The Yearbook Read Free Page B

hangout on Main Street was the Arby’s (the Methodist church on Sundays being a close second).
    But Mrs. Klatsch knew all the town’s secrets, and she let me photocopy everything I needed for free.
    I was there for three hours — on a Saturday, voluntarily. I, David Kallas, in the spring of senior year, after class ranks were set and college applications were in, and it didn’t matter if I’d got a D in everything — I was working. It was sick.
    Ariana was the cause of my disease. Or the cure. Depending on how you looked at it.
    She and I worked well together — except when I wanted to use the picture of the burning of Annabelle Spicer in “Student Activities” as a joke. She thought it was sexist, and also irrelevant to the theme, even though I argued the crack in the ground looked earthquakish.
    Sometimes she can be too serious.
    Fortunately, that was the only blot on my record. I worked like a dog right up until D-Day.
    D-Day was Deadline Day — Monday, April 11. We had to get our “mock-up” to the printer — which meant blocking where every single photo and caption was supposed to go, on cardboard sheets the size of yearbook pages. Getting this done in time was brutal. I don’t think anyone did a homework assignment for weeks (except Smut, who doesn’t sleep, I guess).
    We finished just before midnight at Ariana’s house on Sunday, April 10. Mr. DeWaart took the mock-ups and dropped them off at the printer’s before the next morning.
    We spent the rest of the week recovering. On Friday the fifteenth, we had a party at Mr. DeWaart’s apartment.
    “Abandon hope, all ye who enter!” Mr. DeWaart greeted Ariana, Smut, and me at his door. We had all come up the apartment stairs together. “Welcome to the ship of party fools!”
    “Hi, Mr. DeWaart,” I said.
    “Say what ?” he replied. “It’s Richard to you, my boy.”
    “But your name is Joel.”
    “Details, details. Come on in.”
    Mr. DeWaart was weird. No question. His nickname was Wartface, because of his last name and two large moles on his right cheek and left hand. His image: tweed jackets and wrinkled shirts, a thick salt-and-pepper beard, mismatched socks, and Top-Siders. He hardly ever smiled; sometimes you didn’t know he’d told a joke until about five minutes after you heard it. He’d graduated college four years earlier, which made him about twenty-five, but he looked older. He was both a genius and an awesome athlete. He coached the crew team and organized some of the team members (and other achiever types, including Smut) into a small group called “The Delphic Club,” which sat around after practice and had heavy, top-secret discussions. (No one knew what they were about, or cared.) Between all that, advising the yearbook, teaching history, and working toward his Ph.D. at night, he didn’t have time for much else.
    Still, I figured: mid-twenties, unattached, athletic, smart — he must have had a social life. I half-expected some knockout grad student to come jiggling out of the bedroom — or at least a few tell-tale signs of bachelor life, like a rumpled camisole tossed on the floor, or some female-type perfume in the bathroom.
    No such luck. He lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment with piles of books and papers in every corner, shabby furniture, and some crummy artwork on the walls — mostly pictures of ancient Greece, philosophers in togas, stuff like that. (Bo-ring.)
    But, hey, a party’s a party.
    John Christopher, the Voyager sports editor, waved to us as we walked in. He was by a large fruit bowl, along with Rachel Green (our business editor) and Liz Montez (activities editor).
    “Wai— her — gluzb — ” John gargled, his jaw working like crazy.
    A moment later, he reached into his mouth and pulled out a perfectly knotted cherry stem. With a huge, satisfied grin, he sang, “Ta-da!”
    John is large and competitive. If you walk to school with him, he will not let you get there first. If you eat with him, he