring and those minds would materialize into bodies. Someone was probably already standing guard, waiting for her outside in the hall. They’d have her class schedule; Shadow Council always took care of details like that. Hell, they probably had a plant sitting somewhere in this very classroom, watching her right now.
    “Sally Hanson, lisez le commencement du chapitre trois, s’il vous plaît.” The teacher’s voice, its crisp concise accent, was a sudden missile winging through Sal’s brain.
    “Huh?” As Sal straightened, her hand slipped on her notebook, leaving a sweaty imprint on the blue-lined page.
    “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques, dormez-vous?” singsonged the teacher. The class laughed, a sound defined by its ordinariness. Over by the window, Kimmie faked a coma, then flashed a sympathetic grin. Swallowing hard, Sal stared at the friendly neutral expressions that surrounded her. In approximately one hour, her first meeting with Shadow Council would be over, the invisible all-important X marked permanently on her forehead, and her name released like oxygen into the bloodstream of S.C.’s rumor-mill. At that time, she would be set finally and ultimately apart. Never again would anyone look at her with generic friendliness or indifference. This ordinary moment, this classroom of grinning faces was like a banished prisoner’s last glimpse of a familiar homeland as the king’s ship took him to the deserted island where he’d been condemned to live alone, forever in exile.
    It was a door like any other, in a hallway shared with classrooms and a girls’ washroom. Bare and nondescript, there was nothing to announce its purpose, unlike the insignia that appeared on the school store, yearbook, and darkroom doors. No sign had been tacked to it announcing Enter With Trepidation, no neon skull and crossbones glowed above the doorknob, but there wasn’t a single S.C. student who approached its threshold without having achieved the elite rank of membership or a direct summons. Teachers, even Mr. Wroblewski, the school principal, knocked before entering.
    Officially, Shadow Council fronted as the Celts, a club that had been established decades earlier to assist with school events. Members helped the maintenance department with various tasks such as setting up for school assemblies and sports meets, and they frequently did odd jobs for other clubs, such as distributing publicity posters throughout Saskatoon. In return for these services, they’d been given the use of a small clubroom. Applications from students who wished to join the club were voted on by the current membership. Over the years the Celts had gained an elite status as an exclusive, all-male club, until a female principal had forced the gender issue. Now it was an elite, gender-inclusive, exclusive club that put in its required muscle-time stacking chairs, distributing posters, and posing for its annual yearbook photo surrounded by cartons of Molson Canadian — a club that, on the surface, looked as ordinary as the door that closed it off from the rest of the school.
    As Sal approached the door she could hear muffled voices punctuated by bursts of laughter. To either side the hallway stretched into an echoing emptiness, the early noon-hour rush over, only the occasional student amblingpast. For the past ten minutes, she’d been drifting in and out of the girls’ washroom across the hall, disguising herself as a weak bladder, but none of the glances thrown her way had been remotely speculative. Even after receiving the third scroll, there was nothing to set her apart — she continued to fade into the masses as seamlessly as she’d always done.
    No one had been waiting outside her French class. Shadow Council must have assumed, in its arrogance, that she’d show as expected, no matter what kind of blood, sweat and dissolving entrails she dragged in her wake. Another burst of laughter erupted inside the room, inverting her stomach, and Sal groped