The Lottery
by Beth Goobie

Subjects: Secret Societies, School Life, Human Nature (Bullying) 
Genre: Realistic Fiction

This year’s lottery winner is 15-year-old Sally Hanson 3^rd clarinet player in the band.  You’d think winning a lottery is a good thing, but its not, not at Sally’s school.  Every year the Shadow Council draws the name of 1 student to be the winner or in this case, the victim. This winner becomes the Council’s lackey, their slave, their victim.  The winner delivers shadow council messages to the rest of the student body. Messages, tasks really that the recipients are assigned to carry out, some are pranks some are more insidious, cruel, things that drive students to commit bodily harm or mental anguish. The winner of course becomes the scapegoat of the student body and is shunned, an outcast for 1 year.  No one speaks to them.  They don’t exist.  Friends are no longer your friends or they are punished and you deliver the messages to other students who carry out the punishment.  Everyone is in on it.  Why it is a tradition that is over 30 years old.  They’ve all let themselves be controlled by those in the shadows.  What happens when the winner tries to buck the system, refuses to be a victim any longer?  To find out read TheLottery. 

Booktalk prepared by Janice Bailey, East Central High Librarian