“I think that would be fun,” Mom said.
I fell asleep lying on the couch with her, wrapped in her silk, just like I used to.
A nd that’s how I came to be riding back from Gadsden late Saturday evening with Mom, A llison’s mom, A llison, and a pageant trophy the size of a refrigerator. It took up the whole payload section of the SUV and extended above the back seat, with the pageant girl on top poking between Mom and A llison’s mom in the front.
When A llison’s mom pulled into her driveway, I realized I didn’t want the day to end. A llison had almost convinced me that Walter would get over our fight. It made me feel good to be around A llison, and I’d missed spending whole pageant days with her.
I glanced over at her. She looked so pretty. A nd very funny in a T-shirt, torn jeans, high heels, pageant makeup, pageant hair, and tiara.
We couldn’t extract the tiara without washing her hair and starting all over again. She’d pulled out the majorette tiara before she went to Barry’s party the night before, but that was majorette hair. Pageant hair was another animal. This was some high hair. You teased it and sprayed it until it was mostly air, with a shell of hair around it. The tiara was secured so tightly with pins and hairspray that it was practically glued in place.
Someone else should share this joke. It was a shame that no one from school ever saw her this way.
The pageant trophy was worth showing off too.
I had an idea. I never thought A llison would go along with it. A nd it wasn’t long until our midnight curfew. But we dropped off our moms, borrowed A llison’s mom’s SUV still loaded with the trophy, and headed for Burger Bob’s.
I’d had fun at the pageant. I was glad we’d all gone together, just like old times. But after twelve hours, man, what a relief to be rid of the moms! I rolled down my window—A llison couldn’t roll hers down because the wind would destroy the hair helmet—and we cranked up the stereo. I pulled off the shoes my mom had made me wear inside the pageant showrooms. We sang along at the top of our lungs to songs on the radio.
A fter a few minutes A llison turned the volume down. “Serious convo for a minute.”
Uh-oh, she was pulling at her earring. That meant it was really serious.
“No!” I turned the volume back up.
“Just for a minute.” She turned the volume down. “I know you still care how you look. You haven’t been wearing makeup, but you’ve been plucking your eyebrows, and I’ve seen the Proactiv in your bathroom. You go barefoot, but you’re taking really good care of your toenails.
A nd you’re still using a pumice stone on that weird-looking place on your big toe.”
I stuck out my tongue at her.
She went on, “When you stopped going to pageants, it was so sudden. A nd remember how hard we worked on your baton routine, and how happy we were when you made majorette? Overnight, you decided you didn’t want to be a majorette anymore. It hurt my feelings. You know it hurt my feelings. You never hurt my feelings on purpose. Something happened to you.”
I turned the radio volume back up.
She turned it back down. “Will you tell me someday?”
I said somberly, “Yes, I’ll tell you someday.”
She turned the radio up. I turned it back down. “By the way,” I said, “while we’re having serious convo. I’m glad you’re going to Burger Bob’s with me. I wish you would do stuff like this more often. I wish you wouldn’t go around with your head in the clouds all the time.”
“It’s safer up here.”
“I know. But A llison, you were really unhappy last night. I’ve never seen such an unhappy homecoming queen.”
She pulled at her earring.
“I’m not saying you should come down to earth. If you’re on cloud nine, I’m suggesting that you come down to cloud six, six and a half.”
“Maybe,” she said as she turned the SUV in at Burger Bob’s.
She pulled into the front parking space, nearest the road. This was the unofficial place where boys parked in the winter, during hunting season, and showed off the huge deer they’d killed in the woods that day.
She opened the hatchback, and both of us struggled to slide out the huge trophy and set it on the pavement. We sat on either side of the bumper.
Immediately people cruising from Burger Bob’s to the movie theater and back honked their horns at us. A llison gave them her special pageant wave. A nd then someone hollered, “Hey, it’s JonBenét!”
“Oh no,” I said. I watched Luther’s car turn off the street and into the Burger Bob’s parking lot.
A llison laughed. “What do you mean, Oh no’?”
I looked at A llison like she was crazy. “Drew’s here!”
“You knew you might see him tonight. That’s the only reason I agreed to come here with you.”
Before I could think of a comeback, Luther pulled his car into the parking space next to us. Luther, Barry, and Craig Coley piled out of the car, crowded around us, and gave the trophy an “ooooooh, aaaaaah.” Drew hung behind them, watching me.
“That’s a big un,” Luther told A llison in a dead-on redneck accent, which was hilarious coming out of this A frican-A merican guy.
“Reckon it is,” A llison responded in a dead-on redneck accent of her own.
I turned to stare at her in amazement and new admiration.
“What’d you use to bag him?” Luther asked. “A twelve-gauge or a thirty-aught-six?”
“My feminine wiles,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “A nd a thirty-aught-six.”
He stepped closer to her. “I’ve been in class with you for eleven years, and I had no idea you had a sense of humor.”
“Maybe I just don’t laugh at your jokes. A nd maybe you’re not as funny as you think.” But she smiled at him. Not the pasted-on pageant smile, either. A genuine smile.
You go, girl. She was giving him the time of day. A nd he was giving it right back.
I boasted to the boys, “Today A llison was crowned Miss East-Central A labama 2006.”
The boys looked at me blankly.
“Now she gets to compete in the Miss State of A labama pageant,” I explained. “It’s like shooting a fourteen-point buck.”
“Oh,” the boys said, nodding.
Barry and Craig tried to talk to me, but I babbled on. I was completely distracted. I was listening to the rest of A llison and Luther’s conversation with one ear. Luther was saying something about knowing a good taxidermist. A nd I had one eye on Drew, who still shadowed Barry and Craig.