F is for Fugitive (Kinsey Millhone 6)
From what I remember of high school, our behavior was underscored by a hunger for sensation. Feelings were intense and events were played out in emotional extremes. While the fantasy of death satisfied a craving for self-drama, the reality was usually (fortunately) at some safe remove. We were absurdly young and healthy, and though we behaved recklessly, we never expected to suffer any consequence. The notion of a real death, whether by accident or intent, would have pushed us into a state of perplexity. Love affairs provided all the theater we could handle. Our sense of tragedy and our self-centeredness were so exaggerated that we weren't prepared to cope with any actual loss. Murder would have been beyond comprehension. Jean Timber-lake's death probably still generated discussion among the people she knew, giving rise to a disquiet that marred the memories of youth. Bailey Fowler's sudden reappearance in the community was going to stir it all up again: uneasiness, rage, the nearly incomprehensible feelings of waste and dismay.
On impulse, I parked the car and searched out the library, which turned out to be much like the one at Santa Teresa High. The' space was airy and open, the noise level subdued. The vinyl floor tile was a mottled beige, polished to a dull gleam. The air smelled like furniture polish, construction paper, and paste. I must have eaten six jars of LePage's during my grade-school years. I had a friend who ate pencil shavings. There's a name for that now, for kids who eat inorganic oddities like gravel and clay. In my day, it just seemed like a fun thing to do and no one ever gave it a passing thought as far as I knew.
The library tables were sparsely occupied and the reference desk was being handled by a young girl with frizzy hair and a ruby drilled into the side of her nose. She had apparently been seized by a fit of self-puncturing because both ears had been pierced repeatedly from the lobe to the helix. In lieu of earrings, she was sporting the sort of items you'd find in my junk drawer at home: paper clips, screws, safety pins, shoelaces, wing nuts. She was perched on a stool with a copy of Rolling Stone open on her lap. Mick Jagger was on the cover, looking sixty if a day.
"Hi."
She looked at me blankly.
"I wonder if you can give me some help. I used to be a student here and I can't find my yearbook. Do you have any copies? I'd like to take a look."
"Under the window. First and second shelves." I pulled the annuals from three separate years and took them to a table on the far side of a row of free-standing bookcases. A bell rang and the corridor began to fill with the rustling sound of students on the move. The slamming of locker doors was punctuated by the babble of voices, laughter bouncing off the walls with the harsh echo of a racquetball court. The ghostly scent of gym socks wafted in.
I traced Jean Timberlake's picture back, volume by volume, like the aging process in reverse. During her high school years, while the rest of California 's youth were protesting the war, smoking dope, and heading for the Haight, the girls at Central Coast were teasing their hair into glossy towers, putting black lines around their eyes and white gloss on their lips. The junior girls wore white blouses and bouffant hair, which curved out in a heavily sprayed flip at the sides. The guys had damp-looking crewcuts and braces on their teeth. They couldn't have guessed how soon they'd be sporting sideburns, beards, bell-bottoms, and psychedelic shirts.
Jean never looked like she had anything in common with the rest. In the few group pictures where I spotted her, she never grinned and she had none of the bouncy-looking innocence of the Debbies and the Tammies. Jean's eyes were hooded, her gaze remote, and the faint smile that played on her mouth suggested a private amusement still evident after all these years. The blurb in the senior index listed no committees or clubs. She hadn't been burdened with scholastic honors or elective offices, and she hadn't bothered to participate in any extracurricular activities. I leafed through candid shots taken at various school functions, but I never did catch sight of her. If she went to football or basketball games, she must have hovered somewhere beyond the range of the school photographer. She wasn't in the senior play. All the prom pictures focused on the queen, Barbie Knox, and her entourage of beehived, white-lipped princesses. Jean Timberlake was dead by then. I jotted down the names of her more conspicuous classmates, all guys. I figured if the girls were still living in the area, they'd be listed in the phone book under married names, which I'd have to get somewhere else.
The principal at that time was a man named Dwight Shales, whose picture appeared in an oval on one of the early pages of the annual. The school superintendent and his two assistant superintendents were each pictured separately, seated at their desks, holding official-looking papers. Sometimes a member of the office staff, female, peered over some man's shoulder with interest, smiling perkily. The teachers had been photographed against a varied background of maps, industrial arts equipment, textbooks, and blackboards on which phrases had. been writ large in chalk. I noted some of their names and specialties, thinking I might want to return at a later date to talk to one or two. A young Ann Fowler was one of four guidance counselors photographed on a separate page with a paragraph underneath. "These counselors gave extra time, thought, and encouragement to us as they helped us plan our program for the next year wisely or advised us when we had decisions to make regarding our future plans for jobs or college." I thought Ann looked prettier then, not as tired or as soured.