Alice in Blunderland

  “How big is the baby?” asked Loretta.

  “Seven months,” I said. “But it’s still inside Mrs. Dooley. It won’t be born until April.”

  “Oh,” she said. “That is a tiny baby, then. We don’t have much for babies, but this is the tiniest thing I’ve got.” She took out a box of knit stocking caps for newborn babies. There were pink ones and blue ones and yellow and white ones. And they all said HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEETHOVEN on them. Beethoven, of course, is a composer, and I had just learned to pronounce it right: “Bay-toe-van.” I used to call him “Beet-oven” till Lester told me how stupid that sounded.

  I chose a blue cap with white letters. “Is a dollar and five cents enough?” I asked.

  “It is with your dad’s discount,” Loretta said, and put it in a bag for me.

  When I got home, I folded the little cap in half and put it inside a big valentine. On the envelope I wrote, For Baby Dooley. On Monday, I pushed it down inside Mr. Dooley’s red, white, and blue box for our Valentine’s Day party after lunch that afternoon. I could do the right thing sometimes. A nice thing. I could use my head. I wasn’t a blunderbuss all the time.

  I was so excited at the thought of Mr. Dooley opening my valentine that at lunchtime in the all-purpose room I told the other girls at my table.

  “You didn’t!” said Dawn.

  I stared at her. “Of course I did!” I said.

  “You’re not supposed to buy presents for a baby until it’s just about to be born, Alice!” she said.

  “Why?” I cried.

  “Because something might happen to it. If it dies before it’s born, then the parents will be sad every time they look at your present,” said Jody, as though everyone knew that.

  Now the other girls were nodding. I didn’t know that! How did other girls know when you could give presents to a baby and when you couldn’t?

  “You’re supposed to wait and give presents at a baby shower,” said Sara. “That’s when you give presents to someone who isn’t born yet.”

  I felt awful! Mr. Dooley was going to hate me. If anything happened to Baby Dooley, he would remember me forever as “the girl who gave a little cap to our dead baby.”

  I had to get it back!

  “What am I going to do?” I asked the other girls.

  “I’ll go ask Mr. Dooley what kind of a tree is growing outside our window, and when he goes to look, you take his box to the rest room and get your valentine out,” said Sara.

  When we went back inside after hurrying through our lunches, Sara said, “Mr. Dooley, what kind of tree is that outside our window?”

  Mr. Dooley was sorting through some papers on his desk. “A maple, Sara,” he said.

  “Not the big tree. That smaller one,” said Sara.

  “Which one do you mean?” asked Mr. Dooley, and he walked over to the window with her. That’s when I picked up Mr. Dooley’s red, white, and blue box off the table at the back of the room and walked right out the door with it and down the hall to the girls’ rest room.

  When I got there, though, I discovered that Mr. Dooley hadn’t wrapped the lid and the box separately so that you could just take off the lid. He had wrapped them both together in the same sheet of red, white, and blue paper, and there was no way to get the lid off without cutting through the paper. Then Mr. Dooley would know that someone had opened his box!

  Maybe I could squeeze my hand inside, I thought. Maybe I could push my fingers through the slot and feel around for a thick envelope and pull it out. I went to the last stall in the rest room and stepped inside. Bracing the box against one knee, I tried to slide my fingers through the slot without stretching it. I could barely get them in. Other valentines had been shoved in on top of mine. I pushed until half my hand was in the box.

  I could hear music coming from the classroom across the hall, and I knew that the third graders were having the music teacher that day in Mrs. Burstin’s room. She was the teacher I had last year.

  Suddenly Mrs. Burstin herself walked into the rest room and began washing her hands at the sink. I stepped back farther in the stall and tried to close the door with my elbow.

  “Alice?” said Mrs. Burstin, coming down the row of toilets. And then she was staring at me, standing there in the last stall with my hand stuck in the lid of Mr. Dooley’s valentine box.

  I saw her eyes travel down to the box with Mr. Dooley’s name in big black letters.

  “Does your teacher know you’re here?” she asked.

  “N-No,” I said, and my cheeks felt as red as valentine candy.

  Mrs. Burstin studied me. “What’s the matter, Alice?”

  “I’m trying to take back the valentine I gave to Mr. Dooley,” I said, and my chin trembled.

  “Oh. You wrote something on it you wish you hadn’t?” she asked.

  “No. It’s for his fetus, and it might make him sad if it dies,” I said, swallowing. “I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to give presents to babies until just before they’re born.”

  Mrs. Burstin reached down and helped me get my fingers out of the box. “You know what?” she said. “I think Mr. and Mrs. Dooley will be so pleased that you thought of a valentine for their baby that they will love it no matter what.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Really.”

  “But how am I going to get the box back in the room without anyone seeing?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you give it to me. I’ll think of some reason to have Mr. Dooley called to the principal’s office before your party starts, and as soon as he leaves the room, I’ll pop in and return the box. He won’t even know.”

  I handed the box to Mrs. Burstin. “Thank you,” I said.

  When I went back to my room, Mr. Dooley stopped talking for a moment because he hadn’t realized I’d been gone. He waited until I sat down. Then he went on talking about how a human fetus has a tail at five weeks inside its mother, but at seven weeks the tail begins to shrink. I didn’t know I had a tail once! That means Mr. Dooley once had a tail! Rosalind had a tail, and so did Dad and Lester!

  “Where is it? The valentine?” whispered Jody.

  “In the box,” I whispered back.

  She stared at me. “Where’s the box?”

  “Mrs. Burstin’s got it,” I said. “And she thinks the Dooleys will love my present no matter what.”

  12

  BIG TROUBLE

  MRS. BURSTIN WAS RIGHT; BEFORE I LEFT for home that day, Mr. Dooley pulled me aside and told me it was one of the nicest valentines he had ever received.

  It hadn’t seemed like Valentine’s Day because the week had been so warm that a lot of us took off our jackets at recess. When Donald Sheavers walked home with me after school, he gave me a chocolate marshmallow heart that looked as though he’d been carrying it around in his back pocket for a couple of days.

  “You’re supposed to give me something too if you’re my girlfriend,” said Donald.

  Only a blunderbuss, I guess, would take a chocolate heart from her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day and not give him anything. When we got to my house, I told him to wait on the steps. I went inside and asked Lester if we had any Snickers bars left from Halloween.

  Lester went down in the basement and looked in his sock drawer. He found two. I took them out to Donald.

  “Thanks,” he said, and went home.

  When I went back inside, Lester said, “How was the Valentine’s party?”

  “It was okay,” I said. I sat down in my purple beanbag chair and took the wrapper off the marshmallow heart. I ate all around the edge where the chocolate was until only the center was left.

  “You want it?” I asked Lester. Lester will eat anything. He ate the marshmallow center.

  “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

  “Donald Sheavers.”

  “Ohhhh! Boyfriend?” he asked.

  “I guess,” I told him. Having a boyfriend was easy, easy, easy!

  Lester licked his fingers. ?
??Hey, Al,” he said, “do me a favor?”

  “What?”

  “There’s this girl at school…”

  “Lisa Shane?” I asked. Lester looked surprised that I remembered her. “The girl who cries herself to sleep?”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right! That’s Lisa! Well, I’d sort of like to take her something tonight—maybe some valentine candy. Cheer her up.” Lester actually sounded nice, like he wasn’t mad at me anymore.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Well, you know how Dad is about me going out on school nights.”

  Of course I did. Dad goes to bed early, and whenever Lester goes out for the evening, school nights or not, Dad puts a big windup alarm clock outside his bedroom door. He sets the alarm for whenever Lester’s supposed to be home. If Lester’s not home in time to shut it off, the alarm goes off, Dad wakes up, and there’s big trouble when Lester comes in.

  “So?” I said.

  “If I’m not home before ten twenty-five, will you turn off the alarm clock for me?” Lester asked.

  “Les-ter!” I said. “I can’t!”

  “Just this once. Look. Lisa works at Borders, and she gets off at nine. I said I’d pick her up and drive her home. It will take fifteen minutes to get to her house and another fifteen to get back here by ten thirty.”

  “That leaves a whole hour to give her a box of candy, Lester,” I said. It took Donald Sheavers four seconds to give me a chocolate marshmallow heart. Even in slow motion, I couldn’t imagine it taking longer than four minutes to give a girl a box of candy. “So what do you need a whole hour for?” I asked. After all, he’d said she wasn’t his girlfriend, so he didn’t have to kiss her.

  “I want to talk to her—see how she’s doing. I’ll look like a nerd if I just give her some candy and tell her I have to go,” Lester said.

  “But how late will you be?”

  “Not real late. I might even make it home before ten thirty. I just want you to stay up till ten twenty-five, and if I’m not home, go down the hall and turn off the alarm.”

  “Well, I’m only doing it this one time because it’s Valentine’s Day and I know how mean Lisa’s parents treat her,” I told him.

  “You’re the greatest,” said Lester. “Just don’t fall asleep. Okay?”

  If I did this for Lester, maybe we could be real friends after all.

  By the time Dad came home for dinner, Les and I had opened some canned salmon, mixed up some packaged mashed potatoes, and heated up frozen green beans. It was our night to cook. Dad, though, brought home a box of chocolates for our dessert that a customer had given him. I could tell by the way Lester looked at the box, tied with a gold ribbon, that he really wanted to trade the box he’d bought Lisa for this one, but he didn’t dare. I was sure if we explained about Lisa and how her father beat her every night, Dad would let Lester have the best box. Lester wouldn’t want me to say anything, though.

  “Can I have the car a little while this evening, Dad?” he asked. “I promised to pick up a girl at Borders and drive her home.”

  “I thought you had a big physics test tomorrow.”

  “I do, but I’ve studied.”

  “Just be home by ten thirty,” Dad said.

  “Even on Valentine’s Day?” asked Lester.

  “Especially on Valentine’s Day,” Dad answered.

  As soon as Lester left the house at a quarter of nine, I wished I hadn’t promised to turn off the alarm. I was pretty miserable all evening, and when Dad found me still up, watching TV at nine thirty, he said, “Al, you were supposed to be in bed a half hour ago. Come on, get those PJs on.”

  “I’m not very sleepy,” I said.

  “You will be. Just climb in bed and your pillow will do the rest.”

  I stood up slowly, turned off the TV, and went down the hall to the bathroom. I took another five minutes to brush my teeth, then went in my room and checked my clock. Twenty of ten.

  I heard Dad brushing his teeth. Then the soft thud of his footsteps back in his bedroom. There was the little clunk of the metal alarm clock as he set it on the floor outside his room.

  “G’night, Al,” he called.

  “Good night, Dad.” Boy, Lester, you’d better come home and turn that alarm off yourself, I thought. In a way it would be like lying to Dad, because I was making him think I was going to sleep when I wasn’t.

  I turned on my lamp and propped the pillows against the wall to keep me sitting up. The house was ghostly quiet. My ears felt as though they were going to pop off, I was listening so hard for our car. I looked at my clock. Ten of ten. I told myself I could only look at it every five minutes, so I counted to sixty five times, then looked. Nine fifty-five.

  At ten o’clock Dad got up and went to the bathroom. I turned off my lamp. Dad went back to bed. I turned it on again.

  What if the alarm went off a few minutes early? What if it went off at ten twenty-five, not ten thirty? I couldn’t take any chances. At ten twenty-four, I tiptoed down the hall, felt around for the alarm button, and pushed it in.

  Then I wrapped a blanket around me and went out to sit on the couch in the living room. Oatmeal was sleeping at the other end. She got up on her little cat feet, walked daintily across the cushions, and settled down in my lap.

  What if Lester had been in an accident? If Lester didn’t come home and the alarm went off, Dad would probably check with the police or call some hospitals to see if anyone had been brought in. Now the alarm wouldn’t go off and Dad wouldn’t even know that Lester was still out. Maybe Lester was lying by the side of the road this very minute with a broken neck! Maybe he was lying there hoping I hadn’t turned the alarm off so that Dad would start looking for him.

  I pulled the blanket up to my chin and leaned back against the cushions. Then I had another thought: Maybe he wasn’t in an accident. Maybe Lisa Shane’s father saw Lisa out in the car with Lester and tried to beat him up. I was worried, but not worried enough, I guess, because the darkness of the room, the softness of the blanket, and the warmth of my cat put me to sleep.

  “Al?”

  I tried to open my eyes, but I was too tired. I tried to pull myself out of my dream, but I kept drifting back.

  “Al!” the voice said again, louder.

  I forced my eyes open. There was a light on in the hallway, and I could make out Dad standing beside the couch in his robe.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked. And before I could answer, he said, “You’re waiting for Lester, aren’t you?”

  I could feel my eyes closing again.

  “And you turned off the alarm for him, didn’t you?”

  I opened my eyes. “I… I promised.”

  Dad didn’t say any more. He sat down on a chair across the room, his hands on his knees. I was afraid that if I got up and started for bed, he’d make me sit back down again, so I stayed where I was, wondering when the scolding would begin and what my punishment would be. I didn’t know what time it was or how long I had been asleep, but I was certainly awake now.

  It was just a few minutes later, though, that I heard our car pull up outside. A car door closed, probably as quietly as a car door could. It certainly didn’t slam.

  There were soft footsteps on the front steps, a key turned in the lock, and then the door was opening, but only a little way. I knew Lester had noticed the light on in the hall and knew someone was up.

  “Come on in, Les,” said Dad.

  The front door opened wider, and Lester stepped into the hall. “D-Dad?” His eyes traveled over to me on the couch and asked the question I couldn’t answer.

  “This is the second time in the last month or so that I’ve been disappointed in the two of you,” Dad said. “Lester, you should know better than to ask your sister to lie for you.”

  “Dad, you just don’t understand!” Lester said. “This is a special night, and Lisa’s a really nice girl. She works at a book store, Dad! I couldn’t just give her a box of candy without talking to her a little while.”
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  “Les, you had a lot of options. You could have given it to her last weekend. You could have given it to her today at school. I’m not so old that I can’t understand how a girl can be special and a night can be special, but this wasn’t that night. It’s a school night, and you’ve got a big exam tomorrow.”

  “Dad, I’m ready for it! I—”

  “Do you have any idea how it makes me worry when you come home an hour late? And then… to get Alice involved…”

  “Dad, I’m sorry,” Les began.

  But all Dad said was, “There are going to be some changes around here. I don’t know yet what they are, but there will be changes. Go to bed.”

  Lester shot me an angry look. “What the heck were you doing out here on the couch with a blanket around you?” he growled as he went down the hall to the bathroom.

  I went back to bed and crawled under the covers. Why hadn’t he explained to Dad about Lisa Shane and how much she needed a friend? I knew Dad would understand. It’s Lester I don’t understand. He and I were definitely not any friendlier toward each other than we were before.

  I’ll bet if Lester had a choice, he would even choose a new pair of sneakers before he’d choose me.

  13

  SAVING LISA

  DAD DIDN’T SAY ANY MORE TO US THE next morning about changes. Lester and I were careful to put our dishes in the sink after breakfast and pick up our shoes in the living room so we wouldn’t make him any angrier than he was, but Lester wouldn’t even look at me, like I was dog doo or something. As though he wouldn’t have got caught if I hadn’t wrapped up in a blanket and waited for him on the couch.

  After school I went to Donald’s house, as I always do on Tuesdays. There was something about the way Mrs. Sheavers sat down with us for our snack that told me she wanted to talk. There were three glasses of Hi-C orange drink and three saucers of Oreo cookies, not two.

  “So!” said Mrs. Sheavers. “How was Valentine’s Day at your house, Alice?”

  I wondered if she knew about Lester coming home late. “It was okay,” I said.