When 10th-grader Mike loses his family and both legs in an automobile accident, he is predictably withdrawn and highly resistant to those intent on helping him. Just as total academic and social detachment seem inevitable, the yearbook committee at his Vancouver high school offers Mike a job assembling a 50th anniversary feature. He accepts, but only because the assignment will free him from attending the soporific history class taught by the dreaded Mr. Dorfman. The plot takes a supernatural turn when an eighth-grade yearbook assistant, Sarah, turns up. Her persistent peppiness gradually defrosts Mike, and young love seems destined to run its course until he reports to his post one day to find Sarah bloodied and weeping in a corner. When she runs out, Mike notifies school officials who inform him that they have no record of her existence. Eventually, yearbooks reveal that she was a student there, but was slain in an unsolved murder dating back to 1982. In subsequent appearances, Sarah reveals the identity of her killer, and Mike sees that justice is done. Unfortunately, while the plot has some compelling ingredients, the third-person narrative relies so heavily on awkward chunks of bald exposition to prop up the tinny dialogue that any personal and spiritual epiphanies that the story's ambitious conclusion might hold are simply not realized.

AR,5.1,5

$7.95