Rhonda Wellington Lloyd was on top of the world. There it was posted on the same school bulletin board they used for theatre call-backs. The sign-up sheet. Not just any sign-up sheet, but THE sign-up sheet that was the most important one in the whole world. It was the sign-sheet for the Yearbook Committee.

It didn't matter that no one else wanted to volunteer for such menial, extracurricular tasks such as figuring out what font to use or where the page numbering should go. A yearbook was a yearbook as far as everyone was concerned but to Rhonda Lloyd it wasn't. The yearbook was immortality and so she took out her best pink-ink pen with a bit of pom-pom glued on the end. She lowered it to the posted sign-up sheet and signed her name in letters so large they took up four name spaces instead of one.

"There," said Rhonda Lloyd spinning her pen like a baton and putting it away smugly. She admired her scrawling name at the top of an otherwise empty list. "I am going to make this the best yearbook anyone in Hillwood has ever seen." Then Rhonda shut her eyes and smiled with contentment, savoring this moment she had so long waited for.

The next day Rhonda headed straight for the teacher's lounge at breaktime, hoping to catch sight of the tall woman in a lab coat who taught half of the sixth grade. There was someone new teaching the second half of the sixth grade school population, for Arnold's class and those beneath him represented something of a baby boom. This district in Hillwood had no short supply of children and the classrooms had been sorely taxed for it before the new school additions. But now, the faculty was bracing itself for the day when Arnold's class would be let loose of Mr. Simmons and melded with a whole hoard of almost equally misbehaved children.

Rhonda found exactly whom she was looking for. It was the same woman whom had given them all an extremely long, overly educational lecture tour at the aquarium during the teacher's strike. A lab coat and high-heels were not Rhonda's preferred look. But she did not care, either, for once so long as she got to work on the yearbook.

"You do know my name is on the sign-up sheet, don't you?" Rhonda asked with both arrogance and desperation. "Rhonda W. Lloyd? The one who is going to work on the yearbook? Please tell me you'll have me work on the yearbook!" Rhonda ended her speech by begging, earning herself a stare.

"Yes, well, Rhonda is it? I am happy to see such... interest. We will have a yearbook committee, but it is a committee. I'm giving everyone of your grade two weeks to have a chance to sign up to contribute. After that, creating the yearbook may take several months."

"Months?" said Rhonda laughing with immodesty. "I could do it in a week. But why rush perfection?" Rhonda Lloyd asked, assuming a manner more smug than ever. "When's the photo shoot?"

"Not till October," said the school teacher.

"Great, great!" Rhonda declared clasping her palms together before spreading her arms wide as if to embrace the whole, round world. "Because this year I think we should go with a more high quality photographer," she extolled. "And I plan to oversee grooming for photo day personally. I mean much more than handing out free combs," Rhonda sniffed holding up one hand as if holding an invisible, but objectionable plastic hair comb. "I'm talking about revolutionizing our whole class. Pedicures. Manicures. Braided hair. Trust me, I'll make it so everyone in my class looks like a magazine model for our picture day. And then, the typesetting for the yearbook itself will be unparalleled!"

"Wow. Such… dedication," the woman in the lab coat declared quietly. Rhonda failed to observe she was a little unnerved by Rhonda's diehard devotion. "As I said, the sign-up sheet will be up for two more weeks and then you and all your committee member partners will meet with me so I can explain the project in detail to you. Does that sound good to you?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" said Rhonda nodding her head up and down. "Just don't forget the name. It's Rhonda Wellington Lloyd!" said the girl with shocking swagger. "I'm going to rock this world of P.S. 118 and see to it that everyone is... FASHIONABLE for picture day this year!" Rhonda held her nose up high and gloried in her imagined future.

Over the next two weeks, Rhonda returned to the sign-up sheet to stare at it each and every day. If any one approached it while she was standing there on break, she glared at them so that she actually scared away several students who might have participated. But toward the very end of the two week, Rhonda gaped at the sign-up sheet to see four names besides herself. Patty Smith, Katrinka, Nadine, and Nate.

"Nate? Who's Nate?" said Rhonda wrinkling up her eyebrow in disgust. A geeky kid down the hallway waved a friendly hand and grinned.

"Ooookay," said Rhonda wondering at the dweeb who had appeared out of nowhere. She had never seen him in Hillwood before. "It doesn't really matter. I may not be the only one working on this year's yearbook. But I am the most important one," said Rhonda in an attempt to recover some of her runaway pride.

Rhonda strutted proudly into the first meeting of the newly minted Yearbook Committee. She carried with her a stackful of paper samples of different colors, in delicate shades from rose pink to antique yellow. Rhonda had said she would make this the best yearbook ever and she meant it. But buying expensive quality paper was not to be, for the very first thing their teacher said was, "okay children, so first we need to establish the budget. The yearbooks need to cost only ten to fifteen dollars apiece to produce. And you will have to sell each and every one that you can to recoup the cost for our school fund. So I recommend squeezing the pictures as tightly together as you can and using black and white copies for any page that doesn't have photos."

"Bla...black and white copies?!" Rhonda stuttered horrified. "Oh, no, no no! Tell me it isn't so! We can't do that! It's simply garish!"

"Well, you can have fewer pages," their teacher proposed. "Here are some sample copies of yearbooks from years prior. You might find ideas of things to do."

"This one is held together with a single staple!" Rhonda exclaimed lifting up one of the yearbooks in disgust.

"Yes. The budget that year was slim and so there wasn't enough for binding," explained their teacher. Rhonda buried her face in her hands.

"Please tell me there is enough money for binding this year," the poor girl lamented.

"Well, that depends," said the tall, high-heeled teacher with a grave expression.

"Depends on what?" Rhonda asked, horrified.

"It depends on if you print it on the backs of used sheets of paper or not."

"Argh!" Rhonda exclaimed with horror.

That night, Ronda sat at her make-up vanity on the chair with pencil in her hand and a piece of paper sprawled out in front of her. She tapped the eraser tip against her temple.

"Hm," Rhonda thought. The door to her bedroom opened.

"Something the matter, dumpling?" said her father, coming just inside the door to check on her. Rhonda looked up at her father with wide eyes.

"Just something I'm working on for school, Daddy. Say, Daddy?" asked Rhonda hesitantly. "If you didn't have, say, enough money for a new yacht or something? What would you do?"

"Hm," said her raven-haired father resting a hand under his chin and wrinkling up his mustache as he thought. "Well, I'd shop around, darling. Maybe you can find what you're looking for at a discount. Not that Lloyds ordinarily need discounts. But say, dumpling, that there is this new sweater that you really want. Other merchants may offer a similar sort of item for lower cost. It's called, 'pricing', dumpling."

"Thank you, Daddy," said Rhonda blowing him a big kiss. "You're a big help!" Her father smiled softly then closed the door again, leaving Rhonda to read over her sheet of notebook paper.

But the one who was really the most helpful to Rhonda was Big Patty. She and Rhonda walked to the stationary and supplies store along Arnold's usual route home from school. Blank notebooks were lined in the shop display window. They pressed open the door and sauntered inside to the tingle of an old shopbell.

"See, look," Big Patty explained to Rhonda. "I knew they would have discounted items. What are you looking for?"

"Paper!" said Rhonda launching herself almost upside-down into the bin. "Lots and lots of paper! Eureka! She pulled three different packages of paper in different pastel shades free from the bin, then frowned at them in disappointment.

"There's not nearly enough for even the cover pages."

"Don't worry!" Big Patty consoled the girl. "There are lots of stores in Hillwood that sell paper. We can go to each and find a little bit at each place."

"Good idea," Rhonda agreed, her words exhaled with a bit of relief. Ultimately, Rhonda, Patty, Katrinka, Nadine, and Nate all wound up at meeting in front a huge stack of multicolored paper.

"Okay, no touching until the final goes to the print shop, okay?" Rhonda fussed. "These papers are not for rough drafts." Rhonda took a few pieces of the paper scraps their teacher had provided to them free of charge and distributed them around the table.

"Now, the binding is going to cost lots, so everything has to be done perfect the first time, no mistakes. Nadine, Katrinka, I want the two of you to help me with beautician booths set up on picture day. Patty, you can interview all the students for quotes in the yearbook, if you don't mind," Rhonda said gingerly lest she upset the big, powerful, on-occasion bully-of-a-girl. "Nate, you put all the little pictures together on the page, perfectly. With my photo blown up, of course."

"Rhonda, that's not fair," objected Nadine, her best friend. "Everyone's photo should be the same size. Unless you added a few group photos with yourself included. That'd be fair."

"Yeah. That'd be kind of neat," agreed Patty. Katrinka nodded her head while grinning.

"Humph!" said Rhonda crossing her arms together in a pout. "And what do you have to say about it?" she said to the most silent member of their committee, the weird new kid Nate.

"Um, glue?" suggested Nate rather clueless. Rhonda rolled her eyes. Things weren't going as smoothly as she had envisioned. But the making of the yearbook had now begun. No matter what, Rhonda was not going to give up on making her yearbook awesome.