The nauseating smell of bacon and broken dreams overwhelmed me at the sound of her name. Oh no. No. No.
“Linda graduated in the class of ’64. She’ll have the book.”
“But Seth, you have a rule.” ConspiracyLuvR was one of Seth’s online buddies who had an extraordinary amount of useless local conspiracy-related knowledge but also a fairly solid understanding of the inner workings of Pemberly Brown. As much as it killed me to admit it, we had depended on someone named ConspiracyLuvR in the past and we would probably have to depend upon him again in the future. The guy’s mom? Not so much. Mrs. ConspiracyLuvR was obsessed with Seth, and from what I could recall, it had something to do with his red hair. I shivered as I considered my own newly crimson locks.
“I do have a rule against engaging the Mrs., but what’s your rule about breaking rules?” Seth shook his head quickly. “Never mind…you know what I mean. We’re going in.”
And we were. I only wished I’d brought a gas mask.
ConspiracyLuvR’s house was shockingly close to my own. My mom spent way too much time with that sex offender locator tool on the computer, and I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t have some sort of app to identify houses where grown men still lived in their childhood bedrooms. Might come in handy for women screening potential dates on Match.com.
As usual, there were about fifteen beat-down cars parked in the driveway and on the grass. I hoped to God they weren’t having some sort of party, couldn’t imagine the delays associated with social hour at the LuvR residence. If there was a way to break in and steal the yearbook without getting caught, I would so be on board, despite the fact that a stolen yearbook had gotten us into this mess in the first place.
“In and out, guys,” Seth whispered. “We get the yearbook as quickly as possible.”
He didn’t have to tell me.
Movement in one of the cars caught my eye, and despite my better judgment, I peered in. And there, smack dab in the middle of his parents’ yard, parked in some god-forsaken car, was none other than ConspiracyLuvR making out with a woman who was clearly in need of the aforementioned boyfriend screening app.
I slapped my hands over my eyes and started screaming. “Ew, ew, ew, ew.”
“Jesus!” Liam said, cracking up. “Who the hell are these people?” He hadn’t had the pleasure of a previous visit. We ran the rest of the way up the drive.
The doorbell didn’t even have to be pressed. Instead, the door swung open and Mrs. ConspiracyLuvR filled the doorway, permeating the air with her eau de bacon grease.
“I thought that was you!” She spoke in some strange accent—a mixture of faux-British and Southern twang that was probably the result of watching too much reality television. And then she screamed some obscenities in the direction of her lip-locked grown son, who either couldn’t hear her or ignored her completely.
Liam widened his eyes at me, his face beet red to stifle his laughter, as Mrs. LuvR yanked Seth into the house. I wasn’t sure if I should be thankful or scared that she still concentrated her redhead-loving efforts on Seth. I was a lot of both.
“Just a quick visit, now!” Nervous laugh. “Actually came for a yearbook.” Nervous laugh. “No, no. We already ate.” Nervous laugh. Poor, poor Seth.
Seth continued to focus Mrs. LuvR on the yearbook and refused four tours of her “renovated” master bath, a couple offers to feed some random parrot named Jimmy that squawked in their family room, and two requests to help load her dishwasher. Finally, she led us into the basement. I hesitated at the top of the stairs. I was 99 percent sure that we were walking into a hoarder’s den, and I was afraid that if we descended beneath the ground, we might never come back up. I thought about waiting in the kitchen or, better yet, back in Liam’s car, but I couldn’t let Seth face this particular wolf on his own. We were in this together. Like old times.
“Y’all excuse the mess, now.” Yikes. A mess warning from a woman who reeked of bacon grease was definitely not a good sign. I kept my gaze trained on Mrs. LuvR’s yellow muumuu as we wove our way through a maze of junk that included everything from old fax machines to piles of Playgirl magazines. She paused for a minute and started digging through a pile of boxes.
“I know it’s in here somewhere…” She threw something that looked suspiciously like a dead cat over her shoulder. Seth yelped.
“Ah, yes, here it is. My old memory box. My senior yearbook should be in here somewhere.”
I steeled myself for whatever we might find in that box and prayed she’d return upstairs so we could at least have the freedom to make fun of some of it.
“I’ll leave you and this young thang to it.” Mrs. LuvR pointed a long, acrylic nail in Liam’s and my direction. “Seth? How about helping me out upstairs?”
Seth looked from the box to Liam, from the box to me, from the box to Mrs. LuvR, and his face fell as though to say, “I quit.” If Seth’s loyalty to me and my endless battles could be summed up, it would look a little like the rueful resignation on his face. He patted the box and walked up the stairs with his plus-sized cougar, leaving Liam and me to fight back both laughter and fear for our friend.
We tore through the box with careful precision to avoid things like gray, cotton somethings (we could not bring ourselves to investigate), dried flowers that disintegrated with one touch, chewed pencils, crumpled papers, even a journal, which would have been fascinating to read if we had more time. Finally, at the bottom of the second box, which was full of maternity clothes and yellowed pacifiers, Liam unearthed the old yearbook.
“I need to wash my hands,” he said, handing it over with two fingers.
I pulled the card stock from my blazer and flipped to the page scrawled in the message.
A boy cradled a girl in his lap, her cheek resting on his shoulder, smile stretched wide. The boy’s brittle smile and flinty gaze made it easy to identify him as ex-Headmaster Sinclair. I pulled the yearbook closer to my face to get a better look at the girl perched on top of him. Her hair spilled over her shoulders in a pin-straight waterfall. She was pretty, but there was something familiar about the way she looked at the camera, hard eyes beneath lowered lashes.
We gasped at the same time, even though we shouldn’t have been surprised.
Ms. D.