The Yearbook (21 page)

Lola rounded the corner of the school, and the reserve room window was within reach. She felt faint now. Her lungs ached. The blood seemed to drain from her head as it had when she'd stood up in the projection booth. Her vision flickered on and off. She stood still for a moment until her eyes worked again, then climbed onto the low cement wall for the necessary boost. But the window seemed higher this time. The finger holds that she'd found easily before eluded her. She became aware of a commotion on the other side of campus, of voices, of shouting. The voices were growing louder, nearer. With all her might she heaved herself up.

Now she could see through the window. Neat bookshelves glowed, and the long leather couch, braced by reading lamps, stretched out against one wall. The wide oak desk held an inkwell. The pleasant smell of library books and floor wax filtered through the window. Lola shoved her arms through the opening and began to drag her torso through.

But something was wrong. She wasn't moving. Then she understood. Someone had taken hold of her legs and was pulling her back out. She began to scream, to beg to be released.

“It's all right, Lola. I've got you,” came Dr. Barton's voice.

“No!” Lola screamed. “No! No! No!”

But Dr. Barton was stronger. He was winning. She was sliding backward. She grabbed the window frame as hard as she could, but the picture inside it was fading. The oak desk, the reading lamps, the glowing books, were vanishing like a mirage. In their place the green rubber garbage bin materialized, standing amid piles of rubbish. She felt herself fall into the arms of the man in the turtleneck sweater.

“It'll be all right now,” Dr. Barton was saying in a low, soothing voice. Was he crying? Lola had the impression that he was. “We've got you. We've got you.”

Lola looked around. A crowd had gathered. There were Incredible Hulks and Catwomen. And off to one side a pair of phony, treacherous flappers whispered to each other. A police car was just pulling up into the school parking lot. Lola could see its light spinning, but the siren was turned off.

Lola's room at Hillside Manor was pale pink and rather small with a window near the ceiling. She examined the window the first moment she was left alone and found it maddeningly escape-proof. The room had a poster of a bouquet of flowers on one wall and a shelf with a few dozen books and magazines. For the first few days, Lola lay in the bed and read, or just daydreamed. She was no longer required to go to school. Therapists and nurses came in and out throughout the day, trying to cajole her into watching television with the crazies or joining in the handicrafts—handi-crap, she called it—or volleyball tournaments.

Nurses came and went with pills that Lola hid under her tongue and then spit out in the sink.

“You know what could cheer you up?” a nurse said one morning as snow came down outside the window. “You could write a letter of apology. Get things off your chest. You could be forgiven. Don't underestimate how good that might make you feel.”

Lola looked up from her book, a beat-up paperback mystery. “Forgiven? For what?”

The woman smiled kindly. “I think you must know what. For the fire at the school, mainly. You could write to the school board and let them know you're sorry. It could be a first step toward your recovery. We could begin to get to the bottom of why you did it.”

Lola felt like she was in a bad movie, the kind where somebody's been sent to the gulag without a fair trial. But she refused to be provoked. She turned back to her book. “There's nothing wrong with me,” she said. “I didn't start a fire. I've never started a fire in my life.”

“Have it your way,” the nurse said. “I'll be in the multipurpose room if you have a change of heart.” The nurse made a few other nonsensical remarks, and then, thankfully, left Lola alone.

Days went by. Lola watched the snow. One day seemed much like another, frozen and white. With time to rest, to reflect, to recover in the pink room, she could see the way time had twisted in on itself, how it could backtrack and jump forward. Time wasn't a straight line the way everybody thought it was. The fire department had listed the cause of the library fire as “unknown.” They were stumped, naturally, Lola thought, because the answer lay beyond their time, undetectable. Peter had started the fire in 1924, but in the contortions of time, it had burned through the open portal in the reserve room to a few days
before
Mrs. Dubois had shown her the mess. The fire that Peter had set to keep her with him was the same fire that had brought her into the reserve room for clean-up duty, and had now flung them apart, a fire that had flickered between past, present, and future.

She replayed their last moments together over and over, trying to imagine what she could have done differently, but always came to the same dead end. How could she lament that Peter had set the fire? If he hadn't, she never would have met him, never have loved him at all. She felt the smallness, the weakness, of her mind. She imagined herself as a fish, unable to conceive of the world that existed above the ocean's surface.

At least they didn't take away my clothes
, she thought. She stroked the lace neckline of the faded lavender dress as she stared up at the barred window.

A week later, Lola sat in the waiting room and stared at Dr. Schultz's pale yellow door. Soon she would see the doorknob turn and the doctor would appear, smile, and call her name. Lola dreaded the encounter, although it was she who had requested it. The time had come to explain her side of things once and for all, to present the facts, coldly and scientifically. It seemed a daring move, revealing all in a place where hallucinations were the rule, but it wasn't really, not when you considered that everything she was about to say, or nearly everything, could be backed up by history books, old maps, and newspapers that she could readily obtain.

Still, it wouldn't be easy to begin. She wouldn't be believed at first, but she was prepared for that. She would chip away at the doctor's doubts, the way a good lawyer does with a jury. She would describe events that took place in Ashfield, late 1923 and well into 1924, with all the rich detail that only a first-hand witness can provide. She would draw a layout of the town, complete with the old roadways and shops, forests and fields, cafes and dance halls, that hadn't existed in fifty years or more. She would name and describe dozens of townspeople. She would tell personal details about the Wrigleys, and about their home and servants. It could all be verified, or most of it.

The ward doors would slide open for her then, followed by the heavy doors to the outside world. She would run down the hill, across the frosty grass, and bum a ride, or catch a bus, straight to Ashfield High. The police would be called if anyone noticed her; she was an arsonist as far as the school was concerned. She might be able to slip past the metal detector without being noticed, but if that seemed too risky, she could climb in the window again. This time she'd make sure nobody was around.

“Lola?”

Dr. Schultz's door had opened and she was waving Lola in with the expected smile. Lola smiled back. She entered calmly, even gracefully, she thought, and took a seat on a floral love seat. The office was done in a palate of yellows, and a big glass coffee table sat in the middle, topped with a giant box of Kleenex and about a dozen vanilla-scented candles of various shapes. On one wall was a poster showing a hundred little cartoon faces, each one displaying a different emotion: happy, guilty, afraid, euphoric, jealous, depressed, and so on. A huge, glossy ficus plant stood in a pot off to her left.

“I'm glad you finally agreed to come in for a chat,” Dr. Schultz said, settling onto a soft white chair across from Lola. “How's it going?” Dr. Schultz had long frizzy gray hair that she held back with a pair of rhinestone clips, and was partial to big colorful sweaters and jeans. Lola felt she was more open-minded than the other therapists in the ward, and had particularly asked for her.

“I feel fine,” Lola said. “In fact, I don't think I belong here.” She tried to look mild and ordinary. She folded her hands in her lap. Then she noticed the cloth-covered button that was dangling from a thread at her wrist. It occurred to her that maybe she should have taken off the flapper dress for this meeting and put her old jeans back on, and those stupid shoes they'd given her, sneakers without laces. It did seem kind of crazy to keep on wearing the dress. But somehow it was the principle of the thing. If she changed into her old clothes, wasn't it the ultimate act of surrender, an acceptance of this time and place where she didn't belong? Then again, she thought, she couldn't have changed even if she'd wanted to; they'd taken away her belt. The jeans wouldn't stay up without a belt. And clomping around with no shoelaces—if anything looked crazy, that did.

“Most of our clients feel they don't belong here at first,” Dr. Schultz said. “Sometimes, for a young person, recognizing that something is wrong isn't so easy. But that's the thing that leads to recovery.”

“But I'm not ill. I'm not,” Lola said cheerfully.

“Uh-huh. Tell me more about that.”

Lola noticed a beetle crawling on the ficus plant. She watched it for a moment, hoping it signaled good luck, and then looked back at the doctor.

“I'm sane. This isn't a place for sane people, is it? I'm not sure I can make it any clearer.”

The beetle took wing. Lola turned her head slightly to watch it land on another leaf and wander around. She hoped her good luck charm wouldn't fly away.

“You've had problems, though. We'd like to help you tackle them, but you have to try, too.”

Was this the right moment to tell? How should she start? Just blurt it out? Or sidle up to the matter, the way Whoopsie Whipple had sidled up to the punch bowl with her booze bottle?

“I do have problems,” Lola ventured. “A lot of them right now. Just not the kind everybody thinks.”

“How would you describe your problems?”

“They have to do with reality.”

“Hmm. That's interesting. What about reality?”

“Reality and science,” Lola said.

Dr. Schultz's mouth curled into a knowing smile and she began to nod. “Are you referring to the time-travel experience you talked about when you were admitted to the hospital?”

Lola was stunned. Had she already told them? “What did I say exactly?” she muttered.

Lola's unanswered question hung sickeningly between them. Dr. Schultz played with her pen and watched Lola closely. Lola turned her head to ward off the doctor's stare. She found herself looking at the plant again. She was sorry to see the lucky beetle spiral up into the air and disappear somewhere behind her.

“I think I understand why you wear that dress, Lola,” the doctor said. “There's a very special secret reason, isn't there?”

Lola bit her lip and met the doctor's stare. She felt like she was seeing Dr. Schultz for the first time; her eyes were narrowed and yellow, her nose was long and sharp, and her gray hair seemed to bristle. She looked like a wolf. Her pen was poised on her clipboard, hungry for details, symptoms, any information that would confirm the diagnosis she had already made.

Lola clutched the arm of the love seat. She had been wrong about Dr. Schultz. She was not the right person to tell anything to. “I don't know what you mean,” Lola stammered.