I looked for a cheery message from Wendy, but didn’t find one. Had the girls been friends or even known each other? If their homerooms had been organized by the first letter of surnames, they should have been together.

I paged through nostalgic photos of the school, empty hallways, the gym, study hall. Following these were page after page of students doing a variety of things. I looked for my sister in a trio of cheerleaders, two suspended high in the air, but she wasn’t there. Wendy would have fit on that page, blinding white smile, lithe figure. I did find her in the homecoming court, looking spectacular in a long, pink sheath slit to her thigh.

I didn’t see sports or clubs, which were probably in the back, and I couldn’t identify my sister in other casual photos, so I kept turning pages.

I reached the senior photos. Seabank High is a large school with almost two thousand students, making Wendy’s many achievements that much grander. With so many students, the senior photos were small, sixteen to a page. Her graduating class had dressed as they saw fit. The boys wore jackets and ties, while the girls wore their Sunday best. As I flipped pages, I saw a multitude of bare shoulders and low necklines, probably the reason the nuns at my school had opted for the traditional academic drape and pearls.

Diana Gordon was at the bottom of a page. Among pretty girls who looked their best, Diana stood out, and not in a good way. Her brown hair had been permed into a frizzy cloud surrounding a long, narrow face. She wasn’t smiling. In fact she was squinting, as if she’d insisted on being photographed without her glasses. She was wearing the type of high-necked, long-sleeved dress I associated with polygamous cults.

Poor Diana had deserved a second photo shoot. I was beginning to understand why her yearbook had ended up at the yard sale.

My gaze moved to the opposite page, where I expected to see my sister. My parents still have a large canvas print from Wendy’s senior photo shoot on a wall in their den. While that photo, showing Wendy against the railing of a footbridge, wasn’t the one in the yearbook, it was magnificent. In contrast, when my turn came, I’d declined the extras. Mom and Dad dutifully displayed my lone head shot in a nice frame on a shelf. My mother still brings up my defection whenever the opportunity arises.

Wendy’s photo was easy to find, but not for the reasons I’d expected. It was the only photograph on the page that had been defaced. My sister’s radiant smile was barely visible under scribbles so violent, they had gouged a hole.

“Whew!” I stared at what remained. Since the yearbook had belonged to one Diana Gordon, the perpetrator was clear. Had Assistant Principal Claire seen the damage? Was this why she’d given me the yearbook? Was she making a point about how little my sister was admired?