The Yearbook (20 page)

She left the projection booth. Lola heard the sound of rummaging in the balcony. Then Miss Bryant reappeared, holding a black-and-white photograph of the theater's interior. She handed it to Lola. “Is this your old friend the toucan?”

Lola began to laugh and cry at the same time. “Yes! There he is, eating the berry. And the grizzly bear. See, he's fishing, like I said. You can't tell from this picture, but the fish has a pink stripe, right down his side.”

“Naturally. He's a rainbow trout, isn't he?” Miss Bryant moved to the other side of the projection booth and plugged in her electric kettle. “They painted over that mural in 1951. It was a shame. The new owners said they wanted something more modern.”

“You believe me,” Lola said.

“Yes, I do,” Miss Bryant said.

“But how can you believe a story like that? I wouldn't have believed it unless it happened to me. Is it just because of the toucan?”

In her excitement, Lola had sat up in bed. Miss Bryant again helped lower her head back onto the pillow.

“No. No. It's simply, dear, because I know that such things do happen.”

Lola was shocked. “They do?”

“Thousands of people disappear from this Earth every day. They don't die, or wash down a river. They just disappear, never to be seen again. Where do they all go? They slip through holes. It happened to my very own cousin in 1966. There are holes all over the place.”

The kettle hissed. Miss Bryant poured out two mugs of tea and brought one to Lola.

“Holes in what?”

“I don't know if it has a name. I think of it as a membrane, with holes, or pores, that open and close. The skin of time.”

Lola nodded and took a sip of her tea. It felt strange to be talking so rationally about something so irrational. For a second she wondered if she were asleep and dreaming the entire conversation, but the idea slipped from her mind as quickly as it had come.

“I'm certain,” Miss Bryant said, “that there are several holes right here in the Grand. I might stumble into an open one someday and, zip, gone.”

“What makes you think so?” Lola said. She took another sip of the tea. The drugs from the hospital were wearing off. It was easier to think.

Miss Bryant had sat back down and resumed her rocking. “At night, sometimes, when I'm sleeping up here in the projection booth, I hear the click of the film running through the projector, and sometimes I hear the organ, too, down there in the pit, just faintly. I hear the audience now and again, too, laughing or gasping or clapping. And I know they aren't ghosts.”

“Ghosts are all bunkum,” Lola added.

“Decidedly,” Miss Bryant said. “What I hear are live people, alive as I am, out of reach but close at the same time.”

“Like trains, maybe” Lola said. “Running along parallel tracks.”

“Yes. Just like that. Passing close enough so the passengers might see one another through the lighted windows. Sometimes, I wonder how it would be to make a mad leap, like in an action film, and land on the roof of the other train, and make one's way in, and sit down among the passengers, and then continue along on that other train.”

“The hole I fell through, I know where it is. It's in the reserve room of the Ashfield High School library. It goes to 1923. But it isn't always open.”

“See, that's just what I mean,” Miss Bryant said. “It's all there, just beyond the membrane.”

Lola had finished her tea. Miss Bryant took away the cup.

“You have to sleep now,” she said, giving Lola a pat on the head. “Try not to think about anything for a while.”

Miss Bryant unplugged the kettle, turned off the light, and went out. Lola heard her footsteps fading down the track that twisted through the heaped balcony.

In the night Lola had strange, vivid dreams and heard voices:
Change the reel, Floyd. Floyd! Put out that cigarette right this minute and change the reel
.
Buzz off, why don't you, Elmer. Go on and mind your own beeswax.
And then the flick-flick-flick-flick-flick of film slapping against itself, the buzz of a crowd, the lurching chords of a theater organ.

By the time the police finished taking the girls' statements, it was very late. Beth got to go home in a squad car. Danielle tossed and turned with fevered visions of Brent Gaynor until sleep overtook her.

She awoke early and took a bus across town, then walked six blocks to the tree-lined street where Brent Gaynor lived. She stood hidden in a bush for two tense hours until Brent Gaynor appeared, alone, in his driveway, dressed for basketball practice, and drove away in his truck. All was well. Brent had not eloped with Lola. Danielle felt giddy. She skipped another three blocks to the Dairy Queen, where she was meeting Beth. She came upon her cousin at the front of the building, reading the glossy advertisements for ice-cream cakes that were taped in the windows.

“Think we'll go to hell?” Beth said in greeting.

“Of course not, stupid,” Danielle said.

Beth ordered an Oreo Brownie Earthquake and Danielle a cup of black coffee and a toothpick, and each enjoyed her selection as they made their plans for the rest of the day. The most pressing business was putting the final touches on their Halloween costumes. There were several parties that evening.

“I didn't look fat in mine, did I?” Danielle asked. “You can tell me if I did. I won't care. I'm thinking more about my arms, and maybe my thighs. Like, did the material cling to my—”

“Think we'll go to hell?” Beth interrupted. Her gum line was caked with Oreo crumbs.

“Listen—what we did last night was a good deed,” Danielle said, twitching at the jaw; she had accidentally swallowed half the toothpick she had been gnawing on. “Lola Lundy requires psychiatric help and because of us she'll be getting that help.”

Beth shoveled another bite into her mouth. “You can't fool me, Danielle. I know this is all about Brent Gaynor.”

Danielle leaned against the vinyl seat and shook her head wearily, as if the effort of clarifying every situation for her blockhead cousin had simply become too much.

“Beth, think. Doesn't Brent Gaynor deserve better than a psycho for a girlfriend?” she said, gagging slightly on the wood splinters in her throat. “Mark my words, Beth. Someday I'll marry Brent Gaynor. I'll be Mrs. Danielle Gaynor. We'll live in Florida. In an A-frame cottage. On stilts.”

“Yeah,” Beth said, but she was thinking sadly about how the strokes of her plastic spoon had begun to reveal the bottom of her dish. “I guess.”

Someone was touching Lola on the forehead. She opened her eyes. It was Miss Bryant.

“You're very hot,” the old lady said. “You have a fever.”

Lola shivered. It was the opposite. She was cold. She noticed Miss Bryant was no longer wearing the pink pajamas but was dressed again in one of her shocking pantsuits.

“Is it morning?” Lola asked.

“You've been asleep a long time,” Miss Bryant said. “All last night and all day. The sun's going down again.”

Miss Bryant moved over to her kitchenette and ran a washcloth under the faucet. She put the cool cloth on Lola's forehead.

“You need a doctor,” Miss Bryant said.

“No,” Lola said. “It's just a little cold. A minor cold.”

“It's more than that, I'm afraid,” Miss Bryant said.

“But I can't go to the doctor,” Lola said. “They'll put me back in the hospital. I'll be arrested. Arrested for the hundred dollars and for running away. I'll go to jail.”

Miss Bryant sat down on the bed beside Lola. She had a thermometer and put it in Lola's mouth. “I know a few people over at the hospital,” she said. “I'll go see them. Very discreetly.”

Lola shook her head.

After a minute, Miss Bryant took the thermometer out of Lola's mouth and looked at it. “Not good,” she announced. She moved over to the coat rack and took down her hat and coat. “I'll go now, and arrange things.”

Lola knew it was useless to protest. Miss Bryant would not let her die of a fever in the projection booth. No civilized person could do that.

“All right,” Lola said, and closed her eyes.

A moment later, when the front door slammed downstairs, Lola threw the blankets aside and stood up. Her head throbbed, but she couldn't worry about that. She had to leave. She'd find a better hiding place this time, somewhere nobody could find her—up in the woods at Eagle Rock or, if she couldn't make it that far, maybe in Fairview. All she needed was someplace where she could be alone to make a peaceful exit from this world. She thought of the Gadd brick factory, so conveniently abandoned and fenced in. She could scale the fence. She took a step toward the door of the projection booth and the blood seemed to drain from her head. For a second she couldn't see. She stuck out an arm and found the wall.
That's just from standing up too quickly
, she told herself.

She continued toward the door. She was doing all right now. She descended into the cluttered heart of the Yesterday Boutique. She had to get dressed. And quickly. The hospital was just two blocks away. Miss Bryant might be back within half an hour with the doctor, or twenty minutes, even.

She looked around. The choices were more than plentiful. She could be a sixties go-go dancer in a red rain slicker or a forties femme fatale in a strapless tulle ball gown. But she was tired and reached for the garment closest to her. It was a poodle skirt, but the zipper was broken.

She giggled. What was she doing anyway? It was ridiculous. These clothes were ridiculous. This was not her world. She dropped the skirt on the floor. She would not go to Eagle Rock after all, or scale the fence of a brick factory; she would go back where she belonged or die trying. She would not scurry around like a cockroach, like a rat, trying to avoid the police, Social Services, the hospital. This was beneath the dignity of the person she had become, the niece of Judge and Mrs. Wrigley, the beloved of Peter Hemmings. She would go home. And she would start immediately.

She went down the slope to the twenties rack and began sliding the hangers aside. The pickings were slimmer than she remembered. It occurred to Lola that she must have already taken the best clothes. Now she had to make do with the leftovers. She selected a faded lavender dress, a pair of shoes (from the 1940s, but it couldn't be helped), a rather moth-eaten fur coat, and a dilapidated, bell-shaped hat. She took off the nightshirt and changed into the vintage clothes right there next to the rack.

Then she climbed the stairs to the stage and exited into the wings. In a moment, the stage door banged behind her and she was back in the alley. It was dark and clear. The icy wind felt good to Lola. She set off in the direction of Ashfield High School, about two miles away. She avoided the main roads. Her bike rides had taught her various routes to the school, and she chose the one that passed through quiet residential streets with sidewalks. A person strolling along a sidewalk doesn't stick out, she thought, the way a pedestrian does on a busy highway. She was tired but no longer groggy or clumsy. She felt angry again, thinking about how they'd given her those drugs without her consent. But it was over now. It was all over.

She felt sure the portal would be open. She would go back, and she and Peter would marry—she was just the right age, wasn't she?—and get as far away from Ashfield as possible. They'd go to California, or New York, or take a steamer to Europe. And if she found the portal closed? No, she knew it would be open, expecting her.

She approached Ashfield High School. The wind blew twisters of grit and leaves around the courtyard. She was surprised to see lights on inside the school and the main doors standing open. She could have walked right in if she'd still had the key to the reserve room that Mrs. Dubois had given her. She had left it in her knapsack, locked at the bottom of the chest in her big, lovely room at the Wrigleys'. Her mind ached trying to grasp where or when the key must be now. She would have to climb through the window. It wouldn't be easy, not with a bad cold coming on, not with a fever, she thought. But she could do it, and she would.

She noticed girls' voices behind her, giggling and laughing under the wind. She turned. At a distance of about fifty yards, in a swirl of leaves, she saw them. Whoopsie! Ruby! They stood near the gym doors in their long coats and cloche hats, their backs to her.

“Whoopsie!” she called out. “Ruby!” But her words flew off on the wind. The girls did not hear her. They did not turn. Lola walked toward them. The air seemed full of leaves now. The wind swirled around her like it wanted to swallow her up. It was hard to see. “Whoopsie! Ruby!” she called again.

At last they were only a few paces from her. She reached out and placed a hand on Ruby's shoulder. Ruby turned. But it was not Ruby. It was Danielle. The other girl turned—Beth. They were dressed as flappers from head to toe. Lola gasped. A wave of revulsion, of nausea, came over her. Now Lola noticed other figures behind them, a pair of vampires, Darth Vader, Frankenstein, Spider-Man.

Halloween. She'd stumbled into the Ashfield High Halloween party. She took a step backward, and another. Danielle advanced and grabbed her hard by the sleeve.

“Lola!” she crowed over the wind. “We've been so worried about you.”

“The whole town's looking for you,” Beth began. “The police came, and Mrs. Hershey, and they—”

Danielle's scowl shut Beth up, and the big girl looked guiltily at the ground.

“It doesn't look like you have a date, Lola,” Danielle said. “You ought to come with us. Come right this way with us. You don't look so good. Maybe you need help.”

Lola yanked her sleeve from Danielle's grasp and ran, her destination the high window of the reserve room.

“I'll get Dr. Barton!” Danielle screamed at Beth. “You follow her. Don't let her get away! Run!”