Dangerously Alice

  “Oh, absolutely!” said Jill.

  “MGT!” Karen murmured as they turned in at the next doorway.

  “What’s that?” asked the girl who was with them.

  And Jill answered, “Miss Goody Two-shoes.”

  I didn’t react, just kept walking, but my cheeks felt hot. It was as though there were one gauge inside my body registering my discomfort level and another registering my self-esteem. The first one was rising; the second was bottoming out. Did I really care what Jill and Karen thought of my career plans? Evidently. I hated that they got to me so.

  Forget it, I told myself.

  You can say that, but how do you actually do it?

  • • •

  By Wednesday, Mismatched Day, at least half the students were in the swing of things. We came to school not only in different-colored socks for each foot, but in hideous combinations of colors and patterns. Pamela, all 105 pounds of her, came in a fur jacket on top, shorts on the bottom, a different earring in each ear. I made sure Sam took a picture of her for our paper.

  It’s interesting how well Sam and I get along now that we’re not going out anymore. He seemed so hurt the day we broke up, and I felt so awful, so guilty, I wondered if he’d ever be the same again. But as soon as he got a new girlfriend, he was happy as a clam. Happier, maybe. Sam’s probably one of those guys who’s in love with love. As long as he has a girlfriend, life’s good.

  “I wish Spirit Week went on all year,” Pamela said. “School would be more fun if we could dress in costumes all the time.”

  “Let’s all go over to Molly’s after school dressed like this,” I said, showing off the lace-up boot and red knee stocking on one leg, the black net stocking and high-heeled pump on the other. Gwen had her brother’s car for the day and said she’d drive.

  When I went to see Mrs. Bailey at noon for my appointment, I found her wearing a baseball cap and a football sweatshirt. We laughed at each other’s getup.

  “Well, I’m not getting a whole lot of work done this week, but I’m having fun,” she told me, and gave me a welcoming smile, then waited.

  “I’ve pretty much decided that I want a career working with people,” I began. “I used to think I wanted to be a psychologist, but I’m not sure I could get through a doctoral program. Statistics and everything. And the more I think about it, I want to go into counseling.”

  I expected her to get all enthusiastic, but she just nodded and smiled.

  “Well, a degree is only one thing you need to consider,” she said. “The other half is personality—your ability to empathize. How’s your patience factor? Are you a good listener?”

  “I probably do a better job of listening than I do of being patient,” I told her. “But I can learn, can’t I?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “You’ll want to bone up on psychology and sociology, anthropology, literature … anything having to do with people. …”

  We talked for ten minutes or more, and then I asked, “What’s the best thing about being a counselor?”

  “Good question,” said Mrs. Bailey. She thought a moment before answering. “I think it’s helping students connect with their real selves; helping them find out what they really, truly, down in their heart of hearts, want to do or be, not necessarily what their parents want them to be. And now you’re going to ask what’s the worst part, right?”

  I nodded, and we laughed.

  “Time,” she said. “Not enough of it. I wish I could spend twice as much time with every student who walks in here. Three times as much. There are too many forms to fill out, reports to write. We’re given too many tasks that aren’t in our job description. But there’s no perfect career, Alice. There are always going to be pluses and minuses.”

  So there, Karen and Jill! I thought as I left her office. Your careers won’t be so perfect either.

  At lunch Penny was showing us a fashion magazine article about how burlesque had influenced the fashion industry over the years. There was a photo of a 1930s fan dancer, supposedly nude except for a large Japanese-style fan covering part of her body; a 1940s-type bubble dancer who performed nude, half hidden by large bubbles blown from a fan behind the footlights; burlesque dancers who used large ostrich feathers to hide their bodies and tease the men. And then the magazine showed pictures of fashion designers’ dresses with fantail pleats for the bodice; large round globes, like bubbles, decorating a neckline; dresses made of beads and feathers. …

  We were laughing at the hairstyles in those old photos. The heavily mascara-lined eyes, the heavily rouged cheeks, the pouty lips. That same afternoon as I headed for my locker, I was approached by the roving freshman reporter for our newspaper, a shy girl who looked relieved to find an upperclassman—any upperclassman—she knew.

  “Scott wants me to do a poll on what people plan to do after college,” she said.

  “To do?” I asked. “Like … travel?”

  “Be,” she said. “What do you want to be after college?”

  “Bubble dancer,” I joked.

  And she actually wrote it down and put my name after it. I laughed out loud as I opened my locker and put on my jacket. Chew on that for a while, Jill and Karen! I thought. Miss Goody Two-shoes indeed!

  Molly was definitely thinner and feeling pretty sick when we saw her. She smiled at our mismatched clothes, but it was a smile that looked as though it were holding back nausea.

  “You guys are great to come by, but I’m the ‘Puke-Up Kid’ right now,” she said.

  We didn’t stay long. We did the talking mostly—Pamela told her about the first three days of Spirit Week and how we were all going to come to school the next day with the weirdest hairdo we could think of. Then Pamela’s voice fell flat when we realized that Molly didn’t have any hair at all under her bandana. In fact, she’d lost her eyebrows and eyelashes. You think of a head being bald, but not a face.

  “We’ll come back another time when you’re feeling better,” I said, signaling the others that I didn’t think she was enjoying our company much.

  “Yeah? When will that be? I wonder,” Molly said plaintively.

  “You’re going to beat this, Molly,” Gwen said. “Be strong, girl.”

  “You don’t still work at the lab, do you?” Molly asked her.

  “No, that was a summer internship,” Gwen said.

  “Then you don’t really know if I’m getting better or not, do you?” asked Molly.

  “No,” Gwen said truthfully. “I don’t. But I’m going to picture you well and strong and gorgeous.”

  “Good,” Molly said. “I want to be a redhead next time, with hair down to my waist.”

  “You got it,” said Gwen, and Molly closed her eyes.

  Downstairs her mom said, “It’s been a trying week. She can’t seem to keep anything down, and she’s behind in her schoolwork. She’s discouraged and scared, and so are we, frankly, though the doctor says this is all to be expected.”

  “I’m praying for her,” said Elizabeth.

  “Thank you. I really appreciate it,” said Mrs. Brennan. “One of her sisters is in town visiting now, and that should help too.”

  Outside, Pamela said, “Maybe we ought to start a fund drive and collect money for her.”

  “For what?” asked Gwen.

  “I don’t know. For whatever you need if you have cancer,” said Pamela.

  “We’re not doctors, Pam. We don’t know what she needs,” Gwen said, and didn’t say much more as she drove us home.

  I think that most of the school came on Thursday with their hair a mess, literally. All colors of the rainbow. Spiked, frosted, peaked, molded, zigzagged, cornrowed, teased, and even shaved.

  On Friday the wild hair was replaced with top hats and high stiff collars, only to be discarded that night at the football game, where we wore wool jackets and fleece-lined boots and cheered our lungs out, even though we lost by three points to the rival team. To be frank, I never really understood football. I cheer when everyone else
is cheering and sit down when everyone else sits.

  We were getting some good stories and photos for the next issue of The Edge, and during the second half of the game—for the third quarter, anyway—Scott Lynch and a couple more seniors sat with us, Scott next to me, thigh to thigh. I figured my junior year couldn’t get much better than this and that I would remember this night, this moment, this warmth against me for the rest of my natural life.

  On Saturday night Gwen got her brother’s car again for the Homecoming Dance, and I went to Liz’s house in my best tight-fitting jeans and a low-cut sweater. Liz did my makeup, and I did her hair, and we both looked eighteen when we left her house and climbed in Gwen’s car, Pam in the front seat. Liz’s little brother waved to us from the house.

  “Tonight we are going to howl!” Pamela announced over her shoulder.

  “Ow-ooooo!” I yipped, and we laughed.

  The gym was decorated with streamers in fall colors, and a DJ played the music, taking requests and playing our favorite songs. He’d also recorded our school song and had a local band tape different variations of it.

  There were a few slow numbers, the lights dimming. The four of us danced together on the fast numbers, drifted away during the slow ones, but as I was leaving the floor near the end of the evening, someone swung me round and pulled me toward him. Tony Osler.

  “Dance?” he said as he began moving with the beat.

  “Do I have a choice?” I teased, smiling back, glad to have at least one serious dance of the evening—and with a senior, at that!

  “All right, may I have this dance?” he said, grinning at me.

  “You may,” I said.

  Tony’s about my height—brown hair and eyes, nice-looking but nothing spectacular. Husky. We were cheek to cheek for a while, and sometimes I felt he was pressed just a little too close. But I’ll admit I didn’t object.

  “So,” he said into my ear, “I’ve been meaning to ask you a question.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “How many of those answers were true?” he said.

  “What answers?” I asked, pulling away a little to look at him.

  “You know—on that ‘Predict Your Future Love Life’ questionnaire that Brian Brewster sent out.”

  I should have known he was still thinking about that terrible trick Brian had played on me, when I’d answered some extremely personal questions online without knowing that all the answers had gone to Brian.

  “That silly thing?” I said. “It’s old as Methuselah. It must be the way Brian gets his kicks. I just wanted to stir him up a little.”

  Tony held me close again and whispered in my ear, “Stirred me up a little.”

  “You’re easily stirred,” I said.

  “Well, all I can say is that you look good tonight,” said Tony. “Good enough to eat.”

  And this was exciting to a girl without a boyfriend. A girl with braces. A girl of average intelligence, average everything, who hadn’t been kissed since last spring.

  3

  Annabelle

  Everyone says to get a good night’s sleep before you take the PSAT. They say to eat a high-carb breakfast, don’t have a quarrel with your parents, and if you can’t answer a question on the test, go on to the next one and come back to it later. But you can do all these things and still be terrified.

  Sylvia had invited Lester over for dinner and made an extra pumpkin pie for him to take back home and share with his roommates.

  “Give me some sample questions, Les,” I said.

  “Al, it’s been so long since I was in high school, I don’t even remember taking a PSAT,” he said.

  “I don’t care,” I told him. “Make up something, and see if I can think clearly. Anything at all.”

  He took another helping of peas and onions. “If ‘X’ equals the number of women seeking eligible men, and ‘Y’ equals the number of men seeking eligible women, and ‘Z’ equals the number of men and women with cell phones, how many couples will hook up?” he said.

  “Be serious,” I told him.

  “Alice, I think the best thing you can do at this point is put the test completely out of your mind and watch a movie or something,” Sylvia said. “That test isn’t going to define you for the rest of your life.”

  Dad grinned at me. “No matter how you do, you can always work at the Melody Inn.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said.

  After dinner I called to see what everyone else was doing. Gwen was reading a novel, Pamela was doing her nails, and Liz was planning to take a half-hour soak in the tub. I decided to go for a long walk in the fall air, then come back and watch a video.

  I was thinking how much I liked our neighborhood—how much I liked Elizabeth living across the street and Pamela only a few blocks away. We’d been friends forever, and at least that much hadn’t changed. But Lester had moved out, Sylvia had moved in, and what I had thought would be the perfect life with the teacher of my dreams for a stepmom turned out to be not quite so perfect after all. She just had her own way of doing things, and sometimes she seemed too much the teacher here at home. But Dad loved her, and I was glad they married. Besides, I only had two more years to live here full-time before I left for college, and that gave me a funny feeling in my stomach.

  I was about four blocks from home when I heard someone call, “Hey, Alice!”

  It was Keeno, Brian’s friend, the guy from St. John’s. His last name was Keene, but everyone called him Keeno.

  I grinned and walked over to where he’d pulled up at the curb, then rested my arms on the open window. “Hey!” I said. “When did you get the wheels?”

  “Dad finally caved and bought me a car. It’s a second-hand, fourth-owner, with a hundred thousand miles on it, but it moves. What are you doing out by yourself? Running away?” he asked.

  I laughed. “PSAT tomorrow. I’m trying to calm my nerves.”

  “I took mine last year,” he said. “Not so bad.”

  “I hate tests,” I told him. “I think I’d actually enjoy school if we never had to take tests. I get stomachaches and headaches, and my hands perspire. …”

  “Want to go for a ride and relax a little?” he asked. “I’ll drive slow and play soft music and let the wind blow through your hair.”

  I smiled. “No, thanks. I need the walk, but it doesn’t stop the worrying.”

  “Then I could drive seventy miles an hour, and at least you could worry about something else,” he said.

  “Not that.” I laughed.

  “Starbucks? A caramel latte? Ice cream?”

  “Naw. I’m just out clearing my head. Thanks. So where are you going?”

  “Oh, just cruising around looking for pickups. Drugs. A little robbery, maybe. Nothing big.”

  I laughed again and backed away from the car.

  “Don’t get caught,” I said. He waved and pulled away.

  When I got home, I watched an hour of Gone with the Wind, then fell asleep.

  The next morning I wasn’t nearly as worried as I had been the day before. Now that the day was here and there was nothing more I could do about it, I read the comics at breakfast like I always do. And as it turned out, I think I did okay on the test. I was sure of maybe 60 percent. A lot of kids finished before me, including Gwen, but I calmed down and tried to see it as an adventure. An experiment. We wouldn’t get the results till December.

  I decided that one thing I could do to make myself more interesting was to actually learn football. I don’t know how I grew up to be so sports-challenged, but I did. When the gang gets together, the other girls seem to know about fifty yard lines and halfbacks and fullbacks, while I sit hunkered down in a corner chair wishing I were watching almost anything other than football. But no one is going to invite a girl over to watch football if she cheers for the wrong team and doesn’t know it. No girl like that would be the life of the party. There was only one person to call.

  “Lester,” I said on Sunday, “will you be home this afterno
on? I really, really need a lesson in football, and I was wondering if you were going to watch the game.”

  “Yeah, we’re watching it here,” Les said, meaning he and his roommates. “Come on over if you want.”

  I arrived with a bag of chili-flavored corn chips and some brownies. I was a little embarrassed that Paul Sorenson and George Palamas were there too, but I tried to ask only about things that really confused me. Les and I were on the couch, Paul was in an easy chair on one side, George in the contour chair on the other.

  “Okay, you know who the Redskins are, right?” asked Lester.

  “Yes, I’m not a total idiot. The guys in red and orange,” I answered. “And the Cowboys are silver and blue.”

  “So far so good,” said Les. “Now, at each end of the field, you see two goalposts. Those are in the end zones. One end of the field is Washington’s end zone. The other is Dallas’s. A team scores if they can get the ball in the other team’s end zone. If they do, it’s a touchdown, worth six points. They get an additional point if their kicker can kick the ball between the other team’s goalposts. Questions?”

  “No, I think I understand that much,” I said. “It’s all the stuff between the two end zones that I don’t understand.”

  “We’ll get to those one by one,” said Les. “But you can’t think straight unless you have a beer in your hand. In your case, a can of Gatorade.”

  I watched for a while in silence. Les glanced over now and then to see if I had any questions.

  Finally I said, “See, Lester? See? This is why I like basketball better than football. In basketball you can’t take your eyes off the ball even for a second or somebody might score. It’s easy to understand. If the ball goes through the basket, you score. What’s to understand? But all these guys do in football is huddle and talk about it first. ‘Just do it,’ I want to say. Just get out there and do it! And even when they do move, it’s only for a few seconds and you can’t even see the ball.”

  Suddenly, however, as Dallas was moving down the field, there must have been a fumble because a Redskins player had the ball. He whirled around and ran … and ran … and ran for Dallas’s end zone. One Cowboy after another tried to bring him down, but he made it, and I was on my feet yelling my lungs out.