The Yearbook (6 page)

“Hi,” I said. “Uh, Jason wants his money back.”

“And he’ll get it,” Mr. DeWaart snapped.

“Thank you,” Jason said from behind me. He ceremoniously dropped the yearbook onto the floor. It made a loud
whomp,
and he marched off.

I picked it up, then huddled inside the office with Ariana, Smut, Rosie, John, and Rachel. Mr. DeWaart shut the door and glared at me. “You did proofread this, no?”

“Yes, but — ”

Ariana cut me off. “Was this one of your crazy ideas, David? I mean, if you have something against Jason, this was a stupid way to express it!”

Before I could reply, Mr. DeWaart shoved the book toward us and said, “It wasn’t just Jason.”

Ariana took it. We all looked over her shoulder as she flipped through. The shrunken head was all over the place — above every single name that was supposed to have had a Bananahead over it.

“I’ve never seen this picture before!” I insisted. “We gave Mr. Brophy the Bananahead shot, remember? Rosie put it in a small envelope. When I got to the printer that Saturday, the photos hadn’t been pasted down yet. But Mr. Brophy had the envelope. He held it up and asked me about it before I left the printer. He made a joke about it.”

“Did you actually see what was in the envelope?” Mr. DeWaart asked.

“No …”

“Hey, before you guys get any funny ideas, let me just say for the record that I did
not
switch those photos,” Rosie said.

“It must have been Brophy,” Rachel concluded.

John nodded. “Figures. He fried his brain on LSD in the sixties. That stuff can have long-term effects, you know.”

“Unfortunately, I’m the one who’s going to have to cover for this.” Mr. DeWaart sighed and looked at his watch. “Let me go to the office and make a P.A. announcement before the whole senior class descends on us with torches and pitchforks.”

“Wait,” Rachel said. “What are we going to do, take all the books back?”

“You bet,” Mr. DeWaart replied, “for a full refund or a corrected printing of the book.”

“But is that in the budget?” Ariana asked.

“No. But if Mr. Brophy is at fault, he’ll pay for it.”

“And if he’s not?” Rosie said.

Mr. DeWaart shrugged. “I’ll pay. It’s my responsibility to produce an official yearbook.”

Ariana and Smut followed him into the hallway, arguing. John and Rachel went off arguing about something else. Liz split with Rosie, who was still looking worried.

I sank into a chair with the yearbook. I leafed through, looking at that hideous face, time and time again.

Who could have done it? I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Brophy, who
was
nuts. But he was also a businessman, and sabotaging a job was a good way to lose clients. Unless he did it by accident. For that matter, Rosie could have done it by accident, too — but would either of those two actually
own
a photo like that? And just happen to have it hanging around in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Mr. DeWaart was the one who took the photo to the printer. He could have switched it. But why? He was the one offering to pay for a reprint.

It didn’t make any sense.

I checked a few other parts of the book. The yearbook staff photo looked great, as did my “Then-and-Now” feature.

My own photo was ugly as usual. Underneath, my many activities were spelled out in great detail:

VOYAGER
STAFF, 4.

Ariana’s photo was every bit as sexy as she was. And her activity list took five lines of small type.

I turned to Rick Arnold’s photo. Fortunately he’d shown up for the shoot. A shrunken head over
his
name would have been pretty disgusting. My heart tugged when I saw the bright, optimistic, friendly look on his face.

Then I read what was underneath:

CHOIR, 3; SPANISH CLUB, 1, 4; PROM COMMITTEE.

Which “Most Likely” goes to Rick?

He isn’t smart or cool or quick

Or careful, so perhaps that’s why

He’s likely, most of all, to die.

I
SMELLED IT AGAIN.

That sick, sweet chalkiness I first smelled in the Ramble.

It seemed to float up from the book. The poem had brought it back.

That and the sense of something growing in my body. It was rumbling the walls of my stomach, spreading like a cancer.

“Attention, seniors who have copies of the yearbook. You must return them. This is Mr. DeWaart and I will be in the yearbook office third period and after school.
…”

As the announcement droned over the P.A. system, I took a deep breath. I tried to force away the memory of Rick Arnold’s body.

The poem stared at me, colder and uglier than the shrunken-head photos. There had to be an explanation for it. Maybe Rick had had a sick sense of humor. Maybe he had known what was going to happen to him.

Maybe Mr. Brophy was psycho, bent on sabotaging our whole book.

Maybe nothing. It was my fault. I should have noticed the poem at the print shop and stopped it from being printed. Some proofing job I’d done. The state of mind I was in, I might as well have been proofing hieroglyphics. Anything could have gotten by me.

Anything.

With a sinking sensation, I wondered what else had.

I turned to the beginning of the photos and read every entry, beginning with Roy Abrams:

SENIOR CLASS RULES! YEAH!!!

And moving on to Anita Adamowsky:

It was great! Best of luck and love to all my friends. See ya in real life!

No wonder no one else had wanted to proofread this stuff. It was boring.

It stayed that way, too, until I got to Laura Chase. She was one of the most popular girls in the class. Dumb as a brick, but popular. I could not imagine her writing the poem I saw under her name:

Pity, pity, Laura Chase,

Pretty hair and pretty face,

Isn’t it a sorry fate

She won’t live to graduate?

Not to mention the entry for Robert “Butt-head” Heald, the All-State nose guard on our football team whose highest academic achievement was recognizing the numbers on his opponents’ jerseys:

Study? Not burly Bob Heald!

’Cause his passion for football won’t yield.

So fold him in creases

Then cut him to pieces

And spread him all over the field
.

The next few dozen were normal, until Edward Lyman, whose picture was right before Ariana’s. Ed was quiet and antisocial and into motorcycles, and his poem went like this:

Ed Lyman Hates rhymin’.

Seeya, Ed.

Dead.

And Janie Youmans, who’d had plastic surgery to make herself look like the star of a teen soap opera she loved, only to end up hating the character:

Greetings to Janie P. Youmans

Who fancies TV over humans

Ask ’em, Jane, now while you’re able,

Will they wire your casket with cable?

I was dizzy. I was sick. This couldn’t be happening. It was like some horrible, perverted
Spoon River Anthology.

Rinnnnng!

I lurched in my chair. The yearbook fell to the floor.

Easy, Kallas, I said to myself. It’s only the first-period bell.

I looked at the clock.

Okay, the
second-period
bell. I’d been so buried in the yearbook, I hadn’t noticed the time go by.

I jammed one of the books into my backpack and raced out of the office. The hallway was filling up. Small groups were forming, all gathered around copies of the yearbook. I could hear gasps. Murmurs. Bursts of laughter.

“Yo, Kallas!”

I turned to see Butthead Heald, holding a yearbook and bearing down on me as if I were the opposing quarterback. My life swam before my eyes.

He stopped before contact, sparing me instant pulverization. I stopped praying and prepared for an open-field run.

“Who did this?” he asked, looking down the winding pathway of his twice-broken nose. “You?”

“No,” I squeaked.

His mouth edged upward, pushing aside the thick muscles of the rest of his face. “Well, whoever did it, it’s great.”

“Huh?”

“I laughed through first period, man,” Butt-head said. “It’s like
National Lampoon
or
Spy.
Those funky old pictures … and the poem! Whoa! I found three of them — but mine was the best.”

National Lampoon? Spy?
I thought this guy gave up periodicals after
Ranger Rick.
“Uh, thanks.”

“Hey, this’ll be worth something someday, you know? See ya.”

He sprinted away, carrying the yearbook like a football. And I felt grateful I was still in one piece.

I split pretty quickly; I didn’t want to be around Butthead when he discovered Rick’s poem. Even he wouldn’t find that funny.

Only one other person liked the yearbook — Ed Lyman, who painted his own version of the shrunken head on the cover and refused to return it. As far as I could tell, the rest of the school was creeped out. I saw Janie Youmans in tears by her locker, surrounded by friends who were trying to comfort her. Laura Chase looked bone-white in English class.

After school we had an emergency
Voyager
staff meeting. Most of the yearbooks had been returned by then, and they were stacked by the door.

Mr. DeWaart looked even gloomier than usual. “I spoke to Jack Brophy,” he said. “He says he pasted down the correct photos — and he did not personally set the text, so he couldn’t have read any of the poems. However, he did offer to reprint the entire run
gratis,
and by the end of next week.”

“I still say he did it,” John remarked.

“John, we are no longer pointing fingers,” Mr. DeWaart said. “Let’s decide how to proceed.”

We all pitched in with ideas. We decided to send an apology and a free book to the affected kids, and a copy of the sabotaged book to the police.

Just as we were discussing the future of the Bananahead shot, Mr. DeWaart decided to call the meeting.

“We’ll continue this,” he said, “but right now I’ve got promises to keep — ”

“ — and miles to go before I sleep,” Smut cut in with a big smile.

A big,
teacher’s pet
smile.

“Let us go then, you and I,” Mr. DeWaart recited, gesturing to the hallway.

“Oh, gag me,” Rachel groaned. “I’m allergic to Shakespeare, guys.”

“Eliot,” Smut said with a laugh. “And Frost.”

He gave Mr. DeWaart a nauseating, smug look as the two of them walked away.

“I knew that was Eliot and Frost,” John mumbled, watching them go.

Rosie shook his head with disgust. “I hate when they get like that. It’s like a disease.”

“Yeah,” Ariana said. “Chronic Superiority Complex. Stephen gets it before every Delphic Club meeting.”

“I hate to say it, Ariana,” Rachel grumbled, “but I’d smack that boyfriend if I were you.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Ariana replied.

“Invite me to see it,” Rosie said. “I’ll take pictures.”

“We can charge admission!” Liz added. “And get Mr. Brophy to do posters.”

“You
guys
. . .” Ariana’s brow was uncreasing. A smile crept across her face.

We all started laughing. I guess I’d been wrong about Smut. Not everybody loved perfection.

“Well, I booketh,” John said. “Comest thou, Juliet?”

“You bettest,” Rachel replied, and they traipsed away into the hallway.

The rest of us left in a nice, normal exchange of good-byes.

I walked part of the way home with Ariana. I could tell she was sinking back into a funky mood. “Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

I shrugged. “Just asking. You look kind of bummed.”

Ariana concentrated fiercely on the sidewalk for a few moments. Finally she said, “I … I feel weird saying this, but I’m jealous of Mr. DeWaart.”

“Hey, you’re just as smart as he is. He’s just older.”

“Yeah, but he’s got Stephen.” Ariana sighed.

“Why don’t you join that club? I’m sure you qualify.”

“Oh, please. The whole thing is so pretentious.
Delphic
means ‘ambiguous,’ at least according to Stephen. They think they’re
so important
that they need to keep people guessing. Stephen says they discuss philosophy and politics and poetry and music. But I’m sure they just sit around nodding while Mr. DeWaart blows hot air. Of course, I’ll never know for sure, because he’s not supposed to talk about meetings. Even the meeting place is this big secret. Like anyone could care.”

“Well, it sounds like you do care.”

Ariana fell silent for a while. When she spoke again, her voice was subdued. “I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if Monique Flores wasn’t in the group.”

“She’s
after S — Stephen?” (I almost said
Smut,
but Ariana hates that name.)

“Don’t be fooled. Under that drippy exterior, she’s incredibly ambitious. She wants him — and we all know she hates being second.”

I listened. I gave support and advice. By the time we reached the turnoff to my street, I was the perfect friend and confidant.

But don’t get me wrong, I was tap-dancing on the inside.

No one knew where The Delphic Club met. But I had an idea.

And if Smut
was
seeing Monique on the sly, Ariana would can him in a minute.

I
SAID GOOD-BYE
to Ariana at the place where I usually veer off to go home.

I walked a block in the right direction, until she was out of sight. Then I broke into a sprint toward the high school.

When I got there, the front door was locked. I could see Mr. Sarro, our custodian, through the glass. He was pushing a broom across the lobby floor, holding his customary can of Coke in his free hand. I knocked loudly and got his attention.

He opened the door and said, “What’s up, doc?”