Alice on the Outside

  I went out on the floor with Donald and got the second surprise of the evening. He was a good dancer.

  “Seems strange to see you here at our school,” I told him. “What’s yours like in Takoma Park?”

  “Not so different,” he said. “Yours is bigger, but we have a good intramural team. I play on it.”

  “Basketball?”

  “Yeah. I’m a forward. I’m going to try out for the team in high school next year. Coach thinks I have a good chance of making it.”

  We were having a normal conversation! Donald wasn’t bellowing out dumb things or belching in public or scratching his armpits and making like Tarzan. It was totally amazing how much he had grown up.

  In spite of the fun I was having, it seemed like too long an evening, and when eleven came, I was ready to go. If Patrick had been there, I knew I wouldn’t have wanted it to end.

  We went around and said good-bye to everyone. People were looking for souvenirs to take home, and then we went outside to wait for Lester. He was already there and had even put on a sport coat for the occasion.

  “Ladies and gents,” he said, and opened the doors of his car for us. Once again, Elizabeth and Pamela and their dates squeezed in back and, like a fifth wheel, I sat in front with Lester.

  He drove each girl home first, and I noticed that he went slightly past each house before he stopped, so that we would have had to turn around to watch Justin kiss Elizabeth on her porch, or Donald kiss Pamela. Then he drove Donald over to Takoma Park and Justin back to his place.

  “Good night!” I said to everyone in my fake voice, smiling my fake smile and giving my little Queen Elizabeth wave.

  When Lester and I were alone in the car, I said suddenly, “Les, drive me over to Patrick’s, will you?”

  “What?”

  “There’s something I want to do.”

  “He’s probably asleep, Al! He’s sick!”

  “I know. If he is, we’ll go home.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Lester turned at the next corner instead of heading home and drove three blocks. He pulled up in front of the Longs’ house. I got out and went around to the side. I knew where Patrick’s bedroom was, and was delighted to see a flickering light coming from inside, so I knew he was still watching TV.

  I stood there in my jade green dress, wishing I could sing. Wishing Lester had his guitar and that we could serenade Patrick, just like he’d done for me on my birthday.

  Then I got this idea. I reached into my jade green evening bag and pulled out a handful of gold-sprayed gravel, my keepsake from the dance. I took a few pieces and threw them up against the shutters of his window, careful not to hit the glass.

  “Al!” Lester hissed from the car.

  I waited. Nothing happened. Patrick probably couldn’t hear it with the TV on. He might even have fallen asleep. I threw the rest of the gravel against the shutter.

  I could see a shadow moving along Patrick’s wall, and then he appeared at the window. He pushed it open and leaned out.

  “Alice?” he said in a loud whisper, then laughed. “What are you doing here?”

  I laughed too. “I just came by to give you a souvenir from the dance. Gold gravel. You’ll have to hunt for it tomorrow.”

  We laughed again.

  “How was the dance?” I could tell from the sound of his voice that his throat was really sore.

  “I wished you were there. How are you feeling?”

  “Urky,” he said. “Hope you didn’t catch it too.”

  “Must be awful.”

  “I’ll live. How was the band?”

  “Not as good as your combo.”

  “Sure.” He grinned. “You dance with anyone?”

  “Everyone. There was a line clear around the gym, just waiting their turn.”

  “How about Sam?”

  “Yeah. Him too.”

  “He was happy, I’ll bet.”

  “Well, as I said, it wasn’t you.”

  “I’m really sorry about tonight,” Patrick told me.

  “You couldn’t help it.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “You look awfully nice.”

  “Thanks. Well, I should let you get back to bed. Thanks for the corsage, Patrick. It’s beautiful.”

  “Good night, Alice. Thanks for coming by.” He threw me a kiss.

  I got back in the car and Lester started the engine. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a nice kid?” he said. “Nutty as a fruitcake, but nice.”

  I laughed. “It’s the least I could do for Patrick.”

  “Throw rocks at his window? Now that makes sense.”

  When we got home, I sat on the arm of the sofa and told Dad all about the dance—all except the part about Miss Summers dancing with Mr. Sorringer. Then I went out in the kitchen to put my corsage in the refrigerator.

  When I opened the box it came in, I saw a small folded piece of paper I hadn’t noticed earlier. I sat down at the table to read:

  Dear Alice,

  I’m really, really, really sorry I can’t take you to the dance. I’d like to have seen you in your green dress and danced with my arms around you. Will you take a rain check? When we’re in high school, the senior prom?

  Love, Patrick

  Read more about Alice in The Grooming of Alice.

  THE PROGRAM

  “IT’S GOING TO BE ONE OF THE MOST exciting summers of our lives,” Pamela used to tell Elizabeth and me whenever we thought about the summer between eighth and ninth grades. “All the stupid things we’ve ever done will be behind us, and all the wonderful stuff will be waiting to happen.”

  But now, on the first day of vacation, as the three of us stood in our bathing suits in front of the full-length mirror in Elizabeth’s bedroom, we realized that the same bodies were going into high school along with us, the same faults, the same personalities, some of the same problems we’d had before.

  Elizabeth, with her long dark hair and lashes, her gorgeous skin, broke the silence first. “I’m fat!” she said in dismay. “Look at me!”

  We looked. She was the same beautiful Elizabeth she’d always been, except that her face and arms were slightly rounder, but she was pointing to her thighs, which puffed out just a little below her suit.

  “Saddlebags! I have saddlebag thighs!” she cried. “My legs look like jodhpurs!”

  They didn’t, of course, but before I could say a word, I heard murmurs on the other side of me coming from Pamela. Pamela is pretty, too, though not as drop-dead beautiful as Elizabeth. She’s naturally blond, and wears her hair in a short feather cut, like Peter Pan. It always seemed to me as though Pamela Jones had the perfect figure, but it didn’t seem that way to Pamela.

  “I have absolutely no definition,” she observed.

  “Huh?” I said. Were these girls nuts?

  “My arms and legs are like pudding! One part looks the same as the rest.”

  “Pamela, anyone can tell your arm from your leg,” I told her.

  “But you can’t tell what’s fat and what’s muscle!”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “People just want to look at you, Pamela. They don’t want to dissect you!”

  Pamela, however, meant business. “Well, I certainly need to do some toning,” she said.

  “And I want to lose this fat,” said Elizabeth. “What do you want to change, Alice?”

  Friends, I thought. But I just took a good, long look at myself in the mirror and thought about it. I’ve got the same color hair as my mom had, they tell me—strawberry blond. Mom died when I was small, and I don’t remember much about her, but they say she was tall and liked to sing. I’m more on the short side, and can’t even carry a tune. I’m not fat, but I’m not thin. I’m more plain than I am pretty, but I’m not ugly. Miss Average, that’s me.

  “I don’t know,” I said finally. “What do you guys think I should change?”

  You should never ask anyone that. You’re just begging for worries you n
ever had before.

  “Well, if you want an honest opinion, your waist is a little thick, Alice,” said Elizabeth. One thing about Elizabeth, she’s loyal to a fault. You ask her to tell you something, she tells.

  “And your legs are too straight,” said Pamela. “I mean, you don’t have to be ashamed of them or anything, but your calves hardly have any curve.”

  “Your breasts could be a little fuller,” said Elizabeth. “Of course, they’re bigger than mine… .”

  “And your arms have no definition at all,” Pamela finished.

  It’s really weird, you know? Five minutes before, I had put on my bathing suit, ready to go over to Mark Stedmeister’s pool with the gang, feeling really good about myself and my friends, and suddenly I was disintegrating before my very eyes! I had this new royal blue bathing suit that looked great with my hair, and now nothing looked right.

  “There’s only one solution,” said Pamela. “We’ve got to start an exercise program. We’ve got exactly two and a half months to get ourselves in shape before school begins. Because how ever you look when you start ninth grade, that’s how people will think of you for the next four years.”

  Now that was a sobering thought. I don’t know where Pamela comes up with stuff like this, but she’s got a cousin in New Jersey who knows all about what they think in New York, so we learn a lot from her. What we don’t get from Pamela’s cousin, I get from my cousin Carol in Chicago, who’s two years older than Lester, my brother, and used to be married to a sailor.

  I’d never seen Pamela quite so gung ho as she was now.

  “If we get up at seven each morning for the next ten weeks … ,” she began.

  “Seven!” I wailed.

  “Well, eight, maybe. And we jog for three miles …”

  “In public?” Elizabeth gasped.

  We stared. One reason we like Elizabeth is that her whole world sort of spins on a different axis.

  “I suppose we could jog nine hundred times around your room, if you’d prefer,” Pamela said dryly. “But if we spend the next ten weeks jogging every morning with ankle weights, and do push-ups, we might look reasonably good by the time we start high school. And no ice cream. No chips. No Oreos or anything like that.”

  I looked first at Pamela and then at Elizabeth. No ice cream, no chips, and jogging three miles with ankle weights? This was a summer?

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to see me sweat,” she declared.

  “If you jog, you’re going to sweat, Elizabeth!” Pamela told her. “You have to sweat! You’re supposed to sweat! If you don’t sweat, the fat will stay right there, and you’ll keep those saddlebag thighs forever.”

  I looked at Elizabeth’s face and wished Pamela hadn’t said that. It’s one thing to talk about saddlebags yourself, but something else to hear your friends say it.

  “Oh, come on!” I said, grabbing Elizabeth’s beach towel and tying it around her waist. “Let’s go on over to Mark’s. Everybody’s waiting.”

  Everybody was. We’ve been hanging out at Mark Stedmeister’s pool for the last few summers, and even after Pamela and Mark broke up for the second time, we still go over there. Pamela went with Brian for a while after that, and then she wouldn’t go out with either one of them, and now the guys have sort of lost interest. We’re still all good friends, though.

  Patrick Long, my boyfriend, was there, and Justin Collier, who likes Elizabeth. Except for Patrick and me, though, we don’t couple-off the way we used to. Right after sixth grade, “couples” were “in.” Most of us had never had boy- or girlfriends before, so everyone wanted one and found someone to hold hands with, whether they liked each other or not. Now we mostly do things as a group, and only Patrick and I are still “going together.”

  “Heeey! The babes!” Brian yelled when he saw us, and we smiled. A year ago, there would have been sheer terror beneath my smile, because I’d been deathly afraid of deep water, only nobody knew it, not even Dad. It wasn’t until I’d confided in my twenty-one-year-old brother that I learned to swim the deep end, when Les took me to a pool and helped me swim across one corner of it.

  Elizabeth and Pamela and I dropped our towels on a deck chair and dived in. Elizabeth went first because she wanted to hide her thighs, I went next because I didn’t really care, and Pamela was the last one in because she wanted to show off her bright red bikini with the halter top. Patrick dived in the other end and came up the same time I did. We swam over to the other side of the pool together, and he kissed me on the eyelids before he was off again to play water basketball with Mark. That’s what’s nice about having a boyfriend. He’s sort of always there, someone to count on. Not that I didn’t look at other guys too, of course.

  We horsed around in the water for a while, and when we came out and were all sitting around drinking Sprite, the talk was about summer jobs and what we had lined up. Now that some of us were fourteen, we could get work permits if we wanted.

  Patrick was going to work for a landscaper loading trucks, pulling weeds and stuff. Brian had a job in a doughnut shop, Mark was shelving books at the library, and Justin Collier got a part-time job in a pizza place.

  Of the girls, two of us were volunteering. Karen was helping out her aunt in a home for senior citizens, and I was going to be a candy striper at one of the hospitals, besides working in my dad’s music store on Saturday mornings. Jill was going to summer school, and Elizabeth’s mom was going to pay her to watch her baby brother four hours a day.

  “What about you, Pamela?” someone asked.

  She just shrugged. “I’ll think of something,” she said. Pamela was the only one who didn’t have a clue. Her life was all torn up because her mom had run off with a boyfriend. It was as though the only thing Pamela could control anymore was her body, which was why she was devoting the next ten weeks to it, I think.

  “Remember when all we had to do each summer was lie around the pool and play badminton?” Mark said, reaching for the chips. Elizabeth and Pamela and I wouldn’t even look at the bowl. We tried to tune out all that crunching and munching.

  “You make us sound like old people,” said Patrick. “Remember back in the olden days … ?” Patrick’s a redhead, and when he’s out in the sun, the fine hair on his legs and arms looks orange, too.

  Brian put his arms beneath his head and stared up at the clouds. “Yeah, back in the good old days the only thing we had to do was listen for the Good Humor Man. That was the high point of our day.”

  “Good old summertime!” said Justin, rolling over on Elizabeth’s towel and tickling the bottoms of her feet. She kept giggling and drawing her feet up, and then he began playfully poking at her—her legs, her back, her stomach—and she kept trying to grab his hand.

  “Hey, getting a little chubby, are we?” he asked jokingly as he poked at the space between her bathing suit top and bottom.

  Elizabeth stopped laughing and sat up. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Justin, grinning at her lazily. “You’re just a little softer in all the right places.”

  But Elizabeth’s face was pink. Mark, of course, who’s about as subtle as a neon sign, had to say, “It’s all those Good Humor bars, the kind with the chocolate bar in the center.”

  “It is not!” Elizabeth declared.

  “I like the toasted almond bars,” said Brian. “I could eat those all day.” And the guys immediately started talking about their favorite ice cream, oblivious of what was happening with Elizabeth.

  She sat stiffly on her towel, arms circling her thighs and calves, as though trying to shield her body from view. She wouldn’t even touch the rest of her Sprite, and finally went in the house to change. I followed.

  “Elizabeth, don’t take what Justin said so seriously. You know you get a little puffy right before your period,” I told her.

  “I’m fat!” Elizabeth insisted.

  “You’re only round, not angular. Girls are supposed to be round.”

&n
bsp; “Fat!” said Elizabeth. “I’m F-A-T, as in whale blubber, walrus blubber, globules of lard all coagulating inside my body. F-A-T, as in pork roast, lamb chops, sausage, and leg of mutton.”

  “We don’t want to eat you! We like you just the way you are,” I told her.

  But she marched into the Stedmeisters’ bathroom and closed the door.

  I put my face against the door frame. “Any weight you gained over the winter, you’ll lose this summer by swimming and stuff,” I called.

  But when she came out, she was staring straight ahead. “I’m fat,” she said again. “I will never eat another bite until I’ve lost fifteen pounds.” And with a quick good-bye to the group, she left.

  Pamela called the next morning to be sure I was ready to go running. She said that Elizabeth had been up since seven, and we were going to do three miles around the neighborhood. She’d already mapped it out.

  I put on my sweatpants and a wrinkled T-shirt, Pamela arrived in short shorts and a top, and we crossed the street to pick up Elizabeth.

  We hardly recognized her. She came out on the porch in sweatpants and a sweat jacket with sleeves that hung down below her hands. The hood of the jacket completely covered her hair and was tied under the chin. She was also wearing a huge pair of sunglasses. It was impossible to tell whether the creature beneath all that paraphernalia was male or female.

  “Good grief, Elizabeth!” I said. “It’s about seventy degrees outside. It’s going up to eighty-three. We’re not going sledding, you know.”

  “I don’t want anyone to recognize me,” Elizabeth said.

  “Sure. They’ll see Pamela and me and say, ‘Hmmm. I wonder who that third person could be?’ We’ve only been hanging around together since sixth grade,” I told her.

  There was simply no reasoning with her, so we started off, trying to find a pace that was right for the three of us.

  “How many calories do you figure we burn in a half hour?” Elizabeth panted.

  “It depends how fast we run. Enough to burn off a scoop of Häagen-Dazs, maybe,” Pamela said. “Of course, if you add fudge sauce to that, and whipped cream …”