The Truth About Alice(15)

At 9:30 p.m. everyone was there. By everyone I mostly mean the twenty to thirty people in the upcoming junior class and the twenty to thirty people in the upcoming senior class who were cool enough to be invited to my party. There was also a handful of former Healy High students who were heading back to college in a couple of days, so that’s why Tommy Cray was there. And, last and certainly least, there were a few token upcoming sophomores who were probably the coolest kids in their class, which is why they were invited to my party, and they were sitting around sort of nervously sipping their beers like they couldn’t believe they were actually lucky enough to be there.

“Elaine, where do your parents keep the whiskey?” Josh Waverly said to me from the kitchen. I could only hear his voice, not see him.

“They don’t drink whiskey,” I said, which is a lie. I’d taken all the hard liquor and hidden it in the attic. If I didn’t want my mom to kill me, we had to stick to the cans of Natty Light and Bud Light that people stole from their parents’ refrigerators.

“Aw, Elaine, you know you’re lying. Where did you hide the whiskey?” Josh whined. “I really need some whiskey.” You could tell he was already kind of drunk.

“You need to get laid,” Brandon Fitzsimmons said from the couch where he was drinking his fourth beer. For a second I remember the first time we did it in my room during winter break of tenth grade. Even now I remember everything cute about him. How he was so cut, clear-skinned, clear-eyed, with that perfect jock attitude that I love. Like he could win the Super Bowl and make out with me for hours in the same day.

“What the hell do you know about getting laid?” some dumb sophomore football player said, walking into the room with no shirt on and fat free Reddi-wip sprayed all over his bare chest in the shape of a penis. I mean he had honest to God squirted on balls and a big dick right there on his chest. (Weight Watchers points for fat free Reddi-wip = 0!)

“Oh my God,” my friend Maggie said, hiding under a throw pillow, but you could tell she was loving it just like everyone at the party.

As for me, I had a couple of beers—enough that I was buzzed but not wasted, having fun but not totally out of control. I wandered from kitchen to living room to backyard deck, talking to people and getting the latest gossip and going to get another beer, etc. At one point I spotted Alice Franklin in the corner with Brandon. She was sitting on his lap and laughing. I mean, honestly. Sitting on his lap? For a split second I remembered the eighth grade dance when Brandon and I had been on again and I’d found out the two of them were fooling around in the coat closet. Tonight she was wearing a tight raspberry T-shirt that made her raspberry lips look brighter and her perfect boobs look bigger. Alice was just as pretty as she had been in eighth grade. Prettier, actually.

I wanted to smack her.

I pushed her and Brandon out of my mind and drank another beer. I followed Maggie out to the porch and took a drag of someone’s cigarette. It was getting late when I decided I should try to keep an eye on what was going on upstairs. It was actually turning into a pretty crowded party even if it wasn’t approaching teen movie party status, and I was freaking out that people would end up having sex in my parents’ bedroom. Before everyone arrived, I’d shut the door and taped a sign on it that said “STAY OUT OR YOU’LL NEVER GET INVITED TO ANOTHER PARTY,” but signs don’t always work with drunk people.

Upstairs was cool and quiet compared to the level of noise downstairs. The floorboards squeaked under the new carpet my parents had put in all the bedrooms at the beginning of the summer. The chemical smell was still hanging in the air. I knocked on my parents’ bedroom door and then slowly opened it. Empty and dark. Their bed was made up nice and neat, and the hall light shone onto my mom’s stack of O magazines sitting carefully on her nightstand.

Then I heard voices coming from my room. I headed down the hall and opened it without knocking this time, and I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons sitting on my bed. Standing next to the bed was Alice Franklin. She had this weird, uncomfortable look on her face.

“Hey, Elaine,” she said with this little gasp, like she was wishing I hadn’t just walked in on her.

Then I noticed Brandon was holding a notebook open on his lap, and he was reading from it with a smirk on his face.

“When I had to start wearing a bra in fifth grade, my mom told me it was a blessing,” he read out loud in a sing-song voice, like he was trying to sound like a girl. “My butt is pretty round, I know, but I think I look good in clothes.” Then he looked up from the book to my face. “Damn, girl, I know that’s true. But you look good without them, too.”

Brandon was reading from my diary—the black-and-white composition book I keep under the mattress. Usually. Only I must have left it out or he found it or something because he was reading from it. Out loud. In front of Alice. In front of me.

My off-again, on-again, off-again guy—the guy I had lost my virginity to—was reading about my fat butt.

Brandon continued, “I’ve gotten naked in front of the mirror and really looked at myself, and I don’t think I look bad that way either.”

Oh my God.

“Give me that!” I screamed, and I reached for it, but Brandon grabbed my wrist and wrestled me to the bed. He was so strong he could hold me down with one hand and still keep the open book in the other.

“I know I have big boobs but so do all the women in our family, including my mom,” he read, his eyebrows popping. “Your mom has big tits? I’ll have to look next time!” He was laughing that big, loud, so-sure-of-himself jock laugh that I normally loved but right then made me sick. He tossed the book aside and pinned me down, his hands on my wrists, his knees pressing up along my outer thighs. I couldn’t move if I tried. I’d done it with him here, on this very bed, and that had been nice. Sweet even. But this Brandon was scary as hell.