The Yearbook (26 page)

She got up from the floor, shoved the junior class page featuring names from H to M under her desk lamp, and, for a good ten minutes, stared at it: Lola Lundy. Without a doubt, that
was
Lola Lundy. It was, but it couldn't be. She had the same feeling of uneasy skepticism that came over her whenever she saw a card trick or a magician. There was an explanation. She just wasn't seeing it.

She sat down in her chair, took a bite of her burrito, and chewed, listening to the scrape, scrape, scrape of the workman's blade, which had now pared down her name to “HE.” After a minute she began to laugh softly to herself. A coincidence, that's all it was. Lundy was a common enough name, and so was Lola. There had probably been other people named Lola Lundy over the decades. Now she knew why Lola had wanted the yearbook: She had liked that picture of the girl who shared her name. Maybe the girl had even been a relative, a great-great-grandmother or aunt, and Lola had found comfort in looking at the picture.

Still, the card-trick feeling hadn't gone away. What about the stunning likeness? And that smile? She drummed her fingers on the old book and thought. Could it be, possibly, that she no longer quite remembered what Lola Lundy had looked like? Could the old photograph have fused itself to the fragment of Lola in her memory? She had seen so many teenage girls come and go, so many, many, many. It was a wonder, really, that she could picture any one of them clearly. She slipped the yearbook into her purse to take home. Then she stood up and turned back to her files. It was late, and there was still so much to do.