Simply Alice

  “But that was when we thought we’d be going to rehearsals together,” Pamela said. “Just tell them you changed your mind.”

  “But I want to do it!” I protested. “Just because you changed your mind doesn’t mean I have to!”

  Pamela seemed offended that I’d want to do something without her. “It’s not as though you’re the only one in school who can do the job, Alice. What’s so important about being on the prop committee?” she asked.

  “We could have so much fun together at Tiddly Winks!” Elizabeth said. “We’d have a blast. Of course, if you don’t want to be with us …”

  It did sound like it could be fun, but to tell the truth, the stage crew sounded better. I wasn’t all that nuts about accessories. “I just can’t,” I said. “Don’t be mad.”

  “Who’s mad?” said Elizabeth, getting that look on her face. “I just thought it was something the three of us could do together—you’re always so busy on the newspaper.”

  “You guys can still do it!” I said. “I’ll come down and you can do a color analysis on me.”

  “Whatever,” said Pamela.

  They’ll get over it, I told myself. After all, Elizabeth hadn’t joined the drama club when Pamela and I signed up, and we hadn’t made a fuss about it.

  For the first time, I was doing things on my own, and had made friends with another girl on the stage crew, a sophomore named Molly. She’s shorter than I am, sort of squat, and wears overalls most of the time. Her hair is cut in a punk rock style, and she has the biggest, bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.

  “So which of these things can you find?” Molly asked me the next day, after Mr. Ellis had distributed a list of all the different props we’d need.

  “Not many,” I said.

  “Me either,” said Molly. “It would help if one of us were Jewish, because all the characters in the musical are. Where are we going to find all this stuff?”

  “We start asking, begging, pleading, borrowing, and hope we don’t have to sell our bodies or resort to stealing,” I joked.

  There was one other girl who joined the stage crew, a junior. Her name was Faith, and she was tall, rail-thin, wore long, gauzy dresses of purple or black with beaded vests, black stockings, granny tie-up shoes with pointed toes, and lots of bracelets. Her hair was long and very straight, and she wore pale, almost white, face powder with her lips and eyes outlined in black.

  We liked Faith a lot, but we didn’t especially care for her boyfriend, Ron Blake. He’d hang around at the back of the room when we had meetings, and never let Faith out of his sight. She even told him when she was going to the rest room. When it was just the two of them in the cafeteria or out on the school steps, they cuddled a lot, and Ron gave her tender kisses. But when she was around other people—I don’t know; Ron seemed jealous or something.

  He was there again on Thursday when we met after school, slouched in a chair off to one side, while Faith and Molly and I were checking things off our lists.

  Pretty soon I heard Ron say, “Hey! C’mere!”

  I don’t think Faith heard him, because we were busy deciding who was going to try to get vests for the guys in the cast if they didn’t come up with any themselves.

  “Hey!” Ron said again, more loudly.

  Faith glanced around and held up one hand, as if to signal, Wait a minute, and went on talking to us.

  Ron got up from his chair and strode over to her.

  Faith looked up. “What?” she asked.

  “Let’s head out,” he said, as though Molly and I weren’t even there.

  “I’ve got to finish here first,” Faith answered.

  He looked at his watch. “We leave here at four,” he told her, and left the room.

  Four wasn’t time enough to do all we had to do, because we had each made a list of the props and clothes we were sure we could get, and those we still had to find. But this time when Ron came back he didn’t call her name. He just walked up behind her, took hold of her long hair, and slowly tipped back her head until she was looking straight up at him.

  “Owww!” she said, making a joke of it.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Just a minute, Ron,” she said, trying to work her hair free.

  “Now!” he said.

  Faith stood up, and he let go of her hair. “If you find any more of this stuff, call me, okay?” she said to us.

  We nodded and Faith left, with Ron steering her by one shoulder.

  Molly and I looked at each other. “I think maybe Faith has problems,” I said.

  “And he’s number one,” said Molly!

  • • •

  What helped make the breakup with Patrick bearable was that we were still speaking. In that first week or two after we split, I hid whenever I saw him coming, especially if he had Penny with him. Or I’d turn and go in a different direction. But that can get exhausting after a while, and I decided I just wasn’t going to live that way anymore. So I started speaking to him and he to me, and when our whole gang got together, we acted like old friends. We were friends. In fact, Penny was part of our crowd now, and it got so that I didn’t mind very much that she was around.

  Except I could still remember Patrick’s kisses and the way he touched me, and it still hurt to think of him giving those same kisses to Penny. There was also a sort of affectionate politeness between Patrick and me. Sometimes even a look that passed between us, as though we understood things nobody else could. But that was all. He was in an accelerated program to graduate one year early, so he was busy, I was busy, and it wasn’t “Alice and Patrick” anymore, simply “Alice.”

  One day at lunch I was eating my chicken salad and talking to Elizabeth and Pamela when I suddenly stopped chewing and said to Pamela, “That girl looks so familiar.” She looked like me from behind, actually—her body, anyway. Maybe that was why.

  Pamela and Elizabeth turned and looked in the direction I was staring. A pretty girl was in line at the pizza counter. She was about my size, same color hair, and was wearing white cords and a gray top. Her thick hair was blow-dried back away from her face in wave after glorious wave. She was talking animatedly to a couple of boys who obviously were hanging on to her every word.

  “She does!” said Elizabeth. “Who is she?”

  Pamela stared intently at the girl, then back at me. And suddenly we both said it together: “Charlene Verona!”

  “Is it?” said Elizabeth. “Are you sure?”

  Charlene Verona was in sixth grade with us. She had everything going for her: looks, talent, boyfriends, grades… . Everything good seemed to happen to Charlene Verona.

  “Tell you what,” said Pamela. “I’ll go up and say, ‘We’ve missed you,’ and if she says, ‘I know, everyone has,’ it’s Charlene.”

  We laughed.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll go up to her and say, ‘How do you get your hair so shiny?’ and if she says, ‘Beauty runs in my family,’ we’ll know it’s Charlene.”

  But neither one of us went up to the girl in the white cords because it was undoubtedly true: Charlene Verona was back, and if there were wonderful things waiting to happen to anyone at all in the next few years of high school, you could be sure they’d happen to Charlene.

  Elizabeth, though, didn’t remember her as well as we did. “What’s the matter with her?” she asked. “I used to jump rope with her on the playground. I didn’t think she was so bad. Why don’t you like her?”

  Pamela and I looked at each other again.

  “She’s perfect,” said Pamela.

  “And she knows it,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Elizabeth, and shrugged.

  But people can change, I told myself. I was all prepared to hate Penny for making a play for Patrick—and getting him—but I still had to admit she was funny, wasn’t stuck on herself, or phony… . How did I know Charlene may not have changed?

  “You know, Charlene might have changed a lot since we knew her,” I said to Pamela as we left the cafe
teria.

  “I’m sure she has! For the worse,” Pamela replied.

  2

  Cay

  Elizabeth called me around the first of February.

  “Where have you been?” she asked. “You weren’t on the bus, and I’ve called you at least four times, but you weren’t home yet.”

  “We had a staff meeting for the newspaper, and then Molly and I had to pick up a tablecloth a woman is loaning us for the Sabbath.”

  “The Sabbath?”

  “The Sabbath supper in Fiddler on the Roof. We’re trying to make the scenes as authentic as possible, and a woman said her grandmother brought a tablecloth over from Russia.”

  “Who’s Molly?” Elizabeth asked, a whine in her voice. She’s been going to a therapist to help her deal with her feelings about being molested when she was younger—by a family friend, no less—and lately she’s been short-tempered. Hard to get along with sometimes.

  “I’ve told you,” I said. “I work with Molly and Faith getting props and things for the play. What’s new with you?”

  “Oh, nothing. The usual arguments with Mom. Why don’t you come over after dinner?”

  “I will,” I said. “I thought you and Pamela were going to be down at Tiddly Winks for a while.”

  “That doesn’t start till next week,” she said.

  It seemed I had less time for anyone anymore, myself included. When did I have a chance to cut my toenails? Write to Sylvia? Play cards with Dad? Go to a movie with Lester?

  I walked across the street to Elizabeth’s. She came to the door with Nathan in her arms. He’s the one person who can always make Elizabeth smile these days. She’d been an only child until Nathan Paul was born about sixteen months ago, and now he’s toddling all around the house and is into everything.

  “I-yah!” he chortled when I came inside. That’s what he calls me. I grabbed him from Elizabeth and swung him around, then blew on the side of his neck and he squealed happily, pulling away from me.

  “He’s a pill,” Elizabeth declared. “Aren’t you, Nate?” She kissed him.

  Up in her room later, she was full of complaints. Her mom did this … her dad said that … no consideration … they never understood how she felt. I figured I didn’t need to say anything, even if I’d known what to say, which I didn’t. Maybe when you’re seeing a therapist, all your angry feelings have to come out first before any positive ones can get through.

  I was listening to what Elizabeth was saying, but what I was really looking at, or trying not to look at, was her chin, because right smack in the middle of it was a huge red pimple, and there was another on the left side of her forehead. She just had to feel awful about that—Elizabeth, who has always had skin like a china doll. I was lucky, I guess, because I usually got only a couple of pimples the week before my period, while Pamela had pimples on her forehead through most of middle school and still has some.

  After a while I said, “Liz, you sound mad at the world. I hope you’re not mad at me, too.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “It’s just, you’re never around! At school you’re always with kids we don’t know.”

  “We eat lunch together, don’t we?” I sighed sympathetically. “It’s just the way things are going to be until the production is over. I promise I’ll have you and Pam over soon.”

  “I’ll believe it when it happens,” Elizabeth said.

  When I got home later and finished my homework, I checked my E-mail before I went to bed and found the usual messages from Karen and Jill and Pamela—one from Mark Stedmeister, even one from my old boyfriend, Donald Sheavers, back in Takoma Park. And then, near the bottom of the list, was an E-mail address I’d never heard of, and when I clicked “Read,” it said:

  Have been watching you. Curious?

  Meet me at the statue outside the

  auditorium tomorrow morning, 8:10.

  I could feel the blood throbbing in my temples. Who was this? Of course I wouldn’t go. Was he nuts? Was it even a he?

  Still, I was curious. I thought about all those “How We Met” letters to Ann Landers. What if this turned out to be Mr. Wonderful, and years from now I’d write some columnist and say that my future husband had once sent me an anonymous E-mail… .

  I called Pamela.

  “Oh, my gosh! That is major romantic!” she said. “Alice, you’ve just got to go!”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “What if he’s a rapist or something?”

  “Inside the school, main entrance, just before the first bell? Are you crazy?”

  “Well, why didn’t he sign his name?”

  “He’s just making an adventure out of it, that’s all. He’s a romantic!” Pamela said. “Look, I’ll even go with you. I’ll stay back in the shadows and make sure you’re all right.”

  “What if it’s a grown man waiting there?”

  “We’ll report him to the office. Come on, Alice! It’s probably someone you know.”

  “Well … okay. Just for the fun of it,” I said.

  She giggled. “Oh, Alice! What are you going to wear? Something sexy!”

  “Pamela, you’re out of your mind. I’m going to wear perfectly ordinary jeans and a sweater. And for Pete’s sake, promise me you won’t tell anybody. Not one word. I don’t want an audience.”

  “Cross my heart,” she said.

  Of course, the first thing she did the next morning was tell Elizabeth, and Liz was hurt because I hadn’t told her. But when she got over her snit, she said she wanted to come with us, too. So after we went to our lockers, we walked toward the auditorium.

  “Okay, I’ve got it all figured out,” Pamela said. “You know the kiosk at the top of the stairs? Elizabeth and I will hide behind that—actually, we’ll just stand up there by the railing talking while you go down to the statue below, and we’ll keep an eye on you. Make sure he isn’t a serial killer.”

  I laughed. “This has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done.”

  “Huh-uh,” said Liz. “Hiding Pamela up in your room last summer was the stupidest.”

  “No,” said Pamela, “pulling my hair onstage in sixth grade was worse.”

  “Never mind,” I said when we reached the kiosk. “Here I go.”

  Of course all three of us went to the stairs and looked down, but we didn’t see anyone. The person could have been standing behind the statue, though.

  “Good luck,” said Elizabeth as I descended the steps in my best jeans, a white turtleneck, and my backpack. At the bottom, I thrust my hands in the pockets of my jeans and looked around. Kids were coming through the doors from the buses, swarming around the statue, heading for their lockers. No one seemed to be lingering.

  “Hey, Alice, you’re going the wrong way,” someone called as she passed. I went over to one side and leaned back, one foot against the wall behind me, real casual, real cool. I felt that whoever the person was was watching me, but as the minutes ticked by and a couple kids looked at me as they passed, I could feel my face beginning to color. I glanced at my watch: 8:14. The note had definitely said 8:10. The bell would ring at 8:20.

  I decided to give it one more minute. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Pamela and Elizabeth looking over the railing in the hall above, wondering the same thing I was: Where the heck was he?

  At 8:15, I pushed away from the wall and quickly went back up the stairs. I knew my face was bright red, and wished like anything I’d never told Pamela, that I had suffered through this alone.

  “Let’s go,” I murmured, taking big strides back down the hall.

  “I wonder why he never showed,” Elizabeth said, hurrying to catch up with me.

  “I don’t know, but whoever wrote the note I don’t even want to meet. He was probably somewhere watching, laughing his head off.”

  At the corner I stopped. “Listen, if you two are my best friends, you will never, ever, tell anyone else about this.”

  “Oh, we wouldn’t!” said Elizabeth.

&nbs
p; “Not a soul,” said Pamela.

  I checked my E-mail when I got home that day. Nothing. But when I checked it again just before going to bed, I found this:

  I’m really sorry about this morning if

  you were at the statue. Our bus had to

  go around the construction on Dale Drive

  and we were late. Would you give me

  one more chance? Meet me at the statue

  today at 12:35?

  CAY (Crazy About You)

  • • •

  I clicked “Delete” and turned my computer off.

  On Saturdays at the Melody Inn, I run the Gift Shoppe. It’s under the stairs leading to the second floor, where instructors give music lessons in soundproof cubicles. Dad’s the manager of the store, and Marilyn Rawley, one of Lester’s former girlfriends, is assistant manager.

  We sell all kinds of stuff in the Gift Shoppe—from novelty items to useful things like guitar picks, batons, mouthpieces, and strings. Dad usually handles the instrument sales, Marilyn the sheet music, and I do the Gift Shoppe. There are other part-time clerks who help out on evenings and weekends.

  In January, we have a big sale to get rid of the stuff we overstocked for Christmas, and make room for new things. Salesmen come by with catalogs of new music boxes in the shape of violins, sweatshirts with keyboards on both sleeves, men’s shorts with clef signs, scarves with the Moonlight Sonata printed on them, earrings in the shape of middle C, and all sorts of jewelry for the revolving glass case beside the counter.

  “Hi, how you doing?” Marilyn said when I came in on Saturday. Her brown hair is straight and shoulder length, curled under at the ends, and she wears a lot of Indian prints. Today she had on a calf-length black wool skirt with a slit up the side, and a green silk blouse with embroidery on both sleeves. I always wished she and Les would get back together. I think Marilyn would in the blink of an eye, but I don’t know about Lester.

  “Busy,” I told her. “That’s the one word that describes high school—busy, hectic, tense… .”

  “How about ‘exciting, different, challenging’?” Marilyn said.

  “Well, that, too,” I told her.