The next day at recess I was sitting on the steps with Megan and Jody and Dawn and Rosalind. Dawn and Jody were looking through a teen magazine, trying to find a new way to fix Jody’s hair, which hung down over her eyes like a sheepdog’s. I’m not too interested in hair. Lester says he’s seen me try only two ways to fix mine: combed and uncombed.
They knew I didn’t want to talk about hair, not after my brother had broken his ankle. Megan thought we all ought to take some Magic Markers and draw flowers and happy faces on his cast, but somehow I didn’t think that would cheer him up.
I was sitting next to Dawn, hugging my knees and feeling sad, when suddenly I yelled, “Stop!” and grabbed hold of the magazine.
The girls stared at me and then at the open page. There were pictures of unusual prom outfits for guys and girls. There were dresses and tuxedos that looked like they were made of animal skins. Clothes that had been put together with duct tape. Tuxedos with fur collars to wear in cold climates and dresses to wear when it was hot. And right there at the bottom of the page was a picture of a girl in a bikini top and a teeny-tiny skirt and a guy in a tuxedo top and satin shorts. Cool fashions for a hot climate! it said beneath the picture.
Yes! I thought. Lester could still go to the prom with his ankle in a cast if he could just slip on a pair of red nylon shorts over his cast. I told the girls about my idea, and Dawn said I could take the magazine home and show it to Lester.
Lester hadn’t gone to school that day because the pain medicine had made him oversleep, and Dad said he could take one day off to rest up. I was afraid maybe he had already called Lisa and told her he couldn’t take her to the prom.
“Wait!” I yelled as I burst through the door.
Lester had been asleep on the sofa and almost fell off. “What the heck?” he yelled.
“I’ve got an idea! A really great idea!” I said. “You can go to the prom after all.”
“You’re crazy,” said Lester. “I couldn’t even get into a tux.”
“But you could get into a pair of shorts,” I said. “Look!”
I opened the magazine to the pictures of crazy prom costumes. I pointed to the photo of the guy in a white tuxedo jacket. He was wearing a fancy white shirt with ruffles down the front and a red bow tie. There was a carnation in his lapel. And he was wearing red satin boxer shorts.
The boy in the picture was a real hunk. He was handsome as anything. He had big muscles in his legs. Lester looked at the photo a long time.
“Even if I could manage that getup, I couldn’t dance,” he said. And then he added, “Of course, nobody really goes to dance in the first place, I guess.”
“Yeah!” I said. “I’ll bet kids just go to show off and see what everyone else is wearing!”
The phone rang and I ran over to get it. I brought it back to Lester because the calls are almost always for him. There was a girl’s voice at the other end, and it wasn’t Mickey’s.
I went out in the kitchen and made myself a graham-cracker sandwich with a hot marshmallow in the middle. I made one for Lester, too.
When I took it out to him, he smiled at me. It was the first time he’d smiled since he broke his ankle. “Hey, Al,” he said. “You’re all right.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So are you going to the prom after all?”
“I’m gonna try,” he told me.
15
ONE DEAD BEETLE
THE DOCTOR SAID THAT LESTER WOULD need to use crutches for a few weeks but that he could probably put his weight on the cast by the night of the prom.
“If you wear red satin shorts, Lester, I could draw red hearts all over your cast,” I offered.
“No, thanks,” said Lester.
“I could go along and bring you stuff all evening,” I said. “Punch and cookies and things.”
“No, thanks,” said Lester.
“I could ride along in the limo with you and make sure you don’t take off your clothes and get in a Jacuzzi,” I said, grinning.
“Uh… no, thanks,” Lester said again. “Don’t press your luck.”
Lester was feeling better and so was I. My eleventh birthday was coming up on May 14, and because Lester was sick last year on my birthday, Dad promised me a party for this one. I was afraid that maybe because Lester broke his ankle, I couldn’t have a party this year, either. That maybe he’d go on getting sick and breaking a bone every year around my birthday so I could never have a proper celebration again. But Lester said no, that as long as my friends didn’t kick his leg or jump on his cast, a party would be fine.
“What kind of a party do you want?” asked Dad.
“My whole fifth grade?” I said.
Dad gave me a look. “How about the same kids you invited to your birthday last year,” he suggested.
That was okay. I got out my silver sparkle markers and some index cards and made invitations for Rosalind, Megan, Jody, Dawn, Ollie, Donald, and Cory Schwartz—all the people I knew best. But there was one person left, and that was Sara. I guess there is always a hole—an empty place in your life—where a friend has been.
We held my party on a Sunday so that Dad wouldn’t have to take time off work to be here. He said he would be in charge of the refreshments if Lester would be in charge of the games. And because I’d helped Lester find a way to go to the prom, Lester said he would be master of ceremonies.
First, he said, everyone had to come in costume.
“Lester, this isn’t Halloween!” I protested.
“Everyone has to come in a color,” said Lester. “One color. They can choose any color they want, but everything they put on has to be the same color.”
“Even their underpants?” I cried.
“Except their underpants. Tell your friends I won’t be checking underpants.”
“So then what happens?” I asked.
“The person who does it best gets a prize.”
“What’s the prize?”
“I haven’t thought of it yet,” said Lester.
At four o’clock on Sunday afternoon I was dressed in green, from my head to my toes. I had on a green T-shirt with dark green frogs all over it, green shorts, green socks, and old green sneakers. Lester was all in white: white T-shirt, shorts, one white sock, one white sneaker, and the white cast on his other leg. Dad was busy in the kitchen, so Lester said he didn’t count.
Most of the kids came in just one color, except Megan, who didn’t have any shoes that were pink. Jody won the prize—a bag of M&M’s—because she’d chosen blue and everything about her was blue, even the polish on her nails. Dad lined us up like paints in a paint box and took a picture.
“Okay, listen,” said Lester. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to send you on a scavenger hunt, and you’ve got to be back here in forty-five minutes.”
“What’s a scavenger hunt?” asked Ollie. “How do we know where to find it?”
We laughed.
“A scavenger hunt is where you look for stuff on a list,” said Lester. “I’ll give you the list. After forty-five minutes I’ll go out on the steps and ring a cowbell. You can go one block in either direction, and you have to go in groups of two or three. Nobody goes off by himself. The group that comes back first with all the stuff on the list wins. But everyone has to come back when they hear the cowbell. You can knock on people’s doors and tell them you’re on a scavenger hunt, but you can’t go inside. Got it?”
We quickly teamed up. Ollie and Donald and Cory went together; Rosalind and Megan chose me, so Dawn and Jody were a team. Lester gave each group a copy of the list and a paper bag.
“On your mark, get set, go!” said Lester.
The boys went up the street, Jody and Dawn went down, and Rosalind and Megan and I stood out on the sidewalk reading the list.
In honor of Alice’s eleventh birthday, it said at the top of the page, collect the following eleven objects:
1. One dead beetle
2. A peanut butter sandwich
3. A dirty sock
r /> 4. A clean Band-Aid
5. An old toothbrush
6. A dill pickle
7. A baby’s pacifier
8. A candy wrapper
9. Lip gloss
10. A black shoelace
11. Something gross
We giggled and started off. Some of the things were easy to get, like the Band-Aid and the dill pickle. But other things—the lip gloss and pacifier—could be a problem.
The three of us went up to each house together.
“Excuse me,” one of us would say when someone opened the door. “We’re on a scavenger hunt. Would you happen to have a dirty sock?”
Everyone laughed when they read our list.
“I could give you one, but I’m afraid I might not get it back,” one woman said.
And a man said, “I’d take the sock off my foot, but the smell would knock you out. What’s next on your list?”
“A peanut butter sandwich?” asked Rosalind.
“No problem,” the man said with a laugh. And we waited on his porch while he made one for us. Rosalind wanted to eat half, but I wouldn’t let her.
At the next house we got a candy wrapper and a black shoelace, and we found a dead beetle beside the steps.
“Let’s go to Donald Sheavers’s house for the dirty sock,” I said, and Mrs. Sheavers laughed when she opened the door and heard what we wanted.
It was one of Donald’s, and it was dirty, all right. Smelly, too.
“Do you think this would do for something gross?” Megan asked as we went back down the sidewalk. But then we saw something even more gross. Somebody had stepped on a worm, and half of it was squished flat.
“You pick it up,” said Megan.
“No. You,” I told her.
Rosalind picked it up. The worm fell apart. The squished half fell back to the sidewalk, and the other half wiggled a little in Rosalind’s hand.
“Euuuw!” Megan and I said together.
“Worms are like that,” said Rosalind. “You could even cut one in two and it would turn into two worms.”
I never know whether to believe Rosalind or not.
When Lester rang an old cowbell, we had found everything on the list except the lip gloss, the old toothbrush, and a baby’s pacifier. No one else had found a pacifier either, but Ollie and Donald and Cory got the most.
What we all wanted to see, of course, was something gross. Jody and Dawn had found a dead mouse, but the boys got something even worse. A woman had been cleaning out her refrigerator and gave them a container she’d found far at the back. When Ollie took off the lid, we couldn’t tell what it was, but it was covered with green mold and smelled like a dead animal.
“Euuuw!” we all said, and held our noses, and Donald and Ollie and Cory got the prize—little fold-up binoculars you could fit in a pocket.
Dad made a good dinner for us. We ate out in the backyard and had a hot-dog buffet. Dad had all kinds of stuff we could put on them: onions, pickles, relish, ketchup, cheese, and pineapple.
Then we had an ice-cream buffet, with chocolate sauce and chocolate chips, nuts, coconut, and M&M’s to put on top. There was cake, of course. And beside the cake was an envelope addressed to me. It had Happy Birthday written across the envelope in green letters. It didn’t look like Lester’s writing, and it certainly wasn’t Dad’s.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “It came in the mail yesterday, so I saved it for the party.”
Lester was cutting the cake, and Donald was begging for the piece with the most frosting. The girls were lined up waiting for theirs.
I sat down on one of the lawn chairs and opened the envelope. It was a homemade birthday card, with silly little people across the top, all gobbling up cake. I smiled because it was exactly what we were doing now. All the people on the card had big eyes and big ears. They looked almost like bugs. Have a good birthday, Alice! it said on the card. If I were there, I’d give you a goldfish, because my grandmother has too many. So this will have to do. Sara.
I looked in the envelope again. There were the remains of some Goldfish crackers, only they were mostly crumbs.
“It’s from Sara!” I said happily, waving the card at Rosalind. Under her name there was an arrow pointing to the back of the card. I turned it over:
Dear Alice,
We are staying at my grandmother’s until we see if my dad’s job is going to work out in Texas. Then we’ll probably go there. My grandmother’s house isn’t very big, but we like it anyway. She has two dogs and about a million fish. I hope you have a great birthday. If Rosalind is there, give her an elephant kiss for me and keep one for yourself.
Love,
Sara
P.S. To give an elephant kiss, blow water through your nose.
16
THINKING OF MOM
I THINK THAT THE CARD FROM SARA was about the best present of all.
Everyone brought me something, of course. Donald Sheavers gave me some of his comic books, Ollie gave me a jar of jelly beans, and Cory gave me a flashlight. From Megan and Jody and Dawn, I got a bead set, a headband, and a tiny purse, but Rosalind gave me a purple clay elephant. It was about three inches long, made in India, and had green and gold and pink spangles embedded in it.
“I bought it for you at the zoo,” she said.
I told her I was supposed to give her an elephant kiss from Sara, but Donald was the only one who tried to do it. He tipped his head back and poured ginger ale in his nose, and then he tried to sneeze it out. All the girls jumped up and got away from him. Ollie and Cory just laughed. Boys can be so gross sometimes.
“Okay,” Dad said, smiling and handing Donald a napkin. “Anybody want more cake?”
Donald did. So did Cory.
“I was born at four in the morning,” said Dawn.
“I was born right at midnight,” Jody told us. “The doctor said I could probably say I was born on either the day before or the day after.”
“Mom says I came at six in the evening,” said Ollie.
“When were you born, Alice?” Jody asked me. “Are you officially eleven years old yet?”
I didn’t know what time I was born, and Dad had gone back in the house. Mom never told me, and now I didn’t have a mother to ask.
“It was a great party, Alice,” Dawn said when parents drove up later and kids started to leave.
“Yeah, we had a lot of fun,” said Megan.
I helped Dad bring in all the stuff from the backyard—the blankets and paper cups and soda cans.
“What time was I born?” I asked him as we washed the bowls and spoons and forks.
“Quite late at night, as I remember,” he said.
“Did I take a long time?”
“Nope. You were a pretty speedy baby. Lester took a lot longer, being the first.”
“Were you with Mom when I came out?”
“Yes, I was right there. Could have caught you in my bare hands if I’d been quick enough, but the doctor was quicker. They wouldn’t let me in the delivery room for Lester, and I wanted to make sure I was there for you,” Dad said.
“What did I look like?”
“Well, to tell the truth, you looked like a piece of moldy cheese.”
“Dad!”
He laughed. “Till they cleaned you up, that is. Then we thought you were the most beautiful baby girl in the whole world.”
“Was Mom happy that I was a girl?”
“I don’t think I’d ever seen her more happy.”
“I wish she were here,” I said in a small voice. “I wish she could see me now.”
“I wish it every day of my life,” said Dad. “But especially on your birthday.”
Lester was hobbling in from the other room singing “Happy Birthday.” “Okay, Al, close your eyes!” he called out.
I did. “Don’t put anything gross on me, Lester,” I warned.
“Happy birth-day, dear Alice… ,” he sang, coming closer. I felt somethi
ng go around my shoulders. I felt something touch the top of my head. “Happy birth-day to you!” he finished. “Okay. Open your eyes.”
Lester was standing in front of me holding a hand mirror. I looked. I was wearing a gold crown made of cardboard and a cheap shiny gold cape.
“What is it?” I said, laughing.
“Queen for a day, of course! Except that you can keep them and wear them as much as you like.”
I took off the crown and examined it. Lester had taped my name over some printing on the front. I peeked underneath and read MINIATURE GOLF QUEEN, TAKOMA PARK, MARYLAND.
“Les-ter!” I grinned. “I’ll bet you got this stuff for free.”
He ignored me. “And now, for your subjects… !” He took down a plastic fishbowl from the top of the refrigerator, in which he had arranged sand and seaweed or something. There, swimming around inside, were two of the tiniest fish I had ever seen. The larger one was fat and gray-green; the smaller one was every color of the rainbow.
“They’re so tiny!” I said. “What are they?”
“Guppies,” Lester said. “The female—the larger one—gives birth to about fifty live guppies every month or so. Keep that up, and you’ll have a vast kingdom in there.”
I’ll have to admit that Lester’s present was original. I liked the thought of something reproducing in front of my very eyes, especially now that I knew how reproducing was done, though I’m not sure if it was quite the same way for guppies.
“Ah, yes. I believe I have a little present for you too,” said Dad. He went back in his bedroom and returned with a small package. Dad doesn’t pay too much attention to wrapping paper. He says it’s all he can do to get it around the box in the first place. This time he had wrapped the present in Christmas paper, and there were rows of red and green snowmen running from left to right.
“Way to go, Dad!” said Lester.
I unwrapped and opened the box. Inside was another box, this one made of wood. The lid was decorated with carvings of parrots and a jungle motif around the edges. It must have taken a long time for a carver to make that box. Inside were two ten-dollar bills and a note that read, Happy birthday, Alice. Love you. Dad.