The Truth About Alice(2)

Healy isn’t as bad as it sounds. I know it’s totally lame that the biggest store is a Wal-Mart and we have to drive an hour and ten minutes to go to a real mall, but still, I love it. I guess, yeah, it’s all I know, but I love walking into almost any store in town and people know me and smile at me, and they ask me about my mom and dad and they ask me if I’m on the varsity dance squad this year (yes) and if I’m planning on being on the junior prom committee (yes) and if I think Healy has a chance at state (always). And the things I do seem to be the things that everyone else at Healy High wants to do. Like when my girlfriends and I were freshmen and we started using toothpicks to write letters on our nails with fingernail polish, so we could spell out ten-digit messages like I AM SO CUTE! and SCHOOL SUX! In about a week practically every other freshman girl at Healy High was copying us.

But back to Alice Franklin.

In the movies, high school parties are always these huge, crazy events with five hundred kids jammed into one house and naked people jumping from the roof into the pool, but in reality, high school parties are nothing like this. At least not in Healy. Healy parties basically consist of people sitting around the living room drinking, texting each other from across the room, watching television, and every once in a while someone goes into the kitchen to get another beer. Sometimes two people will go upstairs to one of the bedrooms and everyone makes a joke about it, and around midnight or 1 a.m. people pass out on the couch or go home.

Not so exciting sounding, I know, but I suppose what makes them exciting is the possibility that one of these nights, at one of these parties, something will happen.

And I guess that something did.





Kelsie

The night of Elaine O’Dea’s party, I was throwing up and had a fever of 102.

So I didn’t go.

This was truly an epic emergency in my eyes because despite being almost a junior in high school, the old Kelsie from Flint was not completely dead and buried inside of me yet. Back when I lived in Michigan, I was a nerd. A nothing. A nobody. In Healy I am popular, and this blows my mind, and I guess the night of the party there was this part of me that was sure that if I missed even one opportunity to remind everyone of my social standing, I would be kicked back to the solitary cafeteria table of doom, destined to live out the rest of my high school days completely on my own. I would have to give up the fun that came with being part of this super elite club where there was no secret handshake or door knock, but there was still plenty to make it worthwhile.

I mean, to be totally honest, it’s not like I’m on the very top rung of the social ladder like Elaine O’Dea and her crew, but if for whatever reason Elaine O’Dea and her friends are ever unable to perform their duties as the Most Popular Girls at Healy High, I am happy to be part of that Most Popular Girls Runners-Up group that is totally available to step in. And even as a runner-up I have privileges. Like … the feeling I get when I walk into the cafeteria and I know I can sit anywhere I want and people will always want to sit with me, and the fact that I know the teachers will already know my name on the first day of school without me having to tell them, and the fun in not worrying for even one second about whether or not I will have people to hang out with on the weekends. I always have people to hang out with on the weekends. Or anytime. Texting, talking, calling, drinking, kissing, laughing, dancing, drinking, texting, talking, and drinking. And I’m right in the middle of all of it.

I’ve seen the other side of things back in Flint, and I am here to tell you that being popular is awesome.

But I was so sick the night of Elaine’s party, I didn’t even pretend there was a chance I could show up. I just clutched the rim of the toilet bowl and cursed to myself as I thought about Elaine and Alice and Josh and Brandon and everybody sitting around together, and me not being a part of everything.

I hated not being a part of things. I hated missing things.

As it turns out, I did miss something. I missed The Thing that everyone would talk about all year long, and I knew I’d missed it the next morning as I ate dry toast and sipped ginger ale and listened to my best friend Alice Franklin on the other end of the phone.

“Tell me the truth, has anyone texted you about it?” Alice said, her voice low and serious. If it had been me, I would have been crying. But Alice wasn’t crying. Not yet.

“I just got, like, one text about it.” In reality I had gotten three texts, but I didn’t see the point in telling this to Alice. The first text had been from this crazy sophomore who prides herself on spreading gossip, and it said:

Alice did Tommy Cray AND Brandon F. at Elaine’s party. OMG.

My stomach sort of gurgled a little when I read the text, and it wasn’t from the stomach flu. It was mostly because of what it said about Alice, but it was also because it mentioned Tommy Cray, who I hadn’t even realized was going to be at the party. I guess it was one last hurrah for him before going back to college for his sophomore year, but any mention of Tommy Cray and I’m forced to think about The Really Awful Stuff that happened to me last summer. No one knows about it. Not even Alice.

“Kelsie, it isn’t true. You know it isn’t true. I don’t know why the hell Brandon is telling people this shit. Nothing happened! We were hanging out at the party and he tried to mess around, and I was sort of buzzed and told him I didn’t want to, and then I left. Nothing happened! You believe me, don’t you?”