The Yearbook (19 page)

“She was throwing away her homework,” the policewoman said as she examined the contents of Lola's overflowing wastebasket. “Looks like a ton of unfinished assignments in here.”

So far, the police had discovered two pieces of evidence—a wide-open window and a scrap of denim cloth fluttering on a tree branch just outside. From this they'd deduced Lola had heard the police on the stairs and fled down the tree.

Mrs. Hershey turned back to Danielle. “Did she maybe have a boyfriend somewhere?”

Danielle gasped, then slowly brought her hand up to her mouth. Although she had retracted her accusation concerning Lola and Brent Gaynor, the spark of suspicion had not gone out.

Her eyes darted back and forth.
Oh my God.
Lola's on her way to Brent Gaynor. No, it's worse. She's already with him. They're in his car. She's telling him to run away with her. It's so obvious. That night she was out until four. That's when it started. Or before. And of course she lied to me. Liar. Lying pig. I've got to stop them. I could call his phone. I could call it right now, secretly, from the bathroom. But he changed the number last week and wouldn't give me the new one. I could try to find the new number. Maybe if I went to his house and searched his mailbox like I did that one time and—

“Are you listening? Can you hear me? Danielle?” Mrs. Hershey was prodding Danielle on the shoulder. “What's wrong?”

“It's just the shock,” Danielle said. “If anything happened to Lola . . . I can't even, like, think about it.”

“Look at this. A strange letter,” said the policewoman, who was still crouched over Lola's wastebasket.

Mrs. Hershey reached for the crumpled sheet of paper. She began to read silently.

The hair on the back of Mrs. Hershey's neck stood on end. She reached for her handbag and took out her Rolaids. She put two tablets in her mouth and chewed them as she read the rest of the letter.

“Hey, here's another strange letter. And another,” Danielle said, rifling through her own wastebasket, hoping to reclaim her spot as expert witness. “And another. But they're all the same. Listen to this! A mining camp. In Colorado. Lola's never stepped foot out of Ohio. She told me so.”

Beth let out a grunt-like laugh as Danielle waved the paper. “Four copies. She must have typed it over and over, the way crazy people do,” Danielle said. “Like that maniac in
The Shining
. On that funny old machine she brought in today. She thought I didn't see the typing machine, but I did. She went out on her bike. That's when I saw it. She tried to hide it under her bed.”

Mrs. Hershey plucked the copies out of Danielle's hands.

“Hey! Can't I keep just one?” Danielle pleaded. She had been imagining the look of gratitude on Brent Gaynor's face when she showed it to him.
Thank you, Danielle. You've saved me from making a terrible mistake. I've been so blind. It's been you all along. Not that fat, mentally insane Lola. I've been blind, blind, blind.

“Of course you can't keep these letters. They're Lola's personal property, whether they're in the trash or not.”

“But it's my trash can.”

“I can't imagine why you'd want them. Unless you'd be cruel enough to show them to others.”

Danielle began to cry. She had expected a much different response, a hushed thank-you, perhaps, for her teenage insight into crucial evidence. She felt cheated: first by Lola, out of her hard-earned right to Brent Gaynor's affections, and now by the Social Services department, which, come to think of it, might even owe her a monetary reward.

“I don't see what there is to cry about,” Mrs. Hershey said. “Lola ran away from this chicken restaurant manager who accused her of stealing money. We don't know if there's any truth to the accusations, but she needs to face the matter head-on.”

“It's just that, I didn't want to say, but,” Danielle blubbered on, “but there's something else. Something so bad that I didn't want to say it.”

Mrs. Hershey took a tissue out of her purse and handed it to Danielle. “Come on now. What could be so bad?”

Danielle covered her face in her hands, as if she couldn't bear to think about, much less say, what was in her head.

“Whatever it is, it doesn't have to go any further than this room. Would you like Beth to step out?”

“No. Beth should stay. She knows it, too.”

Beth gazed at Danielle with her mouth hanging open. She had no idea what it was that she supposedly knew.

“All right then,” Mrs. Hershey said. “I'm listening.”

“It's about that fire in the reserve room. I saw Lola right before it happened, on that same night. We got in a little argument because she said she thought Ashfield High deserved to be burned to the ground. Of course I don't think so.”

“Neither do I,” Beth added helpfully. “Even though I don't go there.”

Danielle held her hands miserably to her face. She opened her fingers a crack to gauge Mrs. Hershey's reaction. To her dismay, the social worker looked amused.

“I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard somebody say they'd like to burn down the high school,” she said, and turned to the officers. “Are we done here?”

“Wait,” Danielle said.

Mrs. Hershey was getting impatient. It was late, and she still had several other matters to attend to. Things always seemed to go wrong at night. “Yes. What is it?”

Danielle sniffed pitifully. “Lola bragged about setting the fire. She said she volunteered to help clean the room so nobody would suspect her.”

Danielle peeked through her fingers again and knew she had hit her mark.

“Do you realize what you're saying?” Mrs. Hershey said.

“Beth heard it, too,” Danielle put in quickly.

Danielle and Mrs. Hershey focused their attention on Beth. It was the first time in Beth's life that anyone had hung on her words, and she paused for a long moment to enjoy the feeling.

“Uh-huh,” she said finally. “She told us she set the fire. ‘I set it' were her exact words, I believe.” Beth was gaining momentum now, getting into the spirit of the lie. “She warned us not to tell anybody.”

Mrs. Hershey sat down at the desk and stared blankly at the pile of papers that had come out of the wastebasket. She had known Lola for a long time and could have sworn she was incapable of such an act, or almost sworn.

“I'll get their statements,” the policewoman said, taking over.

Mrs. Hershey nodded.

It was a cold night. What month had the girl said it was? October. Yes. October the thirtieth, still. The hospital stood on the edges of the old downtown, and Lola wandered into it. In a few minutes she entered Ashfield City Park and slumped onto one of the cannons. She knew it was not a good hiding place, but she needed a rest. Just a little rest. The cannon would help her get her bearings. It was solid and strong.

Sleet began to fall. She sat heavily with her eyes out of focus. But after a few minutes, she became conscious of the fact that she was looking straight at the facade of the Grand Theater. How desolate it was. Gone was the booth where she had lined up with Peter to buy tickets for
The Sheik
. She felt dreamy and strange.

An idea came to her; she stood up, removed the borrowed red coat, and draped it over the cannon. She took off the galoshes and then her hospital socks and placed them neatly on top of the coat. Now she was barefoot. She crossed the street to the Grand. She trod softly, and felt like some nocturnal animal rarely glimpsed by humans. A layer of ice had formed on the cement, but it did not concern her. She took her place in line for
The Sheik
—or rather, where the line had been. Then she could almost hear Peter's voice:
What about the rings of Saturn? What are they made out of?

She smiled. Sleet flecked her face. She made no move to get out of the weather. In fact, she found herself willing the sleet to come down harder, for the temperatures to drop. The wisp of a plan had appeared in the park, a bold, stunning plan that was quickly developing into something magnificent: She would stay out in the weather until she died. She didn't feel sad about it. Not at all. Lola Lundy no longer existed anyway. She had existed once. She had lived with her Aunt Eunice and Uncle Horace. She was an important part of their family. She'd been loved by Peter Hemmings, and they'd planned to get married one day. She'd had friends who had sought her advice, a good standing in school, and a future she looked forward to. She had been given stylish gifts befitting a young lady of a certain social standing, and had been serenaded by a harpist. This shell that stood in the sleet did not contain Lola Lundy, did not contain anybody. It was like a fall leaf that should turn brown and fly off on the wind. It was nature's way. She was happy.

But soon a dog began to bark crazily somewhere nearby, and it made her think of the dog's owner. Someone might see her, standing there in line. They would return her to the hospital and try to cure her, try to make her look alive, when she was no more alive than a pressed flower in
The
Ashfield County Herbarium.

She moved into the alley to hide. There was a dumpster just behind the theater; she wedged herself between it and the brick wall. That lurching, floating sensation she'd felt in the hospital hung on her and made her clumsy. She did not see the two broken bicycles leaned against the side of the dumpster until she had knocked them over. The crash seemed like the loudest sound Lola had ever heard; she wondered if there was something wrong with her eardrums.

A moment later an alley door opened, and a rectangle of light appeared. Inside the light stood a figure in pink pajamas.

“Is someone out here?” came Miss Bryant's voice. The old lady took a couple of steps into the alley. “I see someone,” she said. “Come out of there.”

Lola left her hiding place. She stumbled over one of the downed bicycles and fell forward onto the wet pavement.

“Lola!” Miss Bryant shouted. “What's happened to you? Your feet are bare.” She leaned over and placed a hand on Lola's back. Lola was still wearing the borrowed sweater, but it was frozen and soggy.

“Come in right now.” Miss Bryant's voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well. She seized Lola's arms and pulled her up from the pavement.

A few minutes later Lola was in the projection booth, sitting limp as a ragdoll as Miss Bryant took away the wet clothes, dried Lola's hair with a towel, and dropped a heavy flannel nightshirt over her head. Lola did not resist as Miss Bryant lowered her head onto a feather pillow and tucked a comforter around her.

“Did someone do something to you?” Miss Bryant asked. “Should I call the police?”

“No. Don't. No one did anything. I was sick, but I left the hospital. I didn't want to be there, so I ran away.”

Miss Bryant sat down in a rocking chair. Lola closed her eyes and listened to the creak of the runners. Her limbs ached and throbbed. They were thawing out. Like it or not, she was coming back to life, whoever she was.

“Why did you run away?” Miss Bryant asked.

Lola's eye sockets hurt as she focused on the old lady. “They think I stole money. They would have arrested me if I'd stayed there.”

“Did you steal money?”

“I only stole it back. From someone who stole the equivalent from me.”

Miss Bryant nodded.

“It was fair. More than fair. The police chased me and I ran away from Wrigley. I climbed out the window. Down a tree. I went to hide in the reserve room at the school. But then something happened in there.”

“In the reserve room? What happened?”

“I can't tell you.”

Miss Bryant scratched her wig thoughtfully. “It looks like you need to tell somebody. I'd listen.”

“You'd think I was crazy.”

“I doubt that. Give me a try.”

Lola looked up into the thick spectacles. The eyes were large and luminous like heavenly bodies seen through the lens of a telescope. “I've been gone a long, long time,” she said.

Miss Bryant got up from her chair. She sat down on the bed next to Lola and took her hand. “Go on. Whatever it is, I won't repeat it.”

Lola knew then that she would tell Miss Bryant everything. What did it matter? The whole world could think she was crazy, crazy as her mother who planted pills in the garden and flew off with the birds, because soon she would fly off, too. She would make sure of it.

“I went to 1923.”

“To where?”

“The year. I went to the year 1923.”

Lola looked at Miss Bryant. Her mild, attentive expression had not changed, but she was nodding slightly. “Go on.”

“I don't know how I did it, but I was there. I stayed for months and months. I lived with Judge Wrigley and Eunice Wrigley. And I fell in love with somebody. His name is Peter. He's nineteen now. We came to this theater and saw a movie,
The Sheik
.”

“Ah, Valentino,” Miss Bryant murmured.

“Yes. But the theater was different. There were animals painted on the walls, in gold frames, lions, and one with a bear. The bear was catching a fish. And there was a toucan, too, with a big red berry in his mouth. He was in a tree, in a jungle. There was a chandelier, a giant one, with hundreds and hundreds of crystals on it. And there was a great big organ, with four keyboards, down in the orchestra pit. And a man played it. A bald man with baggy pants. I saw him.”

“Just a minute,” Miss Bryant said. She let go of Lola's hand and rose from the edge of the bed. “I want you to see something.”