“Bonjour, Nadine,” said Mme Greenberg in New York–accented French.
One thing that had never been in question was my name. “Sorry,” I said, “My name is—”
“En français? Je m’appelle…”
“Je m’appelle Naomi. Uh…Non, Nadine. Nadine, non.”
“Ici, nous employons les noms français, Nadine.”
“Oui,” I said. Fine, if she wanted to call me Nadine, whatever. It sounded like the name of a comment dit-on? French prostitute, but whatever. En anglais, I asked the boy sitting behind me what in the hell she was talking about. Apparently, we had all been assigned French names, which struck me as incredibly idiotic. If I ever went to Paris, people weren’t going to all of a sudden start referring to me as Nadine.
Seventh period was gym, which I was, of course, excused from, and had been told to use for study hall until I could rejoin. I spent the period sleeping.
Last period was Advanced Photography Workshop. The teacher’s name was Mr. Weir. He didn’t look all that old to me (he might have still been in his twenties, though I’ve never been good at guessing ages), but he was completely bald. Whether it was elective baldness or compelled, I couldn’t determine. He was wearing a T-shirt and a pin-striped blazer. When I came into the room, he introduced himself. “I’m your favorite teacher, Mr. Weir. Fierce shades.” I liked him immediately. “You sit over there,” he said helpfully, pointing me to a table in the back.
Advanced Photography Workshop was for kids who’d taken two years of other photography courses, which I had (although I couldn’t remember them, of course). The main point of the class was to do one big independent project. It was basically supposed to be a series of pictures that told a story, preferably a personal one, and our whole grade was based eighty percent on the one assignment, and twenty percent on everything else, which, from what I could tell, mainly came down to class participation. It seemed like a breeze to me, the fat on the rest of my schedule, something I could put off while getting caught up with my more academic subjects.
On my way out of the classroom, Mr. Weir asked if we could talk. “I don’t know if I should mention this to you, but you came to see me in the summer before your accident. You told me you wanted to drop this class.”
“Why?”
“You said something about commitments to yearbook, but I’m not really sure. That may have been an excuse, so as not to hurt my feelings. Of course, you can still drop the class if you want, but I’d be happy to have you.”
I asked him if he knew what I’d been planning to take instead, but he didn’t. The one class I had actually liked (and that seemed like a small time commitment) I hadn’t even wanted to take. Who could make sense of any of it?
At least the day was over. Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if school had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everyone.
I decided to go to the bathroom. Not because I actually had to go, I just wanted to be alone.
I was sitting in the stall when I heard Brianna come in.
She was talking to someone.
She was talking to someone about me. “Oh, I know, it was so awkward at lunch,” I heard her say. “I mean, she looks the same, but she’s not all there. She used to be so…” She sighed. “But now…” Her voice trailed off. “So tragic. So, so tragic. And you know who I feel really awful for? Ace.”
She was an idiot, but I didn’t necessarily want to confront her either. What would I say? Besides, she was probably right. I stayed in the stall until she had left.
To tell you the truth, I found the whole thing pretty depressing.
I was still sitting there when my cell phone rang. I hadn’t even realized it was on. I looked at the display. It was Will.
“Don’t tell me you’re at school,” he said.
“Unfortunately,” I answered.
“Now I’m pissed. My mother called me, but I didn’t believe her. Why didn’t you mention you were coming today? I would have definitely gone to school.”
“Your mom said you were sick.”
“Nothing that major.” He said he’d had an ulcer when he was younger and now he had “this stomach thing” that sometimes acted up, so he’d stayed home. “But I would have shown up for you, Chief. And I’m here now anyway.”
“If you’re not feeling well, shouldn’t you still be at home?”
“I never miss yearbook,” he said. “You don’t either. Where are you? I’ll come get you right now.”
“Sure, Will. I’m in the ladies’. Come on in.”
“Um…you’re not serious?”
“No. I’m not.”
Will laughed. “Right. How about I meet you at yearbook, then? It’s the classroom next door to Weir’s. By the way, you should call your dad to let him know you’re with me.”
“Hey, Will?” I asked.
“What?”
“How come I was going to drop photography?”
“Photography. Photography. Okay, I think you said it was because you thought that the big project was going to take up too much of your time. Also, you didn’t think it was right for your grade to be based on a personal story. I think you thought it left too much to chance. And…that’s it, I think.”
I could tell he was leaving something out. My dad always says to listen for the pauses when you want to know if someone’s hiding something. I asked Will if there was anything else.
“Well. I’m theorizing here. But the first two years of photography are more technical. Like which cameras to use and lighting and processing and Photoshop. But advanced is more creative, more like what your mom does, if you know what I mean. So maybe that was the problem?”
I didn’t say anything, but it sounded like truth. “I’ll see you upstairs,” I said.
The staff cheered for me when I entered the room and everyone sang “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and shook my hand and patted me on the back, like I was some kind of hero. Someone held up a camera that turned out to be the camera, and said that I should have my picture taken with my old nemesis. They rounded up yet another camera, and I pretended to be having a fistfight with the camera, which made everyone laugh. I felt a little overwhelmed and maybe even touched, because it was clear how much these people really did like me, as opposed to the ones I had to eat with in the cafeteria.
All that was wonderful, until I started to realize what the actual business of yearbook entailed. It amounted to a succession of group photos, selling advertisements, and going to conferences about (you guessed it) yearbooks. All this required an endless series of meetings and debates. I wondered why in the world it could possibly take so much time, money, and effort to slap two hard covers around a stack of photographs.
The meeting lasted until around seven o’clock at night. There were photos to approve and copy to edit and schedules to arrange. On the way out, I asked Will how many times yearbook met each week. He laughed and said, “You’re joking, right? We meet every day. Some weekends, too.”
I did the math. That amounted to twenty (plus) hours a week of yearbook.
Seven hundred and twenty hours a school year—not including weekends or yearbook conferences.
Any way you looked at it: a hell of a lot of time.
I hoped that I would get my memory back, so that I would remember what I had liked about yearbook in the first place. I didn’t want to let all these nice people down.