The Truth About Alice(25)

“Is Alice the first girl to refuse your advances?” I asked, and I felt a bit strange inside, like the house had suddenly tilted a bit.

“Yup,” Brandon said. “That’s the truth. I never had a girl say no before. And it made me angry. So I said I did her and Tommy did, too. Sort of to get her to see that she shouldn’t have said no.”

“But what about Tommy?” I asked.

“I knew Tommy would be going back to college,” Brandon answered “He wouldn’t be around to deny it.”

I thought of how to explain to Brandon in a way he would understand. “But she’s getting so much … shit for this. You’re aware of that, right? I mean, everyone thinks this is true.”

Brandon rolled his eyes. “Elaine O’Dea and her whole crew, spreading it around to everyone in creation. But it’ll pass. This stuff always does. Give it a week or a month and everyone will forget about it.”

I simply could not believe what I was hearing. Never did I think Brandon would have lied about something like that. But he had lied. And what was more, I could tell this utterance on the roof wasn’t meant as some revelation or even omission of guilt. I don’t think that Brandon had that level of depth. In his mind, he was merely entertaining me as he usually did with stories about what it was like to be Brandon Fitzsimmons.

We finished our beers wordlessly, and then Brandon said he needed to go to bed.

“Morelli, you’re not going to tell anyone about our little secret, right?” he asked, turning around to slide into his room. “I have a reputation to uphold, you know.” When he said this, he put his hand on his chest like he was saying the pledge and grinned at me widely.

“Who would I tell?” I answered.




That was the last time I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons alive. The next afternoon as I was helping my grandmother weed her garden, we saw Officer Daniels pull up in front of our house in his official Healy Police Department vehicle.

“Hello, Paul,” my grandmother called to him.

“Hello, Vivian,” Officer Daniels said, his face looking drawn and pale. Then he told her he needed to speak to her privately, so she left me in the bed of weeds and walked down the driveway to talk to him.

Whatever he told her, my grandmother put her hand up to her mouth and shook her head upon hearing it. I thought it must be news about one of grandmother’s church friends, but then I saw her nodding her head yes, and she followed Officer Daniels toward the Fitzsimmons’ house.

“Kurt, give me a moment, please,” she said, and I think she was trying not to cry. I watched, confused, as she and Officer Daniels knocked on the door and Mrs. Fitzsimmons let them in. A few moments later, I heard Mrs. Fitzsimmons screaming like an animal at the top of her lungs.




But I couldn’t tell Alice my story that night. Not like that. Not with Alice buzzed from drinking and her eyes red from possibly crying. So I said nothing.

“I left my math books at school,” Alice said, tossing her empty beer can away and opening the refrigerator to find a full one. “So I guess you can’t tutor me tonight.”

“Okay,” I said. It seemed to be the one word I could utter.

We were just standing there in the kitchen. Alice was wearing those dark blue jeans and her shirt was dark green and loose and draped over her small frame almost like a blanket. She didn’t have on any shoes, and her tiny toenails matched the color of her lips. These are the things I notice about Alice Franklin. These are the things I am constantly noticing about Alice Franklin.

“Follow me to the living room, please, my tutor friend,” Alice said, and she took one finger and sort of dragged it across my chest as she left the kitchen.

My chest was on fire from Alice’s fingertip, and I walked behind her to the living room. It’s not a particularly unique living room. It has a window that faces the street, two broken-in beige couches, a few end tables, a television (not the latest model), and a dark blue throw rug in the center of it all.

Alice sat down on one end of one couch, and I sat down on the other end. I drank my beer slowly, and then I asked the only question I could come up with.

“So why aren’t we working on math?”

Alice’s eyebrows popped up like she was thinking about my question very hard. Then she sighed one of her big loud signs again and took another sip of beer, and she got a sort of faraway look in her eyes.

And then a few tears started to run down her face.

Soon, she was no longer entertaining a few tears; she was sobbing. Hard. Hard enough that she got up to grab some paper towels from the kitchen as I sat on the couch, mute and useless.

In all of my Alice Franklin fantasies, sitting on the couch in her house while she cried was not one of them. Something told me I should go to her. Pat her hand. Tell her it was going to be all right. But I couldn’t figure out how to make myself do any of those things. And anyway, who could say it was going to be all right? Considering all that Alice Franklin had suffered in recent months, that sort of prediction would be considered highly suspect by anyone in Healy. Most especially Alice.

I almost asked her if I should leave, but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to do the right thing. I clenched a fist in frustration. Why couldn’t I just say something? The right thing? Whatever that right thing might be?

“Alice, I have a Christmas present for you.”