Jem got to his feet.He stretched.He wasn’t wearing socks, and that seemed like a bad sign.He padded down the hall, found a pair of socks in the bedroom, and pulled them on.Then he went into the bedroom they used as an office.
Tean was already at the computer.
“What’s going on with your dad?”Jem asked.“Did something happen?”
“He decided we needed to clean out my grandfather’s apartment.Today.All of it.Which meant going through every box, right now, and having a beautiful stroll down memory lane.”
That tone—annoyance right on the edge of anger—wasn’t Tean.And Jem was smart enough, sometimes, to keep his mouth shut.
Not for long, though, because for some reason a moment later he was saying, “What’s the rush?That’s a big project.”
“That’s what I said.”
“And they said you had to leave work right then to help?”
“No, Amos told me everyone was over there, which means I’m a bad member of my family if I’m not there too.”
“He said that?”
“Of course not.And then Seth was somewhere and Amos was somewhere and Miriam and Sara never have to do anything because they’re always watching their kids—never mind that Miriam’s kids are all in school and she spends half her day buying stuff online and then returning it—and Tim and Corom didn’t have to come because they have to work to provide for their families.”
To punctuate this flow of words, Tean hammered the Enter key on the keyboard.
The screen changed to a new site: the Uintah High School’s online collection of yearbooks.
Jem rubbed Tean’s shoulder.The muscles were tight.
“Never mind that I have a family too,” Tean said.“I have a job.I have a career I’ve worked really hard for, actually, and I’m proud of it, and I can’t rush out of work in the middle of the day because there’s some sort of family emergency, only it turns out it’s not an emergency, it’s my dad’s combination of nostalgia and hero-worship, and the real stuff that needs to get done—like finding a funeral home—stillhasn’t happened.”He shook himself, like he was trying to throw off the bad mood, and although he was clearly trying to lighten his tone, his voice was still stiff when he said, “How’s it going with the vows?”
“Great.I finished today.”
The words just popped out of Jem.
“You did?”Tean twisted around to look at him.“That’s wonderful.”
Smile.Tell the truth.Say it was a bad joke, and you’re still working on them.Hell, even that’s a lie.Say you promise you’ll get them written tonight.
But he only nodded at the screen and asked, “What’s this?”
Settling into the chair again, Tean said, “This is the digitized archive of the Uintah High yearbook.Which, I hope, might help us figure out who S is.”
“That’s a lot of yearbooks.”
“We don’t have to look at all of them.We only have to look at the years that Kai was a student, and each graduating class is somewhere between two hundred and three hundred kids.That means twelve hundred names.And we’re only looking for the ones that start with S.”
“God, that sounds so boring.”When Tean twisted around in the seat, Jem said, “Uh, I mean, send me the link and tell me where you want me to start.”
They split up the years, and Jem retreated to the couch and the iPad.He started with Kai’s junior year and began scrolling through the other members of the junior class.After about five minutes, he had a headache from zooming in to read the tiny names.And even though Tean had been optimistic about it, it felt like it was taking forever.
He jotted down all the S names that he saw: Shelly, Sara, Sandy, Scott, even one runty guy named Simon.When he finished, he found Kai’s senior class yearbook and repeated the process.The same kids with S-names—minus Simon, plus a Sara and a Sariah—showed up again.And when Jem had finished, he reallydidhave a headache, and he had a list of names that didn’t help him at all.
“Any luck?”Tean asked as he came into the living room.
“I mean, I found some names.I don’t know if that counts as luck.”
Tean perched on the edge of the couch.He compared his lists with Jem’s.Aside from a handful of students who must have moved away or transferred in, the lists remained relatively consistent across the four years.Tean borrowed the iPad and went back to look at each face.Then he said, “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
