The Yearbook by Carol Masciola

Author:Carol Masciola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2015-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

A month passed and then it was nearly Christmas. Ashfield glowed with colored bulbs, and the smell of fresh-cut pine garlands and hot cider floated over the downtown. Lola strolled Main Street between Eunice and the judge, looking into display windows that had become villages of toy trains and wind-up soldiers. Little by little, she was beginning to forget the Ashfield she had once known, its routes and houses and smells. She could not recall, sometimes, what had stood on this or that street corner, or the price of a Golden Recipe jumbo basket or the precise schedule of her days. Her old life seemed more and more remote, like a recurring bad dream that had finally left her in peace.

Peter had not approached her since their encounter at Eagle Rock. The stories about Lola’s background as a New Yorker and a mining camp girl continued to circulate; he had not given her away. The thought of him made her furious, but she longed for a glimpse of him everywhere she went.

When Virgil Ludlow asked her to the Christmas dance, she hesitated and then cursed herself. The hesitation was for Peter, a person who had ambushed and exposed her. She accepted Virgil’s invitation and went shopping with Eunice for the most beautiful dress she could find, a silk chiffon evening gown of midnight blue with metallic brocade and a low-cut back.

The only person who questioned her about her decision to go to the dance with Virgil was Whoopsie Whipple, on the day before the event, when she came over to bob Lola’s hair.

“I’m gonna ask you flat out, Mike. Why aren’t you going with Peter Hemmings?” she said, lining up her beauty tools on Lola’s bureau.

“Was I supposed to?” Lola said. “Anyway, he didn’t ask me.”

“But you’d have gone with him, right?”

“No.”

“But he’s the one you love.”

“No, he’s not,” Lola said. “As a matter of fact, I don’t love anyone. And especially not him.”

“Uh-huh,” Whoopsie said, and chopped off Lola’s ponytail. Lola gasped. Whoopsie dropped the hair and went right on talking. “I know true love when I see it. But then things ran off the rails somewhere. You wanna know what I think?”

“Not really.”

Whoopsie snipped at the air. “You better change that to ‘yes,’ since I’m holding the scissors.”

“Yes, then.”

“I think something happened up there at Eagle Rock. The night of the bonfire. It was all sidelong glances and quickened palpitations up until then, and don’t tell me it wasn’t, Mike, because I’m not blind.”

“He’s wrong for me,” Lola said.

“Did he get fresh?” Whoopsie continued.

“Not exactly.” Lola said, although she wasn’t sure what “getting fresh” entailed in 1923.

“Aha. So he did get fresh. I thought so,” Whoopsie said, clipping away near Lola’s ears. “How fresh, pray tell, did the man get?”

“I looked through his telescope and then he—”

“What? Then he what?”

“Whoopsie, is Peter like everyone else?”

“What’s that mean? No, he’s just like himself.”

“I mean, does his brain work right?”

“Peter Hemmings’s brain? Why, it’s the best brain in the whole class, the whole state, I’ll bet.

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