Page 77 of Forgotten Dreams
I follow her as she takes her keys out of her pocket and opens the door before turning on the light and stepping in. “They are all dated by year,” she says of the boxes that are facing us piled on shelves. She holds open the door for me as she steps into the room, and you can smell the oldness of the room. “It will most likely be in this area,” she says, looking at the second shelf. “Yup, this is from twenty-five to thirty years ago.” She calculates the years written on the box. I grab the small footstool they have, walking over and grabbing the handle to the brown box before stepping down. The inch layer of dust on the top of the box shows you this hasn’t been opened in the longest fucking time. “You can take that box and look at it on one of the desks.”
I follow her out and see Sierra standing there pacing back and forth in front of the door. “I’ll be at my desk if you need anything.”
I look over at her. “You ready for this?” I ask, putting the box on the table. “It’s literally like opening Pandora’s box.”
She takes one look at me and nods, rubbing her hands together. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 33
Sierra
I look at the box that has dust on it, my heart hammering in my chest, my knees just a touch weak, and my palms are clammy. And I don’t even know if there is anything in the box that will help me. Nothing. I just know this box might hold some answers, but nothing in life is this sure.
When I woke up this morning, something pushed me to go check the local high school. I don’t know why, but it was like a force I couldn’t really explain. So now here I am with the box in front of me, and it feels like I’m really lifting the cover off Pandora’s box. “I’m so nervous.” I laugh. “It’s crazy, right?”
“A little bit,” Caleb replies with a sly smile. “Do you want me to open the box first?”
“No.” I shake my head and pull up the top of the brown box, seeing the old yearbooks stacked in two piles. “I don’t think we should start twenty-five years ago since she was having me, so maybe twenty-six years ago.”
I grab the one on top that is just twenty years old, placing it beside the box and then going one by one until I find the one that is twenty-six years old. “It smells old,” I tell him as I crack open the book. The pages are glossy and some stick together. “How different it was back then,” I say as I look at the first page of the whole school outside taking a group shot. “Lots of bucket hats.” I laugh as I search the crowd, trying to see if my face pops out.
I turn the pages. With each page, I feel like someone is going to jump out at me, but nothing happens. We see the pages for the graduates first, a couple of pictures of different groups of friends. A couple of pictures of activities that had been happening around the school year: a barbecue, a Christmas one, a ski trip. My eyes roam over the last names, and when I get to D, there is nothing there. I move along to eleventh grade, checking for anyone with the Dyson name and also come up empty. I go until the ninth grade and then close the book. “Well, one year done,” I say, trying not to feel defeated.
“Baby, the chance that you’d find it on the first try was slim to none.” He puts his arm around me, and he pulls me to him as he kisses the side of my head. “Nothing has come easy this whole journey, you really thought you would open the first one and boom, it would be there?”
I feel the dryness in my eyes as I blink and turn to look at him, staring at me. “I know it was crazy, but I did think I would open it and it would be there.”
He shakes his head, grabbing the next one and opening it up, as I place the one in my hand to the side. He opens it up and isn’t like me when he looks for the Dyson name. He doesn’t take a second before he goes to the graduating year, seeing no Dyson, and then going to the rest of the grades. It takes him a full minute to place it on top of the other one and then he grabs the next one.
“Every single time we place one on the side, it feels like a lid is being shut,” I tell him, and he smiles.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he responds, picking up the next one. He then fans the book until he gets to the graduating class and comes up empty, and then stops when he gets to eleventh grade. “Holy shit!” he exclaims and I look over at the picture his finger is on. It’s Fiona Dyson. I gasp when I see her. Our features are very similar. We each have the same color hair and her eyes are blue, whereas mine are a green hazel. “Do you think?” he asks as I take the book from him, my eyes fixated on her as she smiles at the camera.
“I have no idea,” I answer him. “I spoke to Sonia and she said we know who you are. So it could be.” I turn the pages to the younger grade and then finally, three years later, I find Sonia. She looks very much like Fiona. Her hair is a darker color—almost like a chestnut—and her eyes are brown, but they have the same shape of eyes, which are mine, along with the same nose.
“It makes no sense that they were here this year and then gone,” Caleb notes, grabbing the yearbook after the one in my hand, and he finds the page. “Here she is again,” he says, “so they left town after this year.”
“How are we doing here?” The librarian comes over and smiles at us.
“Amazing,” Caleb answers her. “I was wondering how one would get a copy of a certain yearbook?”
“That would depend on if there are any extras,” she says. “Usually we print twenty extra, just in case you have a student who forgot and then those go into storage.”
He grabs the one in my hand and then closes it so she can see the year on the front written in silver. “We were looking for this one.”
“Let me check in the storage room,” she tells him.
“Would you like me to help you?” he offers her and she smiles bashfully at him.
“That would be lovely,” she says, turning and walking toward the room.
“If she wasn’t seventy,” I start to mumble, “and I was confident in what a catch I am, I would seriously wonder who else you are flirting with all day long.” He chuckles, giving me a kiss before leaving and walking out of the room.
I look down at the picture of her, it’s the younger her. The next picture the year after shows how much she changed in a year. I find Sonia and she looks even younger with braces on. My hand hovers over her picture.
It’s a couple of minutes later when I see the door open, the librarian walking out first followed by Caleb, who holds the book up in his hand. “We found one,” the librarian says.
“We did,” Caleb confirms, “and she gave us fifty percent off since it’s been a long time, so instead of thirty-five dollars it’s seventeen fifty.”
