The Yearbook (7 page)

“Some emergency yearbook work,” I lied. “You heard about our problem?”

He nodded solemnly. “Say no more. Come on in.”

Picking a key from the jangling arsensal attached to his belt, he let me into the office.

I thanked him, shut the door behind me, and stayed there listening to his off-key whistling in the hallway. When it faded away, I opened the door softly and bolted.

The backstage door was opposite a row of lockers around the corner from the office. I pulled it open and went inside.

In the dim light I saw tent flaps and circus props lying among brooms, wires, and empty paper cups. It all brought back fond memories of Smut as Billy Bigelow in
Carousel,
falling into the orchestra pit during a knife fight, then climbing back onstage after he was supposed to be dead.

It was a dramatic highlight of the year.

Across the stage I saw what looked like a round cage with an open gate. As I walked closer, I could see that the cage surrounded a spiral staircase leading into the basement.

My mind was racing faster than my feet. Chief Pudgy had talked about “secret societies” and “high-toned frats” in 1950. The newspaper clippings had mentioned “Communist agitators” meeting in the high school basement, which had to be “sealed off until further notice.”

Nowadays the drama society had a scenery shop directly under the stage. I’d never been there, and I didn’t know how big it was, but the school was sprawling and that meant the basement must be, too.

Plenty of room for a high-toned frat to meet.

A light shone from below. I went through the gate and descended into a large room crammed with all kinds of stuff I recognized from past plays.

The ratty sofa from
Arsenic and Old Lace,
the wheelchair from
The Man Who Came to Dinner,
the butter churn from
Oklahoma!,
the fake car from
Grease
— plus dressers, chairs, tables, chests, and mannequins. A bookcase lined one whole wall, and even that looked familiar.

Along another wall was a long, wooden workbench stocked with tools, supplies, and countless paint cans. Costume racks were jammed against a third wall.

The furniture, all different styles but all cheap-looking, had been arranged to create a kind of Living-Room-from-Hell effect against the fourth wall. It seemed like a perfect setting for a Delphic Club meeting.

I assumed they were still off rowing. (The Wampanoag River widens about three miles up the road in Baldwin Township, where the high school crew teams share a boathouse and have their meets and practices.) I also assumed they’d be back any minute. I had no time to hang out and enjoy the scenery.

I headed back upstairs. Had I found the great secret? I wished I could know.

Against the back wall of the stage I noticed a huge flat, covered with Day-Glo stars. It was left over from a corny scene in which Smut went to heaven. (Really, you had to see this play.) I hid behind it. If The Delphic Club didn’t show up within ten minutes, I’d go back to the drawing board.

The first seven minutes were not pleasant. Mr. Sarro wandered onstage and sang “Memory” from
Cats
so loud and terribly, I almost barked. I stayed put until long after he left, just in case he decided to come back for an encore.

I was glad I did, because soon after I heard voices.

From the basement.

I couldn’t believe it. Where had they been, hiding among the costumes?

The voices got louder, punctuated by clanging footsteps against the metal stairs. “I think Hamlet was a putz,” one person said.

“A putz?”
Mr. DeWaart repeated. “Hmmm, I like it … ‘O what a putz and peasant slave am I’ ”

“ ‘In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a putz!’ ” someone else said.

Laughter echoed across the stage. They were walking toward the door to the hallway. One of them started humming, and they all joined in, harmonizing. I have to admit it sounded pretty good, especially after Mr. Sarro.

I took a step closer to the edge of the flat. I was angled so that I could see the group from behind.

Smut’s arm was around Monique’s shoulder.

Yes! Yes!

There it was! Eyewitness proof! Smut being a two-timing jerk!

I felt resentment toward Monique, anger toward Smut, sympathy for Ariana.

But let’s face it, many nice possibilities were opening up for me.

I had found out one thing Ariana wanted to know. Now I was determined to find another: The Delphic Club hiding place. Obviously the basement was larger than the scenery shop. I just had to find the entrance to the rest of it.

I ran toward the cage. Its gate was shut but not locked. The light no longer shone from below, and I didn’t see a light switch, so I stepped downward into pitch darkness.

The stage light cast a pale circle onto the scenery shop floor. I went to the section of the wall I
could
see, then groped along it to the right, into darkness, carefully stepping over props and around furniture.

I came to the corner and went right. My fingers told me I’d reached the bookcase. No switch likely there. As I turned to go back, my foot hooked under something ankle-high.

I tumbled against the bookcase. Old, smelly classics rained down on me, one of which must have been an unabridged dictionary.

As I rubbed my poor aching head, I looked toward the stairs. From my low position I could now see a string hanging from the ceiling. I got up slowly, walked toward it, and pulled.

And there was light.

(I know. What a genius.)

Around me was the same ugly room I’d seen before. With several books missing from the bookcase. And a heavy barbell on the floor next to it.

My ankle was starting to throb, so I had to hobble around the room. I pushed aside the costume rack from the wall, but no door was behind it, and I got a mouthful of fake fur and a noseful of mothball stink.

I lifted a dusty old Oriental rug off the floor, hoping to see a trapdoor. Instead I saw a troupe of dust bunnies slam-dancing on linoleum tiles.

Some sleuth. For all I knew, The Delphic Club had beamed itself down from a spaceship into the basement, just to annoy me.

I limped over to the bookcase to replace the books I’d knocked down. As I bent to pick up the heaviest one, which happened to be
War and Peace
(ouch), I noticed that my fall had actually
moved
the bookcase. I could see where the bottom of the case had slid inward.

I had to stand on my toes to reach the shelf I had emptied.

“Aaagh!” I came down on my ankle too hard. My arm shot out toward the shelves to brace myself.

The bookcase moved again.

Great. One more time, I thought, and the whole thing would topple.

I bent to pick up another book, and then I froze.

I remembered where I had seen the bookcase before.

It was in a picture from the 1950 yearbook. Reggie Borden was emerging from behind it, in a stage set.

I dropped the book and leaned against the case firmly.

With a creak it swung away, into a vast, empty blackness.

“W
HOA …”

The space beyond the bookcase was huge.

It receded into darkness, the expanse broken by thick cement pillars. Rotting wood beams made rectangles in the ceiling, from which a few scraggly light bulbs hung.

I stepped inside, onto a floor of hard, well-trammeled dirt. The air was clammy and cold, and it smelled of mildew and dry rot.

I turned on two light bulbs. They swung jerkily as I let go, sending ghostly shimmers of light across the walls.

Plenty of students had found this place, besides The Delphic Club. Drawings and graffiti were all over the walls. This is what I saw on the nearest one:

BEANO + DELORES 1948

CLASS OF ’73 RULES!!!

MAX YASGUR FOR PRESIDENT

IMPEACH NIXON!

TRAMPLE THE NAZI DOGS!

END IMPERIALISM! MARXISM NOW!

U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM

GEORGE LOVES CALI 4 EVER 1967

I stared at that last one. I felt my heart skip.

George and Cali are my parents.

Well, one is and one was.

The message stood out so proudly, as if it had been written yesterday. I could see Dad, seventeen and looking over his shoulder, not wanting to be caught.

4 Ever,
it said. That was how long they expected to be in love. Forever.

They didn’t make it. They had twenty years.

Twenty years seems so short. Yet the seven years since Dad died —
that
seems like forever. I guess it’s because my time without him will never end.

Terrific. My eyes were watering. I hated thinking about Dad. I’d trained myself not to. It was too frustrating. Whenever I did, I always wanted to ask him questions — about sex, about Ariana, about this crazy yearbook stuff. I would picture him listening, but I couldn’t picture his answer. Whenever I tried to imagine looking into his eyes, he was always looking back at a ten-year-old.

I needed to let my past alone. Reading about strangers was much easier.

Besides, some of the writing might answer what had actually happened down there in 1950.

A lot of the messages were faded or drawn over, but I could make out dates on quite a few. I saw plenty of writing from the forties, about Hitler and Mussolini and the atomic bomb. A couple of things were dated 1950, and lots of it was after 1965.

Absolutely nothing existed between those two dates.

The basement had been “sealed” after 1950, that much I remembered from the microfilm. But what exactly had happened down there?

I followed the writing deeper into the basement. Odd, unexpected corners opened into wider and wider areas, until the bookcase was nowhere to be seen.

The writing thinned out, then disappeared. But I didn’t care. The air was sweeter here, and I was feeling light-headed.

At the end of the wall was a long, long crack in the dirt floor, which I followed with my eyes till it led to a wide opening fifteen feet away — through which a soft mist billowed and hissed.

I’m coming.

I breathed deeply and started to laugh. A hole in the earth, maybe that was where The Delphic Club met, an underground lair like the high-toned Communist-agitated frat.

Someone was giggling, cackling. It didn’t shock me at all, and then I realized the laughing was
mine
and the smoke was circling my face and I was walking to the hole and I felt smart
(om
…
pha
…
los)
and powerful and charged with energy (Oh how weird what the hell did that mean?) and I never wanted to go back and I could live forever like that (4 Ever!) and behind me I could see the bookcase now and it was closing (Hamlet was a putz) and (Smut and Monique) and (what am I doing).

A strangled cry welled up from my toes. It exploded from my mouth, doubling and tripling off the walls.

I stood at the edge of the crack. My knees were locked, but I felt a piece of me ripping away, plunging in the blackness.

My heart was a jackhammer, my brain a tangle of loose sparking wires. Before the last echo of my cry faded, I turned and ran.

The bookcase was in view when I blacked out.

And another dream rushed in to fill the void.

“M
ARKY, OUR COMPANY’S HERE!”

Splursh. Spllllat!

“MARKY!” Yiayia screams from the living room.

The ketchup lands in little shiny clumps on the carpet. Marky steps in them.

He hears the front door open and some strange woman’s voice squeal hello. Yiayia and she jabber on about how long it has been and how wonderful each other looks.

Marky opens his mouth, squirts some of the ketchup inside, and keeps it there without swallowing. For good measure, he gives his white T-shirt a blast, right over his heart.

Oh, and some in his hair, of course.

He hides the ketchup bottle under his bed. Then he lies down, his matted hair right in one of the red puddles on the carpet. Facing upward, he spits. The ketchup, thinned by his saliva, trickles down the sides of his mouth.

“MARKY! Just a sec, Joyce. He’s probably got his headphones on. Eight years old and he can’t go a minute without
— ”

The bedroom door swings open, and Yiayia swallows her last word. Marky wishes he could see the expression on her face, but that would mean opening his eyes.

Yiayia’s scream is worth the trouble, even though it is the loudest scream he has ever heard and he thinks he has lost some hearing.

“Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Help!”

The gasps are great, too. Like hiccups.

Then she has to go spoil it by jumping on him. He doesn’t expect that. Also he doesn’t expect her to start pounding his chest.

Putting her lips on his is the last straw.

“Stop! Ew! Ew!” he cries.

Yiayia’s eyes are enormous. Her mouth.is ringed with ketchup, and curled into this gross shape, like a kidney bean.

Behind her, Joyce Somebody stands gaping in the doorway.

“You almost gave me a heart attack!” Yiayia shrieks. “Is this your idea of a joke?”

Marky bursts out laughing. Yiayia looks like a clown with that ketchup around her mouth.

“I want you and this room cleaned up, right now! And no dinner for you tonight!”

All riiiight! Marky thinks. He doesn’t want to have dinner with those old farts anyway. All Yiayia ever likes to talk about is one thing.

She slams the door, and Marky hears footsteps receding down the hall.

“I’m so sorry, Joyce. He never used to be like this. His parents’ death was huge trauma. I’m looking for a therapist right now for him.
…”

There she goes. Starting already. Only this time he doesn’t have to sit there and take it. His parents aren’t dead. The bodies were never found. Dead bodies don’t just walk away. Someday they are going to come back.