The Yearbook (2 page)

She turned the page and the ghosts of Ashfield High began to appear. The young, serious faces looked back at her from their faded oval portraits. Lola was caught off-guard by a tight yearning in her chest that she didn't understand.
This one I'll keep
,
she thought, and slipped the book into her knapsack. She rested her head on the thin canvas of the bag, and her drowsy brain shuffled the scraps she'd read from a hundred different books that day, trying to organize them into a story. The Friday night dance had begun in the gym, and the distant thump of the bass echoed down the hallway.
Gaga Oo-la-la
. Soon she was asleep.

The scrape of chair legs woke her sometime later. She lifted her head to see a young woman dragging a wooden stool across the floor. The light was dim, as if the electricity was at half power. Giggling to herself, the woman climbed the stool and reached for the top shelf. The hidden compartment reappeared from behind the trick board, and she drew out the glass bottle. She took a sip, shuddered, and smacked her lips.

That old bottle was empty
, Lola thought.
And besides, I'm sure I threw it away.
“Nightcap?” Lola said.

The woman whirled around on the stool and seemed startled to see Lola sitting there. “Shhh,” she hissed.

Lola saw then that the woman was really a teenager in some kind of freak costume. A silky pink dress fell to her shins, and a whole lot of tinkling glass beads swung along her front. She wore a bell-shaped hat with a feathery brim, long white gloves, and chunky heels, white with big silver buckles.

Lola stared at the weird shoes on the heavy wooden stool. Where had that stool been all day while she was risking her neck on that wobbly Formica table? And where, by the way, was the wobbly table? Because Lola was now seated at a wide oak desk.
This is not the room where I fell asleep
, Lola thought.
Did I sleepwalk here?
She looked around more carefully.
No, it is the same room. I'm sure it is. But the room has changed
. The big rubber garbage bin was gone from its place in the corner, as was all evidence of fire and flood. The stench of mold and ashes had been replaced by the pleasant, papery scent of a library. A leather sofa stretched against one wall, with goose-necked reading lamps positioned on tables at each end. The books glowed in that strange half-light. Who had cleaned the room? How? And when? Under her baseball cap, her scalp prickled.

The girl in pink took another nip and jumped down from her perch.

“Hey,” Lola said. “Where's the stuff that was here? Wait a minute.”

But in a swish of silk she was gone.

Lola scrambled up from the desk and chased the girl along the wide, echoing halls of Ashfield High. The floors were glossy as pools in moonlight, as if they'd just been waxed. The music from the Friday night dance grew louder but was nothing like the pounding pop that had lulled her to sleep. It sounded curiously like a live orchestra playing bouncy cartoon music.

The girl in pink vanished into the gym. Lola was stopped in the doorway by a sight that hit her like a punch in the face. The gym was a mass of color and motion, like a flower garden in a storm. Thunder seemed to rise up out of the floor as the dancers' hard heels struck the wooden planks. The girls were dressed like the one in the library, some with added sequins and feathers, and most with white gloves that stretched past their elbows. The boys wore scratchy-looking suits and neckties and moved with a kind of elastic joy. Something was radically wrong. Not just in the library, but here, too.

Lola stepped warily into the gym. A twenty-piece orchestra was playing on the stage, and a man sang through his nose:
“Every morning, every evening, ain't we got fun?”
In a state of tremendous confusion, Lola sidled along the wall.
“Not much money, oh, but honey, ain't we got fun?”
the man went on, as
Lola came up alongside the refreshment table. The girl in pink was a few feet away. She stood in front of an immense crystal bowl of bright red punch, pouring booze into it from the bottle she held behind her back.

“Hey, you,” Lola called.

The girl looked up. “Moi?”

“What is all this?” Lola said. Her sudden idea was that the gym had been rented out for a music video or a movie scene. What was this supposed to be, the 40s? The 50s? The olden days, anyway. She looked around for cameras but couldn't see through the crowd.

“You're not from the Temperance League, are you, little man?” the girl answered. “Let me assure you, sir, that this bottle contains nothing but the purest lemonade.”

Sir?
Lola turned and looked behind her. Was this girl talking to
her
? Was she blind?

“You wanna dance with me, right? You wanna dance with me, but you're shy,” the girl went on. She had skipped over to Lola and was yanking her by the arm. “I'm Whoopsie.”

“What?” Lola shouted over the music.

“Whoopsie Whipple. I don't recognize you, shorty. You're sure a little guy. But I don't mind. I was a late bloomer myself. Didn't get my first powder puff till last year.”

“You need glasses,” Lola said.

But Whoopsie didn't seem to hear. She just kept dragging Lola by the sleeve of her sweatshirt, deeper into the throbbing, thrashing heart of the dance. Lola had failed so far to see any cameras. It was as if she had wandered straight into the past. She felt like crying, or laughing, or running. She hoped some explanation would present itself before she fainted.

“You dance funny,” Whoopsie said.

“We have different dances where I come from,” Lola said.

“Oh yeah? Where's that?”

“New York,” Lola said. She sometimes lied when she felt stressed. She heard the words coming out of her mouth but had a sense that she wasn't completely in control of them.

“Really and truly? A real, live New Yorker. You're the first one I ever met,” Whoopsie said. “I'm going to New York someday. I'm gonna shake the dust of this hick town off my heels and make a name for myself.”

Lola watched the girl's face as she talked. It wasn't a strange face—just the face of another human being, with eyes, a nose, and a mouth with slightly oversized teeth. Maybe if she focused on these small, normal things, she could keep the panic away until she figured out what was going on here.

“Tell me all about New York,” Whoopsie said.

“Well, it's very big,” Lola said. “And crowded, and—”

“Confidentially, I, myself, will be seeing the Big Apple soon, sooner than anybody in this hick town could ever conceive of,” Whoopsie said. “I've entered a magazine contest, see, to be a real, live chorus girl on the Broadway stage. All I had to do was send in my photograph and measurements. You can't tell anybody, though. Nobody around here has a lick of ambition. The day I get my acceptance telegram, I'll wave it in Mother and Daddy's faces and then they'll fall right over in a dead faint. They don't have a lick of ambition, either.”

“You're an actress, then, right?” Lola said. “And all of this is—?”

“I've always been an actress at heart,” Whoopsie said. She plucked at Lola's sleeve. “I never saw a pullover with words on it before. Nike? Is that your name? Shouldn't it say, ‘Mike'? Is it a misprint, Mike?”

“It's a shoe company,” Lola said as they moved past the orchestra, but her words were lost in the high note of a clarinet.

“Come on, Mike from New York. Dance over this way. I wanna make Thumbtack jealous.”

Whoopsie Whipple's beads shook, whacking Lola in the face in time to the music, as they danced sideways toward a ferocious-looking person in a dark suit who was daintily drinking a cup of punch. Thumbtack's hair was slicked down and parted in the middle, and a tiny bowtie rode high on his white collar. Lola saw him deposit his cup on a table and start toward them.

“You New Yorkers certainly can cut a rug, Mike,” Whoopsie shouted at Lola when she was sure Thumbtack was close enough to hear. “I don't know if I'm ready for a steady beau, but I'll certainly consider your appealing offer.”

Thumbtack's big hand clamped down on Lola's shoulder, and he glared down at the top of her baseball cap. “Hey, farmer,” he said. “Keep your paws off my gal.”

I'm having a nightmare, that's all
,
Lola decided as the big man squeezed her collarbone
. It's
from eating those expired Doritos. They don't put that expiration date on there for nothing.

“Thumbtack Matthews, for the love of cucumbers,” Whoopsie said.

“Keep 'em off, hayseed, or it's knuckle-sandwich time,” Thumbtack growled. He gave Lola a shove. She stumbled backward a step, then rebounded and kicked him hard in the shin of his tweed pants.

“Ow. Why, you!” he yelled. “All right, you asked for it.”

Whoopsie screamed and Thumbtack charged, nostrils flaring, like a bull in the cartoons. Lola fled into the cyclone of heels and elbows. “
Yes sir, that's my baby
,” someone was singing in a high tenor.
“No sir, don't mean maybe.”
And then, there it was: the exit.
I've got to get out of this gym
,
she thought
. If I can get out of this gym, maybe I'll wake up.
She skirted the refreshment table and was almost free when she slipped on a pile of peanut shells and went into a long skid. Then she was down on the floor, Thumbtack glowering over her with clenched fists as the dance raged on around them. She shut her eyes.

“Matthews, you ugly mug. Why don't you let the little fellow be?” someone said.

Lola opened her eyes. A man in a suit and tie—no, a teenager in a man's suit and tie—had stepped out of the crowd and imposed himself between her and Thumbtack.

“Stay out of this, Hemmings,” Thumbtack said.

“He's just a tiny little runt after all,” the elegant young man in the suit said. He was shifting playfully from side to side, blocking and reblocking Thumbtack's access to the supposed farmer.

“You just go ahead on back to your laboratory, professor,” Thumbtack said. “What made you decide to come to a dance?”

“I don't know. The mood struck me,” Hemmings said. “Lucky for this little farmer, I'd say.”

Down on the gym floor, Lola picked the peanut shells from her sweatshirt and watched the pair argue. Yes, it had to be the vivid edge of a dream, one of those high-definition experiences that can come right before waking, but of an intensity she never would have thought possible. She took off her baseball cap to swat the dream away, and everybody turned to gape at her. It wasn't the swatting they were looking at, she realized, but the long, thick ponytail that had tumbled from inside her cap.

Lola's defender put a hand to his heart. “Why, you're a girl!” He looked her up and down again. “Aren't you?”

Lola struggled to her feet. “Are you all blind? Is this a blind people's dance?” she shouted at the group, even though she'd just decided they were only dream characters. “Of course I'm a girl.”

Thumbtack blushed to his hairline and hid his fists behind his back. “Golly ding. I've never seen a girl in waist overalls before. Do pardon me, miss.” He made a slight bow and crunched away over the peanut shells. Whoopsie Whipple danced after him.

The young man who had protected Lola crouched down and scooped a broken necklace off the floor. “Is this yours?” he said. “Looks like somebody danced on it.”

Lola nodded dismally. It was her favorite necklace, the initial
L
suspended from a silver chain. She had found it on a sidewalk when she was twelve. She liked to tell people it was an heirloom from an aunt or a grandmother, although she'd had neither.

“Busted chain, I'm afraid,” he said, handing it back to her. “I could fix it for you. I've got a little workshop. Every kind of tool you can think of, and some I invented myself.”

She stared at him. He was familiar somehow. She'd seen him somewhere—the strong jaw, the dark wavy chestnut hair—but then again, maybe not, because if she had, she certainly wouldn't have forgotten who he was. The dream softened and sweetened as she looked at him, and thoughts of fleeing the gym were replaced by thoughts of stretching out the experience. She extended the necklace to him. He closed his palm over it, and over Lola's entire hand as well, guiding her into the crowd of dancers. The orchestra had eased into a slow, dreamy number. In a moment she was in his arms, gliding along, or gliding as well as anybody can in thick basketball treads. The steps weren't too complicated, and before long she stopped watching the other girls' feet. He told her his name was Peter Hemmings, and then she introduced herself.

“See here, Miss Lundy, I'm sorry I thought you were a boy. I'm very stupid. Now that I've had a good look at you, I can plainly see you don't look at all like a boy, except for your—”

“You mean my costume?” Lola said. “I'm in this play, see, and we just had a performance. I play the role of a—”

“A hobo?” Peter guessed.

“How did you guess?” Lola said. “Yes, indeed. A hobo.”

“But your shoes. I've never seen a hobo with shoes like that. I've never seen anyone with shoes like that.”

“They're from France,” Lola said. “Paris, France. My aunt sent them to me. Pretty soon everybody will have a pair.”

“I don't doubt it. The girls around here are crazy for all that French stuff.”

They danced along the south wall, past a row of chairs, and Lola discarded her cap. With a flick of the wrist, she released her hair from its rubber band and let it fall, sandy brown, past her shoulders. She wasn't going to be called “sir” again if she could help it.

Peter squeezed her hand. “I'd like to see that play of yours, Lola. I'll bet it's swell.”

“Play?”

“About the hobo.”