The Truth About Alice(21)

“It looks like you might not need my help that much after all,” I said, desperate to say something and then instantly regretful of what I had just said. If she didn’t need my help (which, despite two correct problems, she so clearly did), then how would I see her again?

My comment did something to Alice. Her smile disappeared, and perhaps I’m exaggerating, but I think she frowned. Ever so slightly.

“You want to sleep with me, don’t you?” Alice said, shutting her Algebra II textbook. You might even say she slammed it. “You think I’ll, like, do it with you in exchange for math help, don’t you?” Her cheeks—her perfect cheeks—pinked up like two bowls of strawberry ice cream.

The phrase sleep with me just hanging there in the air made me blush. I could feel it. And here is the truth. I did and I do want to sleep with Alice. How could I say no to that question? I’m almost seventeen years old, and despite my mostly contented loner status and my social inadequacies I have carnal desires that I am all too familiar with, so yes, I want to sleep with Alice Franklin. I want to take her in my arms and kiss her neck just under her elfin hairline and slip my hands under her black T-shirt and touch her skin, which I am sure will be soft and warm and sweet. I want to feel her body under mine in some dark, secret room where no one can bother us. Yes, oh my God, yes, do I want to sleep with Alice Franklin.

But not in the way Alice thought in that moment.

Not like that.

Not in exchange for answers to her Algebra II homework.

So I was not completely lying when I said, “No. No, Alice. Not at all. I just want to help you.”

I must have seemed somewhat sincere because Alice stopped frowning. But she still seemed distrustful of my actions. I wasn’t sure what to say next, so I just sat there, certain this plan was hopeless. I’d made a total ass of myself.

And then Alice pushed back from the kitchen table, and I was convinced she was about to kick me out, but she just sighed, a big hefty sigh that was almost too big for someone so small. Then she said, “Why are you being so nice to me anyway?”

“Because…” I answered. And I thought about the rumors swirling around Alice. The ones I’d surreptitiously gleaned in the hallways and during passing periods before and after classes.

The party. The sexual texts. The abortion.

I thought about the stall on the second floor that I’d heard students talking about, so recently covered in graffiti about Alice Franklin. They’re calling it the Slut Stall.

Alice was waiting for an answer to her question about why I was being so nice. Her face was silent, staring steadily at me.

“Because…” I said again. “Because … I guess I think you deserve it.”

The moment I said it I knew it was exactly the right response.

I also knew it was one hundred percent true.

Alice didn’t kick me out. She looked down at the kitchen floor for a minute, and then she brought her big brown eyes back to look at me.

“Can you help me with one more problem?” she said, opening her book up again.

“With as many as you want,” I told her, and I reached for a pencil.





Kelsie

These are the things that keep running through my brain even though I don’t want them to: ? The Slut Stall.

? Telling people about Alice and the abortion.

? The Really Awful Stuff that happened to me last summer.

? Alice and Tommy that night at Elaine’s party.

? Tommy Cray in general.

? Alice Franklin in particular.

? Whether or not I deserve to go to hell if there actually is a hell for me to go to.

It’s like my brain has been working so crazy hard at not thinking about certain things that I don’t really have time to appreciate the fact that I’m a full-fledged popular girl now. I sit with Elaine and Maggie and all their friends every single day, right in the middle of the noise and the inside jokes and the attention. I hang out at Elaine’s house a lot and we gossip about everything. And it’s really fun. I would be a huge, ridiculous liar if I told you it isn’t fun.

But.

Still.

The other day I noticed Alice talking to Kurt Morelli in the hallway. Elaine and me and some of the other girls were walking by and there they were. Alice was standing there in her gray sweatshirt and jeans, her arms squeezed up tight around her chest with her hands tucked under her armpits. Like she was trying to shrink into nothing. Kurt was acting like he didn’t know where to look or put his body, like he was just really uncomfortable being alive. Alice was saying something and Kurt was nodding his head and it was the weirdest image I’d seen in a long time.

“What the hell is that about?” Elaine muttered to me, and not all that quietly either.

“Oh my God,” I said, because it was the only thing I could think of.

“I hope he doesn’t get her pregnant,” somebody added, and we all sort of collapsed into each other, giggling. The thought of Kurt and Alice doing it was so hilarious that we had to hold each other up to keep from passing out with laughter.

I don’t know if Alice heard what we said or not.

Seeing her talking to Kurt Morelli was totally bizarre. Even though I know the other girls don’t feel the same way, there is still a little part of me that sees Alice as this unattainably cool girl in my freshman homeroom on the first day of high school. The kind of girl who swore out loud with total confidence and deemed me worthy of being her friend even though my mom was way too crazy into religion and I didn’t know how to put on eyeliner. The kind of girl who acted like getting asked out by a guy was the most boring thing in the whole world because it happened to her, like, every single day.