The Truth About Alice(32)

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I thought since you didn’t say anything, you were on the Pill or something.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, well. Obviously.”

We didn’t say anything for a while because really we had nothing to say to each other. We’d made small talk at the pool and had sex once. That was it.

“So how’s sophomore year other than that?” Tommy asked, and I wanted to smack him through the phone. I guess he meant it in a friendly way and everything, but come on. How’s tenth grade other than your abortion?

“Oh, it’s been awesome. It’s been totally amazing, actually,” I said, my voice tense with sarcasm.

“Come on, Kelsie, I’m just trying to be nice. I’m sorry. I really am, but I’m not sure exactly what I should be saying here. I mean, it wasn’t like you and me were girlfriend and boyfriend,” he said.

Somehow, hearing him say that hurt more than I expected it to.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, and all of a sudden I just wanted to get off the phone.

“Come on, I didn’t mean it like that,” Tommy said, and I just said, “Okay,” and I hung up on him. I wondered for a second if he was going to try and call me back, but he didn’t.

Just before midnight as I was about to go to sleep, he texted me.

don’t be mad we can still be friends I’m sorry about everything

Like we were ever friends. Like we were ever anything at all.




Later on, when it first came out about Alice (probably/maybe) sleeping with Tommy and Brandon at the party, I wasn’t jealous. Not really. Even as she swore up and down that nothing had happened, all I could think about was how crazy it was that it had been Alice’s words that had kind of talked me into sleeping with Tommy in the first place.

And then she went and slept with him, too. I mean probably.

Maybe.

Every time I thought about those words coming out of Alice’s mouth—those sort of gentle, pitying words—I thought about walking into Tommy’s bedroom that summer afternoon. I thought about the cool dampness of my bathing suit on my suntanned skin, of the softness of the carpet as I slipped off my candy cane–striped flip-flops and sank down onto Tommy’s unmade bed, knowing there wasn’t any turning back.

I wondered if my life would have been different if maybe Alice Franklin had never said those words to me.

I’d told myself I’d give myself a year to feel sad about The Really Awful Stuff and then I wouldn’t think about it anymore. And then so much happened in that one year. Elaine’s party. The car accident. Alice getting blamed for Brandon’s death. Alice not being my friend anymore.

And then one night, just about a year to the day of that miserable morning at the clinic, I had a dream that I was dancing on our back deck holding a baby boy with blond hair and blue eyes bluer than the water at Healy Pool North. And I had this sick, scary feeling like even though the next day was the deadline for not being sad anymore, just naming a date wasn’t going to work.

And then the next day I found myself with Elaine and Maggie and all the other girls in the bathroom. I still felt like I needed to prove to them that I was on their side and not Alice’s. Like I really needed them to know I wanted to stay friends with them, not anyone else. And my head kept getting filled up with snatches of that dream of the baby and also little snippets of the Jimi Hendrix poster and the nice nurse holding my hand and my scary mom and Tommy never calling me and Alice’s words. Alice’s words.

My head hurt. Elaine looked bored. No one was saying anything. I wondered if it was because I was there. They didn’t really like me. They could smell my old middle school nerdiness on me like it was some kind of disease. They were this close to getting rid of me, I just knew it.

So I got all dramatic and said to the other girls, “Okay, so I have to tell you something. About Alice.”

Lying about Alice and starting the Slut Stall was something Kelsie from Flint wouldn’t have ever done.

So I guess that’s why I did it.





Josh

I hate school. I’m not good at it and I don’t get the point. I have no idea what I’m going to do once I graduate Healy High, but I can tell you that it sure as hell isn’t going to involve Algebra or Chemistry or the Gettysburg Address.

But I still try to do good. I mean, I don’t want to end up in summer school. It wasn’t so bad when I would go with Brandon. We would sit in the back row and make stupid jokes. But this summer Brandon won’t be around to make summer school less painful. He won’t be around to make Two-A-Days less painful.

He just won’t be around.

The other day I had to research this history paper that was already late, so I went down to the library during study hall to mess around on one of the computers. I have a computer at home and everything, but my brother is always screwing around on it or my mom is on it or whatever, so I figured I would just go down to the Healy High library and do my research there.

I was hoping someone from my class would be in there so we could joke around and make the whole research thing not so painful, even though most kids spend Study Hall in the auditorium where they let you talk. Maybe if there was some girl I knew in the library I could even get her to help me do the work. I’m always looking for someone to help me do the work.