Deadly Lessons
Deadly
Lessons
by David Russell
To Barbara, who encourages and inspires me
And Ainsley—who inspires us both
While most of the locations in this novel are real, Sir John A. Macdonald Secondary is a fictional Vancouver high school. All of the characters are, of course, likewise creations of the author. Any perceived similarity to actual people is purely coincidental. Numerous individuals helped me by reading the manuscript and making suggestions—thanks to you all. Thanks also to Sean Vanderfluit, who answered occasional what surely seemed ignorant legal questions: any errors in legal understanding contained herein are certainly mine and not his.
Prologue
Dobrila peered at the clouds swirling just outside the kitchen window. A storm was brewing. Since she was a small child, Dobrila had both feared and delighted at the booming summer thunderstorms that would roll quickly through the countryside when she stayed at her grandparents’ farm. She remembered standing in the doorway of the big barn—green as opposed to red like they were supposed to be—laughing and pointing at each flash of lightning, her grandfather counting aloud the seconds between the lightning and the thunder claps. When the storm moved towards them, he would grab her shoulders with each clap of thunder, sending her running with shrieks of delighted terror behind the old rain barrel next to the door. When the storm receded, he would stand in the doorway, hoist Dobrila onto his shoulders and declare their bravery had scared away the storm. When the storm was over, Dobrila’s little brother could always be found stepping gingerly out of the empty horse stall at the end of the barn, never admitting his fear. To protect him, neither Dobrila nor her grandfather ever let on they knew how scared he was, and they did not tease him for his obvious lack of courage in the face of atmospheric disturbance.
Turning from the sink, Dobrila smiled at the memory. She smiled too, though quizzically, at the thought of her own daughter, nearly six years old, asleep in the other room, unaware of the thunderous turmoil rolling their way. Her daughter never bothered with conflicts around her. Instead, she was the dreamer, like her father. Her father. Dobrila sighed.
For over two months, she had heard nothing from her husband. Since the beginning of the end of their country, her husband had been home only sporadically. He was an officer, he told her. The Croats could not be allowed to break apart their nation, he had told her. Croatians. Hungarians. Serbians. All her life, Dobrila had known them all, growing up as she had in this very city on the Danube, Novi Sad, so close to the area now reclaiming independence as Croatia. Her friends were Croatian. Her friends were Serbian. She shook her head. As a child, none of that had mattered. How was it that these same people with whom she had run through the woods behind the school, the handsome young Croatian neighbour on the school’s soccer team from whom she had stolen her first kiss, the old couple who ran the small store just three doors from her own home, were now her enemy?
That was the danger, her husband was convinced. It was no longer safe to trust anyone. No one’s loyalties could be trusted any more. Dobrila wanted to hear none of it. All that mattered to her was that this independence—or failure to achieve it—would conclude before her daughter began school in the fall. She could not bear the thought of her little girl facing danger by simply walking down the street with her classmates, whoever they might be. If it came to it, she would take the family away from Novi Sad, to the south where they would be safe from the country’s squabbles. Maybe she’d go to London. She had always wanted to go there. Or even to America. Her brother, long since grown and working with the government, could surely find her passage away from the city of their childhood before it robbed her daughter of her own childhood. Her husband only got angry when she talked of uprooting the family. It was a topic she didn’t bother to discuss with him. Though for two months now, there was no topic she had been able to address with her husband.
Dobrila turned back to the window just in time to see the sky awaken as a flash of lightning brought the city aglow in yellows and blues. The lightning was bright, intense, though without forks, for which she was grateful. To this day, some of the fear of the forked tongue from the heavens remained with her, the byproduct of her grandfather’s active imagination. In the split second during which the city was illuminated, Dobrila could see as far down the hill as the city centre and the spire of the church, hundreds of years old, that stood steadfastly against the modern downtown developing around it. From the corner of her eye, Dobrila saw movement in the instant of brilliant daylight in her backyard. Her head turned quickly as the shadow of a man passed on the path from the gate. As the lightning disappeared from the sky, so too did the lights from her kitchen, as Novi Sad experienced another of its many power outages.
She wondered if she had only imagined the man on her garden walkway. Fighting had recently broken out within the city limits, but it had been limited largely to small pockets of Croatians on their way to what they saw as their new homeland. But the resistance to the Croatian independence movement had grown in recent months and with it, growing numbers of Croatian militants had infiltrated communities and towns where Serbian officials lived. It was foolish to be worried, she tried to tell herself. She was allowing the passions of the moment to invade her reasonable mind, the power of the storm sparking new fears in her now that she was alone.
Dobrila turned away from the window. It was too dark to see anything outside anyway. The power outages usually lasted only a few minutes, but just the same, Dobrila thought she should find some candles. Feeling her way along the counter’s edge, she made her way to the curio cabinet—another remnant of memories from her grandparents’ farm. The top drawer stuck, as it had for as long as Dobrila could remember. With effort, she pulled the drawer away from its rails, spilling the contents onto the floor. Dobrila crouched down to gather them, and as she did, she shot her head back up towards the back door. There. She had heard it again. It was more than the contents of the overturned drawer that had made such a racket. The noise she heard was from outside by the garden path.
Dobrila slowly raised herself, pressing her back against the archway that separated the kitchen from the dining room in her small, proud home. Watching the doorway, she found herself momentarily stunned into paralysis. She looked towards the hallway leading down to her daughter’s bedroom, thinking for sure that she must by now have woken up. Yet no sound came from that direction. Again Dobrila heard a slight scraping outside, closer now to the back door. She wanted to tell herself that her husband had finally returned. But why would he take so long to open the door? Was he injured? Did he need her help?
Quickly deciding she needed to get to her daughter, if only to hold her and be sure she was safe, Dobrila eased her way towards the sleeping girl’s room. She had nearly reached the hallway when she stopped. Had she locked the door? The distance between her and the door seemed so far, but it seemed equally foolish to run to her daughter—who had not yet even woken—if the door was not even locked. Dobrila stepped away from the wall, feeling suddenly exposed as she walked in the dark, arm outstretched, to reach the deadbolt on the door. Reaching the door, she breathed a sigh of relief when she noted it was already locked. After catching her breath, she half-smiled at her own foolish fears.
“Now who is afraid of storms?” she said aloud, and the sound of her own voice brought her even more comfort. A flash of lightning briefly lit the room, confirming for Dobrila that she was alone. So alone, she only then noticed the family dog was not at his usual spot lying near the radiator in the hallway. “Idiot,” she told herself, again aloud, realizing it was the dog making the noise in the yard. He was probably terrified by the storm, as she had allowed herself to become. Dobrila unlocked the deadbolt and pulled open the door, whistling quietly so as not to wake her daughter—as if anything could, she smiled again to herself. A flash of lightning illuminated