Alex Ryan, Stop That!

by Claudia Mills

  He had his first inspiration of the trip. “We could pretend we were going to throw up,” he suggested to Dave.

  Dave’s eyes shone. “Both of us?”

  “Too much of a coincidence.”

  Alex waited to see if Dave would volunteer to do the honors. After a moment’s pause, Alex said graciously, “I’ll do it.” Leave it to Alex. And, actually, he thought he might be convincingly pale. Another lurch or two of the bus, and he might even be green.

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Here goes.”

  He stood up and started making his way down the aisle.

  “No standing while the bus is in motion,” the driver called out.

  “I … think … I’m … going … to … be … sick.” The kids nearest to Alex screamed and leaned as far toward the windows as possible, so that the aisle kids were practically sitting on the window kids’ laps. Mrs. Martin and Ms. Van Winkle both had stricken looks on their faces, as if painfully aware that they were the only teachers on the bus and in charge of averting any impending catastrophe.

  The bus screeched to a halt. The door wheezed open. “Not in the bus,” the driver ordered, sounding more authoritative than Alex would have given her credit for. She jerked her thumb toward the open door. “Out there.”

  Alex stopped at about the fourth row, by Lizzie and Alison, and swallowed mightily, as if he were about to heave.

  Lizzie stood up suddenly. If Alex had felt green before, Lizzie looked fresh from the Emerald City of Oz. “I think I’m going to be sick, too,” she whispered.

  Alex didn’t waste any more time with pantomimes. It was clear that Lizzie wasn’t pretending. And if Lizzie threw up right now, he was the one she would throw up on. He hurried on out the door. Lizzie stumbled after him.

  “If you’re going to be sick, you two, do it and get back on the bus. We’re already behind schedule,” the driver called after them.

  Alex didn’t think much of her bedside manner. Maybe there was a reason she was a bus driver instead of a nurse.

  It was a good twenty degrees chillier on the mountain pass than it had been in West Creek. The cold air in Alex’s face felt good.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Lizzie with genuine concern, though he was careful to stand a couple of feet away.

  “I guess so. It was just that when I thought you were going to be sick …” The memory drained the returning color from Lizzie’s face.

  “Take deep breaths,” Alex said, impressed by his own calm in the face of possible vomit. Ms. Van Winkle should see him now: Dr. Ryan, able administrator of first aid to the nauseated.

  Lizzie took the deep breaths, and her cheeks flushed ever so slightly pink: Dr. Ryan’s first medical success story.

  “Are you two done out there?” the driver yelled to them.

  Alex looked at Lizzie. She nodded. “Yeah!” he yelled back.

  On the bus again, Alex accepted congratulations from Dave and the other guys sitting near him. Then he tuned out and half dozed for the rest of the ride. He had done his share for the bus trip. Any further excitement was up to someone else.

  They reached Elliot Ranch a little past noon. It was very windy now, and the low gray skies were threatening rain, if not snow—if not a major spring blizzard. The teachers announced that they would eat their sack lunches outdoors. “Lunch first, then mountain biking!” Coach Krubek called out heartily.

  Glad to be off the bus, Alex followed the others to a group of picnic tables set in a grove of aspen and oak trees and opened his lunch. His mom packed great lunches. That day he had a thick roast-beef sandwich, homemade potato salad, huge soft ginger cookies, and lemonade.

  His dad ate at a table with some of the teachers. Marcia and Sarah were at the table closest to Alex, laughing and chatting in such a jolly way that Alex felt hopeful, too. Maybe Marcia had finally forgiven him for all his stupid remarks.

  To test this theory, Alex scooped up a handful of acorns from the ground and tossed one gently at Marcia’s back. She gave a little scream and looked around. Alex devoted himself to his last cookie. When her back was turned again, he launched another acorn.

  “Alex Ryan, stop that!”

  Marcia got up and flounced over to his table. Her hair was in two short pigtails, tied with blue ribbons. She was so cute he thought that his heart might stop beating right on the spot, and that he’d keel over and die.

  “Stop what?”

  “You know what!” Marcia giggled, an excellent sign.

  “Are you ready for mountain biking this afternoon?” Alex asked, since the conversation was going so well.

  “Are you? Someone told me that you hadn’t taken off your training wheels yet.” Marcia giggled again. Her pigtails bounced ever so slightly in time with each giggle.

  Alex tried to think of a friendly insult to top Marcia’s, but after so many unfriendly insults lately, he was out of practice. “I saw you riding your bike the other day around the neighborhood,” he lied. “You looked like a trained gorilla in the circus.”

  Oops. To Alex’s dismay, Marcia’s face flushed a deep, angry red. Don’t ever tease girls about their looks! Why couldn’t he remember that one simple truth, which by now should have been burned into his poor battered brain?

  It was too late to turn back now. “I meant that as a compliment,” he protested. “Trained gorillas are good bike riders.”

  Oh, no. That didn’t help at all. At least Marcia didn’t jump up and run away this time. But her eyes glistened with something close to tears.

  Coach Krubek whistled for everyone’s attention. “Time for mountain biking!” he bellowed in his loud coach’s voice. “Line up over at that gray barn to our right, roughly by height, and we’ll fit you with bikes and helmets and get you started. Helmets are required for everybody. Parents and teachers, that means you, too. The other main rule: stay with your partner, and stay on the trail. There are over a hundred miles of trails here at Elliot Ranch. We don’t want to lose anybody.”

  “What if it rains?” someone called out.

  “You should have your rain gear in your day pack,” the coach said.

  Great, Alex thought. There was nothing like a refreshing long bike ride on muddy trails in the pouring rain.

  “What if it snows?” someone else asked.

  “It’s not going to snow.”

  Alex thought of the instructions printed on the outdoor ed REQUIRED SUPPLIES list: “Mountain weather is unpredictable. Snowstorms are common even in late spring and early summer.” Apparently Coach Krubek hadn’t read that far on the list.

  The West Creek kids hastily cleared the lunch tables. Then everyone, except for Lizzie, fell in line for the equipment. Alex suddenly remembered that last fall, in a dumb get-acquainted game in family living, Lizzie had confessed that she didn’t know how to ride a bike. It was still the strangest thing Alex had ever heard. Not knowing how to ride a bike was like not knowing how to walk or swim. There were some things that every normal twelve- or thirteen-year-old person knew how to do. Not that Lizzie was what you would call “normal.”

  Alex guessed that Lizzie would just stay behind with somebody’s parent—not his, he hoped. Maybe Ethan would make a big show of offering to stay behind, too. Ethan was always very gallant where Lizzie was concerned.

  To Alex’s surprise, Marcia left the line and joined Lizzie, who was standing off on one side next to Ms. Singpurwalla. Marcia knew how to ride a bike. Was she trying to stick with Lizzie? Alex hadn’t thought the two girls were that friendly.

  Curious now, Alex got out of line himself. He could ask Ms. S. where the bathroom was. That was a perfectly reasonable question.

  Edging toward Ms. S., he heard Marcia say, “I don’t think I can ride a bike today.”

  “Why not?”

  “I hurt my ankle.”

  “When? Just now?”

  Marcia looked flustered. “Yesterday. When I was roller-skating.”

  Now it was Ms. S.’s turn to look flustered. “Do you have a note? Wh
at about the hike tomorrow? We’re going to be doing a lot of hiking. Did your parents have a doctor look at it?”

  “I’m sure it will be fine tomorrow for the hike,” Marcia said desperately. “It just hurts if I pedal a bike.”

  Ms. S. looked unconvinced, but didn’t send Marcia back to the line again. “Alex. What do you want?”

  “Um—where’s the bathroom?”

  “We’ll all stop at the rest room before we head out on the trails.”

  As he returned to the line, he saw Marcia whisper something to Lizzie. Lizzie put her arm around Marcia’s shoulders. Then Lizzie, usually so sweet and shy, gave Alex a furious glare.

  So Marcia wasn’t going mountain biking because Alex had said she looked like a gorilla when she was biking? Now what was he supposed to say?

  Alex gave up. The more he tried, the worse things got. Lately, it was the story of his life.

  9

  OUT ON THE TRAIL, Alex managed to forget his latest runin with Marcia. The clouds that had seemed so threatening had lifted, and the sunshine was warm on his back and shoulders. Alex loved bike riding almost as much as he loved running.

  His dad chose to go mountain biking, too, though most of the parents and teachers had stayed behind at the lodge, leaving the kids to the supervision of the ranch’s trained guides. Passing Alex and Dave on an open part of the trail, his dad flashed them a grin. “Forget the law firm!” he called to Alex. “This is the life!”

  His dad looked good on his bike. He didn’t have a bulgy stomach, like Julius’s dad, or a receding hairline, like Ethan’s. For a fleeting moment Alex felt proud of his dad for being cooler than the other dads. Smarter and more successful, too. His dad was the only one who was a hot-shot lawyer. Ethan’s dad cleaned carpets for a living; Julius’s dad was some kind of boring accountant. And Dave, of course, didn’t have a dad at all.

  “Come on, you two!” his dad yelled back over his shoulder. “Don’t wuss out on me!”

  The moment faded. Alex was torn between pedaling harder, to try to keep up, and just admitting defeat. He chose defeat.

  When the mountain-biking excursion was over, Alex felt tired and sore, but in a good way. Now they had free time for the hour before dinner, to settle into their rooms, shower, play some pool or Ping-Pong in the lodge rec room.

  “This would be a good time to take a short walk and get started on your nature journals,” Ms. S. suggested. Alex knew that exactly one person would take her up on that idea: Lizzie Archer. Though perhaps Lizzie had already crammed her journal full of poems while everyone else had been out biking. Unless she had spent the whole time talking with Marcia about how terrible Alex was.

  Alex was sharing his room with Dave and two guys he didn’t know very well. You were guaranteed one friend from your request list; for the rest, you had to put up with whomever you got. But his other two roommates weren’t bad.

  He took a long shower. The water felt good on his aching muscles. Then he and Dave shot some pool until it was time to eat. Although dinner was served cafeteria style, the food was several notches above the West Creek Middle School fare. Alex went back for seconds on the barbecued pork, baked beans, home-style fries, and apple cobbler. He even felt cheerful enough to speak to his dad when they met at the bussing station with their trays.

  “Don’t tell Mom how good the food was,” he said.

  “We want to keep her on her toes, don’t we?” his dad replied. “Maybe we can get the cobbler recipe from the chef before we go.”

  “And the barbecue recipe, too.”

  His dad gave him a wink, and they both smacked their lips.

  The first after-dinner activity was watching an educational program about Colorado wildlife on the ranch’s large-screen TV When it was over, the girls’ P.E. teacher turned on the lights, to reveal that at least half the kids had fallen fast asleep during the video. Alex had dozed off himself in a couple of places.

  “All right,” Coach Rorty blared, as if speaking through an invisible megaphone. “Our main activity this evening is going to be—square dancing! Elliot Ranch has an experienced caller, fiddler, and teacher who’s going to teach us all we need to know. Mr. Dee, it’s all yours.”

  The kids who were fully awake emitted loud, heartrending groans. Those who were still half-asleep blinked their eyes in dazed confusion. Alex was sorry now that he hadn’t paid more attention during the outdoor ed information night so he could have been psychologically prepared for the horror of square dancing. Then again, maybe it was better not to have known.

  “Come on, kids, it’s not going to be so bad,” Mr. Dee said with a big grin. He had a down-home, folksy way of talking, which went with his bib overalls, plaid flannel shirt, and bushy red-and-gray beard. It wasn’t going to be so bad for him maybe. Though any job that required bib overalls looked pretty bad to Alex.

  As he continued talking at a steady clip, Mr. Dee started playing his fiddle. He could definitely play, bib overalls or no bib overalls.

  “All right, ladies to my right, gents to my left; that’s right; gents, go find yourselves a lady; there’s some mighty purty gals here; come on, fellas, don’t be bashful; ladies, help ‘em out, give ’em a big smile; gents, they aren’t going to bite you; come on, gents, who’s going to be your lucky lady tonight?”

  No one, apparently. None of the boys moved forward out of the tight, desperate knot they had formed in front of the lodge’s enormous stone fireplace.

  Coach Krubek walked toward them, with quiet menace in his approach. The fiddle music continued, but Mr. Dee for the moment had dropped his patter, evidently preferring to let the West Creek teachers try their own methods of persuasion.

  “Boys,” Coach Krubek said, “this is a square dance. You are all going to dance. Dancing is not optional. Dancing is mandatory. Go. Now. Dance.”

  For extra effect, he pulled a pad of West Creek Middle School Behavior Modification Slips from his shirt pocket and thumbed through it thoughtfully.

  One boy—braver than the rest? or more cowardly?—gave in and walked across the dance floor to where the girls were clustered and glaring at the boys for their stalling. Others followed. Alex watched as Ethan asked a girl from their math class, Julius asked a quiet girl who sat next to him in English class, Tom asked Lizzie. Even Dave inched his way across the room, toward Marcia’s friend Sarah.

  Alex still stood rooted in place. To ask Marcia or not to ask Marcia, that was the question. At the last seventh-grade dance, back in March, Alex had asked Marcia twice for boys’ choices, and she had asked him three times for girls’ choices, including both slow dances of the evening. He knew girls thought it was a big thing to ask a guy for a slow dance. But that seemed so long ago.

  On the one hand, if he asked her, she might refuse, though maybe Coach Rorty had given the girls the same speech Coach Krubek had given the boys, that dancing wasn’t optional. She might have pads of West Creek Middle School Behavior Modification Slips, too. But it would be pretty bad to have a girl dance with you just because she’d get a Behavior Modification Slip if she didn’t.

  On the other hand, if he didn’t ask her, she might hate him for life. Of course, she already hated him for life. But girls seemed somehow capable of hating you for more than one lifetime.

  As Alex remained paralyzed with indecision, another boy, Spencer, asked Marcia. Would she now hate him for life because he hadn’t beaten the competition for her hand? Alex couldn’t think about that now. He slunk up to one of the only three girls who were left, a very tall, skinny girl named Tanya. He couldn’t quite get out the question May I have this dance? but she seemed to understand his grudging intent and, looking as unenthusiastic as he felt, followed him out to the floor.

  Mr. Dee, fiddle still in hand, bustled about, organizing them into squares of four couples apiece. Alex and Tanya were put in the same square as Marcia and Spencer. Alex suddenly remembered something about square dancing: in square dancing, you changed partners all the time. So he’d get Marcia, anyw
ay. Ms. Singpurwalla had told them about these old Greek plays, where whatever the hero tries to do, however hard he fights against it, he always ends up with his inescapable destiny. Apparently, Alex’s inescapable destiny was Marcia.

  Marcia pretended that Alex wasn’t there. Alex pretended that Marcia wasn’t there. He wished he could pretend that Tanya wasn’t there. She towered over him, so that Alex knew he looked small and silly beside her, even though he was one of the taller seventh-grade boys. Across the room he could see his dad, grinning in his direction.

  Mr. Dee resumed his place by the microphone. “This first dance is called the Turkey Trot. I’ll walk you through it slowly the first time. Then we’ll let ’er fly. Gents, bow to your ladies. Ladies, curtsy to your gents.”

  If anything looked dumber than girls curtsying while wearing jeans, Alex didn’t know what it was. Except maybe a boy bowing to a girl who was half a head taller than he was.

  “Now swing your partner. Link your right arms and swing around once.” Reluctantly Alex linked arms with Tanya. It was little comfort that she seemed to hate dancing with him every bit as much as he hated dancing with her.

  “Now grand right and left. That means you move in a circle, gents in one direction, ladies in the other, holding out first your right hand, then your left, so that you shake hands with every lady or gent that you pass.”

  Great confusion ensued as several people forgot which hand was which. Glancing at the square next to theirs, Alex saw that Julius had already managed to trip one of the girls he was trying to shake hands with, and they had both gone sprawling. When Ms. Van Winkle told them they might need their first-aid skills at outdoor ed, she must have been thinking about the square dancing.

  As Alex passed Marcia in the grand right and left, their hands touched so briefly that neither of them made a big deal out of it. When he had to swing her, he just swung her, unlike some of the boys, who whirled their partners as hard as if they were playing crack-the-whip on the playground.