The Truth About Alice(11)

I don’t know what I was thinking would be going on, but when I hopped off my ten speed and walked into the guard house, I found Alice and Tommy and Mark. That was the party. They had some beers, and they smelled of bleach from bleaching out the bathrooms. Even though I’d been hanging out at the pool most of the summer, I still wasn’t as tan as the three of them. I remember Tommy had little pockets on his shoulders that were peeling, and the skin underneath was as pink as a brand new eraser.

Alice was sort of drunk, I could tell, and she was sort of hanging onto Mark, cutting into his side with her elbow and laughing with him at some private joke.

“Let’s swim,” Tommy said. I think he sensed Alice and Mark wanted to be by themselves. I was glad I’d worn my bikini underneath my clothes.

The pool felt so different at night without the shrieks of middle school kids screaming Marco! Polo! or the tweets of the lifeguard whistle. After a beer, I dove in without making a splash and sunk down to the bottom, letting my fingertips slide over the slippery black lane line markers. I broke through the water and dove down again immediately, wanting to stay there forever, enjoying the feeling of being slightly buzzed and underwater. Anyway, if I got out, I would have to talk to the heart-stopping Tommy. That seemed basically impossible.

“Where’s Alice?” I asked, when I’d finally resurfaced. Tommy was sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. He was sipping on a beer. He arched his eyebrows. He was gorgeous. Even now, after everything, I can still admit that.

“Where do you think?” he said, like I was slow.

I ducked back down under the water, wondering how long I should stay there or what I should say when I came back up. I loved Alice when we were alone together, eating ice cream or raw cookie dough or painting our toenails green or telling stupid jokes, but sometimes I felt left out whenever Alice was around a boy she liked.

Like I wasn’t sure where I fit in.

And like I knew I’d never get a boy to like me in the same way.

When I resurfaced, I heard someone saying, “Hey, Kelsie, are you ready to go home?”

It was Alice, coming out of the girls’ locker room, followed by Mark Lopez. Mark’s face was a little red. Tommy gave him a look, and the two of them laughed. Alice tucked her fingers under the bottom of her wet green bikini and tugged on it, like she was straightening it back out. When she let go, it made a smacking sound on her rear end. Her body was perfect, and that wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that fact with a lot of envy inside.

“Something happened with Mark, right?” I asked that night, the two of us alone in the dark of her bedroom, sharing her double bed. We’d been too tired to shower, and the sheets and the air and everything smelled of chlorine. I’d gathered up the courage to ask Alice that question because I knew I was going to be jealous of the answer. It was like I didn’t want to hear it, but I couldn’t help myself.

But Alice just laughed that loud honking Alice laugh.

“Oh my God, what?” she said, rolling over onto her stomach and turning her face away from me. “He’s leaving in a week for college. We’re just friends.”

I remember the way she laughed. The way she said, “Oh my God, what?” She said it the same way Tommy Cray had said, “What do you think?” earlier at the pool.

Like I was slow.

I was 99 percent sure she was lying, and this made me madder than anything. Best friends aren’t supposed to lie to each other. Not about boys.

That next week I ran into Maggie Daniels—Elaine O’Dea’s second in command—in an aisle at Seller Brothers when I went to pick up some toilet paper and a couple of other things my mom had asked me to get. We were talking about how we didn’t want to start back at school and catching up on the all the gossip when Maggie said, “So what do you think about Mark Lopez and Alice?” she said.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Seriously? You don’t know? I thought you guys were best friends.”

“Well, yeah, we are, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, nervous about seeming totally out of it.

“Just ask her about Mark Lopez,” she said, “because he’s telling everyone.” She was laughing like she was in on a joke I wasn’t. Which I guess she was.

I marched home, clutching the groceries, my candy cane–striped flip-flops flip-flopping on the sidewalk the whole way. I’d barely put the groceries away in the cupboard before I was texting Alice.

ran into maggie. what happened with mark l.?

Not two seconds later:

it was stupid.

what?

u can’t tell anyone.

Just like always in Healy, everyone already knew, but I answered back:

u know i won’t tell.

i’ll be over in 2 sec.

“What?” I asked, yanking open the front door.

Alice’s eyes darted around behind me.

“I’m home by myself,” I said. “My dad’s at work and my mom and sister are at some church thing.”

Alice collapsed onto the family room couch and pulled her knees up to her chest.

“It was so dumb,” she said. “I don’t know why I did it.”

“What?” I said, totally annoyed and envious at the same time.

Her voice dropped down low to a whisper.