I Just Got a Letter from Allyson Pringle Read online

  “Hey, Duck, old boy, I think I just got a reality check,” I told my dog, who was sitting by my feet, his brown eyes alert. Lucky Duck, who was pretty sensitive to my moods, let out a little woof of empathy and beat his tail just once against the wood floor.

  Chapter Eleven

  In third period on Monday, I tried my best to act normal and even congratulated Alysse in Spanish again, this time on being chosen homecoming first attendant. But it didn’t take her long to pick up on the fact that I wasn’t the same upbeat Kendall-Armando she’d been joking around with just a few days before. I tend to be pretty transparent, and what I was really feeling was apparently oozing through my skin. “¿Qué pasa?” she asked during conversation time, adopting her chipmunk-Elmo voice. “Is Kenny-Wenny in a funky-wunky?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Cuz Kenny act sad.” Allyson lifted her index finger and widened her eyes. “Alysse help Kenny feel better!” With this, she began plowing through her Minnie Mouse bag until she found a giant plaid hanky.

  “Uhhhh, no, thanks,” I said, pulling back.

  “For Kenny-Wenny,” she insisted, lifting the hanky toward my nose.

  “Sorry, I’m not blowing my nose into your hanky. Or is it a small tablecloth?” I was trying to sound disgusted, so it bothered me that I was on the verge of laughing again.

  “Kenny-Wenny—oops, I mean Armando-Warando—blow nose in hanky,” she insisted, moving the cloth closer.

  “Go away!” I said, pulling back. Alysse continued trying to catch my nose. “Seriously,” I said, still trying not to laugh. Alysse could even make a person enjoy being annoyed.

  Finally, I gave up and grabbed the hanky. “Fine, I’ll blow my nose in that whatever it is, but only if you promise to quit calling me Kenny-Wenny.”

  “Oh, so sorry, big Kendall,” she responded, her voice lower.

  I sighed, lifted my eyes, and held the hanky to my nose, pretending to honk.

  “Aw, come on, big guy, you can do better than that!” she said, sounding more like a storm trooper now.

  “HONK!” I bulged out my eyes for comic effect. Those around us were involved and laughing as well by this time. Carlin turned with a half grin and Daphne giggled from a couple of seats away. Rhonda looked over, shaking her head in amusement.

  “Oh my goodness,” Alysse cried, pulling back, “hold the levees! It’s a tidal wave!”

  Alvarez came into the room right then, and I was half afraid Alysse would ask our teacher how to say honk in Spanish. I shook my head but chuckled as I rolled my eyes. How can you stay in a “funky-wunky” when somebody has you honk into a huge plaid hanky?

  For the rest of the week, Alysse paid even more attention to me than she had before homecoming. I tried really hard not to let it affect me when, after she saw me in the hall on Wednesday, she pulled away from the Beal twins and Lindsey Bell and John Fallon and walked a ways down the AB hall with me. Again she had me laughing. That next week and the week after I continued to get special treatment, and the following Friday, when I decided to show up for a few minutes at Hollenda’s annual Halloween Bash, I was flattered to the bone marrow when Alysse, who was decked out as a humongous potted plant, left the group she was with and waddled over to compliment me (sarcastically) on the aluminum foil star I’d made to go with the same old cowboy outfit I’d worn in the skit. “Big effort,” she joked.

  Then, even though I ended up with one group and she with another, which included a vampire I guessed was none other than my old friend Ren, she made it a point to waddle back over when she saw me leaving—no small chore in her hula hoop flowerpot. “Let me guess: homework!”

  “You got it.”

  “Well, then, here’s one for the road, Sheriff Party Poopster,” she said, and, with Ren looking on, she handed me a purple petal from her wrist.

  It’s funny how little things can mean a lot. I kept that petal on the bulletin board in my room until I left on my mission.

  The following Monday as well, Alysse paid special attention to me. “If you’d told me you were coming as a sheriff to the Halloween Bash, I would have loaned you the nice big hat I wore in the homecoming skit,” she said.

  “I thought you gave that back to Yosemite Sam,” I shot back happily.

  “Oh wait, you’re right,” she joked. “I did, didn’t I?”

  I was doing better now. I’d decided not to worry about things I had no control over. There wasn’t much I could do about the fact that Arnold had turned out to be right and that it looked like Alysse was hanging with Ren pretty much regularly now. But as far as she and I were concerned, whatever was going on with Ren didn’t seem to be making a difference in her attitude and friendship toward me. We still clicked like a good lock when it came to humor. Even better, every once in a while Alysse let her mask slip a little as we talked about assignments or things going on in the state or the world. She even confided in me now and then—nothing major, just challenges in her school office, for instance, an assignment I could tell she seemed to really relish, but which she took far more seriously than anyone would have guessed.

  As for Ren, I tried to convince myself that people really do change and that maybe he was an okay guy now and that it wasn’t up to me to judge him any more than I judged those who chose to go the tattoo route. People grow up, I decided. I even told myself that it was good that Allyson had a boyfriend, regardless of who it was, so that I wouldn’t let my imagination carry me to some never-never land where I couldn’t and shouldn’t go anyway.

  Chapter Twelve

  I don’t know how Allyson found out that my birthday was on November 20th, but a few minutes into Spanish that day, she shocked the socks off me by calling right out, “Señor Alvarez, we need to wish Armando here Feliz Cumpleaños! How do you sing the birthday song in Spanish?”

  I lifted my head, my lips rounding, then glanced at our teacher for his reaction as several class members clapped and laughed.

  Even though Alysse was pushing the envelope again, good old Alvarez smiled and agreed to sing an Americanized version. ”Cumpleaños, Feliz, Cumpleaños, Feliz, Cumpleaños, Cumpleaños, Cumpleaños Feliz!” What can I say? The guy was cool.

  “Piece of cake,” said Alysse.

  “Cake? No . . . pastel or torta,” said Alvarez. “Sí, es fácil.” Then I assumed he was telling her to do the honors, because Alysse happily jumped out of her seat, rose to her toes, and led the class in the birthday song with great enthusiasm.

  We were at least twenty minutes into the class period by the time we got to our regular curriculum, and I’ve wondered since how Alvarez filled up the time in his other classes that didn’t have Alysse in them.

  “So how old did you turn today?” Alysse asked after class. She was looking at me kind of sideways, “Umm, cuantos . . . años . . . tienes?”

  “Dieciocho,” I answered, still reeling from all the unexpected attention I’d just received. I’d never in my life had that many people sing “Happy Birthday” to me.

  “So you’re eighteen, huh? Legal age. That’s what I thought, but you never know. For all I know you could have skipped a grade. That wouldn’t surprise me.”

  I felt an urge to argue that point because people have always considered me smarter than I really am, but decided against it.

  Alysse looked around, her voice quieter. “So, does that mean you’re old enough to go to a dance? I heard Mormons can’t go to dances until they reach a certain age.” Without taking her eyes from me, Alysse folded her vocabulary sheet into her Spanish book, which she carefully slid into her Minnie Mouse bag. “What’s the magic coming-out age?”

  “That’d be sixteen,” I said to the notebook I was pushing into my backpack. Where, I wondered, was she heading with this?

  “So how many dances have you been to?”

  Now she was stepping into some sensitive territory. Kip especially gave me a bad time about my lack of social experience. That wasn’t to say I hadn’t been invited to a few dances. I’d alm
ost gone to the girl’s preference dance the year before with Marin Kilpack, Abe Stanley’s cousin, but she’d come down with mono just a few days before. “Hey, you just saw me at the Halloween Bash, didn’t you?”

  Alysse cleared her throat with exaggeration. “The Halloween Bash? Sorry, Kendall-Armando, but even if you’d stayed more than four and a half minutes, the Halloween Bash wouldn’t count. I’m talking about real, official dances.”

  “Well, in that case . . . umm, let me think.” I began to count on my fingers in mock concentration, but then curved my index finger and thumb into a zero and lifted it.

  “Exactly what I was afraid of.” Alysse scrunched her mouth to one side and nodded. “Well, you know what? If you haven’t been to an official dance, I’m going to see to it personally that you go to the Winter Formal!”

  “I’m really not that into dancing,” I objected quickly and with concern. “You might have noticed that when we put on the skit. And what about . . . I mean, wouldn’t I need to be somebody’s . . .”

  “Date? Yes, of course. You’d be going with me, silly. You’d be my date.”

  She laughed merrily when I sucked in my breath with surprise. For the first time since we’d become friends, I didn’t have a comeback of any kind. Why was she doing this? “You betcha, it’ll be you and me,” she continued. But then she hesitated ever so slightly. “So, how about it?”

  “You’re just giving me a bad time now,” I said, looking around. “Is this a setup or something?” I meant what I was saying. I figured it had to be one of her practical jokes. But only Dennis Craig was still in his seat, and he wasn’t laughing. Neither was anyone else. Lakeesha was talking to James Domrose on the other side of the room, and only a few others were still in the classroom. The rest had headed out.

  “No, I’m serious,” said Alysse, and I could tell by her voice and a couple of extra blinks that she was.

  I pulled my backpack up to my shoulder, feeling all the symptoms of a good old-fashioned panic attack. I was twelve or thirteen again, stuttering and sputtering. “So, will there be others? Will there be a group?”

  Alysse chuckled. “Aw, yer skeered you might be alone with little Alysse, ain’t ya?” she said, slipping again into her western drawl—or was it her hillbilly accent? “Well, you can rest yer little mind. There’s a big whoppin’ group of us goin.’ You know Dee Dee and Caleb Sweeney, and our old buddy Rhonda and Jake over there.” She looked toward the door where the happy couple were laughing. “And Dansco and Tallulah, and, let’s see, Rich and one of the Beal twins. He can’t decide which one. And Lindsey’s going with Carlin. You know Carlin.” Of course I did. Even if he hadn’t been in Spanish with us, I would have known who he was. In fact, Alysse had just named the people in the school everybody knew—class officers, athletes, the stars who hung out on the central stairs. “Dansco” was her nickname for Dan Scoville, the senior class president, and she brought him up again. “Dansco knows somebody, and he thinks he can get us a limo,” she said. “We’ll be cruisin’ in style and you won’t even need to pick me up. You’re on the way, so we can just swing by.”

  I lifted my head at this information. “I wouldn’t need to drive?” Since I really didn’t have a car I would want anybody to actually get into, this information seemed significant.

  “And wait’ll you hear this!” said Alysse as she glanced toward the rear door at Rhonda, who’d switched to John Fallon and was flashing her ultra-whitened teeth at him. “Since this would be your first dance and since I’m guessing you traumatize easily, I’m actually planning to come in a regular formal dress.” She pulled back and nodded. “How do you like that, huh? Jingle Pringle in a normal formal.”

  “And not a costume?” I recognized this as big. “Isn’t that a first?”

  “It is.”

  “And you’d do this just because I’m so conservative?”

  “You guessed it. So how about it?” Alysse paused then and waited, trying not to look concerned about how I planned to answer. But the slight flicker that I’d learned to recognize indicated otherwise.

  “I can’t believe you haven’t already been asked by somebody else,” I said, stalling. What I was really wondering was why she wasn’t going with Ren Jensen and what was going on there. In the latest “Who’s Who” column of The Dutchman’s Herald, our school paper, Alysse and Ren had been listed as the couple to watch.

  Alysse seemed to know what I was thinking and she suddenly turned serious. “You’d actually be helping me out.” There was another flicker of something I couldn’t distinguish, but soon she grinned and went into another routine. “And hey, y’all Mormons are ‘s’pose’ to help people out, ain’t ya?”

  I lifted my chin. “So how would I be helping you out?”

  She glanced toward the back door where Tallulah had joined Jake, John, and Rhonda. Rhonda made a comment to the group and glanced in impatiently. Alysse raised and lowered her eyebrows a few times at them, then turned back to me, her grin wavering slightly. “You just would.”

  I glanced toward the back door myself, hesitated, but then took a deep breath. “Okay, well . . .”

  “Well . . . ?” She flashed her amazingly turquoise eyes at me.

  “Since you say Mormons are ‘s’pose’ to help people out, I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  “Not what I’d call the most highly flattering answer, but seriously, you’ll really go, then?”

  “Sí, Señorita, I’d be, ummm, emocionado to go to the dance with you.” It was one of our vocabulary words.

  “Gracias, Señor.” She bowed and smiled widely. I wondered at this point just how badly I was blushing. But then I noticed that Alysse’s neck was flushed and her cheeks were rosier than usual.

  I have to admit that the rest of the day was a blur. I had so little to say at lunch that Parry asked me if I was okay.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I muttered evasively. Parry was a nice enough dude, but he talked a little too much and I wasn’t sure I was ready to unplug what had just happened quite yet. In fact, I was kind of glad for once that Arnold had second lunch instead of first because he always seemed to be able to read my face even when something not all that big was up. And this was big. Oh, yeah. So big I was having a really hard time believing that what had just happened really had, and I ate my peanut-butter sandwich as I looked around the cafeteria with a robot-like stare.

  I don’t think it hit me full force until orchestra that I, Kendall- Wendall, alias Jumpin’ Jack, Armando, Archer, Kenny, and whatever, was really going to a dance, my first ever, with Allyson Delilah Eleanor Penelope Pringle (at least she claimed those were all her names), the funnest and funniest girl in the school. In other words, this was serious! I considered it a lucky thing that the Thanksgiving break was coming up. I had the feeling that I might once again be putting off the science project I’d planned to start on that weekend. I wondered if I could maybe Google a complete list of things a guy needs to do to get ready for a dance. I winced and blew out air as I realized I might finally be calling my Aunt Betty about dance lessons, something I had managed to avoid thus far in my life. She and my mother would be ecstatic. I smiled as I pictured how my old buddy Arnold would react to my news. Arnold would freak!

  But then Ren and some of his friends strutted by the orchestra room door heading for who knew where, and I froze. Within seconds the excitement was seeping back in, however, this time swelling over, and I lifted my trombone and blasted happily into it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Other than the fact that the lessons with Aunt Betty hadn’t gone so well, by the night of the dance I considered myself fairly well prepared. I’d assumed that because of the wedding I wouldn’t be able to count on my family members for much, but when I finally got around to telling them about the dance, they came through for me big time. Mom, after I practically had to get her a paper bag to stop her hyperventilating at the news, immediately raced to the hall closet and pulled out Kip’s old tux, which she’d bee
n planning to shorten for me to wear at my sister’s reception anyway, and almost ran it to the sewing room.

  Lynette brought over one of Josh’s formal shirts and his black bow tie and reminded me not to fidget. Dad helped me find some cuff links and let me know the same rules applied to me as had applied to my siblings. Since it was his belief that the Spirit was harder to tune into after midnight, I was to be back within seconds—okay, minutes—after the clock struck twelve. Twelve-fifteen at the latest. Kip advised me to loosen up and have a good time but to watch the hormones, and he recommended a good antiperspirant. Even Monica called from Utah to tell me to make sure there was nothing in my teeth, not to overdo the aftershave, and to stand up straight. “Just because you’re getting married doesn’t mean you need to start sounding like Mom,” I said.

  After he calmed down, Arnold, who might as well have been family, even offered some advice. “Don’t pick the corsage up too early,” he suggested. “Five days before is too early. The petals fall off.” I had the feeling he was speaking from experience.

  Along with dance steps I practiced each night in front of the old, broken, full-length mirror I’d pulled in from the storage room, I rehearsed possible things I could say and how I could say them. So yeah, I thought I was prepared.

  But when Allyson rustled into our entryway all shiny and shimmery, her hair pulled up in a fancy new style, looking—I’ll say it—beautiful, I totally lost my emotional footing and started rolling downhill fast. “Om, this is Malice,” I heard myself say. Mortified, I squeezed my eyes shut. “Sorry, I mean Mallyson.” I stopped and took a breath. “I mean Allyson.” I moaned, then shook my head with self-disgust. “And Alysse, this is my mom and not my om.”