I Just Got a Letter from Allyson Pringle

by Anya Bateman

  But laughter can also make it very hard to get out your lines. Parker Teal was up first. Alysse did a huge, oversized twist and pointed to him to indicate that it was his turn. Poor Parker sputtered like a plugged faucet. She did another twist, this time pointing at Parker sideways with both index fingers as she looked forward, which made him snort even more. Alysse tapped her foot with exaggeration, her eyes raised. Then she lay down on her side and pointed to Parker with a foot. When Parker still couldn’t get it out, Alysse said his lines for him, moving his hands as if he were a puppet. The students really liked that.

  John Fallon, who could normally blast it out, had just as hard a time coughing up his lines and went completely limp when Alysse pretended he was a puppet—to the point that he fell over and lay on his back, his chest heaving. Even Tyrone, who’d had lots of practice containing himself on the stage, couldn’t seem to keep it together, and Alysse had to cover for him as well.

  Now it was my turn, and I gasped for breath and wiped my eyes, fully expecting Alysse to bail me out too. But when Alysse pulled me forward and said, “Come on, Deputy Chuckles, give us your reason for voting for Allyson Pringle!” I caught something: a subtle but pleading look on her face. Although she was putting on a good show, Alysse, I could tell, wasn’t all that excited at the prospect of performing the entire skit by herself. I swallowed in an effort to get control, managed to pull in a breath, and then willed myself to get out the words: “ . . . voting fer Allyson Pringle cuz she’s . . .” That was as far as I got. I paused, lowered my head, snorted again, took another breath, lifted my head, and tried once more: “Cuz she’s . . .”

  “Yer makin’ me nervous now, pardner,” Alysse blared out. “Cuz she’s what?”

  I took another gasp and finally pushed it through: “Cuz she’s the best durn cowgal in these-here parts.”

  “Wahoo!” shouted Alysse. Then, possibly out of relief that somebody had finally gotten out some lines, she jumped into the air, her feet turned up. The second she landed, she pointed at me, indicating I was to follow.

  Caught up in the moment, the laughter of the audience, the craziness, I, Kendall Archer, did just that. But we hadn’t rehearsed anything like it, and, fearful that I would land on my right leg, which sometimes gave me a little trouble even back then, I stumbled, but only a little. I did lose my hat, though, and after picking it up, I lifted my hand. “Lemme try that again,” I said with a nasal tone and what I hoped resembled a western drawl. Had I really just said that?

  “He sez he’s takin’ another shot at it,” Allyson let the audience know.

  As the students quieted down, I took a step or two to gain momentum and then jumped into the air once again, this time with both feet out and up. I’d had many a slam-dunk contest with my brother, and I have to say I got up there pretty high. The instant I landed (making sure most of the weight was on my better leg) I lifted both hands in victory. The students went crazy. “Wahoo!” several shouted.

  Looking amazed and amused, Alysse pointed at me, grinning and nodding. “Musta got you mixed up. You must be Deputy Chuckles’ twin brother, Jumpin’ Jack Jehosafats! We’ll call you JJ and J.”

  I snorted along with the others at this nickname as Alysse moved toward Tallulah. I suspected that my making it through my part helped her spit out hers as well. And then the others who still had lines found the control to get their parts out.

  Next, Alysse announced that we would all be doing a “clip clop” dance. You need to know your limitations, and I was happy to move to my position on the back row, where I mostly just bobbed my head in rhythm. We’d only practiced as a group once, but I got the impression, by the students’ reaction, that we were looking pretty good or at least that it didn’t really matter if we didn’t.

  Tyrone got big cheers during a little solo stick-riding, which consisted of his jumping over his stick horse handle several times. The guy was agile. “Old Ty is horsin’ around again,” Alysse said. She turned toward the rest of us then and said, “Next?” Since I had already participated, I felt no concern as Alysse surveyed the group. But suddenly she headed in my direction. What was she doing? The next thing I knew, she was pulling me out from behind John Fallon. “Come on, Jumpin’ Jack, yer turn agin.”

  I’d had my turn! But Alysse was insistent, and soon there I was front and center. Since I wasn’t into stick riding, and since it appeared she wasn’t going to let this go, I did all I could think of to do. I jumped again. Holding my “horse” in a vertical position alongside me, we rose into the air. After we landed—my knee luckily cooperating again—I had both of us bow (me and the “horse,” that is).

  “Wahoo!” several more shouted, as classmates really clapped and laughed this time, a few even standing to get a better view.

  “And it’s JJ and J,” said Alysse, “at it again!” There was a delayed reaction to the initials. With one last “yee-haw,” Alysse galloped off the stage. The rest of us quickly followed, Tyrone lifting his hat. “Yee-haw! Vote for Alysse!”

  “Yee-haw!” I heard myself repeat.

  Ours was the last skit, and as we met offstage, laughing and giving each other high fives, I immediately looked for Allyson, hungry to get that pat on the back I deserved. But as the others congratulated themselves, I noticed that Alysse was standing alone near the curtain, a strange, almost terrified look on her face. And then Alysse turned toward us and said something that would have knocked us right off our stick horses had we still been riding them. “Thanks for your help and support, guys. That was terrific. Too terrific. I gotta go back out there and tell them not to vote for me.”

  “What? What did she say?” Tyrone stared at her in confusion as the others turned toward her almost in unison. “What’d you say?” She had all their attention now.

  “Look, you did so well that now I’m afraid I might win, and the truth is, I just realized I really can’t be homecoming queen. That wouldn’t work.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t be homecoming queen?” said John. “We just busted our butts so you could be homecoming queen!” In reality John had been lying on the stage floor laughing for most of the skit.

  “No, Alysse, come on, noooo,” Tallulah pleaded, reaching for her arm.

  “Sorry,” Alysse said, pulling away and edging toward the stage. “I’ve just decided. I’m going to ask everybody to vote for Charlotte Climpton instead of me.” And with that she pushed open the curtain and shouted, “ ’Scuse me! Hold it, folks! Hold yer horses!”

  “Charlotte?” John’s mouth remained open as we heard Alysse saying, “Yesiree, if you had any inklin’ to be votin’ fer me, I ask you to vote for Charlotte Climpton, who deserves being queen a big heap more’n I do after the year she’s had!” Adding a yee-haw, she exited the stage on the side opposite us, yelling, “Wahoo, Charlotte!”

  Other than the echo of the microphone, the auditorium was silent. Everyone, it appeared, was as surprised as we were. On the other hand, we were also all well aware of Charlotte Climpton’s challenges because the school had raised money the Christmas before to help pay for her surgeries. I didn’t begrudge Charlotte anything, and I don’t think anyone else did either. It was just that this was unexpected. As members of the audience seemed to be digesting what had just happened, I didn’t so much as blink. Finally we heard a heavy buzz and then, at last, some applause.

  “What’d she do that for?” Tyrone snarled.

  On the first row I saw Ren Jensen jerk his head toward Nate Manicox with what looked like a similar reaction. Not me. I pulled off my too-small cowboy hat and smiled in awe through the curtain. “She only takes the character roles,” I explained to Tallulah, who was peeking through the curtain with me. “She never goes for the leading lady parts.”

  Chapter Ten

  It’s amazing how much attention a couple of leaps in a skit will get a guy. The rest of that day, people I hardly knew were greeting me in the halls with, “Hey, Jumpin’ Jack,” or “Howdy, JJ and J!” After school artie Cananbella, a
part-time rapper I tutored whenever he felt like showing up, wanted to hear all about the skit before we dug into business math. “You really think The Pringle was serious about us not voting for her? Because I wouldn’t mind seeing old Alysse win the homecoming thing,” said the guy everybody called “Tough Artie.” Apparently even he was starstruck.

  A few hours later, at the joint Young Men and Young Women service activity in the ward, Arnold’s sisters Ella and Bella rushed me like I was a rock star. “You were soooooo funny in Allyson Pringle’s skit!” chirped close-to-six-foot Ella, who had the same featherweight hair as her brother.

  “Totally funny!” agreed Bella, whose booming voice never seemed to match her five-foot frame. “But when Alysse came out and said that she wanted everybody to vote for Charlotte, I was like . . .” Bella dropped open her jaw.

  “Me too,” said Ella, patting down her bangs, then pulling out the little spray bottle she always carried to give them a few quick squirts.

  “I think it surprised a lot of people,” I said.

  “I can’t wait to find out what happens,” said Bella.

  Ella added such an energetic “me too” that I jerked back in mock surprise, even though I was feeling the same way. It was why I’d been looking around anxiously for Arnold. I happened to know, since he’d talked about little else, that he would be at the homecoming dance with Dora Eccles, a tall, skinny girl from his study class.

  “So where’s your bro?” I asked the twins, trying not to sound too anxious.

  “He went thataway,” said Bella in a not-that-lame attempt to mimic my western drawl in the skit.

  “Okay,” I said more eagerly than I’d planned. “Thanks, umm, pardner.” Ella, who amused easily, giggled happily as Bella added her foghorn laugh that echoed through the scout room like a bass drum.

  “Hey, listen, you gotta do me a favor,” I told my friend as soon as I found him hauling some of the bags of donations down the hall.

  Arnold acknowledged me with a lift of his head and I grabbed the bag he was dragging behind him. “Sure. What do you need?”

  “You gotta call me tomorrow night after the dance and tell me everything that happens, okay?” I said quietly but intensely.

  Readjusting a box he was balancing on his hip, Arnold smiled a little too smugly. “You mean let you know whether Allyson wins homecoming queen?”

  “Yeah, that and the rest of it.” I recognized the irony myself. This time I was asking him for a play-by-play. None of this “you had to be there” stuff, I even felt like saying. Now one of those little hidden cameras or recorders didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

  “Hey, you coulda been there in person, you know,” Arnold reminded me. “You coulda gone with The Pringle herself. You coulda gone with the queen! Well, I mean, unless she has her way and Charlotte wins queen.”

  “Don’t start that stuff again,” I moaned. Arnold had insinuated before that Alysse liked me as more than just a friend. “Join the real world, okay?” Even if I’d been in the market for a girlfriend, which I wasn’t, Alysse had her pick of the Hollenda central stairs kind of guys.

  I think Arnold had more to say, possibly something about how I always underestimated myself, but as we came to the door of the multipurpose room, Brother Wanslot was describing conditions in the real real world—the lack of adequate supplies, even safe drinking water. Shame filled me as he described the conditions of the orphans in Somalia who didn’t even have the most basic essentials. Here the biggest concern of my life seemed to be what would be happening at some high school dance when there were little kids out there struggling to stay alive. How shallow was I?

  Apparently pretty shallow. “So, you won’t forget to contact me after the dance, right?” I reminded Arnold a little later as we deposited toothbrushes and toothpaste packets in the grooming kits we would be sending off.

  “Double promise!” sniffed my friend, a term he’d used since we were eight or nine. To my relief, he skipped the part where he spat on his palms and slapped mine.

  The following night Arnold was true to his double promise even without the spit to bind it. He called me on my cell, which I had put on vibrate and stuck in my armpit when I went to bed so it would wake me up no matter what time he called. But what he told me left me speechless. It was neither Alysse nor Charlotte but Bluebell Wilcox who’d been voted queen.

  “Yeah, everybody was pretty surprised,” said Arnold. He speculated then that neither Allyson nor Charlotte had taken the top spot because the votes were split between them. His date, Dora, he went on, didn’t think Bluebell would have had a chance if she hadn’t changed her name, taken up the electric guitar, and painted blue stripes in her hair the previous summer. “But you had to be happy for Bluebell,” said Arnold, as ever the peace-on-earth-goodwill-to-men kind of guy. “You could tell she totally didn’t expect to win. Luckily, she got a good reaction and some decent applause. But, mate, you shoulda heard them when Alysse was announced first runner-up.”

  “So Alysse got first attendant?” I pulled myself up a little. This was more like it.

  “Yeah, and the place went crazy. She was about the only one there who didn’t act excited when her name was called. But she was sure happy a few seconds later when they announced Charlotte as second attendant. She went into another cheerleader routine and jumped on a chair and got everybody chanting Charlotte! Charlotte!”

  “So Charlotte got second attendant.” I was still smiling widely.

  “That’s right,” Arnold confirmed. “And if you thought Bluebell was excited, you shoulda seen Charlotte. She was beyond excited. The girl was beaming to the ceiling. She looked nice, too. Somebody’d done up her hair, and she had on a good dress.”

  Picturing Charlotte all fixed up nicely choked me up a little, but by the time Arnold told me that Alysse had once again come in costume, this time as “Alice in Wonderland” complete with the bow, I was giggling like a stage mother.

  “So it sounds like it turned out to be an all-around good dance,” I said happily. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should have gone just to be there. I’m not necessarily talking about with Alysse,” I added quickly. “But I probably could have found someone to go with.” I think maybe at that moment I was secretly hoping Arnold would say something again about how Alysse would have gone with me if I’d asked her, but instead there was a long pause. “Arnold?”

  “There’s probably one more thing I should tell you,” he said far too quietly.

  “Okay, what’s that?”

  “It was hard to tell for sure, but I think she might have come with our old friend Ren Jensen.”

  “Ren Jensen?” My stomach did a rollover.

  “Yup. Either that or they hooked up when they got there. And even if they’re not an item now, they soon may be, considering the way he was nuzzling her neck during the last dance. Sorry, mate.”

  “Why should I care?” I reacted. “I told you, Alysse and I are just friends, remember? I’ve always told you that.”

  “Well, you know . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I sighed. There was no point trying to fool my friend. I wasn’t even doing a good job fooling myself. “Okay, you’re right. Ren Jensen isn’t somebody I’d have picked for her.” I rose up at this point in order to catch some air. I could still feel that extra twist Ren had given my arm the last time he’d talked his friends into trying to deposit me in the nearest trash can. It’s hard to warm up to people who think you belong in the trash. But even worse—afterward, when we were all hauled into the office because some courageous hall monitor turned us in, Ren had looked straight into the eyes of Mr. Julliard, the vice principal, and sworn I had started the whole thing. He even came up with some ugly racial slurs I’d supposedly said to Nate Manicox, who’s maybe a fourth of a percent African American. The guy just stood there and lied through his perfect teeth. His friends, even Nate, backed him up. Being lied about had hurt worse than the physical part of it.

  After Arnold and I disconnected, I cou
ldn’t get to sleep. Ren Jensen! Man, living the gospel could be challenging. I had worked a long time at trying to soften my attitude toward Ren. Finally, toward the end of the previous year, I’d gotten to the point where I didn’t feel like I wanted to flatten him every time I saw him. Now, just like that, I was feeling like I might need to start all over in these efforts. Okay, I’d seen Ren and some of his friends hanging around with Alysse once or twice, but so many people hung around her that it hadn’t really made an impression. But now . . .

  Did Alysse know what this guy was like? I chuckled bitterly. Hey, what did I expect? Ren was captain of the varsity football team and had been voted “hottest guy” the year before by the Hollenda High Girls Association. Maybe Alysse wasn’t so different from the mindless girls in our school who seemed to go for the nasty-tempered, bad-guy type. I huffed out another bitter laugh. I was glad, really glad I’d decided not to have a girlfriend until after my mission! They were all alike.

  But then something smacked me across the brain with a two-by-four. It was none of my business who Alysse chose to go to a dance with or run around with! She and I had fun kidding around together and she was nice to me—but she was nice to a lot of people, including some of the underdogs of the school. What made me think I was special? At that point a big “I” for Insecure might as well have reemerged on my chest (never having completely disappeared) as I even wondered if she considered me one of those underdogs. She’d made it clear that she thought I was “different,” hadn’t she?

  I sniffed with self-disgust. I’d been making this big thing out of Alysse’s paying attention to me and joking around with me when that was what she did for a living. I was a pitiful idiot, worse even than Arnold, to be this starstruck about a girl who just happened to be funny and nice and, okay, really cute. Maaaaaan, I’d even had Arnold call me in the middle of the night about her! What a loser I was! Didn’t I have enough to think about and do? I was behind in my homework because of all this homecoming stuff, and there was the wedding coming up. And hadn’t I vowed I would study the lessons in Preach My Gospel and memorize the recommended scriptures before I got my call? Yup, I definitely had better things to think about and do. It was time to get my priorities straight.