The Yearbook (7 page)

Lola yanked off the gloves. “Nothing.”

Danielle scrutinized the old clothes. Lola could almost hear her brain cogs grinding away.

“Does this have something to do with that old yearbook?” Danielle asked, and began to giggle. “Are you trying to be like one of those people in that yearbook? You
are
.”

“Yearbook?” Lola said, turning away from Danielle. She felt a hot blush come over her face. “No.”

“Well, what's with the dress, then?”

“Halloween,” Lola said casually.

“You're going as what?” Danielle re-examined the outfit. “An olden-days person?”

“A flapper. From the 1920s. Haven't you ever heard of the flappers?”

“Then this
is
about the yearbook.”

“Maybe I got the idea there,” Lola said.

Danielle came closer and breathed on her dress. “It's not a bad idea. In fact, it's a halfway decent idea. Wish I'd thought of it myself.” She stroked Lola's hat with her pinky, like it was a new pet. “But I'm surprised you'd want to go to any school dance. You always say that stuff's for imbeciles.”

“People do change,” Lola said in a tone she thought Pola Negri might employ.

Then Danielle noticed the suitcase open on the bed and inside it the coin purse and the other old garments. “Where'd you find all this junk?”

The word stung. It wasn't junk.

“Downtown,” Lola said. “In a big thrift store. The Yesterday Boutique, it's called.”

“Did they have any other outfits like this? I want one, too.”

“No,” Lola lied.

Danielle pulled off her t-shirt and put on the vintage blouse. Lola bit her lip as Danielle struck poses in front of the mirror.

“Don't rip it,” Lola said.

“And you need all this for one Halloween party?” Danielle demanded, turning to inspect the suitcase and its contents. She opened up the coin purse, took out the silver dollars, and jingled them in her cupped hands. “Wow. How much was all this?”

“Enough.” Lola wrenched the coins from Danielle's hand and dropped them back into the purse. If only she'd heard Danielle coming she could have hidden everything. But Danielle was so light, so thin. She came and went as softly as a spider.

“Come on. What's the suitcase for, Lola?”

“I told you.” In truth, Lola didn't know why she had bought so many things, but felt there was some vital reason, just beyond her understanding. She longed for a diversion: a bolt of lightning, a phone call. If Jared Fantino had appeared in the doorway right then to show off his stack of survivalist magazines, she might have been glad.

Danielle took off the blouse and dropped it on Lola's bed.

“Okay. Then who's your date?” Danielle asked, pulling her own shirt back on.

Lola turned away and pretended to tidy her desk. “I don't know yet. Anyway, you don't have to have a date.”

“So you're wearing two olden-days outfits on the same night, or is this for two Halloweens, or two different Halloween parties?”

Suddenly Danielle was the district attorney conducting a cross-examination. It was time for a clever change of subject.

“What about you?” Lola asked. “You got a date?”

Danielle turned away from the suitcase and smiled mysteriously. The tactic had worked.

“You
do
have a date,” Lola said. “Who is it? That Jeff guy from pottery?”

“No. Not the Jeff guy. Not even close.”

“Who then?”

“Brent Gaynor,” Danielle said.

“Wow,” Lola said. “That's front-page news.”

“Are you being sarcastic about Brent Gaynor?”

“No.”

Danielle shrugged. “Well, he hasn't asked me in so many words. But I know he's going to. He's obsessed with me. He talks to me all the time now. He's always intercepting me at school, hanging around my locker, asking me all about this place.”

Lola wondered who was intercepting whom. She didn't think she could stand to hear any more just now. Her head felt hot. She took off the flapper hat and tossed it on the bed.

“There's another thing, Lola. I've seen him sitting outside in his truck, right outside, looking up at this window.”

She's getting worse,
Lola thought.
A basketball star wouldn't be caught dead with a Wrigley girl. At least not in public, not in daylight.

Danielle seemed to sense Lola's skepticism and pulled out her phone, ready with photographic proof. The big oak tree that stood just outside the bedroom window jutted into the picture, partly hiding the truck, but it was Brent Gaynor in the driver's seat all right, and just as Danielle had said, he was looking up at the building.

“It
is
him,” Lola said.

“Of course it is,” Danielle said. “You think I'm having hallucinations of Brent Gaynor?”

Lola skipped the evening meal. It seemed best to avoid Graham, Danielle, and the rest of the Wrigley Group Home residents. Besides, the voice that had encouraged her to buy the clothes had grown louder, and she needed some peace and quiet to hear what else it might have to say. This wasn't the kind of voice a crazy person hears, she assured herself, but a wisdom that seemed to come from deep inside her. It was a version of her own voice, and she trusted it.

• • •

On Monday morning, Lola was surprised to encounter Mrs. Dubois running the metal detector. The machine was beeping like mad while Dubois worked the sudoku.

“How come you're here?” Lola said as she passed through the machine.

“Oh, they're making me play cop today,” Mrs. Dubois said. “Where've you been? I've been waiting for you in the library.”

Lola stepped to one side and let the stream of students beep past. “Waiting for me? Why?”

“You signed on to clean up all that crap, but unless my eyes deceive me, the crap's still right where it was.”

“That was a one-day thing,” Lola said. She was about to add,
Go find yourself another slave
, but something stopped her. Suddenly she wanted more than anything to return to that stinky, cozy reserve room. “I'm free right now,” she said, although she had a midterm chemistry test.

“All right,” Mrs. Dubois said. “Here's the key. Have fun.”

Lola took the heavy old key. It felt good in her hand. She was halfway to the library when a page from the principal's office intercepted her.

“You Lola Lundy?” He was one of those freshmen whose voices were still trying to change.

“What of it?” Lola said. She couldn't stand for interruptions. Not now. That voice was talking to her again, softly, but it was there. And it wanted her to go to the library.

“Dr. Barton wants to see you ASAP,” the kid said, and handed Lola a note saying as much.

“Who?”

“You know,” the kid said. “Guidance counselor. Room 107.”

Lola walked into the open door of Room 107 and there, behind a desk, drinking a cup of vending-machine coffee, was the turtleneck man, still wearing the turtleneck.
The guidance counselor, of course
, Lola thought
.
Lola was disturbed to see that Hershey was with him. Hershey rarely visited the school. Something was up.

“Lola!” Hershey exclaimed, as if Lola were a long-lost friend encountered by accident. “How are you? Getting along all right?”

“Yeah. Everything's swell,” Lola said.

“Swell. Well, that's retro,” Dr. Barton said. He forced a chuckle that seemed calibrated to break the ice.

Hershey patted the seat on the couch next to her. Lola plopped down and braced herself for an annoying encounter; sitting down in a person's office never came to any good.

“How are you feeling today?” Hershey said. “I hope your migraine headache and ulcer haven't returned.”

Lola smirked.

“I understand you've been volunteering in the library,” she went on. “That's very positive.”

Lola crossed her arms. “Thanks for the endorsement. What do you want?”

Dr. Barton and Hershey exchanged a glance, as if trying to decide who should talk first.

“Lola,” Dr. Barton began. “I think it's best if we don't beat around the bush here. We have a report from the security company that you were trespassing on school grounds.” He consulted a report on his desk. “Last week after the dance.”

Lola had figured she'd got clean away with that. Graham hadn't checked the log. Danielle had kept quiet. Now here she was, blindsided by a delayed attack from an unexpected quarter. She tried to look placid, innocent. “You've got me confused with somebody.”

“You were by the mermaid with your shoes off,” Hershey said. “It was three-thirty in the morning, and you told the man you were washing your feet.”

Lola felt her anger spike. There were spies everywhere, at every institution she'd ever been associated with, all of them waiting for the orphan girl to live up to her loser potential. And that guard had seemed more or less decent.

“I wasn't washing my feet,” she said.

“Of course not,” Dr. Barton said. “It's not even a fountain.”

“It is a fountain,” Lola objected. “The water comes out of the mermaid's mouth.”

Dr. Barton raised the blinds behind him and pointed at the statue in the courtyard. “But the mermaid doesn't even have a head, Lola,” he said. “See?”

“I mean, the mermaid did have a head once, and when she had a head, the water came out of her mouth. Look it up for yourself.”

“You seem to be an expert on the history of our mermaid,” Dr. Barton said. “For someone so new to the school.”

“Like you said, I've been in the library a lot.”

Hershey sprang from her chair. “Tell us what you were doing on school property at three-thirty in the morning.”

“I fell asleep in the library,” Lola said. “I did.”

Dr. Barton cut in. “Let's all calm down. So, essentially, your story is you fell asleep in the library and when you came out it was night?”

“Yeah. Essentially, that's my story.”

Dr. Barton referred to the report on his desk. “Would you like to talk it over?”

“No,” Lola said.

The guard thought you were trying to break into the gym,” Hershey said.

“I left my cap inside. So I tried the doors, but they were locked,” Lola said. “That's all.”

“When were you in the gym?” Dr. Barton asked.

“I went to the dance.”

“Before or after you fell asleep?”

“Huh?” Lola said. She was beginning to lose track of the proceedings.

Hershey's eyes narrowed. “You went to a dance? You hate those things.”

“I met some interesting new people, or old people, depending on how you look at it.”

Dr. Barton made a covert notation.

“I don't believe you,” Hershey said. She rose and took a few agitated paces around the office. “Were you running away again? You were running away and this guard interrupted you? Is that why you were outside so late, alone?”

Lola looked her in the eye. “No.”

“I'm not hauling you out of another ditch in the middle of the night, Lola. I mean it. My bag of tricks is just about empty.”

Lola stamped her foot. “Oh, for the love of cucumbers.”

She hadn't intended to say it. It sounded bizarre. But there it was.

Dr. Barton grimaced. “What? Cucumbers?”

“I'm not running away. I like the house.”

The adults let this sink in but looked skeptical. “Mrs. Graham must be awfully permissive,” Hershey said. “What did she say about you coming in so late?”

“She didn't notice.”

“I'll have to ask her about that.”

“It might be better to ask her what happened on ‘Celebrity Cellulite',” Lola said. “She'll know that.”

Hershey sat down abruptly and smoothed her skirt. She had no further questions.

“Can I leave now?” Lola said.

Dr. Barton and Mrs. Hershey watched as Lola disappeared into the corridor. Mrs. Hershey let out a deep breath and sank back on the couch. “She doesn't seem to be taking very good care of herself.”

Dr. Barton examined the bags under Mrs. Hershey's eyes. “Neither are you. When was the last time you had a good night's sleep?”

“Her clothes weren't clean,” Mrs. Hershey said.

“Weren't they?”

“No. And her hair wasn't combed. She's always been fairly neat in her appearance. And she seemed to be in a big hurry. Didn't you think so?”

Barton yanked at his turtleneck. “What does it mean?” he said.

Mrs. Hershey fidgeted with her purse and brought out a big plastic jar of antacid tablets. She popped two tablets and quickly chewed them. “It means she's up to something. You'll have to keep an eye on her,” she said, licking her teeth. “I can't be in ten places at the same time.”

Dr. Barton nodded. “I have tried. She's an elusive character.”

“If she has her mother's illness, it's better we know now so we can arrange for treatment,” Mrs. Hershey went on. “She's a nice girl, under all that armor. And smart, too, really sharp, although you'd never know it by her grades. I'd hate to see her end up living under a bridge, or dead. That's what so often happens.”

Dr. Barton turned over the pages of Lola's Social Services file that Mrs. Hershey had placed on the desk in front of him.

“A criminal record, I see,” he said.

“Nothing major,” Mrs. Hershey said. “Some vandalism. A little shoplifting. Probably the worst thing she's done is hot-wire a car and drive it around for a couple hours.”

“How did it happen with her mother?” he asked. “A teen mom, wasn't she?”

“Yes. Janine. She was seventeen, but she insisted on keeping Lola. Wouldn't even consider adoption. Wouldn't say who the father was. She dropped out of school and worked as a waitress here and there. Lived in the trailer park in Fairview. That's where she started to disintegrate. First she stopped going to work. Apparently she'd call in and say another waitress wanted to kill her or the cash register was reading her thoughts. That kind of thing. It seemed she started hearing voices around then, or seeing people who weren't there. Your classic schizophrenia symptoms.