I Just Got a Letter from Allyson Pringle Page 14

  Arnold had band practice before school again, but even though our other car was in the shop, Mom had said she’d be home all day unpacking, washing, and working on the bridal gown and I was welcome to take the van.

  I found a space in the parking lot fairly close to the side door of the school. Avoiding the front hall, I hurried to the office the long way. There were several students waiting and I glanced nervously at the clock.

  “Mrs. Carruber’s booked,” one of the student assistants, a girl with white streaks in her black hair, said brusquely when it was my turn. Had she already heard about what had happened with Alysse? Or was I just becoming paranoid?

  “Okay, thanks.” I turned, walked out of the office foyer door, and headed to English, late again. To my relief they were still doing announcements.

  Mrs. Cavanaugh pulled her eyes from the screen, glanced at me, then quickly looked back up. Fantasia pulled back in her seat when she saw me, and April whispered something to the guy next to her. Several others shifted in their seats. I lifted my eyes and immediately knew why everyone was acting so weird. Above us, Sam Penosh was being announced as the winner the Spirit of Hollenda award. I headed to my seat, forcing myself to act normal. I’d had no delusions whatsoever that I would win, but Sam Penosh? The guy was a drug dealer.

  As I lowered myself into my seat, I felt other eyes on me as well, but there were no condolences. What a contrast to when I had been nominated! But that was then. It shouldn’t have amazed me that people in English already seemed to know what had happened in history the day before yesterday. The guy next to me was cracking his knuckles; when I looked over, he started messing with his folder. He too seemed to already know. The whole class seemed to know. Again, it didn’t matter. I just wanted things to be all right with Alysse.

  “So what happened?” I asked her anxiously as soon as I got to third period. “Did you meet with anybody yesterday?”

  “No, the meeting was postponed and we met this morning first thing,” Alysse said, her voice tired. “It wasn’t too bad. I was given citizenship demerits and I was docked big-time points from history, and, umm . . .” she hesitated. “I got temporarily relieved of my SBO duties.”

  My heart did a nosedive. “How temporarily?”

  “The good news is that Lindsey volunteered to take over for me and that’s been okayed. She’ll handle my assignments along with her historian responsibilities, and the other officers all offered to pitch in as well. If I behave and there are no more ‘infractions,’ I can maybe be reinstated before the end of the school year. First I need to do about a thousand hours of school and community service, though.”

  I drooped down in my seat, my insides still smashed together, my head light. “This isn’t what I was hoping to hear.”

  “Hey, listen, it could have been much worse,” Alysse continued. “Thorndike was pushing for me to be relieved of my office for good, so he wasn’t too happy with the decision. Believe me, if he’d had his way, I’d maybe even be expelled. Hey, who am I kidding? If he had his way, I’d be heading to the state prison.”

  I didn’t laugh. “You think they’ll for sure reinstate you, then?”

  “As soon as I meet the requirements. I just feel lucky that Mrs. Millenstein had a conflict and Mrs. Carruber stood in for her. I think Millenstein would have booted me out of my office permanently. Carru’s a lot more lenient. She seemed to understand that it was a practical joke—a stupid practical joke, but a joke.”

  I rounded my lips and exhaled slowly. I had the feeling it was Sister and not Mrs. Carru who’d showed up to work that day. Maybe the lame message I’d left had done some good after all.

  Alysse pulled in a breath and made an effort to smile, but there was still that weariness in her voice when she said, “I told you that you didn’t need to worry about it.”

  “I’ll stop worrying when they reinstate you.”

  Rhonda, a few seats over, and Daphne didn’t look like they thought it could have been much worse. Neither did the others in our class. In fact, if kids in our school were upset before, they were furious when word got around that Alysse had been relieved of her office temporarily. As I walked down the halls of school, I could kind of tell that the “Kendall Archer is a cool, funny guy” period had come to an end. I was getting looks now that would have made a pit bull yelp.

  “Better steer clear of me for a while,” I told Arnold.

  “I can handle it,” Arnold said.

  And I honestly thought I could handle it all as well: the looks, the verbal thrashing, maybe even a bump or two here and there, as long as Alysse continued to be my friend. As long as she was still okay with me, I was pretty sure I could take anything dished out to me. But in Spanish that next day even Alysse seemed to be acting differently toward me. As Rhonda talked to her about a party that weekend, Alysse didn’t even glance in my direction. And the following day—the day I needed to check out early because of the wedding—Alysse seemed remote. Oh, she was civil and said hello and so forth. She didn’t ignore me or anything. It was nothing I could pinpoint, just something I could sense.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  That Friday afternoon Mom, Dad, Lynette, Josh, Baby Skipper, and I caught a flight to Salt Lake. We rented a Dodge Caravan at a rental place near the Salt Lake airport and took I-15 to our motel in Provo. Early the next day we drove the additional fifteen minutes or so to Payson, Rulon’s hometown, where we helped set up for the reception. On the way, Dad complained to Mom about how much everything was costing. Mom worried aloud about the dresses fitting okay, especially Monica’s wedding gown. My thoughts were back home in Kalamazoo.

  Seeing good old Monica again did, I have to say, soothe my soul. It took me a few seconds longer than the rest of the family to get into the house, thanks to all the stuff I was hauling in, but when I got inside Monica called out, “Kendall!” and grabbed me for a breath-defying bear hug. Then she spun me in the direction of Rulon, who was moving toward me, his hand outstretched. “Kenny, this is my wonderful fiancé, Rulon, the love of my life,” she gushed. I lowered the bags and held out my hand. “And Rulon, this is my fantastic brother Kendall!” Her words made my eyes well up. But none of this was supposed to be about me, and I pulled myself together fast. I knew how anxious Monica was to have us all get to know her “prince,” and I have to say that Rulon seemed like a nice enough guy. He was more than just a couple of inches shorter than Monica, however, like she’d claimed. He was more like four or five inches shorter. But hey, there weren’t a whole lot of people taller than my sister. With the exception of Kip, Monica was the tallest in our family. I’d long ago given up hoping to catch up with Kip, and my goal had become trying to catch up with Monica, which I hoped to do during my mission. Rulon, however, was back from a mission, and so I doubted he’d be growing more. But so what? If Monica didn’t care, why should anybody else?

  “So, you play any sports?” I asked him. It was the kind of thing my brother would have asked had he been there, but Kip had just started a new job and he and his family wouldn’t be joining us until the reception in Kalamazoo.

  “Just Church ball,” Rulon said, pushing back his glasses, “but I’m not very good.” It was probably a good thing Kip wasn’t there to hear that, but I liked the guy for leveling. And hey, I related.

  I liked it even better when Rulon beamed up at my sister and said, “I’m just glad somebody in this new family will be holding up the sports end of things. Monica has amazing talent, and I plan to support her in whatever she decides to do. You’re looking at her number-one fan.” The guy was now a stud as far as I was concerned.

  The ceremony was beautiful, according to my parents, and the reception in Payson, the journey home, and then the second reception in Kalamazoo all went off without a hitch. There wasn’t a hitch I was aware of, anyway. Later, Mom told me that more people had shown up than they’d expected at the Kalamazoo reception, and they’d had to begin cutting the lower layer of the cake before the evening was even half ove
r. Then there’d been something with the flowers. But even Mom, I could tell, felt good about how things had turned out. The main thing was that none of the challenges fazed my sister, who continued looking as elated as she’d sounded on the phone when she’d first told us she was getting married.

  Gathering the gifts, setting up and taking down, keeping track of the little kids, and concentrating on the happy couple helped me to forget temporarily about what had happened with Alysse. But under the surface it was still there, like background noise. I tried to continue thinking about happy things, I really did. But as soon as the two lovebirds had made their escape and we’d cleaned up and loaded things into our van and it was all over, I was right back in a funk.

  Since we hadn’t fully celebrated Christmas, my family and I opened a few gifts on New Year’s Day. And then that Monday, in the middle of one of Michigan’s worst snowstorms, I returned to Hollenda to finish up the last two weeks of the semester.

  I’ll sum it up like this: Those two weeks were not the best of my life. The one good aspect about being an outcast? I had plenty of time to catch up, study for finals, get term papers in, and do the finishing touches on my science project—a balsa-wood bridge that, despite the fact that the rest of my life seemed to be falling apart, turned out to be a strong one.

  During the school hours themselves, I concentrated on just making it through. Poor Señor Alvarez undoubtedly wondered what had happened to our happy-go-lucky group and why we weren’t having as much fun anymore. As far as history—tense isn’t a strong enough word.

  I generally tutored during lunch on Tuesdays, but Artie, who’d showed up only once in a while anyway, didn’t make it back to school after the break. Juan Phineas stopped me in the hall to let me know he’d be switching lunches and would go ahead and have somebody else tutor him. Juan had been making good progress, and I was relieved when I saw him with one of the other tutors later.

  That afternoon when I got to my locker, somebody had scrawled “Mormon” across the door, and then that same somebody or somebody else had crossed out the second M so that it read Moron. So much for making a good impression for the Church. Even Lexie treated me with something resembling contempt. It bothered me more when she treated Arnold the same way. He’d had nothing to do with what had happened.

  Some friends of Abe Stanley’s who’d started eating lunch at our table a week or two before the Christmas break didn’t come back after the break, opting instead for a table at the far end of the cafeteria with some guys on the soccer team. Parry and Abe had been hanging out with Tanny and Tallulah and their friends, and they joined the thespian group table, once in a while at first, and then daily. That left me with Beezer and somebody named Farwell who had plastered-down hair and an attitude. He mellowed somewhat when I helped him figure out his algebra.

  Arnold had said he was trying to switch to my lunch, and I hoped he would. I knew I had his support and probably always would. I had my family’s support as well. Soon after the Kalamazoo reception, I’d finally told my parents everything that had been going on.

  “Oh my gosh, Kenny,” my mother said. “Why on earth didn’t you talk to us and tell us you were going through all this?”

  “You had plenty to worry about with the wedding,” I said.

  “You could still have come to us. No matter how busy we are or seem to be, we’re never too busy to talk to you about your problems.”

  Dad, as quick on the spiritual draw as ever, asked me if I wanted a blessing. I said I did, and felt comfort and relief when he pressed his hands on my head and blessed me with courage and the ability to stand alone if necessary for what I believed was right. He blessed me that I would make it through this difficult period. “Thanks, Dad,” I told him. “I needed that.” And I did. There are some things you just don’t know if you can get through by yourself.

  Well, “making it through” was what I ended up doing. Each day I got up, got dressed, and went to school. Each afternoon I entered invoices into the computer and then spent the rest of the evening studying for classes and finishing up papers, stopping only for dinner. Every night I prayed harder than I’d prayed ever before for strength and for Alysse—that she’d get reinstated and that everything would work out for her after graduation.

  After a while something came into my mind that seemed to stay there and build a nest. There are people out there in the world in a lot worse shape than you are, I could almost hear. Gird up your loins. Something else came through even more powerfully: Christ suffered for us all, including you—and including Alysse.

  Two days before the end of the semester, I realized I should have been praying for Arnold as well when I came around the corner and saw some members of the hockey club grabbing at his hat. He put up a good fight, but by the time I caught up, the smallest and apparently the quickest of the group was running off with it.

  “It’s okay,” Arnold said. “I’ll get it back . . . eventually.”

  In Spanish Alysse remained polite but aloof. It’s hard to explain how sad I felt that things had become awkward between us. She still joked with others, but not with me. I thought at the time it was because she’d had a chance to review everything and had decided she had good reason to be angry with me. It wasn’t until later that I realized she was maybe just embarrassed.

  And then the semester was over. No longer did I have two classes with Allyson Pringle. Even though history was a full year course, Alysse transferred to Mrs. Petrie’s class. And who could blame her? I stuck with Thorndike, even though I had a hard time even looking at the guy. I knew I would need to forgive him, but again, it was going to be hard. As far as Spanish was concerned, I’d promised Dad that I’d sign up for accounting, and the only time it was taught was third period. The family business was going better, thanks to out-of-state sales, and I needed to pick up a few more bookkeeping skills. I had no choice but to transfer to Alvarez’s fifth period. So now I had no classes with Alysse. I still heard things about her, of course. Arnold and his sisters and people in my classes still talked and laughed about her antics. She apparently hadn’t let her setback get her down too much. At least, she acted like it hadn’t. If anything, she was in better comic form than ever.

  Parry, who landed the part of the rejected boyfriend, Hugo Peabody, in Bye Bye Birdie, let me know one night when we both hitched a ride with Arnold that Alysse had tried out for the part of Mama Peterson, just as she and I had talked about. He said that although Mrs. Dallask hadn’t officially given it to her, she’d unofficially told Alysse she could have the part after the air cleared a little. In fact, because Alysse was still on probation, the teacher asked the cast members not to advertise the fact that Alysse was coming to rehearsals. The star role of Kim MacAffee went to an unknown junior, Mitzi McCormick, who’d come out of nowhere to beat out Tallulah and Dee Dee, among others.

  “Who’s playing Albert Peterson?” I asked.

  “Carlin Stevens,” said Parry, “but he won’t be tap-dancing.”

  I nodded. “And is Tyrone playing Conrad Birdie?”

  “Good guess.”

  I was glad Alysse had landed the part she wanted, or that it looked like she would be playing Mama Peterson, but I also worried that if she got too busy with the play she wouldn’t have the time necessary to meet the requirements to get back into her school office.

  In orchestra, Mr. Hammond told us we wouldn’t be practicing with the cast members until the final two rehearsals. We’d started working on “Honestly Sincere” and “Put On a Happy Face” right after the break and soon had those numbers down well enough to perfect a couple more. I practiced extra hard, maybe hoping that by the time the orchestra got together with the cast, Alysse would be so impressed at my skill on the trombone that she’d want to be my friend again. Of course, I wasn’t counting on it.

  By the second week in the new semester, I was pretty much a nonentity at our school again. Well, almost. I’d been debating whether to stick with the peer tutoring program. When I was assigne
d a couple of refugees from Zimbabwe, I decided to go ahead. I doubted they’d be all that concerned about my status at the school.

  Three weeks into the semester, a girl in orchestra named Amy Washburn, one of the flutists, sent word through Beezer that she wanted to get to know me better. I figured that either she was one of those free spirits who didn’t care what others thought, or the animosity toward me was fading. Amy was a cute, nice girl, and I was civil and everything, but I just really wasn’t interested.

  Ren wasted no time moving in on Alysse again. Possibly because he didn’t want to risk alienating her, he left me alone. He even seemed to be joking around with people he would never have associated with earlier in the year. I hoped he really was changing and that it wasn’t just an act this time.

  Arnold and I had basically traded lunches, but Beezer and Farwell still had my same lunch and soon a couple of Farwell’s friends joined us: Del Riddle and Ben Gallante. It was obvious by Del’s floral shirt and Ben’s interesting cap that they were creative spirits who didn’t care what people thought. Even though we didn’t have a lot in common, they were nice enough to me and I returned the favor.

  It was Ben who told me about the big party Ren had hosted the previous Sunday night. “Booze flowing like the Rhine,” Del added. “Other stuff too. Then here come the politzei.”

  “The police?” I said, looking up, from my sandwich.

  “Oh yeah. A big bust. I heard April McKuen talking about it.”

  My next question, said quietly and with concern, was, “Did she say anything about Alysse Pringle being there?”

  “Somebody said that Alysse and some of her friends, Dee Dee Smit for one, left early and were out of there by the time everything fell apart. But Caleb Sweeney got nabbed.”

  I remembered what a good sport Caleb had been the night of the dance, and his funny and pious expression when Dee Dee had placed that halo on his head. I felt bad for him.