This Is Our Story Ch. 01

Author's note: All characters participating in or witnessing sexual encounters are 18 of age or older.

*****

"All right everybody, you've got your assignments. Remember, article deadlines for your next updates are this coming Tuesday. Oh, and we're going to need to get some pictures from the state academic decathlon finals. Any volunteers?" Conner asked his crew.

Like he expected, the yearbook staff one and all directed their eyes anywhere but at their editor-in-chief. He'd been warned about this by his predecessor last year, when he'd been a lowly assistant editor. Everyone was happy to volunteer photography for school dances, football and basketball, pep rallies - the fun stuff. But ask that someone give up a few hours on a Saturday to get a few pics and a quote or two from an academic team... he may as well have asked if anyone was willing to pony up a kidney.

"Fine," he said with a sigh when the awkward silence became too much for him. "Looks like I'll be covering it. Again."

"Attaboy, Conner - now you got something to do this weekend, eh?" gloated Jordan Lyons with his trademark smirk. Conner didn't know how women could find the face of a guy capable of that insufferably smug expression handsome, but they did.

"Thanks, Conner," said Heather before he could even attempt a rebuttal. Not that he would've. Conner was a writer, and his witty banter flagged under the pressure of immediacy. He was glad in this case. Making a fuss in front of Heather would just make him feel even lamer. Ah, Heather Blake. One look and two words from that mouth and he forgave the lot of them. She was the total package - straight A student, blonde bombshell, VP of philanthropy club. The only reason she wasn't an editor herself was because she didn't have the time in her busy schedule to take on all the extra work that came with the position, but failed to pad transcripts. Still, she could bat those eyelashes at him and he'd give her his title and do the work in her name.

Before he could formally conclude the meeting, the bell rang, signaling the end of the period, and since yearbook was last period, the end of the day. Everyone was on their way out the door, and Conner listened as they made plans to meet up at a coffee shop near campus. The editor-in-chief perked his ears up to see if he'd be extended an invite this time, but as usual, it was a closed small group affair. Just Don, and DeShaun, and Marissa, and Siobhan, and Heather, and six or seven of the others. So, basically most of the upperclassmen but him.

As he stayed back and tidied up the office, he forced himself to let it go. That group had been a clique since they'd joined up, and he'd never had any skill at breaking into social groups. It was fine. A positive, really. It meant the team got along and had low drama, and it was easy to form teams for assignments. That he was often the odd man out meant that his own work was done to his high standards. That was how he chose to see it, anyway. Conner had always been one to try to see things in the best possible light.

"Conner? What're you still doing here?" came a voice behind him. Miss Coszic-Lewandoski - known by all as Miss C, for obvious reasons - was coming back to the room from their small computer lab; though she was the teacher of the Northside High School yearbook class, she generally let her editor-in-chief run the show. Miss C said she didn't like to step on his toes and often used the period to tend to the rest of her workload. Still, the young teacher was always there if he needed support, and he knew her hands off approach stemmed largely from the trust she had in his work. She touched base with him to make sure all ran smoothly and otherwise spent her time instructing the freshmen writers and running the occasional workshop. (Conner suspected the latter was mostly so there would be some material to test them over.)

"Oh, just tidying up. Looks like I'm heading up to Indy this weekend to get pics of the academic decathlon, so I need to borrow one of the laptops and cameras."

The young teacher put her hands on her hips - hips he might admire if she wasn't his teacher and his mentor. At times, almost a friend. (OK, so he admired themsometimes, but only in the privacy of his own imagination.) "Conner. When are you going to start delegating?"

He forced a banal smile as he packed one of the department cameras in his backpack. "It's OK - I don't mind. Who knows, maybe I'll meet one of those decathlete babes."

She chuckled. "Best of luck, killer. Oh and hey, since you're taking one of the laptops, you're the first to know. We got that grant for some new software. Remember talking about that last spring? The customized package." Conner nodded, vaguely recalling her mentioning it, but not much more than that. "I just got it installed on all the machines. You're going to love it. Intuitive as heck. We'll go over some of the features on Monday, but I think you'll be able to figure it out."

"Oh. Anything I need to know for the weekend?"

"Nah. Just use your school ID to log in, and it'll prompt you to set up a password."

"Cool cool. Thanks, Miss C." He carefully tucked the laptop behind the camera, then signed both out on the sheet. "Have a good weekend!"

"You too, Conner. And hey," she said, placing her slender hand on his shoulder, so he turned. "Remember. You're editor-in-chief. That means you're in charge, OK? Don't be afraid to start acting like it." She gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze, and he let himself out into the empty halls.

Academic decathlon was every bit as exciting as he'd thought it might be - a bunch of four point something GPAs taking tests in closed rooms. He'd hoped to get the team together for a few shots at the start of the day, then see if he could coax a few posed shots out of individuals and head back home. It was nearly a two-hour drive each way, after all. Instead, the team had beaten him there and immediately scattered to half a dozen places around the host school. It had taken almost eight hours before the Northside decathletes finally reunited, only then his picture was interrupted by the start of the award ceremony, which went on for another hour and a half. When that finally ended, he managed to plead with the team to pose long enough for a single picture before getting back on their bus to head home.

Thanks to a hell of a rainstorm on his drive back, the two-hour trip became three and Conner didn't get home until half past eleven. By then, he was so irritated and so exhausted that he went straight to bed.

"So how was the spelling bee thing yesterday?" his mom asked as he shuffled groggily to the table the next morning. "Must've been pretty groovy if you didn't make it in until going on midnight. One egg or two?"

"Ugh. One, Mom, thanks. But ugh. You go to an academic decathlon meet knowing it's got to be about the most boring thing in the world, but then you get there, and it's somehow evenmore boring than you thought it could be."

She set a cup of apple juice down for her son. "That's too bad. At least you had time to get your work done, so you can enjoy your Sunday."

He shook his head. "I wish. See, Hailey McManus was there. Remember I told you about her, how she's, like, obsessed with me?"

"That's the girl from the, what, the dance last year, right?"

Was it ever. Conner had gone with this girl Katalina; he'd been a junior and she a senior. He'd known his date was just a friend thing, and they'd really only gone to get dressed up and have some fun dancing. (Also Conner was taking pictures for yearbook, naturally.) Then in the middle of it, he'd found Hailey crying in a stairwell all by herself. Conner recognized the heavyset girl from a shared class or two over the years, but didn't really know her; still, a crying woman was a crying woman. He asked if she was all right, and learned her date had dumped her for her pretty friend two days before the dance. She'd come here tonight to confront them, but the boy had just held up his nose and made a pig noise and told her to lose some weight.

Genuinely moved, Conner had sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulder, saying whatever he could come up with to comfort her. He hadn't meant to convey even the least romantic interest, but ever since then she'd been carrying a torch for him. For a while he'd had to pretend he had a girlfriend from a nearby school, but after a few months he'd accepted that while he was claiming to be in a relationship, he couldn't date anybody else, Hailey or not. Now he just tried to avoid one-on-one proximity with her without being too rude about it - a feat which yesterday's event had rendered impossible.

He hadn't known she'd been on the team; if he had, he might've preemptively taken Miss C's advice about delegating. Conner had brought along his novel for German, some pre-cal homework, and figured if he had time he could always check out the new yearbook software. Instead, he barely finished the reading. Every time she finished one of her tests, there was Hailey. She brought him drinks, showed a rabid interest in his schoolwork [that she was preventing him from working on], insisted on taking him to lunch... she wound up coopting the lion's share of his day. At one point he'd tried hiding in a little nook behind a trophy case, but sure enough she'd found him. Like a hunting dog following a fox's scent.

Conner didn't dislike the girl, per se. There was no physical attraction, and she could babble a bit if she wasn't stopped, but those weren't the deal-breaker for him. It was simply that Hailey had no self-esteem, always running herself down and refusing to be talked out of it. Maybe that was an appeal to some guys, knowing a girl felt she had no choice but to tolerate whatever she had to in order to keep her man. For Conner, it just made him sad. Hailey was a smart girl, and in a handful of years he hoped her world would sort itself out. She'd use those smarts to land a career doing something that brought her happiness, develop some confidence. But this was now, not a decade hence, and like Hailey, Conner was grappling with the now.

A now that, last night, had culminated in Hailey nervously asking him if she could ride home with him from the meet, and him replying in what was probably transparently bullshit that his mom didn't let him drive with other kids in the car. Her capacity for rejection exceeded, she'd quietly nodded and made her way to the team bus, and he to his car. Conner hoped it hadn't hurt her, even as he hoped she'd been hurt enough to back off.

"You oughta go ahead and give her a shot, man. You're not exactly beating them off with a broom," said his stepsister Angelica as she settled into the table. "Plenty ofother beating off though, I bet..."

He glared. Her dad had married his mom just two years back, and their children had never learned to get along. Luckily she was away at college most of the year down in Bloomington, but she'd just gotten home for their fall break while he'd been at the tournament yesterday. "Well I'd tell you to date every jerk who shows an interest in you, but it looks like you already took my advice."

"Kids," his mom interjected before they got worse. "She does have a point, you know, Conner. It'd do you some good to do a little dating. You're such a handsome boy, and it's about time you gave the poor girls of the world a break."

"Giveme a break," mumbled Angelica.

He wolfed down his eggs, glowering at his plate. "Thanks for breakfast, Mom. I'm gonna get some work done."

"'Work,' he's calling it now," said Angelica with a grin.

"You're up awfully early. Don't your kind burst into flame in direct sunlight?" he grumped back.

Back in his room, Conner buckled down. The bulk of his homework only took a couple hours, slowed down somewhat because Owen wouldn't stop pestering him to hang out. A promise to make an effort that evening was the only thing that finally shut him up. With Owen pacified and his homework complete, Conner finally got out his borrowed laptop and logged in.

He realized he hadn't even asked the name of the new app, but it turned out to be obvious; it was named for the title of the Northside High School yearbook,This Is Our Story. The name had actually been Conner's idea, the first time in its seventy-four year history the volume had been more than just "the yearbook." He'd successfully lobbied Miss C during his junior year to call it something more personal to the students it was made for, and when she'd consented, the staff had unanimously approved his proposed new title.

This Is Our Story. This wouldn't be another high school annual full of pictures, signed and forgotten. With Conner at the helm, this was going to be a book that captured the times and travails and triumphs of his class. He would include a piece of everyone.

Conner double-clicked the program. After a lengthy load time, a login box popped up. He used his default school login like Miss C had said, and from there a second box asked for his "user level," with a bulleted list he could click. There was staff, editor, senior editor, faculty, and another one that he could type into.

Editor-in-chief had been a hard-won title. All across America, the top student position in yearbook was senior editor. The title of editor-in-chief meant that the student was the ultimate authority on the production rather than a member of the faculty, as was traditionally the case. Conner had joined yearbook in middle school, before there was even a class for it. Back then, one of his teachers had done it by himself for a small stipend. Conner had asked the faculty editor if he could join him in putting it together. Ever one for nostalgia and mementos, he'd grown up helping his mom with her scrapbooking and photography hobbies, and his interest had grown from there. Fast forward five years and he was the workhorse of the yearbook staff, always on call, always ready to get the quote, take the photo, write the spread.

While it wouldn't be quite accurate to say Conner was gifted with foresight, he was at least keenly aware of the value of memory, and he understood too how they tended to distort and fade. For Conner Fishers, editing the yearbook wasn't a mere hobby or a bullet point on his college applications. It was the preservation of the strangest and most wonderful, terrible, ephemeral years of these students' lives. It was a chance to take their stories and tell them the way they ought to be told, and leave a record that would last forever.

It had been Miss C's suggestion to elevate him to editor-in-chief. Dorky or no, it had been one of the young man's proudest moments. With a fond smile for his teacher, he entered the title in the box and clicked enter.

Checking... said a new box, and the mouse turned into a rotating hourglass. "Checking for what?" he muttered, but let it do its thing. A few minutes later, a new box appeared.

Editor-in-chief privileges granted. User has override authority in regards to other users. Caution: this setting is still in beta test. Note that some features may not fully function or may cause unintended effects. Do you wish to use Editor-in-chief mode?

He could click yes or no. Beta test? Override other users? He wondered if that even included Miss C. It would be handy to easily edit his peers' spreads, he supposed, though he knew his perfectionist tendencies could make him over-do it. Conner worried about the prospect of glitches, but figured the school wouldn't have bought this software package if it was still that buggy. Conner clicked a confident Yes.

Once he was in, the software was pretty similar to what they'd used before, though it seemed more integrated. There was the list of student names indexed to their photos, which he could easily use to tag them elsewhere in the yearbook. There was a dizzying number of menus and options, many of them with some rather daunting jargon. (The Adjustments sub-menu under the Photo Assimilation sub-menu under the Integration tab allowed him to choose between over seventy different styles, half of which he had never even heard of.)

For now, Conner restricted himself to only those needed for his academic decathlon spread. After all, fanciness could always be added in later when he was more familiar with the functionality. He made a few notes on what he'd like to see in the full text - a quote from a member, from the coach, something about the seniors, any details about outstanding achievements.

From there, he organized the spread and inserted one of the photos. With the team roster in hand, he labeled the ones he recognized, then went back and used their names to look up ID photos to get the rest. Luckily school pictures had only just been taken, so people still looked mostly like their pics. (By the time prom came around, it was sometimes a crap shoot trying to match haircuts and fashion styles.) Most people dressed up and did their hair nicer for picture day, after all, and some cleaned up better than others.

As he added her name to the roster, Conner curiously brought up Hailey McManus's class picture. There she was, doughy Hailey, her hair doing its best to overcome its stringy nature. Poor thing. Doomed to go through high school awkward and miserable. It was her further misfortune that immediately next to her was none other than Hayleigh McKnight. The comparison was inevitable; nicknames that Conner preferred not to acknowledge were the common method by which people distinguished the two. After all, although she was also a Hayleigh in pronunciation, it was there any resemblance ended. A copper-skinned goddess with an unlikely mane of pristine auburn hair that Conner swore was more at place in a shampoo ad than his yearbook; face of an angel's hotter sister; an abundance of cleavage that even Miss C's best editing efforts couldn't expunge from her yearbook photo; a butt that made the boys of NHS want to cheer for any teacher who put her in the front of the room.

Hailey McManus, Hayleigh McKnight. A typo in creation and that could be her as homecoming queen, popular and beloved, envied, or feared by all. Conner was no fan of the prettier girl, either; if half the rumors were true, her reputation for being a world-class asshole was well-deserved and probably even understated. What might Hailey have been like had she shared a few more strands of Hayleigh's DNA? With a pitying smile, he clicked and dragged Hayleigh's photo where Hailey's was.Confirm swap? It asked. Conner rolled his eyes at the unnecessary security and clicked Yes.

What the hell. For a few minutes, let Hailey be beautiful, even if only for him.

Only...

"What thehell?" he said aloud after tabbing back to the academic decathlon photo. He'd done a double-take after entering Yang Na's name in its ordered place on line two. There, standing in the front row of the assembled team was none other than Hayleigh McKnight. She was most definitely not on any academic teams. Then why was she...

She was standing right where Hailey McManus had been when he'd added her name to the roster not ten minutes ago.

The roster still read the same. Line two, third from the left, Hailey McManus. But this girl was thin and beautiful and wholly out of place with such a pleasant smile on her face. He tried hitting ctrl+z a few times to see if he'd somehow hit a button or tapped a shortcut. There Hayleigh remained. As Conner studied the spread, it became clear that somehow, the program had edited the academic decathlon photo to show what, according to his photo swap, was the appearance of Hailey McManus.

This was insane. No matter how he zoomed in, he couldn't see the slightest trace of editing. He was no pro, but he'd used enough digital photo editing programs to know how to keep things smooth. Zoom in 1000% and one could always see those tell-tale signs of tampering. Not this, though. This was flawless. Weirder, upon checking he realized it wasn't even like it used Hayleigh's school picture. That was a wry smile, head tilted off to the left; the academic decathlon photo was a toothy grin straight on. Could it be inserting a photo of Hayleigh McKnight from one of her own photos elsewhere in the yearbook? If it was, he couldn't find where the image was stored. He'd assumed all their previous spreads were still saved to the old software and that they would have to be ported over. Nothing here suggested otherwise.