Outrageously Alice

  “What is it?” somebody said.

  “Swat it, and see if it flies,” said someone else.

  “Al, go upstairs and get human,” Lester told me.

  Suddenly I rushed back up to my room, my face as red as ketchup. They didn’t think I was cute, they thought I was demented. I caught one glimpse of myself in the mirror and ripped off the headdress.

  Would I ever grow up? I wondered. This was the kind of thing I might have done back in fifth or sixth grade; I couldn’t believe I’d tried something so ridiculous now.

  “Nice try,” Lester said later, and I did something even more stupid. I got up and slammed my door.

  The next morning I set off for school, camera in my book bag, to make my second try at getting a life. At noon, however, something happened I didn’t expect. There’s a new guy, Justin Collier, who’s in my English class. He’s not quite as good-looking as Mr. Everett, but he’s tall and looks as though he’d be a lot of fun. He was passing our table in the cafeteria with two other boys and stopped to kid around with us. Elizabeth was really thrilled.

  “Hey, Green Eyes, you’re in my English class, aren’t you?” Justin asked me.

  “You’re just now noticing her?” Pamela quipped. She had her eye on Justin too.

  “Hey, gimme a break! I’m a transfer student,” Justin said. “My dad’s in the navy.”

  “So we’re supposed to salute?” Pamela asked. I mean, when Pamela’s on the prowl, you know it.

  “Whooaa!” said Justin. “Who’s the babe with the blue eyes and the sassy mouth?”

  “Pamela Jones,” I said. “I’m Alice, and this is Elizabeth.”

  “Hi,” Elizabeth said, and smiled.

  “Hi, Pamela Alice Elizabeth,” said one of the other boys, trying to balance his empty tray on Elizabeth’s head. She giggled.

  “Anyway, I was supposed to get a course outline and never did. I wondered if I could borrow yours and make a copy,” Justin said.

  “That’s one of the oldest lines in the book! Alice, don’t fall for that,” said Pamela.

  “Hey, Blue Eyes, what’d I ever do to you?” Justin said. “I need it! I’ll take it to the library, make a copy, and bring it right back.”

  “Never trust a guy six feet tall,” Pamela said, grinning.

  “Ha! Never listen to a girl with blue on her eyes!” said Justin. “You girls always hang out together? The three hot mamas?”

  We giggled some more.

  “All but Elizabeth,” Pamela joked. “She’s going to be a nun.”

  I couldn’t believe Pamela said that. It was as though she was jealous of Elizabeth, and was trying to put her down. First of all, it’s not necessarily true. And second, even if it was true, it made being a nun sound like an insult. I could almost feel Elizabeth shrinking beside me.

  “No kidding?” Justin Collier looked at Elizabeth. They were all looking at Elizabeth, and her face was so red, she looked as though she had a fever.

  Pamela noticed too, of course, and immediately tried to backpedal: “I mean, she’ll probably be one of those nuns who’s so hot, she’s kicked out of the convent, but …”

  “Pamela, shut up,” I whispered.

  Elizabeth was as angry as she was embarrassed.

  “Don’t mind her,” she said to Justin. “She’s naturally hot. Her parents are nudists.”

  I felt as though I were sitting between two erupting volcanoes. Pamela had never told us not to tell anyone about her parents, but somehow we just knew that the information was confidential.

  Not anymore.

  “Heeey!” said one of the boys, turning again to Pamela. “You go to those sunbather camps, huh?”

  “Man, just tell me where you meet and give me a pair of binoculars,” said the third guy. They were all leering at Pamela.

  I thought she’d go along with it. I thought she’d enjoy all the attention and laugh it off. Instead, Pamela leaned forward and stared around me to give Elizabeth a long, withering look. Elizabeth glared right back.

  I quickly snatched my English outline from my notebook and gave it to Justin. “You can keep it till tomorrow, but be sure to give it back,” I said.

  The guys loped off, leaving the three of us there at the table. I could feel knives passing through me, left to right and right to left.

  Suddenly Pamela got up, pushed her chair in with a bang, picked up her tray, and left. Elizabeth got up, picked up her books, and went out by the other door.

  It was as though they were both mad at me! Was eighth grade nuts or what?

  Patrick came by on his way to band, carrying a pair of drumsticks and rapping out a little rhythm as he went.

  “What’s this?” he asked, stopping by the table. “Eating alone?”

  “I am now,” I snapped.

  “What’s wrong? You mad or something?”

  “Everything’s wrong,” I said. “I’m sick of eighth grade.”

  “Why? I think it’s great!”

  “You would,” I retorted. “Any guy who would grab a girl and pull her into a broom closet and French-kiss her without even letting her know who he is would probably love this lunatic asylum.”

  “That was three days ago!” Patrick said. “You going to remember it forever?”

  “Well, it was stupid.”

  “Okay, so it was dumb. I thought you’d enjoy it, that’s all. You didn’t, so sue me.”

  “You could at least apologize.”

  “I’m sorry you don’t have a better sense of humor,” Patrick said, and walked away.

  I was near tears when the bell rang, but at least I had the Camera Club to look forward to after school. Unless, of course, we all had to sit in a circle and show each other our baby pictures or something.

  The first surprise was that we met in the biology lab. The second was that the club’s sponsor, Mrs. Pinotti, was a tiny little woman who looked for all the world like a sparrow. She wore wide canvas shoes, shaped almost like a duck’s foot; she had a sharp nose like a bird’s beak; a lined face; closely cropped brown hair, like feathers; black beady eyes; teeny little hands; and she was dressed in a brown turtleneck and slacks. She was also fascinating.

  Because I’d missed the first couple meetings, I was spared the sessions on the mechanics of a camera and listened to this tiny woman talk about how the great photographs are a whole lot more than pretty pictures.

  “Anyone can see a pretty scene and snap it,” she said. “The artistry comes in looking at your subject in a new way. Capturing its shadows, taking it from an unusual angle, photographing just a piece of it up close. The great photographs—the ones we remember—capture feeling, soul, mood, action, and drama. The rest end up on picture postcards.”

  A number of kids were nodding, but this was all new to me.

  “In the next two weeks,” she said, “I’d like you to shoot a whole roll of film on a single subject. It can be one person or one group—a family, a couple; it can be a room at different hours of the day, a garden—but I want all thirty-six exposures on the same subject. Let’s see how much variety we can get on a single theme. I’ll try too.”

  After that I sort of sat on the sidelines and listened to the other kids talk about what they were doing with their cameras. I learned that the photo shop across the street would sell us film and develop it at half price when we showed our club membership cards, so I paid my three-dollar dues and became a member. A guy named Sam wanted to try out his flash attachment and asked another girl and me to pose for him while he checked it out. I didn’t know any of the kids well and felt more of an explorer here than I had at the Explorers’ Club. Here I was investigating new territory without Pamela, Elizabeth, or Patrick around. It was lonely and exciting both.

  Pamela came over around eight and her eyes were red. I took one look at her and said, “Come on up.”

  We sat on the edge of my bed and she said, “I don’t think I can ever forgive Elizabeth for telling about my folks.”

  “I know,” I said, “b
ut you shouldn’t have said what you did, either. She’s just as mad at you.”

  “What I said was supposed to be a compliment. I mean, what girl wouldn’t want guys to think she’s so sexy that if she ever joined a convent, they’d throw her out?”

  “Elizabeth, that’s who.”

  “Well, she should have stopped to think before she said what she did about my parents,” Pamela said, and reached for a tissue.

  “I just don’t see what the big deal is!” I told her. “You told us! How were we supposed to know you never wanted us to mention it to a living soul? And besides, what’s wrong with your folks being nudists? They don’t think it’s wrong, so why should you?”

  “Because I don’t want anyone talking about my parents!” Pamela said, and suddenly I was astonished to see her break into tears. “Oh, Alice,” she sobbed, leaning against me. “They’re separating.”

  This was just too much. I put my arm around her. “Why? When?” I tried to remember when I’d seen her parents last. Hadn’t they gone to a movie together sometime last summer? Didn’t that mean anything?

  Pamela just went on crying but finally straightened up. “I don’t know why. Mom just told me tonight. I think someone else is involved, but I’m not sure.”

  “Your dad’s moving out, then?”

  “No. My mom.”

  Her mother? Mothers sometimes left their families? Mothers got involved with somebody else?

  “What are you going to do, Pamela?” I asked softly.

  “I’m staying with Dad. I’m not the one who wants to leave. Mom wants me to go with her, of course, but I’m not. Now they’re fighting over that.”

  “Oh, Pamela!” My tissue box was empty, and I had gone to the hall closet for more when I heard the doorbell and went downstairs.

  It was Elizabeth.

  “I will never forgive Pamela Jones for what she did today,” she said.

  I pulled her inside. “Oh yes, you will. Her folks are separating.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth fell open, and her eyes grew huge. “Why? Because of what I said?”

  With Elizabeth, original sin begins with her.

  “No. Her mom’s taking off. She might be seeing someone else, Pamela thinks. Pamela’s up in my room right now, crying.”

  Elizabeth ran upstairs ahead of me, and as soon as she got into the room, she had her arms around Pamela, and Pamela was saying, “I’m sorry,” and Elizabeth was saying, “I’m sorry,” and I was just standing there on my rug trying to think how I could keep from growing any older than I was right then. If life got any more complicated, I’d need an encyclopedia of instructions.

  Lester passed my door, paused long enough to hear all the “sorrys” going on, and disappeared in a flash. I heard his door close, then lock, at the end of the hall.

  I pulled out the pillows from under my spread, propped them against the headboard, and we lay in a row, our feet stuck out in front of us.

  “I wish I could go back to last summer, before I knew about my folks, and just stay that way forever,” Pamela said softly, her nose clogged.

  “I wish I could go back to Mrs. Plotkin’s class,” I told them. “When I was in her room, it was as though she could handle anything that happened to us.”

  “I wish I could go back to before Nathan was born,” said Elizabeth. “Life was so simple with just Mom and Dad and me.”

  But we couldn’t go back and we knew it. Life was going forward whether we wanted it to or not.

  I didn’t know how I felt about Patrick, Pamela didn’t know how she felt about her mom, and Elizabeth didn’t know how she felt about Justin Collier. Every time she’d seen him in the hall that afternoon, he had called her “hot mama” and she hated it.

  There was a soft knock on my door.

  “I’m making popcorn downstairs, if anyone’s interested,” called Dad.

  And for a little while, the world seemed good again as we traipsed down to the kitchen and filled our bowls from the electric popper.

  7

  OUTRAGEOUS

  “DID YOUR LIFE CHANGE AFTER I WAS born?” I asked Dad the following evening. We were both working at the dining room table. I was doing homework on one side and he was writing checks on the other, and I wondered if he and Lester ever wished they could go back to a time when life was simpler.

  “My life did!” Lester said from the living room. “The mess! The smell! The crying! The burps!”

  I ignored him and concentrated on Dad.

  “We were so ready for you, all the changes seemed like good ones,” Dad said. “I don’t know if I ever told you, Al, but your mom had three miscarriages before she finally had you.”

  “She did?”

  “Each time she was so disappointed. And finally, you were the one who took.”

  I thought that over. “If any of the other eggs had hatched …”

  “Not hatched, Al. If any of the other fertilized eggs had gone full term …”

  “It would have been someone else, not me. Right?”

  “Right!” chimed in Lester. “A boy! Twin boys! Anybody but you. Just my luck.”

  Pamela came over later. She said her mom was moving out that evening and she didn’t want to be around. Her parents weren’t speaking except to her, and she was tired of being a messenger service.

  “‘Tell your mom the stereo stays,’ Dad says. ‘Tell your dad to go to hell,’ Mom answers. No, thank you. If they’ve got anything to say, they can say it to each other.”

  “I’m really sorry, Pamela,” I said. “Why don’t you stay all night?”

  “I will,” she said, and sheepishly admitted she had already stuffed her pajamas in her school bag.

  Up in my room, I told Pamela how, if Mom hadn’t lost her other three babies, I’d probably be someone else, only Pamela said it wouldn’t have been me at all. I just wouldn’t be. And then we started thinking about all the eggs that never get fertilized and all the sperm that never make it to the egg, and how, purely by accident, there were hundreds and trillions of people who never got to be born at all. Somehow, that made Pamela feel better, I think. I mean, being born and having your parents separate was still better than not being born at all.

  “What I’d like,” said Pamela wistfully, “is to be anyone but Pamela Jones for the next month. The next week, even. To just float right out of all that’s going on at home and not be myself again till it’s over.”

  “I wish you could,” I told her. Then, “Me? I’d like a new personality. More than green eye shadow. I mean, I’d like to develop a whole look, you know? Not so … well … virginal!”

  “So let’s dye your hair green,” said Pamela.

  “Are you kidding? I’m going to be in a wedding party the end of the month.”

  “Just the smear-on kind of dye. You can wash it right out. It’s mousse, actually. We’ll both go to school tomorrow with our hair dyed green and sticking straight up on one side of our heads, slicked down on the other.”

  I looked at Pamela. She looked at me. “Let’s do it!” I said.

  We walked to the drugstore and bought the stuff. We had to set the alarm for an hour earlier the next morning so we could get out of the bathroom before Dad and Lester wanted in. We dressed, me in a green turtleneck, Pamela in a purple one. Then we took some old towels into my room, closed the door, and took turns applying the thick green gel to each other’s hair. The hair that stuck straight up in spikes made our scalps look like the back of a stegosaurus.

  “We’ve got to do the eyebrows, too,” said Pamela, so we did each other’s brows.

  By the time I put on my green eye shadow and liner, I looked like a New Age leprechaun. Pamela dressed the same, except she wore blue eye shadow.

  “Ready?” I asked, and we went downstairs together.

  Les had already left for the U, but Dad was putting things in his briefcase when he looked up and saw us. I watched his lips part in slow motion.

  “Al, what’s this?”

  “We’re jus
t trying out a new look,” I said. “Relax. It washes out.”

  “You’re not going to school that way?”

  “Yes! It’s just a look, Dad. I wanted to try something new.”

  Pamela moved on ahead of me into the kitchen and grinned helplessly from beyond the doorway.

  “I don’t think so,” said Dad. “Go upstairs and wash it out.”

  “Dad …!”

  “Al, I’m interviewing a clarinet instructor at eight o’clock and I’m late. I don’t have time to be standing here arguing. Do as I say.”

  I stood frozen to the floor. He was embarrassing me in front of Pamela.

  He put on his raincoat, picked up his briefcase, and stared at me hard. “I mean it,” he said, and went on out to the car.

  “Gee, I thought he had a sense of humor!” Pamela said. “What are you going to do?”

  “There isn’t anything to do,” I insisted. “There isn’t time! I’d miss my bus, and we haven’t had breakfast.” I went out in the kitchen and got some English muffins, split them in half, and dropped them in the toaster. “I’ll tell him it was either missing school or going like I was.”

  We ate quickly, then threw on our jackets and went down to the school bus stop. We turned heads, all right.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Elizabeth squealed when she saw us.

  At first I was afraid she’d be mad we hadn’t included her, but when I explained about Pamela’s mom moving out and Pamela needing a distraction, she just shrugged.

  “Mother wouldn’t have let me, anyway,” she said.

  Everyone on the bus was laughing and feeling our spikes, and we each wore a big dangly gold earring on the spike side of our heads.

  Patrick, however, didn’t like it. He got on the bus, stared at me for five seconds or so, and then, without a word, moved to the back of the bus and started talking to the guys about football. What was it with boys, anyway? Were they afraid to be a little different? Try something new?

  But everywhere we went, kids turned and laughed and pointed at us. The seventh graders positively gawked. One of them even came up and asked where she could buy the green mousse. Sometimes when I walked into a classroom, the kids clapped, like I was famous or something. I guess that must be what it feels like at the Academy Awards, going to the ceremony in your wildest clothes with everyone looking at you and taking your picture. Someone even took our picture for the yearbook. The only thing wrong was that the people I cared most about weren’t all that excited about it. The people I hardly knew thought we were great.