The Yearbook Read Free

baffles local experts. It far surpassed the tremor felt in this area in 1950. Is there an active fault below Wetherby? Impossible, says Dr. Paul Bascomb, of the County Meteorological Institute. But don’t try to tell that to the students of Wetherby High School.…”
    The camera cut to our school. An ancient maple tree was lying across the front lawn, its top branches embedded in a parked car.
    The Maases all gasped. But Ariana smiled and blurted out, “Hey, we’ve got an event!”
    “Ssshh,” her sister said.
    I must have been giving Ariana a weird look, because she immediately turned to me and explained in a whisper, “I mean, for the yearbook. Every year we have a theme, based on some major event. We try to tie all the aspects of the yearbook together with it. We can have an earthquake theme!”
    I thought it was a dumb idea. “Great idea,” I said.
    “Only problem is, I have to find another staff member. Sonya Eggert was supposed to work on the theme, but she moved.” Then, for the first time, Ariana looked at me with something like interest. “Do you write, David?”
    I’ll give you three guesses what my answer was.
    And that is how I joined the Wetherby High School yearbook. As something called Theme Coordinator.
    I was in charge of a little one-page introduction to the book, blurbs and funny captions about the earthquake, and appropriate photos.
    Me, who had never gotten higher than a “Shows Improvement” on any English paper in my life.
    I didn’t care. I was going to spend a large part of the rest of the year with Ariana. Smut or no Smut.

Chapter 5
    “S MILING OR SERIOUS?” A SKED Mark “Rosie” Rosenthal, the Voyager photo editor. He peered at me through his Minolta.
    It was an April morning, about a week before I found the body. Rosie’s basement felt like the Arctic. “Serious,” I managed to croak before letting out a huge sneeze. My Groucho Marx glasses lurched down my nose. They tugged at my white fright wig, which slipped forward and unseated my hat. The hat clattered to the ground, sending a couple of plastic grapes rolling across the floor.
    “You’re losing fruit,” said Rosie.
    I scooped up the grapes and reattached them to their stem, right behind the bunch of fake bananas and to the left of an apple and a plum. “Whose idea was this, anyway?”
    “Yours,” Rosie replied. “Now, can we take this shot?”
    “Go for it,” I said.
    I donned my fruit-hat, sat straight in the portrait chair, and looked at Rosie grimly through the fake glasses, nose, and mustache. He managed to get in a few shots before he exploded with laughter. Rosie is a giggler. He’s constantly trying to look at the odd side of things — and he was having no trouble today.
    The Bananahead was just one of my many brilliant concepts for the Wetherby Voyager.
    You see, after Ariana had popped the fateful question to me that day in February, I had transformed. I was no longer meek and mild David Kallas. I had become Mr. Yearbook.
    The Voyager was on a late schedule this year, because the print-shop owner was off in Tibet studying meditation till April. (Don’t ask.) So for two months, I lived and breathed the yearbook. I drove Rosie crazy about getting quake photos. I infiltrated the school newspaper and convinced some of their staffers to write funny captions for us.
    And when twenty-three kids didn’t show up for their Voyager photos, and Ariana called them “bananaheads” — voilà — I thought of a way to get even. My plan was to put a photo of the Bananahead above each of the no-shows’ names in the yearbook. Just a joke. Nothing too offensive.
    Our faculty advisor, Mr. DeWaart, hated the idea. But the rest of us outvoted him.
    Over the weeks, Ariana began looking at me with respect. (I would have preferred lust, or even mild carnal interest, but respect was fine.)
    “Okay, I can’t take any more,” Rosie said, still red from laughter.
    I pulled off my disguise. “Good. It’s freezing in