Dangerously Alice

  She headed for the hot air register and stood there hugging herself.

  “What am I going to tell Beth?” she asked plaintively. “What if she wants Annabelle back?”

  “I don’t know,” I murmured.

  “I’m going to take a hot bath and go to bed,” she said suddenly, and leaving her papers scattered on the dining room table, she went upstairs. I heard water running in the tub.

  Dad was at a concert listening to one of his music instructors play the oboe, so I was going to get stuck with the job of telling him what had happened to Annabelle. I studied until ten fifteen, when the doorbell rang again. I debated not answering. No kid should be out this late. But I opened the door a crack and peeped out. There stood Lester.

  “Trick or treat?” he asked. “Dark chocolate, if you’ve got it.”

  I laughed, and he came inside, reaching around me for the candy bowl.

  “You came all the way over here for some candy?” I asked.

  “No. I had to pick up something at the mall, so I swung by here and saw you were still up. Figured you might have some candy left.”

  “Take it all,” I said. “It’ll keep me from eating it.”

  “Any idea what that can of tuna is doing on your front porch?” he asked. “Trying to ward off vampires or something?”

  “No, it’s bait,” I said, and told him about Annabelle and how Sylvia was so upset, she’d gone to bed.

  “That’s a bummer!” he said.

  “I knew this would happen, Lester,” I said irritably. “Sylvia swore she’d take complete care of that cat, but that’s never the way it is.”

  “I know,” said Lester. “Dad said the same thing when I begged for a dog.”

  “I’m sounding like Dad now?” I asked.

  “As long as you don’t start looking like him, you’re okay,” he said. “Give me a bag for the rest of the candy, and I’ll take it off your hands.”

  “You’re a first-class moocher,” I said fondly, but we encourage him because it’s one way to guarantee we’ll see him now and then. I got a bag from the kitchen and filled it up.

  As Les opened the door to leave, he suddenly paused, his hand on the knob. “She’s baaaaaack!” he said.

  “Annabelle?” I said, moving up behind him.

  “And she’s got company!” Lester said.

  I stared. There were two cats competing for the tuna can, nudging it this way and that as they fed. One was Annabelle, and the other was a large orange tomcat.

  “Omigod, get him away from her, Lester!” I cried.

  But all Les had to do was open the screen, and the tomcat leaped to the top of the railing and sailed down into the bushes. I ran out on the porch and scooped up Annabelle as Les brought the tuna can back inside.

  “Well, well!” Lester said. “Looks like she got herself a boyfriend!”

  “Les, what are we going to do?” I bleated.

  “About what? This isn’t Annabelle?”

  “Of course it is, but she’s never been out of a house before! She’s never touched grass or smelled a flower or seen a male cat until tonight!” I told him. “What if she’s pregnant?”

  “Yep, let a female loose for one night, and she goes wild,” Lester said.

  “Les, this is serious!” I cried.

  Les put on his serious face and shook his finger at Annabelle. “Bad kitty! Bad, bad, bad!” he scolded.

  I took Annabelle out to the kitchen and let her lick out the tuna can. “Do you think I should call a vet?” I asked. “Should we take her to an animal emergency room or something?”

  Les stared at me. “For what? A morning-after pill? Are you out of your mind? You don’t even know what she did.”

  “I can guess.”

  “Maybe the tomcat just smelled the tuna.”

  “And maybe he smelled her. What if she has a litter?”

  “So take her to a crisis center! Capture the tomcat and test his DNA!” Les said in exasperation.

  There were footsteps overhead, and then the stairs creaked and Sylvia appeared in the kitchen doorway in her robe.

  “I thought I heard voices down here,” she said. Then she saw Annabelle. “Where did you find her?” she asked delightedly, kneeling down beside the cat. “Is she okay?”

  Les frowned at me and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “I guess the tuna lured her back.”

  “You naughty little girl!” Sylvia said, picking Annabelle up in her arms. “You’re never getting out again, so I hope you enjoyed yourself!”

  “Oh, I’m sure she did,” said Lester. “Probably more than we’ll ever know.”

  I was telling Pam and Liz about the Annabelle episode at lunch the next day.

  “Can you believe it? Her first time out, and she comes home with a boyfriend,” I said.

  “Man, I wish I had that kind of luck!” said Pamela. “I’ll bet he was all over her too!”

  Karen and Jill were standing near our table with their trays, looking to see if there was a better option somewhere else. It was raining, though, and most of the kids had stayed inside, so all the tables were taken. The girls took the last two seats across from me.

  “Who you talking about?” asked Jill. “Who was all over whom?”

  I caught Pamela’s eye. “Tom and Annabelle,” I said.

  “Who are they?” asked Karen, taking a bite of her ham salad.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know them,” I said. “Sylvia brought Annabelle home one night. Friend of a friend.”

  Liz was hiding a smile behind her napkin.

  “And the minute their backs were turned, Annabelle’s out the door. Five hours later she’s back with a boyfriend,” Pamela said, poker-faced.

  Jill set down her Sprite. “She’s staying at your place, Alice?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said.

  “What’s the boyfriend like? Some bar bum? Did you meet him?” asked Karen.

  “Orange hair. Big. You could tell he had only one thing on his mind,” I answered, and quickly wiped my mouth.

  “And Sylvia just let him come in? He spent the night?” Karen exclaimed. Pamela and Liz and I were trying desperately to keep from laughing.

  “No. Lester found them together on the porch and sent the boyfriend packing, but Sylvia will forgive anything,” I said.

  Liz stifled a giggle, and Jill glanced quizzically at her.

  “But what did Annabelle have to say for herself?” Karen asked.

  I couldn’t keep it up any longer. “Nothing,” I said. “She only purred.” And Pam and Liz and I broke out laughing.

  Jill gave me a disgusted look. “I might have known,” she said. “The only girl at your table who will ever get some is of the feline variety.”

  Pamela bristled. “There are other tables in the cafeteria, Jill. Help yourself,” she said.

  Jill laughed if off as though she’d been joking. But she and Karen continued their conversation in a low voice, and it seemed to be about a lingerie sale at Victoria’s Secret—definitely, they appeared to be saying, not for the likes of us.

  The day The Edge goes to press, we pile in Scott’s car and anybody else’s car who can drive, and we take the new copy to the printer. Then we go to the fast-food place next door and eat dinner. Meatball subs and fries.

  “Come on. We can seat three up here,” Scott was saying from behind the wheel. “Alice, you squeeze in between Jacki and me.”

  He was smiling at me with those incredible eyes. The middle seat was a kind of fold-down affair between the two bucket seats, and I had to sit at an angle, my legs to one side, so that Scott could move the gearshift. That made my upper body closer to him than it would ordinarily be. I was almost leaning against him.

  I could smell the scent of his leather jacket, the shampoo traces on his hair, the male-armpit deodorant smell.

  “Everyone buckled up?” he asked, turning the key in the ignition. “There’s no belt for you, Alice, but if I cra
sh, I’ll grab you, I promise.”

  Crash! I wanted to say. Please crash. Just a little fender bender, that’s all. …

  My left hip was pinned against his right hip, my left shoulder touching his right. I could feel any move he made with the gearshift, every turn he made of the wheel.

  Jacki Severn was prattling on and on about the pictures she wished we’d gotten to accompany her feature articles this issue, and Sam, in back, was explaining how shots like those were so difficult to get. Tony and the sophomore roving reporter, sitting with Sam, were arguing over one of the referee’s calls in the last football game. About the only people in the car who weren’t saying anything were Scott and me.

  Didn’t that mean something? I wondered. Was he conscious of the warmth of our bodies pressed together there in the front seat? Was he thinking about me like I was thinking about him? Ignoring all the chatter and just thinking how close our bodies were right then? I think this was the closest I’d ever been to Scott Lynch in my life, and I loved it—the smell of him, the feel of him, the way he laughed, smiled, breathed. …

  The printer is way out in Gaithersburg, a thirty-minute drive, depending on traffic, and I wished it were thirty hours instead. I wished it were just Scott and me, and we’d leave everyone else at the restaurant and he’d drive me home and we’d park and …

  We all trooped inside the print shop and waited while Scott and Jacki went over a few details with the printer. Then we went next door to the sub place and took a table.

  I wanted to sit beside Scott, but Jacki got that chair, so I sat across from him instead. I took a chance and gave him a big smile. “Looks like I got the best seat at the table,” I said, smiling knowingly.

  He smiled back. “Ketchup?” he asked when our food arrived, and handed me the bottle.

  It was like I was waiting all evening for the perfect time to talk to him. I was so aware of him—so full of him—that I hardly tasted my Coke or fries. He had a funny little wrinkle at the corner of each eyelid and three tiny moles at the side of his jaw. There was a faint blond mustache above his upper lip. If you could fall in love with a face, I guess I was in love with his. I wanted in the worst way to run a finger along that mustache. It was crazy. I was crazy for crushing on him like this.

  Jacki got involved in a conversation with someone else, and I saw my chance.

  “So,” I said to Scott. “What do you do when you’re not working on the paper?”

  “Study,” he answered. “Fill out applications for college. What else?”

  “Which colleges?” I asked.

  “Ithaca, University of Michigan, Ohio State. … I’d like to go into journalism. Either that or architecture, I’m not sure.”

  “You’d be great at either one, I’ll bet,” I said. “But what do you do for fun?”

  He grinned. “Oh, go to the movies. Go bowling with my cousin. Rock concerts. Jazz. Sailing in the summer. What about you?”

  “I love movies too,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t ask the name of the last one I’d seen. “I like theater … I like to write … I love dances.”

  He took another bite of his meatball sub, so I barreled on: “Thanksgiving’s so early this year that they moved the Snow Ball up to November,” I said. “November thirtieth. I heard that the decorating committee is going all out.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I heard that too. It’s going to be like an ice cave you have to walk through to get in the gym.”

  “That should be fun,” I said, and looked right into his eyes. I was smiling my special smile, just for him. At least, it felt special. I could feel the air on my teeth. I waited. Scott went on eating.

  “My dad’s manager of the Melody Inn over on Georgia Avenue,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound desperate. “We’ve got a great collection of CDs if you ever want to come by.”

  “That right?” he said. “Thanks. Maybe I will.” Then he reached over and swiped the pickle off Jacki’s plate, but she caught him and slapped his hand, and he laughed.

  It hurts so much to like someone who doesn’t see you as anyone special. I felt right then as though I could have been a doorknob. A chair. A comfortable old shirt, maybe. I wondered if this was what it had felt like to Sam when I broke up with him—that hollow feeling in the stomach. The dryness in the back of the throat. The thick feeling on the tongue, like it’s too big for the inside of your mouth. All I wanted to do was go home, curl up, and sleep.

  Maybe Jill and Karen were right, I thought. Maybe I was a boring Miss Goody Two-shoes and I’d be the last girl on the newspaper staff—no, the last girl in the whole high school—Scott would take to a dance.

  When the next issue of The Edge came out, there were some leftover pictures from last month’s Spirit Week, including the one of my legs with a different shoe on each foot. And on the last page of the paper was a little filler by the freshman roving reporter, titled “Thoughts on Careers from Upperclassmen”:

  Ann Haung—chemist

  Dan Kowalski—criminal lawyer

  Scott Lynch—journalist

  Holly Morella—business

  Erin Healey—physical therapist

  Sean Reston—veterinarian

  Alice McKinley—bubble dancer

  5

  Surprise of the Nicer Variety

  The following evening before dinner, Dad and I were doing the final raking of the yard. I had decided that for the month of November, I would focus so much on driving very carefully, obeying the rules, helping out at home, and getting along with Sylvia that Dad would have to let me drive with friends along in the car. My six-month probation period would end the last week of December, and Dad had all but promised he’d reduce the probation period to five months.

  “Are we still on for the week after Thanksgiving?” I asked pleasantly, plucking a leaf off the sleeve of Dad’s knobby wool sweater.

  He looked at me blankly. “We had a date or something?”

  “The car!” I told him. “You said if I didn’t get in an accident for six whole months after I got my license, you’d shorten the waiting period for driving with friends in the car from six months to five months.”

  “Oh. That,” said Dad. “We’ll see. If you can go all that time without an accident or a ticket and do your homework, clean your room, help with housework, cook some meals, wash the windows, shine my shoes …” He grinned.

  “Hey! No fair!” I said.

  He laughed. “Concentrate on driving safely, doing your homework, and getting along with Sylvia, and we’ll make it November,” he said. “The last week, now. Not the whole month.”

  The fact that he mentioned Sylvia meant either that she had been telling him things that had gone on between us or that he’d been noticing on his own. I hated the thought that they might be talking about me behind my back. But as soon as the rakes were put away, I went inside and e-mailed my girlfriends.

  We’re on! I typed. By the last week of November, I can have you guys in the car with me!

  Hooray! Liz e-mailed back. Let’s have another Girls’ Nite Out.

  Yeah, seconded Pamela. But make it special.

  U mean go sumplace special? wrote Gwen.

  Pamela: Yeah. Someplace sexy.

  I circled the last week of November on my calendar, first in red, then green, then blue. There it was for me to see first thing when I opened my eyes in the mornings: the week I would really begin to feel like an adult.

  It was a good thing I’d agreed to be on my best behavior because Dad dropped a bombshell the following night. This time he made sure that I was in on the original conversation:

  “I got a call today from Frank Kroger,” he said, “the manager at the construction company. He’s made a new offer, so I want both of you in on the decision.”

  I looked up from my shrimp stir-fry. “About remodeling the house?”

  “Yes. As you know, we were planning to start right after New Year’s, but one of their contracts fell through and they’ve got a crew with time on its hands. Frank
said they’ll give us ten percent off the initial price if we can start now.”

  Sylvia put down her fork. “Now? Before the holidays? Like …?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day,” said Dad.

  Sylvia gasped. “But … we’re not ready!”

  “They’ll be tearing down the back of the house with us in it?” I cried.

  “No, they’ll leave the back walls intact as long as they can,” Dad explained, and added, laughing, “You won’t have to undress in front of the neighbors or anything.”

  “What would we have to do to get ready?” asked Sylvia.

  “Keep out of the men’s way, mostly, and put up with trucks coming in and out, bricks and lumber in the yard, a Porta-John out by the street, noise. … If you think it will be too disruptive over Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’ll wait.”

  Sylvia sat thinking it over. “Ten percent’s a pretty big savings, Ben,” she said. “It could help us buy new furniture for the family room. But I hate the thought of all that mess at Christmas.”

  “I know,” Dad said.

  “We could go live in a hotel for a few months!” I said brightly.

  “Great suggestion, Al. That would take care of the ten percent savings,” Dad said.

  “Well,” Sylvia said finally. “We don’t plan to have company here for the holidays, so why don’t we go ahead with it? What do you think, Alice?”

  “If they start now, when will they be done?” I asked.

  “Probably February or March,” said Dad.

  “And it would be nice to have it all done before spring,” said Sylvia.

  To be honest, what I was really thinking about was how I would feel if Scott Lynch did invite me to the Snow Ball, and when he came to pick me up, he’d see that ours was the house with the blue Porta-John in front. But I wanted to be mature and reasonable, and I especially wanted Dad to let me drive my friends in November, so I said, “I think it’s a good idea to start early too. Let’s do it now and get it over with.”