The Truth About Alice(10)

“Yeah,” I answered, already picturing myself alone in the cafeteria since I could only come up with one-word answers.

“See that boy over there?” Alice said suddenly, pointing to a boy with short blond hair and a Texas Longhorns T-shirt on.

“Yeah?”

“Stay away from him. His name is Kyle Walker. We went out in middle school, and he’s a total *.”

Back then I never swore, not even privately in my head, and I know I started blushing.

Just then a pretty cute guy sitting next to us turned and asked Alice if she was free that weekend and wanted to hang out. And just at the moment when I knew I would never be cool enough for this girl, Alice said in her most bored voice possible, “Um, I’m free every weekend. It’s in the Constitution.”

Before I could tell myself to shut up, stupid! I exclaimed, “Oh my God, do you know Grease 2? That’s a line from Grease 2!”

That’s how we became friends. We both liked to watch really stupid musicals like Xanadu, and Can’t Stop the Music, and even Paint Your Wagon, and we both liked to eat frosting straight from the can, and we both thought Elaine O’Dea acted way cuter than she actually was. When she came over to my house for the first time, she didn’t seem to be weirded out by the Smile! Jesus Loves You! pencils in the kitchen by the to-do list or the Bible Stories Bingo game on the coffee table. She was just nice about it, and during our third sleepover after we’d watched Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and we were buried in our sleeping bags and it was totally dark and the only sound was the air conditioner cycling on and off—when I chose that second to tell Alice Franklin that back in Flint I’d never had anyone over for a sleepover—Alice didn’t laugh.

“I’m glad you had me over,” she said. “I’m glad we’re friends.”

Even though I know I did what I had to do, and even though lately Alice has completely disappeared from my life and into her big bulky sweatshirt and wherever it is she goes to eat lunch … even though I don’t regret what I did and I would do it again, it’s that memory that hurts the most when I think about how I dumped Alice.




So she was my best friend for over two years. So how come I can’t believe her? I mean, isn’t that what a best friend does?

Well, partly it’s because I’m too afraid I’ll become some sort of nobody again if I do. I’ll never be popular again if I do. Like I’ve said, I’m owning that.

And partly it’s because one of the guys she (may have) slept with at Elaine’s party was Tommy Cray.

And partly it’s because of last summer—the summer of The Really Awful Stuff—and because of something Alice did when she was a lifeguard at Healy Pool North.

Alice always made her own money. She babysat, walked dogs, anything. Once she even cleaned Mrs. Montgomery’s house for a month while Mrs. Montgomery was recovering from back surgery. Alice always has to have her own money for clothes or magazines or makeup or whatever because her mother doesn’t give her anything. Alice’s mom is always complaining there isn’t enough to go around with her being a single mom and all, but it doesn’t seem to stop her from going out almost every night and leaving Alice to sort of fend for herself.

So the pool was like her first real job. One where she got a check she had to take to the bank instead of just a wad of rolled-up bills.

One of the perks of Alice’s pool job was the free snacks Alice would sneak me. She didn’t take total advantage or anything, but there’d be a Popsicle here or a candy bar there. I would sit on a stool outside the snack bar in the blue-and-white-striped bikini Alice had helped me pick out, and we would gossip and watch the boys swim, and I would help Alice make change when she got confused with the math.

The best perk, however, was the two high school seniors who worked there as lifeguards. Tommy Cray and Mark Lopez. They had just graduated from Healy High, and they were both so gorgeous. So totally gorgeous. The boys in our class still seemed like boys, but Tommy and Mark were men. At least that’s what Alice was always saying.

“Why waste our time with boys when there are men right here at Healy Pool North?” she would say, admiring Mark’s muscles or Tommy’s grin.

I figured if any of my friends knew about men, it was Alice. She wasn’t a virgin at that point and I still was. She’d lost her virginity freshman year to this junior named Tucker Bowles and then they’d broken up two months later, and this made Alice the expert in my eyes when it came to stuff like sex and boys. Or men.

I thought Tommy was gorgeous and had spent most of the summer secretly staring at him whenever I hung out at the pool, but I thought Tommy and Mark both sort of had crushes on Alice. I just didn’t think either boy was interested in me. My problem basically was (and is) that I don’t know how to relax around guys. I can’t make that easy small talk with boys that some girls can. Girls like Elaine O’Dea and Maggie Daniels can do that weird, amazing thing where it looks like they’re making fun of a boy on the surface, but somehow the boy always takes it as one big compliment.

Alice used to be good at that, too.

One night toward the end of that summer before tenth grade, Alice called me after the pool had closed and asked if I wanted to come down for a party. I told my mom I was going to go to Alice’s to sleep over, but I had to convince her to let me go because she wasn’t crazy about Alice (because Alice didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ) and also because we had to go to the 8:00 a.m. service the next morning. (When I whined, she told me, “As for me and my house, Kelsie, I will serve the Lord.”)