The Yearbook

by Peter Lerangis

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.

  Chapter 11

  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 an
d 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.

  Chapter 12

  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?”

  “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 to
ward 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.