The Homecoming Crown Fifty Years Late

Halftime

The whistle blew. The band marched out in their maroon uniforms with the white plumes, and the drum line came down the track past us so loud I could feel it in my teeth.

Eighteen of us went down onto the track. Not everybody could manage the bleacher steps. We lined up in front of the home stands, a row of old people in quilted jackets and name tags, squinting into the lights.

Connie came down. I had not been sure she would. She stood at the far end of the line in her wool coat with her hands in her pockets. She did not look at anybody.

The homecoming court came out from the end zone in a convertible, an old white Chevy one of the dads had restored. Five girls in long dresses with their escorts in suits that did not quite fit.

Ashlyn was in the back seat. She was seventeen, a farm girl from out past the Lutheran church, a senior who played volleyball and showed hogs at the county fair. She had red hair pinned up with a hundred bobby pins and a sash across her blue gown.

She climbed out of the convertible and her escort took her arm, and they walked to the center of the track in front of us. She was smiling so hard her face must have hurt.

The band finished its song. The announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Class of 1976, celebrating their fiftieth reunion,” and the crowd clapped, and a few people whistled, and somebody’s grandson yelled, “Go Grandma!”

Mr. Larson walked over and handed me the microphone.

What I Said

“My name is Marlys Hagen,” I said. “I was the class bookkeeper for the Class of 1976.”

My voice sounded strange, too high and too old. I made myself slow down.

“In October of 1975, I helped count the homecoming ballots in the school library. I kept the tally in pencil on ledger paper. I still have it.”

The crowd had gone quieter. Not silent, but quieter. A little kid somewhere was asking his mother for a pop.

“The count I made that day was not the count that was announced,” I said. “I knew it. I said nothing. I was seventeen and I was scared, and then I was older and I was ashamed. I have been ashamed for fifty years.”

I did not look at Connie. I had promised myself I would not.

“Tonight our class was asked to send someone to crown this year’s queen,” I said. “We decided it should be the girl who actually won in 1975.”

I looked up at the top of the bleachers.

“Darlene Weiss Pruitt. Would you come down, please?”

For a second nothing happened. Then I saw Vern stand up first. He held out his arm, and Darlene stood up and took it.

They came down the bleacher steps very slowly. Vern went one step at a time, holding the rail with his free hand. People moved their blankets and their knees to let them by. It must have taken them a full minute, and the whole field watched every step.

At the bottom, Vern let go of her arm at the gate. He stayed at the fence. Darlene walked out onto the track alone in her gray church coat, with the lights on her.

She stopped in front of me.

“Marlys, what is this?” she whispered. The microphone was down at my side. Nobody else heard her.

I took the yearbook out of my tote bag. I opened it to the back cover, unfolded the green ledger sheet, and put it in her hands.

Then I opened the white box and handed her the tiara.