The Blank Page

THE BLANK PAGE

  By Krista Bean

  Copyright 2012 Krista Bean

  Copyright Photoroller | Stock Free Images & Dreamstime Stock Photos

  The yearbooks this year were going to be lavender. Lavender. Never mind that the school colors were purple and white – purple, the color of bruises and royalty and… people eaters. Apparently whoever designed the yearbook thought that the prissy knockoff of purple was more indicative of the student body of Van Buren High School.

  Or maybe Martin Van Buren himself had just liked lavender.

  Brooke Sheffield had no idea which color had been preferred by her school’s ancient namesake, but she did know that lavender was a ridiculous color for a yearbook. Not that she cared enough to complain; it was June, with only a few weeks remaining of her junior year. The Maryland air was warm, the days were long, and she was completely preoccupied with the summer ahead: swimsuits – hopefully cute guys, also in swimsuits; days by the pool or even the beach if they could organize a trip; late nights at movies and parties; sleepovers at friends’ houses in the middle of the week.

  Also a summer job somewhere in there, but she tried not to think about that too much.

  The yearbooks were being distributed at lunchtime, so after her English class Brooke dumped her books in the locker she shared with her best friend, Gabrielle, and headed to the cafeteria. She bought a soft pretzel in the lunch line, and then found Gabby at the end of a second line which wound away from the table set up to distribute yearbooks.

  “I can’t believe I lost my receipt,” Gabby moaned as Brooke stepped up to her. “I’m so screwed.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Brooke said. “They still have a record of who bought one. The receipt is just in case there’s a problem.” She smiled to herself as she tore one of the loops off of her pretzel and handed it to Gabby. The two of them were so different it was amazing that they’d been best friends since the sixth grade. Brooke’s receipt was in her back pocket, after having spent the last several months folded and neatly pinned to the bulletin board in her bedroom with a pink thumbtack.

  Gabby flipped her hair. “I hate my picture this year, too. It’s the worst picture I’ve ever had.”

  “Every year is the worst picture you’ve ever had,” Brooke laughed. “And stop lying.”

  Gabby was one of the best-looking girls in their class. The two of them actually looked somewhat alike; despite Brooke’s paler skin and blonde hair, and Gabby’s darker skin and hair that bordered on black, they had the same dark eyes, the same nose, similar full lips and smiles any dentist would be proud of. But somehow all those features looked better on Gabby, while Brooke was constantly left feeling like the slightly-uglier, slightly-twin sister.

  Eventually they shuffled their way to the front of the line. Brooke received her yearbook, and Gabby finally did as well, after the administrator gave her a disapproving look and did a cursory check of the sales list. Brooke turned her new book over in her hands, examining it from every angle. It was crisp and heavy, and a faint cracking sound came from the spine as she opened the front cover. Although the lavender was ridiculous, it was also, she had to admit, kind of pretty. Prettier than the navy blue and brown covers of the last few years, anyway.

  Lunch was almost over by then, so the girls headed back to their locker. The hallway looked like it had come down with a lavender plague once the bell rang; pastel purple spots bobbed everywhere as people looked through their books, and passed them off to friends to sign.

  “We don’t have time to sign each other’s,” Brooke said, glancing at the clock. She and Gabby would essentially write novels to each other, and they needed more than a couple of minutes for that.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got soccer until six, but you can come over after dinner tonight,” Gabby said, poking around in their locker. “But save me a page so I have plenty of room.” She pulled out a black Sharpie, and then wrote her name along the top and side edges of her closed yearbook. Brooke took the marker and did the same.

  When Brooke got to her history class Mrs. Moeller wasn’t in yet, so the room was no quieter than the hallway.

  “Sign my yearbook!” Marcia Cartman squealed, shoving her book in Brooke’s face the second she walked through the door. Brooke had never given much thought to Marcia, but she nevertheless smiled and traded books. Then she sat down and pulled out her pen. Several blank pages had been installed just inside the front and back covers, so she chose a spot and scrawled Have a great summer! But when she turned to hand the book back to her classmate, Marcia pointed in the other direction.

  “Just pass it on,” she chirped, taking another book that someone was handing her. Brooke noticed that her own book now sat in front of Jon Bazen, so she shrugged, passed Marcia’s book to the boy behind her, and opened yet another one that appeared on her desk.

  The only person not interested in the yearbook tradeoff was Zoe Delano, who sat slumped in her seat in the back corner. Her appearance – solidly built, with nose and lip rings, disheveled black hair, and clothes and nail polish to match – already made people wary. But it was her reputation for getting into fights and being suspended for everything from drug possession to spray-painting the school building that made her a girl nobody messed with. It didn’t surprise Brooke that Zoe had no interest in expressing warm wishes for the upcoming summer with her classmates.

  Brooke had never liked Zoe, especially not as of late. Just last week Zoe and Gabby had traded heated words in the hallway over who had bumped into whom. It had risen to shouting, which included Brooke finally jumping in and telling Zoe to go to hell. She could only imagine what Zoe might’ve done next, but fortunately a teacher appeared at that moment and sent everyone on their separate ways. But Brooke had avoided even looking at Zoe since then; she had no desire to antagonize her further.

  Mrs. Moeller strode into the room five minutes late with an irritated look on her face.

  “If anyone else is caught fighting over a yearbook, it’s a week’s detention,” she announced, clearly having come from just such an incident in the hallway. “If you have one, make sure your name is on it so there’s no confusion.”

  Check, Brooke thought, glancing at the side of her book which was now two rows away.

  Mrs. Moeller sighed, rubbed her eyes, and then raised them to the sea of lavender adorning her classroom. “All right, all yearbooks up here on my table. You can get them at the end of class.”

  A collective grumble filled the room.

  “Right now,” Mrs. Moeller snapped. “If I catch anyone with a book, it’s mine until the end of the week.”

  Brooke glanced at the one on her desk, which belonged to Dylan Wurtz. There was no time to return any of the books to their rightful owners; Mrs. Moeller looked ready to pop. Everyone got up, trudged to the front of the room, and deposited the book he or she was holding onto the table, next to some spare textbooks and rolled-up maps.

  “All right then,” Mrs. Moeller said with palpable relief. “Who can tell me what a robber baron is?”

  When class finally ended, Brooke filed to the front of the room to retrieve her yearbook. It was at the bottom of a pile, and she had to wait for several other kids to claim theirs before she could. Then she grabbed it and hurried off.

  Her next class was art, but since the art wing was at the opposite end of the building, she had no time to stop at her locker beforehand. Instead, she pushed through the crowd, and slid into her seat with only a few seconds to spare.

  Brooke opened her yearbook, eager to look at the signatures from last period. Have a great summer! was common from people she didn’t know that well. Also Stay sweet! and See you next year! Several inside jokes about the class and Mrs. Moe
ller came from people she knew a little better.

  But when she flipped to the second page, she frowned. She’d written LEAVE THIS PAGE BLANK at the top to save space for Gabby, but someone had written there anyway, smack in the middle.

  And as she looked at the writing, her frown deepened.

  The writing seemed… old-fashioned, like it’d been written not only by an adult, but by someone who’d lived a long time ago. It was a fancy cursive script that looked like it belonged in an old letter, or an historical document – nothing like her classmates’ writing, which was mostly bubble letters and I’s dotted with hearts. It also seemed practiced, like the signer was accustomed to writing all the time. Brooke hardly wrote anything other than when taking tests in class, or doing simple homework assignments; everything else was done on the computer.

  All of this observation happened at a glance, and Brooke actually had to peer more closely at the words to make out what they said. When she read them, her heart skipped.

  Do not go home today. There is a man in your house.