Dangerously Alice

  “But there were all these thoughts going through my head when we went to the hospital, Alice, and I wanted to write a poem about the guilt I was feeling for every argument we’ve ever had and how I’m pledging my life to just enjoying the good things and not nagging him about the little stuff.”

  “That’s wonderful, Aunt Sally,” I said, and handed the phone to Les.

  • • •

  Later, when Dad and Sylvia were watching a program, Les and I did the dishes.

  “So what’s the new girl’s name, Les, and what’s she like?” I asked.

  “Name’s Claire: two arms, two legs, brown hair, blue eyes. …”

  “When do we get to meet her?” I asked.

  “I’ll have to give that some thought,” he answered. “See if she’s the family type.”

  “Is she at all like Tracy?” I asked. “Do you have a lot in common?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say we’ve made much progress in that department, but she’s good … uh, very good … at other things.”

  I decided not to ask any more.

  That evening, as I was searching for a slipper under the bed, I found a sheet of notepaper, scrunched and mauled, with tiny holes and tears in it. I fished it out and flattened the paper. It was the note that Liz had left on my bed the night we crept out to do the story. We must not have closed the door completely after us when we left my room, and Annabelle, coming in to sleep on my bed, had evidently found the note and toyed with it. I never appreciated her more.

  We got my story in by the Monday deadline, took it to the printer, and the paper came out on Tuesday:

  Edge Exclusive

  This newspaper neither assigned this story nor gave its permission, but when it was submitted to us, we felt it deserved to be read. The photos accompanying the article are intentionally dark to protect the identity of the writer.

  THE CITY AT NIGHT

  by Anonymous

  Who has never felt, even for a moment, the urge to run away? To simply walk out of a bad situation and take a breather? To see what two girls might be up against on the streets of Silver Spring in the wee hours of the morning, a friend and I—followed at a distance by two guys to keep us safe—slipped out around midnight on a Friday night. …

  That was the way my article began, and after telling all that had happened to us, I ended with:

  What we learned was that anyone wanting to escape a bad situation at home needs to have moxie, moola, and—most of all—a plan and a place to go. Because streets can be mean after midnight, even in Silver Spring.

  Wow! That story made a real splash. Did Liz and I want everyone to know we were the girls in the story? Does the sun rise in the east?

  When Pamela read it in the cafeteria, her eyes grew wide and she immediately turned to me. “Who were they, Alice? You must know!”

  Liz and I exchanged glances over our salads, and Pamela saw. She grabbed the copy of the newspaper again and studied the photos.

  “That’s you, Alice!” she said, pointing to the profile of me in the doorway of the gas station, trying to get the key. And to the others, she announced gleefully, “It was Alice! Wow! Alice! And you wrote this, I’ll bet! Who was the other girl?”

  “My lips are sealed,” I said, grinning.

  “Wait a minute,” said Gwen. She took the newspaper out of Pamela’s hands and her eyes traveled down the page. “Whoever it was knew a house where priests live, so she’s probably Catholic.”

  All eyes turned to Elizabeth. Jill and Karen positively stared.

  “Elizabeth?” cried Penny. “You and Elizabeth? Man, you guys could have been raped, you know that? You could have been killed!”

  “Who were the guys?” asked Jill.

  “Now, that,” I said, just to savor the moment, “will remain forever a mystery.”

  • • •

  It was raining that afternoon—a cold December rain—the kind that feels as though it could turn to sleet, but I didn’t care. I was on cloud nine. All afternoon the news had traveled around school that Liz and I had been the girls in the story, and kids gave me high fives and hugs.

  “You got a car?” Tony asked me. “I’ll drive you home.”

  I was grateful for the offer, because the bus had long since left. Miss Ames had called the newspaper staff in for a conference with the principal, and they let us know that while the story was a good one and provided some useful information, we should not expect that we could publish whatever we wanted just by printing a disclaimer. All of us, but especially Scott, had to promise that we’d run the paper—the whole paper—by Miss Ames in the future before it went to press. We promised.

  “Everybody’s talking about the story,” Tony said when he slid in beside me. “I think everyone knows now that it was you.”

  “Good!” I said, and laughed. “It probably took me as long to count the characters and lines as it did to write the piece. I don’t know how you always get your sports write-ups in on time.”

  “Computer program,” said Tony. “If you know the typeface, the number of characters needed per line, lines per column, and number of columns, you just feed in the information, click ‘Enter,’ and the computer takes your material and does the rest.”

  “Amazing,” I said.

  “We’ll stop by my place, and I’ll show it to you,” Tony said. He turned left at the corner instead of right.

  “Who’s home?” I asked.

  “Mom’ll be there soon,” he answered. He turned left again farther on and finally into the driveway of a large house. “C’mon. I’ll give you a demonstration.”

  I gave him my suspicious look, and he laughed. “Hey, this is school. This is learning. Jeez, does everything you do have to be an assignment? Don’t you ever do anything just for fun?”

  “Of course,” I said, and old dry-as-dust Alice followed him into the house.

  Tony lives in a more upscale neighborhood than we do. Actually, our house is, or used to be, the most modest house on the block. But Tony’s ranch-style had a big lawn. The master suite and study were at one end, he showed me on a quick tour, with the family room and Tony’s bedroom at the other. We said hello to the maid in the kitchen, then headed for Tony’s end of the house.

  I felt that warm flush at the sight of Tony’s unmade bed—a pair of Jockey shorts on the floor. We went over to his computer.

  Tony sat down and pushed a few keys. He found the article he’d written about our last football game against Churchill, then got up and told me to sit in his place.

  “Click on ‘Times New Roman,’” he said, and I did.

  “Now specify thirty-four characters per line …”

  I obeyed.

  “Then fifty-one lines per column, and press ‘Enter.’”

  I did, and suddenly Tony’s article disappeared, only to reappear in column form. He showed me how to add a heading and even wrap the type around photos.

  “Oh, wow! I’ve got to get this!” I said.

  He was standing behind my chair, hands on my shoulders, and he let them slide down my body until they reached my breasts. He bent over me, thumbs circling my nipples. Instantly, I felt the warm wetness between my legs.

  “Tony …,” I said, laughing a little. He pulled me up out of the chair, turned me around, and kissed me. Without letting go of me, he reached out and slid a CD in his player, and a slow song began, a woman singing a love song.

  “Just want to relive a little of the Snow Ball,” he said, and started dancing with me, hands on my behind. We danced right over his Jockey shorts, in fact, and as we moved away from the bed, I relaxed a little and swayed to his rhythm.

  We danced slowly around his room, our bodies together, and I could feel him getting hard.

  I heard a voice from the hallway, a door closing. I startled and pushed away.

  “It’s the maid leaving,” he whispered in my ear. We were alone in the house then.

  “Your mom …?” I questioned.

  “Shhhh,” he whispered, and
we kissed again.

  The next time we got near his bed, he nudged me down on it and lay beside me. “Oh, baby,” he said.

  I wanted to say, Please don’t call me that. I’m me. Alice. But even thinking it, I sounded like Little Miss Sunday School.

  My breasts again. He didn’t try to unfasten my bra this time. Just reached up under my top and clumsily pushed my bra up over my breasts. It was sort of awkward, the way we were lying across his twin bed. Only our backs and hips were on it, our legs off the edge, feet on the floor. I thought of Aunt Sally’s admonition to keep both feet on the floor and almost smiled when I thought of the trouble you could get in with feet firmly planted.

  Now Tony was trying to get me to lie on the bed lengthwise, but I didn’t like the thought of being pushed back against the wall, so I resisted. Then he was unzipping my jeans, tugging at the sides till they were down past my hips, and his hand was inside my underwear, finding my slippery place. I felt the swelling sensation in my vagina.

  “Oh, baby, you’re creaming for me,” he said. “You want it as much as I do.”

  He didn’t say he wanted me, I noticed. He wanted it. So did I, honestly, but not, I think, with Tony.

  “Tony, your mom …,” I said again.

  “She won’t be home till six,” he whispered. “Shhhh.”

  That was an hour away! I tensed but then gave in again and let his finger explore me. Then it was in me, and his other hand was tugging at my jeans, trying to get them all the way off. I was wildly excited.

  “Baby … baby …,” he murmured breathily.

  He reached over and yanked at the little drawer on his bedside table, pulling out a condom. “I’ll put on a glove,” he said, and unzipped his own jeans. Condoms at the ready, in his bedside drawer? Was I just one of his “babes” in a long succession of girls?

  “Tony,” I said, dislodging his finger and trying to pull up my jeans.

  Another door opening somewhere. Closing. Footsteps in the house.

  “Tony!” I said, panicking.

  “It’s only my dad, and he doesn’t care,” Tony said.

  I edged away from him.

  “He won’t come in. He never does. Trust me,” Tony said.

  “No,” I said, scooting back.

  “Baby, don’t leave me like this,” Tony said, pulling me against him again and putting my hand on his penis. He squeezed my hand a couple of times, and a few seconds later he came.

  “Oh, baby, oh, baby,” he kept breathing in my ear. “We got a good thing going here. We could be so good together. …”

  “Tony?” his dad called from out in the hall.

  “Got company,” Tony yelled back, still breathless.

  I wasn’t sure, but I think I heard his dad chuckle. “Just wanted to know if you were home,” he said, and the footsteps went away.

  I got up, pulled up my jeans, and zipped them. Reached under my shirt and pulled my bra back down over my breasts. “I’ve got to get home. I can’t stay any longer,” I said.

  He wiped himself off with a corner of the sheet, then stood and zipped up, grinning at me.

  I was embarrassed when we walked through the high-ceilinged living room.

  “Alice, this is my dad,” Tony said. “Dad, this is the girl I took to the Snow Ball.”

  “How you doing, Alice?” Mr. Osler said, and he went back to his newspaper.

  Tony talked about his dad as he drove me home. How his dad had been big man on campus when he was in college. “A girl on each arm,” his dad used to brag. And I began to get the picture—that if Tony couldn’t be the sports hero his dad had wanted him to be, he’d try for big man on campus with the girls. Again I wondered, Who was he, really? Who was I?

  When we got to my house, he said, “This was just a warm-up, baby. Next time I’ll give you a taste of the real thing.”

  I smiled. “Your next girl, Tony,” I said, and kissed him good-bye.

  Back at home, while Sylvia was preparing dinner, I lay on my bed thinking about that scene with Tony. The awkwardness of the way we were lying, clothes half on, half off, my bra pulled up over my breasts. A narrow twin bed. I couldn’t help thinking about Dad and Sylvia in their own bed, in their own room. Comfortable. Relaxed. Unhurried. Trusting, and in love.

  Usually, I wanted to rush right to the phone and tell Pam or Liz or Gwen or all of them when something racy had happened to me. This time I didn’t. Not for a while, anyway. Sometimes you don’t tell your friends everything, either. I felt like there was a lot to settle in my own mind about what I wanted and what I didn’t.

  I liked sex, that’s certain. I liked a boy to kiss my breasts, to run his hands up and down my sides, to thrust his tongue in my mouth, to explore my slippery place and finger me. I was eager, I’ll admit, for whatever came next. But I was going to be choosy. It wouldn’t be lying sideways, with my bra yanked up like a rape scene. It wouldn’t be in a guy’s bedroom with his dad just down the hall. It wouldn’t be with a guy who called me “baby” and was adding me to a long list of girls, condoms at the ready.

  Why couldn’t my hormones understand that? I wondered. Why couldn’t they all stay quiet until I was with the right guy at the right time in the right place, and then go crazy? I was surprised to find myself smiling just a little. That would make a humorous subject to write about someday, but it sure wouldn’t be for the school newspaper. Or maybe not for anywhere that my parents could read it.

  There are things you keep from your parents. Some of them they should know, perhaps, like that night in Silver Spring, but you never tell them because you realize afterward just how dangerous they had been. And you know you won’t repeat them. Each time something like that happens, you gain an experience, a little independence, but it’s at a price. Growing up also means growing away, I discovered. After our night out on the town, I felt charged and elated that we had pulled it off. At the same time, there was a sort of homesickness inside me, like … well … that I was leaving a little girl behind. That I probably would never sit on my dad’s lap again, as I had the other night. That there was a necessary distance between us now. Like, you can be excited and sad at the same time. And times like tonight, what happened between Tony and me—I wouldn’t tell Dad at all.

  15

  What Happened Next

  I still hadn’t finished the assignment for Mrs. Cary and couldn’t delay any longer. She was going to start calling on us to give our talks the next day and, as Les would say, I just had to “suck it up.” But how could you give a persuasive speech about something you didn’t believe in?

  I’d done most of the research last week, starting with Google. No, to tell the truth, I’d started with Gwen. “Tell me one medical breakthrough that’s come about through animal experimentation,” I’d asked after explaining my assignment to her.

  “The Rh factor in infants,” she’d told me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Blue babies. I learned about it at the hematology lab. A blood disease of newborn infants when they have a different blood type from their mothers. Doctors learned how to correct it by operating first on dogs. Go to Google and type in ‘medical discoveries using animals in research.’”

  The list of medical breakthroughs in front of me was long. By experimenting initially on dogs, for example, researchers had created the heart-lung machine that is used to keep patients alive during heart surgery. Operating on baboons, surgeons had learned how to remove cancer cells in bone marrow without destroying healthy cells. Pigs had played an important role in studying the healing process of burn victims. …

  Of all the medical research involving animals, one article said, 92 percent of it was not painful. But what about the 8 percent that was? How could anyone stand by and watch a rabbit or a guinea pig suffer? And what about labs where the technicians were careless and needlessly let animals suffer?

  I ran it past Dad at breakfast the next morning.

  “There’s no question that there should be stricter controls over lab
oratory experiments, Al,” he said, considering it. “I’ve read some of those horror stories too. But if a critical experiment is needed, and it’s a choice between a dog having to suffer or your uncle Milt dying, which would you choose?”

  “Was Uncle Milt …?” I began.

  “Well, he’s had heart surgery,” said Dad.

  I sat perfectly still. “Have they … have they ever discovered anything about … about leukemia from animals?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Al. But if they had … if there was …”

  I sighed. “I’d have wanted them to try whatever they could to save Mom. Or Molly.”

  Something dramatic happened in speech class that afternoon. I was the second one up, after a guy who argued against legalizing marijuana. I was halfway through my talk when I saw a woman slip through the door at the back of the room and quietly take an empty seat.

  I saw Mrs. Cary crane her neck a little to see who it was, smile quizzically, then turn her attention back to me. I don’t think any of the other kids noticed.

  When I’d finished, but before the critique began, Mrs. Cary stood up and said to the woman, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know your name.”

  Everyone turned to see whom she was talking to. The woman was short, a little stocky, dressed in a brown jacket and pants, with a bright-colored scarf around her neck.

  “I’m Jennifer Shoates’s mother,” she said, rising from her chair, “and I’d like to talk to you about the completely irresponsible assignment you gave my daughter.”

  The quiet in the classroom was almost eerie. This was something I’d never seen before—well, not since second grade, anyway—a mom coming in to protest. Jennifer, the girl who had spoken against sex before marriage—sitting in the second row—turned as red as a cherry tomato.

  We knew that Mrs. Shoates hadn’t stopped at the office first because she wasn’t wearing a visitor’s pass. I’m not sure just how she got by security. All eyes were on Mrs. Cary now, to see how an experienced teacher would handle this.