Carrie and Tommy sat down. Tina Blake and Norma Watson were circulating mimeographed ballots, and when Norma dropped one at their table and breathed 'Good LUCK!' Carrie picked up the ballot and studied it. Her mouth popped open.
'Tommy, we're on here!'
'Yeah, I saw that,' he said. 'The school votes for single candidates and their dates get sort of shanghaied into it. Welcome aboard. Shall we decline?'
She bit her lip and looked at him. 'Do you want to decline?'
'Hell, no,' he said cheerfully. 'If you win, an you do is sit up there for the school song and one dance and wave a sceptre and look like a goddam idiot. They take your picture for the yearbook so everyone can see you look like a goddam idiot.'
'Who do we vote for?' She looked doubtfully from the ballot to the tiny pencil by her boatful of nuts. 'They're more your crowd than mine.' A chuckle escaped her. 'In fact, I don't really have a crowd.'
He shrugged. 'Let's vote for ourselves. To the devil with false modesty.'
She laughed out loud, then clapped a hand over her mouth. The sound was almost entirely foreign to her. Before she could think, she circled their names, third from the top. The tiny pencil broke in her hand, and she gasped. A splinter had scratched the pad of one finger, and a small bead of blood welled.
'You hurt yourself?'
'No.' She smiled, but suddenly it was difficult to smile. The sight of the blood was distasteful to her. She blotted it away with her napkin. 'But I broke the pencil and it was a souvenir. Stupid me.'
`There's your boat,' he said, and pushed it toward her. 'Toot, toot.' Her throat closed, and she felt sure she would weep and then be ashamed. She did not, but her eyes glimmered like prisms and she lowered her head so he would not see.
The band was playing catchy fill-in music while the Honour Society ushers collected the folded-over ballots. They were taken to the chaperones' table by the door, where Vic and Mr Stephens and the Lublins counted them. Miss Geer surveyed it all with grim gimlet eyes.
Carrie felt an unwilling tension worm into her, tightening muscles in her stomach and back. She held Tommy's hand tightly. It was absurd, of course. No one was going to vote for them. The stallion, perhaps, but not when harnessed in tandem with a she-ox. It would be Frank and Jessica or maybe Don Farnham and Helen Shyres. Or - hell!
Two piles were growing larger than the others. Mr Stephens finished dividing the slips and all four of them took turns at counting the large piles, which looked about the same. They put their heads together, conferred, and counted once more. Mr Stephens, nodded, thumbed the ballots once more like a man about to deal a hand of poker, and gave them back to Vic. He climbed back on stage and approached the mike. The Billy Bosman Band played a flourish. Vic smiled nervously, harrumphed into the mike, and blinked at the sudden feedback whine. He nearly dropped the ballots to the floor, which was covered with heavy electrical cables, and somebody snickered.
'We've sort of hit a snag,' Vic said artlessly. 'Mr Lublin says this is the first time in the history of the Spring Ball-' 'How far does he go back?' someone behind Tommy mumbled. 'Eighteen hundred?'
'We've got a tie.'
This got a murmer from the crowd. 'Polka dots or striped?' George Dawson called, and there was some laughter. Vic gave a twitchy smile and almost dropped the ballots again.
'Sixty-three votes for Frank Grier and Jessica MacLean, and sixty-three votes for Thomas Ross and Carrie White.'
This was followed by a moment of silence, and then sudden, swelling applause. Tommy looked across at his date. Her head was lowered, as if in shame, but he had a sudden feeling.
(carrie carrie carrie)
not unlike the one he had had when he asked her to the prom. His mind felt as if something alien was moving in there, calling Carrie's name over and over again. As if
'Attention!' Vic was calling. 'If I could have your attention, please.' The applause quieted. 'We're going to have a run-off ballot. When the people passing out the slips of paper get to you, please write the couple you favour on it.'
He left the mike, looking relieved.
The ballots were circulated; they had been hastily torn from leftover prom programmes. The band played unnoticed and people talked excitedly.
'They weren't applauding for us,' Carrie said, looking up The thing he had felt (or thought he had felt) was gone 'It couldn't have been for us.'
'Maybe it was for you.'
She looked at him, mute.
'What's taking it so long?' she hissed at him. 'I beard them clap. Maybe that was it. If you f**ked up-' The length of jute cord hung between them limply, untouched since Billy had poked a screwdriver through the vent and lifted it out.
'Don't worry,' he said calmly. 'They'll play the school song. They always do.'
'But-'
'Shut up. You talk too f**king much.' The tip of his cigarette winked peacefully in the dark.
She shut. But
(oh when this is over you're going to get it buddy maybe you'll go to bed with lover's nuts tonight)
her mind ran furiously over his words, storing them. People did not speak to her in such a manner. Her father was a lawyer.
It was seven minutes to ten.
He was holding the broken pencil in his hand, ready to write, when she touched his wrist lightly, tentatively.
'Don't . .'
'What?'
'Don't vote for us,' she said finally.
He raised his eyebrows quizzically. 'Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound. That's what my mother always says.'
(mother)
A picture rose in her mind instantly, her mother droning endless prayers to a towering, faceless, columnar God who prowled roadhouse parking lots with a sword of fire in one hand. Terror rose in her blackly, and she had to fight with all her spirit to hold it back. She could not explain her dread, her sense of premonition. She could only smile helplessly and repeat: 'Don't. Please.'