A/N: Song-fic based on the song Yearbook by Hanson. The only song I ever really loved by them. It needed a background to it.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything really, except for the anonymous narrator. Everything else I got from the song.
I opened the book slowly, almost as if I was afraid of what was inside. I looked over all the old signatures. Pen ink had faded over time, but as I ran my finger over all the inscriptions, a small smile played over my lips.
'Hey, girlie, see you in September!' Amy had signed. My memory flashed, seeing a pretty girl with long blonde hair, smiling and waving at me, her flowered sundress billowing in a June breeze.
'You've always been a great friend to me! Hope I'll still see you around! Stay sweet!' was left by Jaime. A tall, athletic girl with short, curly brown hair. Always loud and always fun. I remembered the times we would walk around campus, laughing at nothing.
I scanned over more signatures. Faces and memories flooding over me. Such good times, we were such happy, care-free kids. We thought we were invincible. I know now, as truly as I've ever known anything, I would give anything to be that worry-free again.
I sat back on the floor, my back leaning against the wall of the closet where I was hiding out, thinking of all my old friends. It had been years since I had seen any of them. I couldn't imagine any of them being adults now. They would always be teenagers to me, eternally young in my memories, though I was heading back to my hometown to see them next week.
I turned the pages, looking over all the pictures, nostalgia creeping over me, making me oblivious to everything else around me. People came to life before my eyes as I remembered all the faces of the yearbook.
Finally, I had reached an overly familiar page, one that I had turned to more frequently than the others. The binding was worn from pushing down in this opening, a small area had been warped from where tears had once dampened the selection of pages. I scanned the names and faces of the year I had been apart of.
My eyes fell upon a small space that held the most painful memory of all. The one that I thought of everyday. A small space between the faces that stated "Picture Unavailable". But someone had written over it. Scrawled in a neat, but tiny script, it stated "Never Forget. - Katie".
How could I forget? Tears welled in my eyes at the mystery that had plagued us all for years. We always talked about it. Where was he? What happened to him? Was he alive? Was he dead? Why didn't he say anything to anyone? How can someone just disappear without a trace?
I looked to the name below the space: Johnny Hanson. I only had a brief memory of a tall kid, on the scrawny side, with a mop of shaggy dirty blonde hair, smiling at me , eyes shining through a set of glasses that seemed a bit too large for his face. He was quiet, but liked. Everyone knew him, everyone loved him. Especially Katie.
We had all been shocked when he didn't come to school that day. Just a random Thursday, he wasn't there, but it was strange. We all felt the same uneasiness, not knowing where it was coming from. And then he didn't show up the next day. Or the following week. We had gone to his house one day after school, only to it completely empty, as if no one had ever lived in it at all, thus immortalizing the mystery of Johnny.
Though this strange occurrence was noted quite distinctively throughout the student body, it seemed to go unnoticed by teachers and staff. When asked, they would never give an answer, sidestepping it gracefully, leaving us still to wonder.
There was no investigation ever, nothing at all. He just disappeared, without a trace. No one had answers, and to make matters even stranger, no one seemed to be looking for them either. No one except us. We knew someone had to know something, there was a lying in their silence, and it did not go overlooked.
None of us thought things would ever be the same, and we were right. Time moved on, and a lot of things had changed. Though we didn't talk about it as frequently, we all never forgot about Johnny and the great air of mystique that surrounded his sudden disappearance.
I had moved away for college and I never did a good job of keeping up with my high school friends, but when I received the Five Year Reunion invitation in the mail, I felt the need to go. I wondered if they would still remember him. I wondered if people still talked about him.
ONE WEEK LATER
I stood uncomfortably by the food table, looking out at my graduating class. I still only saw them as teenagers, even as I looked over them as adults now. I made my way to the bartender, quickly ordering anything that would calm my nerves.
Suddenly, someone walked up to the bar, standing next to me. She was petite, with long brown hair, no longer natural due to the need to color-treat as age and stress had taken it's toll. She seemed so familiar, a recognizable sadness about her features. She turned to me suddenly, looking at me intensely.
"Did you ever forget?" she asked me, her voice breaking, tears welling up in her eyes. I stared at her intently.
"Katie?" I asked, the face finally clicking with a memory of a mousy little girl, always looking at the ground when she walked. She had loved Johnny. And we all thought he loved her. But he had left, or something…
She nodded at my questions, confirming who was standing before me.
"Did you ever forget?" she asked me again, tears coming close to spilling. I stared straight into her deep brown eyes and shook my head.
How could I forget? I could never forget.
We'd be talking about the same thing for years, every time we would get together. There was no such thing as getting over it. Someone knew something, but no one ever said anything. As more years went by, the theories got more and more ridiculous, but in the end it all came to the same question: Where did Johnny go?