I Just Got a Letter from Allyson Pringle

by Anya Bateman

  You always hope with prayers that answers will come immediately and be presented to you on a tray the second you finish your prayer. I waited for probably a full five minutes on my knees, then got up and wandered around, seeking insight. If I wasn’t going to get my answer on a tray, I wanted at least a side dish or something—anything that let me know that what Arnold had suggested and what I’d decided was the right decision, really was okay. Even a Pop Tart would do.

  Finally I went back to my desk and opened my history book again and stared at the next chapter heading: “The Carpetbagger Era.” I read the first couple of sentences, then pushed my book aside, leaned back, and grabbed the scriptures off my nightstand for a different kind of history. Within ten minutes I spotted three references to honesty in the Book of Mormon. I sighed, closed my scriptures, replaced them on my nightstand, and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. As I hit the molars in almost slow motion, I remembered about the stupor of thought the scriptures tell us about—that if an answer is wrong, we draw a blank. I wasn’t sure if what I was feeling was a stupor, but it certainly wasn’t a pleasant, A-okay feeling. It was more of a draining, heavy, things-are-not-at-all-okay feeling. It was an I’m-a-two-hundred-year-old-man-and-my-feet-weigh-five-hundred-pounds-each feeling.

  Mom always accused me of being older and wiser than my age, but I didn’t think this was what she was talking about. I decided to go to bed so I could get up earlier than usual and pray again then. Just before I lay down, I remembered my tooth guard and I grabbed it from my stand and adjusted it into my mouth, figuring I’d probably be needing it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Brother Aspen was generally understanding when people dozed off in early morning seminary, and it was a lucky thing, because when you don’t get to sleep until two-thirty, and you have to get up at five-thirty, it happens. I’d been tired before with all the stuff going on at our house, but this was the worst. It felt kind of like I’d been beaten over the head with an anvil. Nice old guy that he was, Brother Aspen waited until after class to place his wide palm on my shoulder. “You okay, Kip?”

  Kip? I didn’t bother to correct him. Brother Aspen often joked about having taught seminary since Old Testament times. I wasn’t sure how long he’d really been teaching, but it was long enough that he often called us by our siblings’ or, in some instances, even our parents’ names. “It’s not like you to fall asleep during seminary, son,” he continued. “Usually you’re taking notes and marking scriptures.” His eyes were kind.

  “Yeah, and I’ll need to catch up. I, umm . . .” I decided to explain somewhat. “I just have some things on my mind that I’ve been losing sleep over.”

  “Is it something I can help with?”

  I watched Arnold walk away from us backwards, almost bumping into a couple of people. “I don’t know if anyone can help. It’s complicated.” I wasn’t sure whether to tell him more. Arnold headed out the door, obviously anxious to leave. The classroom had emptied quickly, and I turned back to Brother Aspen. “Okay, what if you have a problem and there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer?”

  “I imagine you’ve prayed about it.”

  “Yes.”

  My teacher lifted his ample head and brought it down slowly. “I’ve noticed in my own life that sometimes things that seem complicated really aren’t. We make things complicated, but they’re not necessarily complicated with God. You just may already know the answer.” He lowered himself into the chair next to me. “Have you talked to your Mom or Dad about this, Kip?” Brother Aspen had served with my father as his counselor in the stake Young Men’s organization a few years before.

  “My sister’s getting married in not that many days and the whole family’s pretty involved in that,” I explained. I didn’t tell him that my parents also happened to be in another state and that I wasn’t really a spill-out-your-troubles-over-the-phone kind of guy. I wasn’t even a share-your-troubles-with-your-seminary-teacher kind of guy. “I’m Kendall and not Kip, by the way.”

  “Oh, yes, Kendall. Sorry. I always do that, don’t I? Kendall! Kendall!” I felt bad I’d mentioned anything when he shook his head so hard that his bottom lip flapped. “I’m sorry.” He paused and took a breath. “Well, Kendall, I’d suggest you start there. You have great parents, and I’ll bet they’d make the time to talk with you in spite of everything that’s going on. But, in the meantime, do keep praying. It sometimes takes time, but in my experience eventually Heavenly Father opens a door or window and helps us see the solution to a problem.”

  “Okay, thanks, Brother Aspen.” I looked toward the door where Arnold, his hair already starting to fan out, was poking in his head.

  Brother Aspen lifted his hand to Arnold, then smiled at me with concern. “You let me know if you want to talk about this any more fully, young man.”

  “I’ll do that.” I wondered at this point if it was God’s will that I make an appointment with Brother Aspen. Was the old guy right that this might be more black and white than I was guessing? I didn’t see how it could be anything but complicated. Sometimes life wasn’t black and white.

  “What’d he say?” Arnold asked as we hurried to his car.

  “That life isn’t as complicated as we make it.”

  “Just what I told you,” said my friend.

  My fatigue in seminary was nothing compared to how it hit me first period. By third period Spanish there was a giant mushroom in my head.

  In contrast, Alysse seemed well rested and as upbeat as usual.

  “Hola,” she said, her eyes crinkling mischievously from behind her red glasses. She was wearing a furry pair of antlers this time, again reminding everyone that Christmas was just around the corner. “Hey, for somebody who thought he’d flunked the history test, you did pretty well,” she teased.

  “I sure did,” I said without inflection. “Amazing, isn’t it, since I didn’t study.”

  Alysse opened her Spanish book without taking her eyes from me. “You don’t sound very happy for someone who just got an A on a test he didn’t even study for.”

  I hesitated and sighed. “I’m not, Alysse.”

  “Uh-oh, does Kenny need big hanky again?” I could tell this was another attempt to make me laugh, but Alysse didn’t seem to be putting as much into the chipmunk-Elmo role as she had in the past.

  “The problem is that I didn’t earn that A. I mean, I really did fail the thing.”

  “Oh, boy. Here we go. Well, why am I surprised?” Alysse rolled her eyes and shook her head in what I hoped was mock disgust, the chipmunk voice gone. “So tell me this,” she said, picking up a rubber band from the floor and aiming it in my direction. “Have you ever done anything wrong in your life?” The rubber band hit me on the left hand.

  “Have I ever done anything wrong?” I smiled sadly. “Hasn’t everybody?” I picked up the rubber band very slowly because my whole body felt like it was lifting it. When I started to stretch the elastic, I didn’t even have the energy to do that. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

  “Let me guess. You’ve done one, maybe two things wrong in your life?” Alysse took the elastic from my hand and stretched it around her fist and onto her wrist.

  “More like a half dozen.” I tried to smile at my joke. “And I wish that were true,” I added. I did wish that I’d only done a half dozen things wrong in my life. I’d done hundreds of things wrong—maybe not any major kind of things, but a lot of little things that added up when you put them together. And that was why I always felt lucky that I’d been raised with the assurance that when we give it our very best shot, Christ fills in the gaps. But I’d also been taught, and had learned from experience, that it saves you a lot of grief to just make the right decision in the first place rather than to have to fix it later.

  “What’d you do, take some gum from your mom’s purse when you were three or four? Or did you call somebody in your family a bad name like, umm, stupid?”

  “Worse than that, I’m afraid.” I’d actuall
y taken a ten from the money jar once because I was mad at my mother for handing Kip that amount outright when I was the one who’d cleaned the entire kitchen. It’s true that I’d had no intention of keeping that money, and I’d returned it later that night, but I had taken it. Then there was the time the Garbett brothers and I played a dirty trick on the poor Crane family down the street. When we hadn’t been able to come up with a crane company willing to send a crane, we’d just ordered cabs to their house several times in a row. As if they could even afford cabs. That had felt worse.

  “Uh-huh. Maybe you made some prank phone calls, and that’s about as bad as it gets,” said Alysse.

  I was beginning to think she really could read minds.

  “Well, you know what?” Her voice took on a serious tone. “I can tell this is going to eat away at you, so why don’t you just do what you feel you need to do. I really don’t care.”

  “There’s a big problem with that,” I said. “It’s that there’s no way I’m going to foul you up. I refuse to do that.”

  “Hey, I said I don’t care, didn’t I? It’s my problem, not yours. I know how you operate, and I’m not going to be responsible for you carrying around this burden of guilt for the rest of your life. And besides, what can Thorndike do to me, anyway? I mean seriously, who cares?” She was acting tough, but I knew her well enough to know that she was bluffing—that she did care. Talking to Alysse about it hadn’t made the situation any easier.

  It wasn’t until a few minutes later, when Señor Alvarez passed back the Spanish vocab quizzes and I saw the initials R.P. (indicating that Rhonda Pate across the room had corrected my test), that something hit me like a bolt and then moved through me like an electrical surge. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. I sat up and grinned, fully awake and re-energized. Señor Alvarez and most of my other teachers always had us initial the tests we corrected. For some reason, Mr. Thorndike didn’t do that. I’d wondered about that in the past. Oh, once in a while I’d gone ahead and just initialed a history test I corrected out of habit, but for the most part, since our teacher didn’t seem to care, I didn’t bother or I just forgot. I wasn’t sure why Thorndike didn’t have us identify ourselves on the tests we corrected. Maybe he’d never had any problems in that regard. Well, he should have been having us do that. Apparently the guy was human after all.

  But your mind plays tricks on you. Cautious as ever, I pulled some old history tests I’d saved out of the side pocket of my backpack. To my relief, there were no initials—not on a single one. So it was true, and I didn’t have it wrong. Apparently nobody initialed or identified themselves on the tests they corrected in history.

  I smiled in Alysse’s direction. If nobody knew who had corrected my test or anybody else’s, I could still do the honest thing without getting Alysse in trouble. All I needed to do was tell Mr. Thorndike that someone had changed my answers and that I deserved an F, not an A. He wouldn’t press me to tell him who had done it because he would assume I didn’t know. How would I know? No, Mr. Thorndike would have no reason to believe I knew any more than he did who’d corrected my test. Even if he suspected Alysse, he would have absolutely no way of proving she’d corrected it.

  But what if he came right out and asked me if I knew who had corrected my test? I chewed on my lower lip and then ground my back molars together once again. If he did for some reason ask me if I knew who had done it, I’d just tell him that I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. I almost laughed aloud with relief. It was all going to work out, after all. I could finally get the weights out of my feet and the freight train off my chest. In fact, maybe this was finally the answer I’d been waiting for. Just in case it was, I mouthed a quick thank you to Whoever might be listening in that other sphere.

  Chapter Twenty

  Alysse, listen, I think I’ve just figured this out,” I said immediately after Alvarez dismissed us. Even I could hear the relief in my voice. “Don’t worry about anything, okay? It’s all gonna work out. It’s gonna be fine.”

  Alysse smiled patiently but not convincingly as she gathered up her notebook, pencils, and book. “Whatever you say, Armando.”

  “No, really, I’m not kidding.” I followed her as she moved toward the door. When we entered the hall, the Beal twins called to her to come walk with them and Alysse did a peace sign in their direction, then turned and gave me the sign as well.

  During lunch I was so relieved that everything was about to be resolved that I was almost giddy. I even joked around with Beezer, who generally irritated the socks off me. It wasn’t like it would be fun telling Mr. Thorndike, of course, but at least there was now a way I could get out from under this thing. Fully intending to talk to him right after class, I went into history filled with determination.

  Unfortunately, by the time I’d waited for some of my classmates to clear out, Kerrie, the girl with five hundred questions, was already up at Thorndike’s desk. I lowered myself to Jen Fern’s place and stayed there for a while, waiting patiently as the big hand on the clock continued to move. Mr. Hammond had started docking points each time we were tardy in orchestra because he was stressed about the holiday program. I opened and shut my hand a few times as the clock ticked on. Okay, time was up. I had to get to orchestra, and I had to get there fast. I would just have to return to Thorndike’s room after school.

  When I got back to Thorndike’s less than an hour later, he was alone in the room, seated at his desk, and he seemed to be checking some things in his grade book. I readjusted my backpack and lowered my trombone case, my fingers slow to let go of the handle.

  “Yes?” Up close, his wrinkles looked deeper, and his eyes under his thick brows appeared more old and tired than I’d expected. But when he saw it was me, his face seemed to lift a little. “Oh, hello, Mr. Archer.” It had taken a while, but I was pretty sure the man was finally convinced that I was no troublemaker.

  “Hello, Mr. Thorndike.” I doubted he would feel quite so happy to see me after he’d heard what I had to say. “I, umm, need to talk with you about something.” I lifted myself straighter, pulling in oxygen.

  “Regarding?”

  “Okay, ummm . . .” I plunged in. “I . . . umm . . . generally keep up pretty well in your class and do fairly well on the tests, but I wasn’t prepared for this last test and, umm, well, I didn’t do very well on it.”

  Mr. Thorndike entered a last notation into his book, then looked up at me again, his bushy eyebrows lowered in confusion. “Now, why would you say you didn’t do well when you got the high in your class—a solid A? You were one of the few who did do well, by the way. I think your classmates will plan ahead a little better for the next test, don’t you?”

  I cleared my throat again and pushed my finger against my left eyelid, which was twitching. “Noooo, I didn’t do well. I, uh . . .” This was the hard part. “I didn’t get the high in the class, Mr. Thorndike, and I know for sure that I didn’t get an A on that test or even anywhere near an A.” I swallowed and then blurted it out. “I guessed on most of the answers and even left a bunch blank.”

  Mr. Thorndike pulled forward, his eyebrows together, his eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that you cheated?”

  “No. No, I don’t cheat.”

  “Then I would be very interested in hearing your explanation.”

  This was the part that I needed to word carefully. “I guess someone filled in the answers for me as a joke or something.”

  Oops. I cringed at my choice of the word joke. I hadn’t planned to use that word. Joke and Alysse—they were almost synonymous. Anyway, I was being deceitful. By using the word someone, I was making it sound like I didn’t know who had corrected my test when I did know. I’d heard once that leading someone to believe something inaccurate was as dishonest as lying. My face was beginning to burn. I just wanted this to be over. Maybe this whole thing was deceitful when I knew full well who had corrected my test. Still, I hoped beyond hope that Thorndike wouldn’t ask me now if I knew.
Black and white? This was becoming more complicated by the second. Why had I thought this would work? “The point is,” I continued quickly, my voice hoarse, “I mean, the reason I’m here is that, bottom line, I can’t accept an A that I didn’t earn.”

  Mr. Thorndike puffed forward his mouth and nodded. “So shall we assume that whoever corrected your test paper filled in your answers?”

  I hesitated, but saw no reason I couldn’t answer his question. “It looks that way.”

  “I see.”

  “So, anyway . . .” I took a step back, eager to finish this unpleasant task, get out of Mr. Thorndike’s room, and get back to my life. “Basically, that’s it. I just wanted to let you know so you could change my grade to an F.”

  “Well, I’m disappointed to hear that you performed poorly on the last test, Mr. Archer. I’ve come to expect more of you, but . . .” He folded his fingers together. “I appreciate your stepping forward with this information.” I had the feeling he was actually quite amazed that I hadn’t just accepted the higher grade. But Thorndike was Thorndike and not one to bend rules. “Let’s go ahead, then, and change that grade right now. I’ll make myself a note to get that entered into my computer. In the meantime, I’ve got my grade book right here. I like to keep two copies of grades, but, umm . . .” I wondered why he was hesitating and why he was still holding his pencil in the air. Thorndike chewed on his bottom lip for several seconds and then looked up. “Considering your past performance, I’m thinking I can give you the benefit of a doubt and that we can make that a C instead of an F.” He looked toward the door and lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, you understand, but you’ve proven yourself to be a serious student. We can’t, after all, know for a certainty that you failed this test.”

  “Thank you, but . . .” I did know for a certainty that I’d flunked. And yet Mr. Thorndike was looking at me with a don’t-argue-with-a-rare-gift expression on his face. I started to nod, but then changed the direction of my head movement. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d rather you went ahead and made that an F. My score at the max was twelve.” After going to all this trouble, I needed to have the grade be accurate. I was a stickler myself, and I’d definitely missed more than half of the questions. “There’s no question that I flunked it,” I said unhappily.