The Truth About Alice(17)
Dude, did you hear about that junior girl Alice and the two guys at that party?
That junior girl Alice slept with Brandon Fitzsimmons and that other guy this summer.
OMG that Alice Franklin girl is so slutty!
Even the adults started talking about it. One Saturday when we were on the way home from another Weight Watchers meeting, my mom turned to me when we were at a stoplight and all of a sudden asked, “I keep hearing these stories about Alice Franklin. Are they true?”
“That girl is a total slut,” I said.
My mom gripped the wheel and told me not to use that word, but then she started asking me all these questions, and I told her what I could. I thought my mom was going to be really pissed that all this went down in our house, but you could tell she was way more interested in what everybody was saying about Alice and did Alice’s mom know and blah blah blah.
At the Weight Watchers meeting she’d gained two pounds, so maybe she just wanted to take her mind off everything with some super crazy gossip, but I had a feeling my mom would have been interested even if she hadn’t gained weight.
And then Brandon Fitzsimmons died.
The news that Brandon died spread faster than the news about Alice, and the news that he crashed his car because Alice was sending him gross texts spread even faster than that. Nobody knew what the texts said exactly, but we figured they were disgusting and they were desperate, and of course they had to be both of those things because they were coming from Alice Franklin, who didn’t come to school for a week after the news got out about what she had done.
Healy High freaked out after Brandon died—everyone was crying in the hallways and the English teachers tried to get us to write about our emotions and everyone wore ribbons with the school colors for, I don’t know, a week. They brought in grief counselors, and the next game against Dominion was, like, mandatory attendance for the entire town. They hung a banner reading “BRANDON FITZSIMMONS * HEALY HIGH TIGER FOREVER” at the front entrance of the stadium, and Brandon’s parents came out onto the field during halftime and announced the Brandon Fitzsimmons Scholarship Fund, and Josh Waverly was in his uniform on the sidelines even though he couldn’t play yet. Even the players from Dominion bowed their heads during the moment of silence, and it was almost like they let us win. That they knew how bad it would look if we lost to them.
Alice came back to school eventually, of course.
It was weird how we were all sort of connected after Brandon died—the ribbons with the school colors, the moment of silence at the all-school assembly, the stories in the paper that people cut out and put up in their lockers. Even after all of that sort of calmed down, people still needed something to hang on to. I mean, things were kinda back to normal—the cafeteria ladies asked us if we wanted a fruit cup or a yogurt, the janitors dumped the pink powder on top of people’s puke, the teachers gave out their boring homework assignments and their pop quizzes about nothing we’ll ever actually need in real life—but I think people needed something that made them feel, I don’t know … like we were all still in it together.
So we picked on Alice Franklin. A nobody, a slut, a killer.
And then the craziest thing happened this afternoon. Maggie and me and some of our other girlfriends were sitting in the bathroom cutting French class or Chemistry class or whatever class we had that period. I was sort of trying not to think about the fact that I was starving because I’d only had a granola bar for lunch. Kelsie Sanders was with us. Now I could sort of tell that Kelsie was feeling really super tentative about hanging out with us—I mean, she was Alice’s best friend. I think she was worried that maybe we wouldn’t accept her, but Kelsie’s always been cool with me. She’s always been super sweet and everything. You could just tell, though, that she was thinking that any second we were going to tell her to get lost. Like the way she hesitated before talking. Or the way she laughed a little too hard at everything I said. It’s weird, the feeling of power you get sometimes when you’re popular, but I guess I try to use my power for good, not evil. So I’ve been letting Kelsie Sanders hang out with us.
Anyway, so this afternoon we were all sitting there talking about whatever when Kelsie suddenly said all dramatically, “Okay, so I have to tell you something. About Alice.”
“What, she did it with the entire football team last weekend?” I said, fishing in my purse for my lipstick.
“No, it’s way worse. I think she got an … abortion.”
Kelsie lowered her voice to a whisper when she said the word abortion. I let my lipstick drop.
“What the hell?” I said, and before I could say anything else, Maggie said, “Oh God, did your mom make you protest again?” Maggie goes to the same totally whacked-out church as Kelsie, so I guess she figured out what was up.
“Yes,” Kelsie said, rolling her eyes. She told us how her mom was always dragging her and her little sister to the Women’s Care Clinic in the city to protest abortion and how she tried to get out of it whenever she could, but on some Saturdays she found herself standing behind the gate of the clinic, holding up posters.
“Like, ones with dead babies on them?” somebody said, and Kelsie shuddered a little and said yes.
“So, what? You saw her go into the clinic?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Kelsie said. “Last weekend. With her mom. She didn’t see me. They just rushed in there.”