The Yearbook (11 page)

“Seventeen.”

She drums her fingers on the table, then picks up the phone. “Garvin here. Can I have Social Services?”

When she gets off the phone, Mark asks, “Do I have to be sent to an orphanage or something?”

“No. But until you’re eighteen, you need a guardian. We’ll help find you a good foster family
—
people who have experience with teens.”

Mark isn’t hearing her words. He stares at
t
he top sheet of the papers she has put on the desk. It is loaded with blank lines. Only one of them is filled in.

He tries to focus. He blinks, and the handwriting becomes clear. After DATE OF DEATH someone has scribbled today’s date: January 11, 2016.

A tear lands on the “J.” Mark watches it soak in and spread the ink in a star shape. Officer Garvin is still talking. He can tell she is crying, too.

Later. A couple of weeks, maybe. Mark is staying at the house of a friend, Jon Feldman. He stumbles out of bed when Mrs. Feldman calls him to the phone. “Yeah?” he grunts into the receiver. “Hi, Mark? It’s Officer Garvin.” And I’m going to adopt you and we can play house together, Mark wants her to say.

No such luck. “We’ve found a family,” she goes on. “Or a father, at least. His name is Walter Ojeda. He’s a widower, he’s really nice, and he lives close enough so you can finish out senior year in your school if you want.” “What’s close enough?”

“Two towns over. Wetherby.”

“I don’t want to live in that hole.”

“You’d be surprised. They’ve rebuilt that town
f
rom the ground up, ever since the chemical company opened.”

“I know. My parents worked there.”

“Great! Look, I know you’ll do terrifically. Anyway, Mr. Ojeda will be coming to visit you at the Feldmans’ tonight. Would you like me to fax you a holo of him?”

“I guess.”

“Okay. Bye. And don’t worry.”

“Right. Bye.”

Mark waits by the fax until it spits out a color hologram of Walter Ojeda. He looks older than Mark expects him to. He’s kind of stern-looking, but it’s hard to tell for sure behind the beard.

Plus he has this growth on his cheek. Mark doesn’t know why, but that bothers him.

I
WOKE UP IN
a cold sweat. My dream was breaking up into fragments of memory, and I didn’t try to hold on to them.

My clock said 9:07. I’d gone to sleep at sunrise, 6:00 or so.

Three fat hours. I was going to be in great shape today.

It didn’t matter. I had work to do. Lots of it.

I was dressed in seconds. Quietly I opened my door and heard my mom’s snores from her room. I tiptoed downstairs and punched Ariana’s number on the kitchen phone.

She picked up in the middle of the first ring. She was sobbing. “I’m sorry! Oh, I’m so glad you called. I … I love you so much. Please come over. Please!”

“Sure, Ariana,” I replied softly. “I’ll be right there.”

“David?”

“Uh-huh.”

She groaned. “I thought you were Stephen! Ohhhh, I feel like such an
idiot
! Why did you do that to me?”

“Uh, Ariana, you didn’t even wait to hear my voice.”

“Okay, okay. What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you. I know who George Derbin is.”

“Really? Who?”

“Reggie Borden.”

The phone fell silent. “Ariana,” I continued, “are you still there?”

“Yeah. I must be half-asleep, though, because I thought I heard you say George Derbin was Reggie Borden. Silly me.”

“That
is
what I said. The names are anagrams of each other. Derbin was young, thin, black, and incredibly tall — just like Reggie. The photos of Reggie look a lot like the guy I saw with Jason — except George Derbin had those growths on his face.”

“Oh, this is too weird. I’m not hearing this.”

“Ariana, remember in Chief Hayes’s office, when you suggested that Jason had been led into the basement?”

“Yeah, I suggested
George Derbin
had led him. What are you saying? That Reggie Borden actually hibernated underground all these years, like Rip Van Winkle?”

“If he did, he’d be Chief Hayes’s age.”

“Oh! He’s been in suspended animation! Okay, that explains it. Whew, for a minute I was confused.”

I ignored Ariana’s sarcasm. “Just listen to me. One of the voices used fifties slang, and he sounded our age. I know it seems farfetched, but — ”

“You think one of the
voices
was Reggie’s? He brought Jason down and then hopped back in the hole with two ghost buddies?”

“Jason was desperate to get us George Derbin’s business card. He must have been trying to warn us.”

Ariana didn’t answer.

“You can’t deny what you
saw,
Ariana! Is my theory any less believable than a crack in the earth that spits out smoke and slime monsters?”

“No, I guess not. Go on.”

“Okay. The voices said they were delivering a message. From whom?”

“The slime monster,” Ariana said dryly.

“Must be. And this
thing
takes people, roto-roots them from the inside — ”

“Gross,
David.”

“Sorry. It wasted no time gobbling up Rick, John, and Jason — but it spares others. It hasn’t touched the Delphic Club members, who hold their meetings practically on top of it. It didn’t do anything to Chief Hayes in 1950, or to you and me. I
dove
into its hole — and even then it didn’t want me. It gave me back.”

“Because you were
too early
— that’s what you said
it
said,” Ariana reminded me. “Maybe it’s going through the whole school in some strange order.”

“The voices want me to find out who they are,” I barged on. “They’re testing me.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but I have an idea.” I took a deep breath. “In 1950, the same time Reggie disappeared, three other kids showed up dead. Reggie was never found … until now.”

“The thing
kept
him,” Ariana said.

“And I think it wants to keep me — make me into a fourth … voice.”

“Oh, great. So this is some kind of aptitude test for admission to zombieland? They think you’re stupid enough to want to join them — ”

“I am.”

“What? Stupid?”

“No! Don’t you see? I have to do it. If I find out about them, I might find out about the monster. This whole thing might come together — the earthquake, the murders, everything.”

“I was wrong. You’re not stupid. You’re insane.”

“What’s the alternative? Staying ignorant and letting more people die?”

“You saw your forehead, David. You’re developing a growth, like Chief Hayes. How long before you look like this …
ghost
of Reggie Borden? What if you
and
Chief Hayes are turning into zombies?”

“I’m not turning into anything, Ariana. Chief Hayes doesn’t remember exactly what happened to him in the basement. But he escaped, just as I did. He went on to live a long, normal life — and so will I. We were —
infected
in some way, but obviously not enough.”

“How do you know that? This could transform you slowly, over years.
How do we even know Chief Hayes is on our side?”

“Ariana, we can’t get paranoid about this.”

“I can get as paranoid as I want!”

I couldn’t tell whether or not Ariana was crying.

“We can’t bring John and Jason and Rick back,” I said softly. “But we owe them a little effort. If we can figure out
why
they were chosen, we may be able to predict who’s next.”

Ariana sighed. “Okay. You’re right. I — I shouldn’t be giving you a hard time.”

“So you’ll help me?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ll come over in a few minutes.”

“No. Meet me at the library. I want to look at the town history again. The thing was here in 1950, and it took Reggie. But no one else disappeared that year — ”

“So you think the other two voices were taken at another time, and you want to check, for earthquakes and strange disappearances and murders.”

“You got it.”

“Hey, I didn’t get to be editor in chief for nothing.” Ariana gave a weak laugh. “But here’s what I want to know: Say this thing wakes up every few years, just belches out of the ground, makes everybody’s life miserable, eats people like flies. Then why does it go back to sleep? Does it get too full? Does it have some fatal, weakness?”

“Maybe it’s allergic to females.”

“Ha-ha. Keep it up. I guess you enjoy going to the library alone.”

“Meet you there in ten minutes?”

“Let me call Stephen back. We had this fight before you called. We were supposed to hang out this afternoon, but he called to say he couldn’t make it.”

“How come?”

“Well … that’s what I need to find out. I figured it had something to do with Monique, so I hung up on him.”

My heart started pumping.
Now
she would get angry at him. “Okay, work it out. I’ll see you in twenty minutes?”

“Make it a half-hour.”

“Twenty-five.”

“David — ”

“Bye.”

“D
AVID, YOU LOOK AWFUL.”

Mrs. Klatsch greeted me with those words as I barged into the library. I did not bother to return the compliment.

Needless to say, on a Saturday morning, the place was not crowded. At the nearest table, I dropped my backpack, which contained a copy of the
Voyager,
my alphabetical list of the Wetherby High School senior class, my notebook full of clippings, and a pen.

“Oh … yeah, a skit. It’s dye,” I replied. “Bumped my head, too — ”

“David, I’m sorry about your classmates. It must be awful — ”

“Mm-hm.” I tried not to let my impatience show. “Um, may I use the Wetherby history book?”

She looked at me as if I were insane. “Sure, David,” she mumbled, pulling the book out of the stacks behind her desk. “More earthquake research?”

“Sort of,” I replied.

“Well, if I can be of any help …”

“Thanks.” I tried to give as normal-looking a smile as possible. She didn’t seem convinced.

I took the book and placed it next to my other stuff. I’d forgotten to bring a pad of paper, so I turned over my student list and stared at the blank page.

Now what?

I hate blank pages. They make me dizzy. That’s because I stare at them a lot, especially when I have to do papers. I get tired. I get nauseated. I stand up, walk around, and end up at a large electric object, like a refrigerator or TV.

I couldn’t do that now. I picked up my pencil and wrote:

VOICE 1 = BORDEN

Genius. Brilliant. A+. Skip a grade.

What did I think I was doing? I knew nothing.

I looked at my watch, then the door. I hoped Ariana was off the phone by now.

I took a deep breath that ended as a yawn. Mrs. Klatsch glared at me.

Okay, Kallas. Chill. Start at the beginning.

Victims:

ARNOLD CHRISTOPHER

HERMAN … NEXT?

SABOTAGED YEARBOOK POEMS:

LYMAN YOUMANS HEALD

CHASE … WHY?

YEARS:

1994 1950 … ANY OTHERS?

Duh.

Sherlock Holmes was laughing in his grave. Splitting his sides. Choking on his pipe.

I opened
Our Town: A Wetherby History from 1634 to the Present
to the end. Then I slowly made my. way backward through the years, looking for anything suspicious.

Hot stuff. In 1977, the mayor’s bathroom caught fire. A kid was jailed for wearing long hair to school in 1969. A meteor fell on a car in 1958. The Blizzard of ’44 swallowed a house. Teddy Roosevelt visited in ’03. Zzzzzzz.

When I was into the nineteenth century, I stopped at a drawing. In it, a group of people, blacks and whites, stood by a large hole in the ground. A woman was on a podium, reading from a sheet of paper.

Under the drawing, it said:

Poet Clara Farnham delivering her eulogy to a local hero, April 8, 1862:

A nation riven, rent by strife,

Can deem none of its men more free

Than he who gives a life for life

In service of Equality.

Who scoffs at Fortune, risks disaster,

Pulls from tunnel dark and drear,

His fellow man, once slave to master?

’Tis such a one we honor here.

Let us then, ’ere we depart,

Now consecrate this hallowed site

To him of stout and noble heart,

Beloved neighbor, Jonas Lyte.

I read further. It was the usual stuff, Lyte the abolitionist, Lyte the rescuer of slaves. Then I came to this passage:

Scandal, sabotage, and weather hampered Lyte’s efforts. Several slaves were found dead in the tunnel he had built, along with some of Lyte’s workers. Lyte himself died inside the tunnel when part of it collapsed during a storm. Workers dug for days, but Lyte’s body was not found.

Bingo.

My heart started to pound.

I knew where Lyte had gone. He had built his tunnel in the wrong place. He wanted to help the slaves, but he met ol’ Slimy instead.

And Slimy kept him.

VOICE 2 = JONAS LYTE

Yes. It had to be.

I added the new date to the others:

1994 1950 1862

I began flipping through the book again. Smallpox epidemic, riots, the Revolutionary War, witch-hunts. Deaths galore.

My eyes were crossing. What did this mean? Slimy could have been around the whole time. Maybe it caused the war. Maybe it spread the smallpox. (Was
that
what I had?)

I slumped back in my seat. A gust of wind came through a window and flipped a page. I slapped my hand down to stop it.

My right index finger had landed on the nose of Annabelle Spicer. Fortunately she didn’t seem to mind.

I took my hand away and looked at the picture that Ariana had banned from the yearbook. It was labeled 1686. Annabelle’s wide eyes stared past me, defiant and innocent. As she burned at the stake, watched by the cackling devil, plumes of smoke rose from what looked like a black cloak on the ground. Her executioners looked on in horror. Some townspeople were falling to their knees. Others, mostly young, were dancing and singing.