Starting With Alice

  But what I said was, “My brother went somewhere and locked the door, and I don’t have any place to go.” I stepped inside, dripping water.

  Megan could have said, “Well, why didn’t you walk up the street to Rosalind’s house?” But she didn’t. What she said was, “Boy, you’re really soaked! You want a towel?”

  “Okay,” I told her.

  She brought me a towel, and I blotted my hair with it, then my face and T-shirt. Her little sister kept staring.

  “Don’t you have a home?” she asked.

  Megan and I laughed.

  “Yes, but I can’t get in,” I said. “Now I have to wait till somebody gets there.”

  “Where’s your mother?” asked the sister.

  “I don’t have a mother,” I said. And when the girl looked puzzled, I added, “She died.”

  Now the sister was really curious. “Did she get killed?” she asked.

  “Marlene!” Megan scolded. And then, to me, “You want to wait in the living room?”

  “I’d better not sit on anything. I’m too wet,” I said.

  Megan grinned. “You want to wear some of my clothes?”

  I smiled too. “Okay,” I said.

  We went up to Megan’s room, and she found a pair of leggings and a shirt for me. Pretty soon we were sitting on her bed eating cheese crackers.

  “Thanks for taking me in,” I said. “Lester’s really going to catch it.”

  “Is he your only brother?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Is Marlene your only sister?”

  “Yep. I don’t have any brothers at all.”

  We chewed for a minute without talking. Then I said, “You could come to my house sometime.”

  She didn’t answer right away. Then, without looking at me, she said, “I didn’t think you’d want me to come.”

  “I guess I didn’t think you’d want to. I mean… you and Jody and Dawn…”

  “We’re not really triplets,” she said. “It’s just a sort of fun thing to do.”

  We studied each other and smiled a little.

  “Jody would have a fit if she knew I let you in,” Megan said.

  “Rosalind would have a fit if she knew I came!” I said. We both laughed some more. “It’s silly to go on being enemies,” I said. “It sure is a lot of work.”

  Megan nodded. “But I think Jody and Dawn sort of like having enemies.”

  “So?” I said, and waited.

  “So why don’t we be secret friends?” said Megan. “Just until they change their minds.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  When it stopped raining, I called home to see if Lester was there yet.

  “Yeah?” he said, when he answered.

  “Lester, where were you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean, where was I? I was right here. Where are you?”

  “You were not! I came home from the playground when it started to rain, and I couldn’t get in, and the Sheavers weren’t home, and I’ve probably got pneumonia. I had to go to Megan’s.”

  “You said you were going to the playground.”

  “I did, but it rained, Lester!”

  “Well, I was only gone a half hour. I went to Billy’s for a new CD.”

  “You are in big trouble, Lester!” I said.

  “Not if you don’t blab, I’m not,” he told me.

  Megan let me wear her clothes back home when it stopped raining, and I told her I’d bring them back the next afternoon. I didn’t tell Dad about Lester, but I did ask for my own key. “What if he gets run over or loses his key or something? Then what?” I said.

  “Yeah, Dad,” said Lester. “You wouldn’t want her standing out in the rain with no place to go.”

  Dad looked us over. “Well, you probably should have your own key, Alice, but I don’t like the thought of you losing it on the playground,” he said.

  “I’ll wear it around my neck,” I promised.

  “And I especially don’t like the thought of Lester thinking that maybe it doesn’t make any difference whether he’s here or not when you get home because you have your own key.”

  “I’ll be here!” Lester said. “Only an act of God would keep me away.”

  An act of God or a new CD, I told myself. I wonder how God gets blamed for so much stuff.

  Dad got our extra house key out of a drawer and found a chain to put it on. I think it was the kind of chain that’s attached to the rubber plug in a bathtub, but it was okay with me. I put it around my neck.

  “Am I a latchkey kid now?” I asked.

  “Not till you’re ten,” Dad said. “When you’re a fifth grader, we’ll see how it goes.”

  When I was in my room later working on my math problems, Lester poked his head in the doorway. “Thanks, Al,” he said. “I’ll be here from now on. But just in case…”

  ‘’Just don’t blame it on God,” I said.

  At school the next day, the Terrible Triplets were all wearing purple scrunchies in their hair. But when Megan passed my desk to go to the pencil sharpener, she winked at me. When I went to use the dictionary near the door, I winked back.

  When I got home from school, I put Megan’s clothes in a sack and walked to her house. This time she asked me in for some frozen yogurt, and we sat out in the kitchen with her sister, eating it at the table. Her mother was sewing drapes in the dining room and waved to me.

  “What’s it like having a little sister?” I asked.

  “Awful,” said Megan, but she smiled at Marlene when she said it. And then, more seriously, she asked, “What’s it like not having a mother? Is that awful too?”

  “It’s lonely,” I said.

  “Well, you can come over here anytime you want,” she said.

  “Yes!” said Marlene. “You can live here if you want to, can’t she, Megan?”

  Megan and I just laughed.

  When Marlene had left the kitchen, though, Megan said, “If we’re secret friends, we should each have a code name.”

  “What should it be?” I asked.

  Megan thought about it. “I think I’ll make your code name ‘Pancakes.’”

  I laughed. “Then I’ll make yours ‘Syrup,’” I said.

  17

  WHAT HAPPENED AT DONALD’S HOUSE

  DAD DECIDED IT WASN’T FAIR THAT LESTER had to come straight home from school five days a week just to be here for me. So he worked out a deal with Mrs. Sheavers: Donald could have free music lessons at the Melody Inn if I could stay at their house on Tuesdays and Thursdays until Dad got home.

  “Wouldn’t you like that, Donald? You could learn to play your Uncle Bernie’s trumpet!” his mother said happily.

  “I don’t know,” said Donald.

  “Is there another instrument you’d rather play?” Dad asked him.

  Donald shrugged. “Trumpet’s okay, I guess.”

  Dad studied him for a moment, then said to Mrs. Sheavers, “If he’s not really enthusiastic about it, I wouldn’t force him.”

  “Oh, but he wants to play the trumpet, don’t you, Donald?” she asked brightly.

  “I guess so,” said Donald. That didn’t sound very enthusiastic to me.

  “Why don’t we try it for a few weeks and see how it goes? Donald can always change his mind,” Dad said.

  So we had a deal. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at having to spend two days a week after school at the Sheaverses’. But at dinner that night, Dad had a little discussion with Lester and me.

  “You know,” he said, “moving to Maryland is a brand-new experience for us. We’ve always had your aunt Sally and uncle Milt around to help us out, but now we’re on our own. We’ve got to figure things out as they come along. Some will work and some won’t, but we’ll just have to consider ourselves pioneers on a new frontier.”

  Dad talks like that sometimes.

  “Whatever,” said Lester.

  The first Tuesday I went home with Donald after school, I told Mrs. Sheavers that Dad said we were pioneers on a new fronti
er.

  Mrs. Sheavers clapped her hands. “And isn’t it going to be fun!” she said.

  The thing about Donald’s mother was that she thought she had to keep Donald and me busy all the time. The minute we got too quiet, she’d poke her head in the room to see what we were doing. And what we were doing was playing Crazy Eights or doing homework, but quiet made her nervous.

  When I came home with Donald on Thursday, we found his old red wagon in the center of the living-room floor. On the coffee table, there were long bendable plastic strips, a big piece of old burlap, and a couple of books on pioneer life. We stared at the wagon and then at Donald’s mom.

  “Guess what you’re going to make!” she said. “A covered wagon!” And when we simply stared some more, she said, “You’re the architects! Have fun!” And she went back out into the kitchen.

  “Is she always like this?” I asked Donald.

  “Only sometimes,” said Donald.

  So we set to work bending the plastic strips until they formed an arch, then cramming the ends of them down on the inside of the wagon until we had a frame and could stretch the burlap over it.

  “Now what?” I said. “Do we have to find a horse?”

  “Don’t even tell her we’re finished. She’ll just think of something else,” Donald said.

  When I came back the following Tuesday, she said we were going to make a sod house. She had the encyclopedia opened to pages on the American West, which showed how a sod house was built.

  She had a big roll of brown wrapping paper. We were supposed to draw lines on the paper to make it look like blocks of sod, then drape the paper over the dining-room table and cut out a couple of windows.

  “Is this dumb or what?” I whispered to Donald. It was like we were back in kindergarten. In nursery school! I wondered what we were going to do next—drag out some old rocking horses and pretend to go riding across the plains?

  What bothered me most about Mrs. Sheavers was that I felt she was doing all this to make Dad like her. To make him believe she would be a good mother to me. And all because Dad had said that we were pioneers. Why hadn’t I kept my big mouth shut?

  While Donald and I wrestled with the wrapping paper and tape, Mrs. Sheavers was out in the kitchen making corn cakes for us to eat in our sod house. We got as far as drawing lines on the paper to look like blocks, but after that, we decided we’d had enough of sod houses for a while and didn’t bother to cut out any windows. We just threw a couple of sofa pillows under the dining-room table and crawled under there and told ghost stories.

  I told Donald the one Sara had told Rosalind and me about the woman who turned into a praying mantis. Donald told me “The Golden Arm,” which I’ve heard a dozen times already, and I was just in the middle of telling a story that Lester had told me by somebody named Poe, about a man who put his enemy behind a brick wall in his wine cellar, when suddenly an upside-down face appeared in the doorway of the sod house, and Mrs. Sheavers cried, “What are you doing?”

  I think I must have jumped three inches off the floor. My head fell off the pillow, anyway.

  “Just lying here,” said Donald.

  “Well, you’re supposed to be making a sod house!” said his mother.

  “It’s—it’s done,” I said, wondering why she was so upset.

  “It certainly is not! I don’t see any windows in it,” she said, and now her face was right side up, and she was down on her knees crawling in the sod house herself. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What are these pillows doing in here?”

  “We just wanted to lie down,” said Donald.

  “Why would you want to do that?” asked his mother.

  I never heard such stupid questions.

  “Because we were tired,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you put any windows in your house?” she said.

  I wondered why Donald didn’t just answer. Why didn’t he tell her the truth? That we were tired of makng a stupid sod house out of wrapping paper and would rather tell ghost stories.

  But suddenly Mrs. Sheavers crawled out of the sod house again and pulled all the paper off the table. She wadded it up and threw it in the trash can and said we were through playing pioneer.

  That was fine with me, but then we smelled something awful. The corn cakes were burning in the kitchen.

  At dinner that night, I told Dad what had happened at Donald’s house—namely, that nothing had happened, and certainly not under the table.

  “What’s so special about an old sod house made out of paper?” I said. “I didn’t even want to play pioneer.”

  I could tell that Lester was trying not to laugh as he speared his green beans. Dad was smiling too.

  “What’s wrong with Mrs. Sheavers, anyway?” I asked.

  “Just an overactive imagination,” said Dad.

  I looked at my father as I chewed. “I don’t care how many sod houses Mrs. Sheavers makes or how many good ideas she has for keeping me busy. I don’t want her for a mother,” I said.

  “I can promise you that won’t happen,” said Dad.

  At that very moment we heard the most terrible sound coming from next door. At first I thought it was an animal in pain. An elephant, maybe.

  “Jeez!” cried Lester. “What’s that?”

  “Donald Sheavers, I’m afraid,” said Dad.

  “What?” I said.

  “Practicing his trumpet,” said Dad.

  It wasn’t much fun going to Donald’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because Mrs. Sheavers wanted to know what we were doing every minute. As long as we were making noise, it was okay, but every time we did anything quiet, she peeked in on us.

  It was a lot of work having to make noise all the time. When we played cards, we bumped our feet against the table legs. When we watched TV, we had to talk during the commercials.

  The best times were the days I stopped at our house first and brought Oatmeal over to Donald’s. Muffin and Oatmeal loved being together, Donald and I had a good time playing with my cat, and we made enough noise that Mrs. Sheavers wasn’t always snooping around.

  Near the end of April, there was a cold spell and some of the buds on the bushes froze. I didn’t know it was going to be so cold and hadn’t worn a jacket to school.

  By the time I got to the school driveway, I was freezing. I started to cross, but the patrol girl yelled, “McKinley! Did I tell you to go? Get back over there!” I moved back to the curb, my teeth chattering.

  There was no reason in the world why I couldn’t cross. The bus that was coming was so far down the block that the whole school could have crossed before it got there, I’ll bet. Yet the big patrol girl wouldn’t let anyone cross the driveway and made a couple of kindergarten kids wait too.

  I was getting colder and colder. Finally the bus came, and the patrol girl moved the orange cones so it could turn in, but she still wouldn’t let us cross because another bus, way down the block, was coming from the other direction.

  I knew she was punishing me for bumping into her on the playground. As though I’d done it on purpose! But it wasn’t just me, it was the kindergarten kids behind me who had to wait too. She was only doing this to show who was boss. My fingers felt almost numb with cold, and I didn’t even have pockets to put them in.

  I saw Megan standing on the sidewalk across the drive. She gave her head a little toss as if to say, “Come on over! What are you waiting for?”

  I nodded toward the patrol girl. Megan rolled her eyes.

  I turned and looked at the bus we were supposed to be waiting for. It was still a block away and the light was red. I looked at the patrol girl, whose back was toward us now. I looked at Megan. And suddenly I just stepped down off the curb and walked across the driveway.

  The patrol girl turned just then. “McKinley!” she yelled. “Get back there!”

  I kept going.

  She put her whistle in her mouth and blew as loud as she could. Then she blew it again. She sounded like a steam engine. My feet didn’t stop.
I went on over to Megan, who grinned at me, wide-eyed.

  “Hey, Pancakes! You’re really gutsy!” she said. “That patrol girl would have kept you there all night. I’ll bet you’re in for it now, though.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “She treats me worse every day.”

  “Uh-oh. There’s Jody. I’d better go,” Megan said. “Bye, Pancakes.”

  “Bye, Syrup,” I said, and smiled.

  I went inside at the bell. It was sort of fun having a secret friend. Jody and Dawn didn’t know we were Pancakes and Syrup, and neither did Rosalind or Sara. The morning announcements came on over the intercom, the Pledge of Allegiance, and then, for the second time, I heard the principal’s voice saying, “Mrs. Burstin, would you send Alice McKinley to my office, please?”

  18

  SPRING THAW

  BEFORE WE MOVED TO TAKOMA PARK, I’d never in my eight years of life been sent to the principal’s office. And now I was going for the second time! My mouth was so dry, it felt like there was a sock in it. I knew right away that the big patrol girl had reported me.

  I imagined telling Dad that night that I’d had to go see Mr. Serio. That I’d disobeyed the patrol girl on purpose. Sure enough, when I got to the office, the secretary pointed me toward the door at the back, and as I went in, the patrol girl came out with a grin as wide as a ruler on her face.

  “You’re in for it now, McKinley,” she whispered as we passed in the doorway.

  I wanted to grab her face in my hand and just scrunch it up.

  But then I was standing in Mr. Serio’s office, looking at the tall, thin man who was sitting behind his desk. His tie had little red, white, and blue figures on it, but they weren’t flags or anything. They were tiny little Snoopy dogs turned in different directions. I figured that any man who wore a Snoopy tie probably wouldn’t lock me in a broom closet or anything.

  “Well, hello again, Alice,” he said, motioning me to a chair. “Have a seat, will you?” His voice was polite enough, but he wasn’t smiling. “I think you’ve been here long enough now to know our rules, and obeying the safety patrols is one of them.”