The Yearbook (22 page)

“I think you do, Lola,” the doctor went on. “You told a story of traveling in time. I've been hoping to hear more about that—I mean, as soon as you were ready to share.”

Lola began to laugh. She tried to make the laugh sound as merry as possible. She raised her eyebrows and fixed her face in a big, open-mouthed smile, taking a cue from the “amused” cartoon face on the poster. “I said
what
?”

“You said that you'd traveled in time. Through the reserve room in the school library. I've been wondering if these time travels might be connected to the fire you set, and to your dress. You ought to share all this with someone, get it all out and address it.”

Lola laughed again, and this time, she couldn't stop.

“Do you mind telling me why that's so funny?” Dr. Schultz said.

“You think I meant it?” Lola asked.

“Didn't you?” the doctor said. “Don't you still?”

“Are you a real doctor?” Lola said. She knew it was rude. She meant it to be.

“Yes, I am.”

“Then you should know a high fever can make a person delirious. I had a high fever, and pneumonia.”

At that moment, the beetle returned. Out of the corner of her eye, Lola watched it fly in circles, land, and begin to explore a leaf.

Dr. Schultz tapped her pen against the desk. “Why do you wear that dress?”

Lola stood up. “It seems like proper attire for a nut house,” she said. “But I can see I've been taken too seriously. I'm going to go and change. I would appreciate it if I could have my shoelaces back, at least.”

“I'm afraid I can't do that.”

Lola felt her blood heating and surging. She thought of Mr. Terry, a rotten perv in a stinking office. There seemed something honest about him now. He didn't try to mask his rottenness with vanilla-scented candles.

“I only came today because I have a request. I'd like to speak to my social worker, Mrs. Hershey. I have a right to contact her, don't I?”

Dr. Schultz nodded.

“Make the arrangements, then,” Lola said, and in a second she was out the door.

Mrs. Hershey was sitting at her desk eating a cheese sandwich and doing paperwork when Lola's call came in. Lola wanted her to send over some books on local history, including a 1924 Ashfield High School yearbook. Mrs. Hershey had agreed.

She was glad to hear Lola sounding so normal. Had Lola ever sounded abnormal? She'd been rankled ever since Lola was committed to Hillside. It didn't seem right. But she told herself to face the facts, to remember the fire, and the break-in at the school on Halloween that had been seen by at least twenty-five witnesses.

Mrs. Hershey went to the public library after lunch, checked out a few history books, and put them in the mail to Hillside. The yearbook proved to be more of a problem. The oldest ones in the library dated from the late forties. Several copies were available in the state archives but couldn't be checked out, only viewed.

Mrs. Hershey felt sorry and guilty. She sensed she had somehow failed Lola, and was determined at least to find the old yearbook she wanted. That evening, at home, she checked a few auction websites and found a copy for sale in a small bookshop in another state. It was fifty dollars and reported to be in “acceptable” condition. Mrs. Hershey got out her credit card and ordered it. Delivery would take two to four weeks.

Although it was 10
P.M
., she called Hillside. Anyone else would have been told to call back during business hours, but Mrs. Hershey had clout in that sad world of lost teens, and Lola was brought to the phone. She told her she'd mailed the history books but the yearbook would take a little longer. Lola seemed delighted with the news and thanked her.

Mrs. Hershey hung up the phone and sat down on the couch. She turned on the news but couldn't concentrate. She recalled what Danielle had said about Lola staring at an old yearbook for hours and hours. All she could think was: Why does she want that yearbook? Why?

Lola hung up the phone. She hated having to talk in the common room, which was full of loons who didn't know how to mind their own business. She had almost been asleep when she'd received the call from Hershey.

She walked back toward her room, noticing the light snow that had begun, and thought about Hershey's good news: Soon she would have the resources she needed to somehow build a case for her release.

She glanced about the large room. Most everyone was slumped in front of the television. Maybe that's why she noticed him, the young man in pajamas, off in a corner by himself. He was hunched over a table, working at something. She felt a sudden, overwhelming curiosity, and walked over to see what he was doing. With each step, her heartbeat quickened. She knew the set of the shoulders, the head of wavy brown hair, tilted a certain way in concentration, the hands that worked steadily, confidently. Peter.

Without a word, she pulled out a chair, sat down across the table from him, and waited for him to look up. But he did not acknowledge her arrival. He seemed not even to have noticed it. Lola saw that he was taking apart a telephone, an avocado-green push-button phone, twenty years old at least, the kind with the grating ring that could still sometimes be found in out-of-date offices. She felt herself breaking out in a sweat in the chilly room.

“Peter,” she whispered. “Peter. Look at me.”

After a moment, he raised his face from his work, not to look at her but to choose a new tool from a small kit beside him on the table. Lola stared. It was Peter. But it wasn't Peter. His features had been somewhat rearranged and his green eyes were more hazel now. He was more like the brother of Peter, some strange, younger brother. But she felt not the slightest doubt. It was him.

“Peter,” she said, more loudly than she'd meant to.

Peter did not look up, but Lola's voice drew the attention of several other patients and some of the staff. Soon a nurse had Lola by the arm and was pulling her down the hall. They veered into an office. The nurse shut the door. “Do you know this boy?” she asked.

“What difference does it make?” Lola said. After almost telling everything to the devious Dr. Schultz, she had swung the other direction and now made it a policy to reveal nothing.

“It's very important,” the nurse said. “We have been trying to establish his identity. He won't speak to anyone. We'd like to know who he is, so we can locate his family. He's been here for a month now, and it would help if—”

“A month?” Lola said. “What day did he get here?”

“Do you know him or not?” the nurse said.

“What day?” Lola insisted.

“It was sometime around Halloween, I think. Maybe just before.”

Lola understood now, why Peter hadn't come out of the reserve room after setting the fire. At that moment he had fallen through. And now they were both here, imprisoned.

“He was found wandering in the parking lot of Rite Aid, near the high school,” the nurse was saying. “But the high school people don't know him. If you know anything, Lola, we'd like you to—”

“I've never seen him before,” Lola said.

She went straight back to the recreation room. Peter was gone. She felt desperate, and furious at the nurse for pulling her away, but there was nothing she could do. She had to stay calm.

“Lights out,” one of the staff was saying. The TV watchers had turned off their program and were meandering away to take their medicines and go to bed.

Lola was awake all night. She had to talk to Peter. She tried to think of a way to sneak into his room, but the boys' sleeping area was on the other side of two sets of locked doors that could be opened only with a keycard. She would have to wait until morning to see him again. For now she was left with the frightening image of him, so silent and so changed.

What had happened to him? He had come through the portal, but something had gone wrong. He hadn't remained intact. He was ghostly, airy, mute, a rearranged person, like a puzzle put back together the wrong way. It wasn't surprising; she had always felt changed for the better in Peter's time, a brighter version of herself.

She remembered a spring day in Peter's workshop. She had been strumming the ukulele and fumbling with his science questions.
I know what you're thinking
, she had told him.
You're thinking, of all the future girls, why did you end up with one who doesn't know anything about science?

And how had he answered?
If you hadn't come to me, I would have found you. Somehow I would have.
Lola sat up and watched the snow through the little window. One thing was certain: It was her responsibility to take Peter back to where he belonged, to make him whole again. But how? She worked on the problem until the sky got light. Then she went to the common room to find him. She wore the lavender dress. Something from his era, she thought, might make him feel more at home.

Peter was seated at the same table as the day before. The phone was in front of him, reassembled. He opened his little tool kit, removed a screwdriver, and set to work, taking it apart again.

“That's all he does.”

Lola turned. It was another patient. A girl with neon-pink hair who was always in trouble for stealing things. Marsha? Melinda? She couldn't remember. She hadn't bothered to make any friends.

“Huh?” Lola said.

“That guy. He takes that phone apart every morning, and puts it back together every afternoon. Haven't you noticed?”

“No,” Lola said. She took a step toward Peter.

“You're not going over there, are you?”

Lola ignored her and took another step.

“He never says a word to anybody. They think maybe he never learned to talk,” the girl went on. “What a freak.”

“Shut up,” Lola said.

The girl gave her a dirty look and walked away.

Peter was bent over the table, just as he had been the day before. Lola pulled out a chair and sat down across from him, and again, he showed no sign of noticing her.

“Peter,” she said. “I wish you'd talk to me.”

She watched his hands, which were something like Peter's but not quite, remove the plastic casing from the phone and set it aside. The inner workings of the push buttons were exposed.

“Won't you even look at me?” she pleaded.

But he did not.

Lola sat with Peter all day, except for the meal breaks, watching him dismantle the phone down to its tiniest components and then methodically reassemble it. His complete unawareness of her made her feel like a hovering spirit desperate to communicate with the living.

She wished she had the yearbook. When it came in the mail she would slide it in front of Peter. He'd be forced to look at it. Maybe then he'd be stirred from his trance.

Days passed and Lola kept her vigil across the table from Peter. The Hillside staff noticed her sudden, baffling interest in the silent boy, and questioned her about it. She was summoned into the wolf lair—her new name for Dr. Schultz's office—and reported that she enjoyed watching him take the phone apart and put it back together again.

The holidays arrived and Lola was urged to join in decorating the recreation room and trimming the tree. Volunteers were being sought for a caroling group that would stroll Wings A, B, and C on Christmas Eve, spreading cheer. It was too sad to be funny. She told them to go away.

After a week or so of watching Peter in silence, Lola began to talk to him. In a low murmur that nobody else could hear, she spoke of people they both knew: Thumbtack, Whoopsie, the Wrigleys, Virgil, Ruby, Miss Roach. She talked about the picnics at Eagle Rock, dances in the gym, afternoons of swimming, and the long, blissful hours they'd spent in Peter's workshop.

“Do you remember the reserve room?” she said one day. She had been leading up to the question. “Do you remember what happened there? What happened to you and me?”