Alice in Charge

  “Damn, Al! You didn’t plan for Chapel Hill at all? We drove all the way down here just to hang out at the Sleepy Inn?”

  “Don’t yell at me, Les,” I mewed. “I checked out the campus. The library. I ate somewhere on campus—I forget where.”

  “Great. You checked out the pizza.” Les still hadn’t moved. He stood with his arms crossed and glared at me.

  “Les, I don’t even know if I belong at Chapel Hill! If I could even get accepted. Everybody’s weird and smart.”

  “How can you tell? You hardly even talked to anybody. Why did we come here at all?”

  “Because I have to check out some schools. Dad would freak out if I didn’t look at some. You know that.” Then, trying to change the subject, I asked, “Who were you talking to on the room phone? The guy at the desk tried to call you a couple times, but the line was busy.”

  Les refused to be distracted. He leaned against the door, arms still folded, and said, “I was talking to Paul about a gift for George’s wedding. As for you—”

  At that moment someone knocked, and Les jumped. He turned around and peered through the peephole.

  “Jeez!” he said. He gave me a look and opened the door.

  A man stood there in a security uniform. “Excuse me,” he said. “This room registered to one person? You Lester McKinley?”

  “That’s right,” said Les. “And my sister just arrived. Seems she’s spending the night.”

  Yes! I silently cheered.

  “Your registration lists only one occupant,” the security guy said.

  “That’s what I thought at the time,” Les said.

  It wasn’t fair to make Lester take the rap for me, and I knew it. “I was supposed to spend the night somewhere else, and it didn’t work out,” I told the man.

  I could tell I was making things worse.

  “Identification?” he asked.

  I reached for my bag on the floor and rummaged around till I found my wallet. I showed the guard my driver’s license.

  “You need to go down to the registration desk and sign in,” he said. And to Les, “There’s an additional charge for her.”

  “Okay,” said Les. “Let me put on some pants.”

  The security guard put one hand against the wall outside and waited, to show he meant business.

  Les let the door close and yanked on a pair of jeans.

  “Les, I’m so sorry!” I kept saying. “I really didn’t mean to cause trouble.”

  Silently, he got his sneakers from under the bed and thrust his feet inside them.

  “Let’s go,” he said finally. I followed him out the door and down the hall, the security guard at my heels.

  At the desk the clerk glowered at me, then at Les. In slow motion he reached for his pen and asked for my driver’s license. He copied everything down—ID number, age, weight, address. Then he turned to the computer and slowly entered all the stuff he’d written by hand.

  Les got the picture pretty quick. “Anything else?” he asked. “You want her passport? Birth certificate? Vaccination records?”

  Mr. Sarcastic didn’t even answer. Just printed out a new page, shoved it toward Les, and said, “Sign.”

  The elevator didn’t seem to be working. Les kept pressing the buttons, but the door wouldn’t close. We could hear mechanical grinding and groaning. The door started to close, then slid open again.

  “What else can go wrong?” Les muttered. “Let’s take the stairs.”

  We didn’t know where they were, however. Les turned left, so I followed. We were halfway down the hall when a man called out, “Where you folks going?” We turned to see the security guy, hands on hips.

  “Elevator’s broken. We’re looking for the stairs,” Les said.

  “This end,” the guard told us, turning to lead the way, but he stopped when he came to the elevator. He reached inside and pressed a button. The doors slid closed but opened again when he pressed the button on the outside. He cocked his head to show his impatience with us.

  Les shrugged and we got on. He pressed 2. The door slid closed and the elevator moved. But when we got to the second floor, the door wouldn’t open.

  “Dammit!” Les exclaimed. He pressed OPEN. Nothing happened. He pressed 1. Nothing.

  “Blast it!” Les cried, and pressed the alarm button. Somewhere a loud bell sounded. There was no phone or intercom that we could see.

  I sat down in one corner. I’d worried about being stuck in the elevator by myself but hadn’t figured it would happen to me and Les.

  Les looked dumbfounded. “Can you believe this? Could anything top this?”

  “Yes,” I said. “One of us could need a bathroom.”

  I saw Lester’s face crinkle into a smile, and then we were both laughing. Les leaned against the wall, and his arm hit the alarm button again. It rang a second time, and this really set us off.

  Now the security guard was on our case for good. I guess he was standing outside the elevator on the second floor and could hear us laughing. He banged on the door.

  “Excuse me!” he yelled. He said something about waiting for emergency maintenance and how if that didn’t work, he’d call the fire department. And please don’t ring the alarm again—he knew where we were.

  Les sat down beside me, our feet straight out in front of us.

  “This place is a dump, isn’t it?” I said. “Sorry. The price was right. I was trying to save Dad some money. Probably bedbugs too.”

  “And no hot water after midnight,” Les joked.

  “Was there even soap in the bathroom? Or is that extra?” I said.

  “After they rescue us, they’ll add ‘rescue’ to the bill,” said Les.

  We laughed some more, then grew quiet, listening to the sounds of mechanical tinkering coming from the elevator shaft.

  Les sighed. “Okay. Give it to me straight,” he said. “You don’t have a place to stay tomorrow in Williamsburg either, right?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll find one, I promise.”

  He covered his eyes. “I don’t believe this. And if you don’t find one?”

  “Well …” I searched desperately for a silver lining. “Did we ever do Williamsburg, Les? I mean, did Dad ever bring us? Once we’re there, with its history and all …”

  Les stared at me incredulously. “You’re serious?”

  “I don’t mean that we should see Williamsburg in place of William and Mary,” I said hastily. “I could look around the college first, and then we could do the sights in the afternoon.”

  He was shaking his head. “You really think we’re going to get up in the morning, drive two hundred miles, visit a whole campus—the buildings, the library, the residence halls—and do Williamsburg in the afternoon? Are you insane?”

  I could feel my face heating up, and I swallowed. Les turned away and sighed again. He was disgusted with me, I knew.

  At that moment the elevator jerked slightly and the door slid open.

  We scrambled to our feet and bounded out the door before it could close again. When we got to our room, Les put up the DO NOT DISTURB sign so we wouldn’t have to face the security guard again.

  He looked tired, and he nodded toward the second bed. “We’ve got to get an early start, so why don’t you turn in,” he said, removing his cell phone and unplugging it.

  I picked up my bag, dug around for my pajamas, and took them into the bathroom.

  Les had good reason for being disgusted with me, I told myself, staring into the mirror. This whole trip was a waste of time, a waste of gas. He had carted all his thesis stuff along, trying to use his time efficiently, and I had really goofed up.

  When I came out and crawled in bed, Les said, “Ready?” and turned out the lamp. The room was black except for some light from the parking lot that came through the venetian blinds.

  “I’m not ready for college, Les,” I said into the darkness, my voice shaky.

  “I’m not buying,” he answered.

  “I’m just sta
ting facts. I’m not even sure I want to go.”

  “Cut it out, Al.”

  “Really! I used to dream about Liz and Pam and Gwen and me all going to college together, sharing a dorm room. … It’s not going to happen, Lester. We’re all going off in different directions, and Pamela may go to a design school or something. I’ll have to make friends all over again with a huge bunch of new people….”

  “Not all at once. You’ll make friends just like you made them in Silver Spring—one at a time.”

  “I just feel like … if I don’t … if I can’t make friends … the right friends … if I screw that up, I’ll ruin my whole four years. I’ll be homesick and lonely and my grades will suck and—”

  “What if I promise you that will never happen?”

  “You can’t promise that, so I wouldn’t believe you.”

  “What if I promise that if you don’t put a lid on it, we’re going straight home tomorrow, and you can tell Dad the trip was a bust?”

  “I believe you,” I said, and after a long time I fell asleep.

  I felt better in the morning. My clothes were dry, anyway, and Les let me have the bathroom first. I got ready as fast as I could and decided I was going to treat him to a good breakfast before we got on our way. There was a new person at the desk.

  “Room 217 checking out,” Les said, handing in his key card.

  “I’ll have your bill printed out in a moment,” the young woman said cheerfully, checking the computer.

  “Is there a place nearby where we could get breakfast?” I asked.

  “There certainly is,” she answered, pulling a paper out of the printer and handing it to me. “There’s a pancake house just around the corner, Mrs. McKinley. Enjoy!”

  Lester’s jaw dropped. He turned his head slowly and looked at me.

  I howled when we got outside. “Must be my hair,” I said. I’d piled it on top of my head that morning because I hadn’t washed it, and I’d fixed it in place with a comb.

  But Les was laughing too. “Get in,” he said, slinging my bag in the back of his car and putting his briefcase beside it. “Man oh man, life with you is like living in a monkey house.”

  Over chocolate chip pancakes I asked him about George, the roommate who was getting married the following weekend. “Are you and Paul in the wedding?”

  “Yeah, if it ever comes off. It was already delayed a month due to some scheduling problem,” he said. “We’re still trying to figure out what stuff is ours and what belongs to George.”

  I tried to imagine a bachelor pad with only two guys in it instead of three. “You’ve got three bedrooms,” I said. “You going to get somebody else?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.”

  I thought about the four years of college ahead of me before I could graduate, and at least another year after that to get a master’s before I could be a school counselor. Where would I live after I left home? By myself, or sharing an apartment?

  “I’m glad you’re going through all this first, so you can fill me in when it’s my turn,” I told him.

  But Lester’s disappointment in me really hurt. I knew myself that I’d prepared school assignments more carefully than I’d prepared for this trip, and I wanted Les to know that I was now serious. After our pancake breakfast and coffee, I paid the bill myself, and when we were on the road again, I paid attention:

  “We’re going to turn left on South Fordham Boulevard and go four miles,” I instructed.

  “I need route numbers,” Les said.

  “U.S. 15 North,” I told him, map in my hand.

  “And then?”

  “Go 7.2 miles, then merge onto I-85 North.”

  “Got it,” he said.

  It took three and a half hours, and we were hungry again when we got to Williamsburg. Because I didn’t have a scheduled tour, we took time to get some hoagies at Ye Olde Sandwich Shoppe and enjoyed the costumed actors who passed by on the brick sidewalk occasionally, carrying on conversations with tourists as though it were back in the 1700s.

  “All right,” Les said when we’d finished eating. “You know where I’m staying, but let’s not have a repeat of last night.”

  “We won’t,” I said. “First thing on my list is to find a place to crash.”

  “On campus,” Les emphasized. “That’s important.”

  I really did do better at William and Mary. Les let me off in front of the administration office, and I told the woman there that I didn’t have a reservation for a tour but would like a map for a self-guided walk around campus. She was glad to help and told me to check one of the residence halls to see if any of the women would show me what the rooms were like. I heard her tell someone else that there was no place for visiting students to stay overnight, so I didn’t ask, but I’d already made up my mind that I would pay for a motel myself if I couldn’t sleep on campus, regardless of what Les had said.

  I started off, duffel bag over one shoulder. Welcome to William and Mary, the brochure read, one of America’s oldest and best universities, which claims both Thomas Jefferson and Jon Stewart as alumni. I “walked the brick pathways where Thomas Jefferson ran when he was late to class” and asked questions whenever I could, even when I knew the answer, just to sample the conversation.

  The campus was smaller and more manageable than the one at Chapel Hill, more my style. Next September this could be me, I thought as I breezed along, my bag thumping against me. I could see myself as a student here on a fall morning, and when a guy smiled at me and said hi as he passed, I smiled back and thought, Not bad! I walked to the library, the sports center, the stadium—all the usual places, and was glad to put my duffel bag down at the bookstore and just browse and have an iced tea.

  But I got really lucky in the caf, as they call their cafeteria, when a girl put her tray across from me on the table and, seeing the Moroccan chicken on my plate, said, “Oh, you love it too.”

  “It’s great,” I said.

  “It’s all I ever eat,” she told me, and began shoveling food in her mouth. “I’m on a fifteen-minute break. Feed the dishwasher on Saturdays.”

  “Well, I’m visiting colleges this weekend,” I told her. “My first time here.”

  “Yeah? Where you from?”

  “Maryland. Silver Spring. I’m Alice.”

  “Judith,” she said. She had short, dark, curly hair that seemed to bounce with every word. Dark, intense eyes, but friendly. “How do you like the school so far?”

  “Nice,” I said, “but I didn’t make arrangements in advance, and my brother’s sort of pissed. He drove me down and wants me to find a place to stay overnight on campus.”

  And just like that, Judith said, “You can stay with us. We’re in a suite, and one of our roomies went home for the weekend. You could have her bed.”

  “Really?” I said. “How do you know she’d let me?”

  “Because she loaned out my bed two weeks ago,” Judith said. “Just don’t leave makeup on her pillow. She hates that.”

  As she chewed the last bite of chicken, she scribbled the address of her residence hall on a paper napkin. “I’ll meet you right here between five and five thirty,” she said. “You can drop your bag off at the dorm.”

  “This is terrific,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Gotta run,” she told me, and in one quick sweep, she slid her tray off the table and disappeared through the metal door leading to the kitchen.

  9

  DECISIONS

  This was way too easy. I’d toured the campus myself—well, some of it, anyway—and I already had a place to sleep. I’d agreed to meet Les at nine o’clock in the morning right where he’d let me off, and he wasn’t going to get a kid sister knocking on his motel door at midnight.

  I spent the next couple of hours at the bookstore so that I didn’t have to carry my bag and listened to the conversations going on around me to get a feel for the student life:

  “… I absolutely have to take another semester of
Spanish or I can’t graduate …”

  “… the best cookies! But if you want a fantastic fruit salad …”

  “… His face said it all. I mean, Rob’s perfect for the part of Aaron, but I know Nick feels he should get the part …”

  “… the problem with the Drake equation is that he’s only taken this galaxy into account, and when you consider the thousands of millions of galaxies …”

  Judith got off work about five fifteen, and I walked with her back to her residence hall. It was a relief to be rid of the bag for the evening, even though it was more cumbersome than heavy. I had a crease in my shoulder from the strap, and I gratefully deposited the duffel bag on the floor beside an unmade bed in Judith’s suite. The room wasn’t much bigger than a large bathroom. There was barely enough room for two beds, two desks, and two dressers.

  “I’ll leave a note on the door for Mack that the bed’s occupied,” Judith said as she pulled off her sweater and headed to the second bedroom to change.

  I did a double take. “Mack?”

  “Yeah. Neat guy,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve known him for two years. He can fix any problem at all with a computer.”

  I tried not to appear shocked. It was like I was back at the University of Chicago. But after a night on Patrick’s couch there, and after sharing a room with Les last night, I was ready for anything.

  When Judith came into the common area of the suite again—the “living room”—she was wearing skintight jeans, ankle boots, and a low-cut jersey top. Her curly hair was hard to contain, and it didn’t look as though she’d really tried. She ducked into the bathroom to put on mascara.

  I wasn’t even sure she knew my last name. How did she know that I wasn’t a psycho with razor blades in my pocket or that I wouldn’t sneak off during the night with all her stuff? I guess that with someone named Mack sleeping across from me, it was safe to conclude I wouldn’t try.

  “I’m going out with my guy tonight,” Judith told me. “Make yourself at home—turn on the TV, whatever you want. If you go out, just leave the door unlocked. My own roomie’s still out, and so is Mack. If you leave and can’t get in the front entrance when you come back, ring the bell and I’ll let my resident manager know to let you in. Bye.”