Allegiance by Aryn Kyle, 2006
The magic trick:
Creating a child-in-peril story where no helpful adult shows up
Great story today from Aryn Kyle.
The fourth-grade protagonist at the heart of the story needs help. Her parents are fighting. The family has moved from England to the United States. So she’s the new kid at school, and things aren’t going well.
Obviously, when you read a story like this – with a vulnerable protagonist in need, you begin to search for, if not desperately expect, a helpful adult to emerge.
So it’s to this story’s credit – and the reader’s anxiety – that such a helpful adult never shows up.
And that’s quite a trick on Kyle’s part.
The selection:
Glynnis stands to the side, watching as Leora reads the directions from her science book. At the desk behind hers, a boy uses his knife to lift a sliver of guts from his worm. “Hey, Mary Poppins!” he says and thrusts his knife towards Glynnis.
Two girls with matching Princess Lea buns in their hair laugh as Glynnis darts sideways. “Jer-e-mi-ah!” they squeal, and Glynnis tries to smile, tries to take the joke. At her old school, the disturbed children had their own classroom in the basement, and even in there, Glynnis is pretty sure they weren’t allowed to hold knives.
It’s a mess, this new school, a dirty scab of a place with orange carpet in the hallways and soggy hamburgers at lunch. Because the rain made the playground muddy, the class has to take their shoes off when they come inside and pile them up next to the door. Glynnis has spent the whole day feeling cold and grubby in her socks. In England, they always got to wear their shoes inside.
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