The Truth About Alice(5)

The television was on mute. I stared at ESPN for a minute. Mrs. Fitzsimmons was just sitting there on the edge of my dad’s old recliner. My mom had given her a glass of sweet tea that she held in her lap but she didn’t drink it. She just sort of clutched it with her hands.

“Well, I mean…” I started. My heart was pounding real hard.

“I know you don’t want to make trouble, but I feel like there’s got to be another explanation than he just had a few beers,” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said. She put the glass down on the coffee table and reached out for my hands. They were cold and clammy. Maybe from holding the sweet tea. Maybe just because they were. And I thought about all the times I’d been over to Brandon’s house since I’d been a kid. The millions of times. And how Mrs. Fitzsimmons was always so nice to me and everything, almost like another mom.

And I felt my mouth moving and words just coming out, and all of a sudden I was telling her about Alice’s texts.

“Alice Franklin?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked, her forehead wrinkling up.

I nodded. I mean, it was kind of embarrassing because she was Brandon’s mom, but I’m sure even Mrs. Fitzsimmons had heard the rumors about Alice and Brandon and what had happened at Elaine’s party at the end of the summer. Everyone had been talking about Alice since then. Even the grownups.

So I told her how when we’d been on the road, Alice had been sending Brandon all these texts and she wouldn’t stop.

“Texts? What do you mean texts?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said. “What would she be texting him about?” I looked at the television screen and I looked at the glass of sweet tea on the coffee table. But I couldn’t look at Mrs. Fitzsimmons.

“Uh, I’m sorry, but this is sort of awkward,” I said.

“No, it’s okay, Josh. The texts, were they, like, harassing?”

“They were, like, uh, sexual stuff,” I said. “Like stuff about that party and, uh, stuff she wanted to do to Brandon or whatever.”

“How many times did she text him while he was trying to drive?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked. “Lots. I mean, I lost count. They were popping up every second or so.”

Mrs. Fitzsimmons nodded and I guess you could say she looked upset, but her face relaxed a little, like maybe there was a part of her that was also relieved. She finally took a sip of her tea.

“So you could say she was distracting him with her texts?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “You could say he was distracted.”

“Thank you, Josh. Thank you for telling me that. I know it wasn’t easy.”

I nodded, and I was glad when she switched the topic to Brandon’s funeral and how touched she was that so many people came out for it and how happy Brandon would have been about that. We sat there for a little bit longer, just talking about Brandon and how much we both missed him, and Mrs. Fitzsimmons had to dab at her eyes a little with her napkin and stop every so often so she didn’t start crying really hard. When she decided to leave, she hugged me, but not too tight on account of my shoulder.

“Josh, sweetie, I just want you to know you’re welcome at our house anytime,” she said. “Anytime, honey. I don’t want to lose touch with you. I hope you know that.”

I nodded again, wishing she would just go home. I felt bad about feeling that way, but I just wanted to be by myself.

On her way out, she stopped in the kitchen to talk to my mom, and I could catch little bits and pieces of what they were saying over all of the yelling on ESPN. Now I love my mom and everything, but she doesn’t exactly have the best habit of keeping stuff to herself. And in a town like Healy, information like the kind I’d just shared with Mrs. Fitzsimmons travels pretty fast. I guess my mom must have told someone else’s mom, and that mom told another mom, and maybe that mom told her kid. You get the idea. Anyway, the bottom line is that by the time I started back at school, Alice Franklin wasn’t just that slut who’d slept with Tommy Cray and Brandon Fitzsimmons at some party.

She was the slut who got Brandon Fitzsimmons killed.





Elaine

Brandon and I were never, uh, boyfriend and girlfriend. Like official, we-celebrate-monthly-anniversaries, I-have-a-framed-picture-of-him-in-my-bedroom kind of boyfriend. I mean, I’ve had boyfriends like that. When I was younger, they were usually upperclassmen, and they were always popular. I started dating guys when I was in seventh grade. Other girls couldn’t go out that young, but my mom was okay with it. I mean, my dad wasn’t. But my mom sort of talked him into it as long as the guy came over to our house first and shook his hand and blah blah blah.

But the thing is, as I’ve grown up, there’ve just been fewer and fewer available guys around here who are older than me and who are my type. Which leaves Brandon. I know this is going to sound totally conceited, but, like, as the most popular girl and guy in our class, we naturally ended up together sometimes. And by that I mean we went to sophomore Homecoming together and we made out at parties pretty regularly and when I was bored or he was bored, we would go over to each other’s houses and yes, okay, fine, I did sleep with him a few times last year. (Oh my God, if my dad knew he would just have a stroke and die. Even if Brandon was the best quarterback Healy ever had.)

Anyway, I’m not saying he was like my property or whatever, but there was this unspoken thing that everyone knew, which was that Brandon Fitzsimmons and I were sort of with each other when we weren’t busy figuring out who else we could be with. It was, um, the natural order of things. We were on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, wash, rinse, repeat.