Incredibly Alice

  Some people, I know, self-destruct. They get just so far, so high, so popular, so famous that they eventually light the fuse that blows them up. Maybe Brian was one of those people. Maybe he would always test the limits. Go one step further than he knew he should. We’d thought the car accident he’d been in last year might change him, but it didn’t look as though it had.

  But Friday night I got the news. Phil called. “It’s over,” he said. “We can print an end to our story.”

  “What happened?”

  “Brian and every member of the wrestling team showed up this morning in Beck’s office. They asked if they could work the whole day helping out in maintenance, whatever needed doing around the building, to help make up for the epoxy incident.”

  “None of those seniors skipped?” I asked, incredulous. “I’d heard the whole team was going to Ocean City for Memorial Day weekend.”

  “They were, but they didn’t. They stuck together to help out their captain and didn’t leave for the beach till a little while ago. Beck took them up on their offer, the maintenance supervisor put them to work, and six hunks working eight hours got a lot of stuff done, I heard. On Tuesday, after we all get back, the sophomores will find a letter of apology in their lockers from the wrestling team, and Brian’s cleared for takeoff.”

  30

  ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN

  It was Dad who found the printout on the coffee table.

  “Al?” he said. “What is this?”

  It was four days until graduation, and I had just looked out the window to see if anyone was hiding in the bushes.

  Dad read a paragraph out loud: “‘No killing during school hours. No killing on school days within a block radius of school. To and from grad parties you can be killed, but not at your own… .’”

  “Relax already,” I said, laughing. “It’s a game. The seniors are playing Assassins. We only use foam darts, and it’s a blast.”

  I don’t know who thought this up. Other schools have played it, I know, but 156 of our seniors signed up for it on Facebook, and Drew Tolman was appointed record keeper. Over Memorial Day each of us had put five dollars in the pot, and Drew divided us up into thirteen teams of twelve each. He was the only one who knew who was on what team and what names were on each other’s hit lists. Each of us bought our own NERF dart gun, and as soon as you “killed” someone, you had to text Drew with a cryptic message, like: Jane Doe shot Charlie Smith @ 7:32 p.m.

  When Dad was convinced that nobody was going to get hurt and that everything took place out of school hours, he said he’d leave it to my own common sense. But we had our own rules:

  No killing @ work—going to and from OK.

  No killing @ church, synagogue, or any other religious-affiliated event.

  No killing at school-related events, practices, or games. Going to and from is OK.

  No killing inside someone’s house unless invited in by a family member.

  No shields. If you are hit anywhere once, you are dead.

  DO NOT bring your gun inside school. This is not affiliated with school.

  DO NOT shoot at point-blank range and hurt someone.

  The rules went on and on. The thing was, you had to keep your hit list secret. Most of my friends had signed up, and none of us had any idea which person or team had our names on their list. You could offer someone a ride home, and the minute he got in your car, he could shoot you. Once you left the one-block radius outside of school, you were fair game.

  If you wanted to freak yourself out, you remembered that someone was always out to get you. It could be your closest friend. A neighbor or a person you hardly knew. The school population came from all over Silver Spring and Kensington. The only people on my list that I knew well were Pamela, Phil, and Sam, and I figured Pamela would be the easiest to shoot. But I couldn’t give myself away.

  Dad said I could use his car for the rest of the week so I could get to school early and park in the student lot. A block away, and I’d be a target for the assassins. Teachers had lived through this before, evidently, and put up with our furtively checking our cell phones to see if anyone else had been zapped. The team that scored the most hits got to divide the pot—sixty-five bucks for each of the twelve players.

  We broke into laughter when we got to history and the teacher started class by pulling out a NERF gun and shooting a dart at the clock. Then he announced that we could spend the whole class time talking about current events. How did we feel about gun control, for example? Who should be allowed to buy assault rifles? How was it that anyone could buy a gun at gun shows? And for the next forty minutes, we forgot we were assassins and concentrated on something with a little more depth.

  Gwen hadn’t signed up for the game and thought we were out of our minds to spend so much time at it, with all we had to do. Jill and Justin hadn’t signed up either. They walked the halls with their arms around each other, and I think Jill was a little annoyed that they weren’t the chief topic of conversation any longer.

  As soon as school was out on Tuesday, I got in the car. People were ducking behind walls, aiming at friends who were running toward their cars farther down the street. I went straight home, then sat in the car, scrutinizing the territory before I made a mad dash for the house.

  That night Liz called and asked if she could come over for a minute. Immediately, I was suspicious.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “I want to show you something,” she said.

  “Uh … no,” I answered. “Show me at school tomorrow.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded.

  “I know what you’re up to,” I said, laughing.

  “You’re not on my list! Honestly!” she protested.

  “Yeah, that’s what an assassin would say,” I told her.

  “It’s a picture of the haircut I want for summer,” she said. “I want your opinion.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “It can wait.”

  “You’re no fun,” said Liz, and hung up.

  Things were getting really wild at school. The longer it took an assassin to find me, the more nervous I got. I’d had to get to school even earlier Wednesday to find a space at all, but Pamela hadn’t been so lucky. I was just pulling out of the student lot at the end of the day when I saw her running down the street toward her dad’s car at the corner. Someone was chasing her.

  I pulled alongside.

  “Pamela!” I called. “Hurry! Get in!”

  She gave a little shriek as the gunman fired but missed, and as he reloaded, she made a dash for my car and collapsed in the seat beside me, locking the door.

  “Saved!” she screamed happily to the guy who rushed the car and tried to get in, then walked away. But when Pamela turned to thank me, she was looking at my NERF gun pointed at her leg.

  “You dog!” she screamed, trying to grab it from me, but I got her, and we were both yelping with laughter, even though she claimed she was crippled forever.

  “What are friends for?” I said, and pulled slowly into traffic.

  When Gwen picked me up later to go to her house—I wanted to see the bag she’d bought for the cruise ship, the bag with the zillion pockets—I sat on the floor of the backseat and didn’t get out till the car was in her garage. I even wondered if someone had bribed her so they could assassinate me at her place, but I’d been desperate to get out for a while.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to die and get it over with? Then we could talk about packing,” she said.

  “Hey, I got through the first two days. I like living dangerously,” I told her.

  I shouldn’t have stayed so long at Gwen’s, though, because when I got home and looked at the stuff yet to sort, I was more conscious than ever of how little time I had left to pack. We’d be leaving for the Bay at noon.

  I’d been listening to music while I decided what underwear to take and how much when Sylvia called from below. “Alice, Ryan’s here to see you.”

  Ryan? I thought we
were over. I thought he knew it. I stood there with a bra in one hand, pants in another. Was it possible he hadn’t seen me at the prom with Patrick? And suddenly I realized that Ryan was playing Assassins too.

  “Can he come up?” Sylvia called, waiting.

  “Don’t let him in!” I screeched, wondering where I’d left my NERF gun. But he wasn’t on my hit list, so even if I shot him, he wasn’t officially dead.

  “What?” cried Sylvia.

  I heard Ryan laughing. “Sorry about this,” he said, and I realized he already was in. And then I heard rapid footsteps on the stairs. I screamed and ran into Dad and Sylvia’s bedroom, their walk-in closet.

  Dad and Sylvia were laughing too down on the landing as Ryan went slowly from room to room saying, “Might as well give up, Alice! I know you’re here!” like a stalker in an old Hitchcock movie. My heart was pounding anyway.

  When I heard him walking around in Lester’s old room next door, I sprang for the bathroom and managed to lock the door just as his hand grabbed the knob.

  “Too late!” I yelled. “So, so sorry!”

  He was laughing then. “There’s always tomorrow!” he said.

  “Need any help up there, Al?” Dad called.

  “I’m not coming out till he’s gone and the front door’s locked behind him,” I said.

  “I know when I’m licked,” Ryan said. “And … by the way, Alice, you looked great at the prom.”

  “So did you,” I told him, “but I’m still not coming out.”

  When he was gone at last and Sylvia assured me I was safe, I opened the door and collapsed on the pile of underwear on my bed, which I suppose Ryan had seen.

  “How am I going to get through school tomorrow?” I said, still breathless. “I’m a marked woman!”

  Sylvia sighed. “I’m so glad I don’t teach high school,” she said.

  I’d only made one hit, and that was Pamela. I knew now that Ryan was gunning for me, but there would be others, too. I felt quite sure I wouldn’t make it through the day without getting zapped, but I wanted at least one more notch in my belt before the game was over.

  So on Thursday, I got up at five thirty, ate a piece of toast, and drove to Phil’s house in Kensington. We’d been there once for a newspaper party, and I parked on a side street. Phil’s house was on a cul-de-sac, only one way in and out.

  It was six twenty-five, and I doubted he’d be leaving for school before seven. I dropped the car key in my jacket pocket, made sure my dart gun was loaded, then walked stealthily from tree to tree until Phil’s house came into view.

  I stopped and reconnoitered. There was a large lilac bush on one side of the front steps but not the other. To hide behind it, I would have to come in from the other direction. I would have to follow a neighbor’s hedge to the backyard, then cut over into Phil’s and come around from the other side. There was no garage and two cars were parked in the driveway, so I felt quite sure that this was the door Phil would use.

  Checking to see if there was any activity in the neighbor’s house, I entered their yard, hurried along their side of the hedge, head down, until I reached an open space in the backyard.

  I ducked behind the toolshed in the neighbor’s yard, behind the toolshed in Phil’s, stood for a while behind the trunk of a large poplar at one side of the yard, then zipped around to the other side of the house, finally edging up to the lilac bush by the front steps, my heart beating wildly.

  At any moment I expected a window to open and someone to call out. But nothing happened. A car went by on the street, and the driver didn’t even look my way. Far off in the distance, a dog barked, then stopped. I waited, NERF gun in hand.

  It’s harder to hide behind a lilac bush than you might think. It’s not thick, like a hedge, and the branches go every which way. The ground was wet from an overnight shower, and my shoes sank down a little in the bare earth.

  What if I had miscalculated and Phil had gone to school early? It was Thursday, the day we usually distributed the newspaper, but this week it was coming out one day late to get in all the news. Still … What if he was cleaning out old files, getting ready for the new staff that would take over in the fall? It was hard to think of someone else putting out the newspaper, someone else being in on all the news and gossip, a new set of bylines showing up weekly.

  I looked at my watch. I’d been standing there in the semi-mud for eleven minutes and it seemed like half an hour. I wondered if anyone was looking out a window overhead. A blue jay scolded me from a Japanese maple in the front yard. I was probably standing too close to its nest.

  “Sorry. I’m not moving,” I said under my breath.

  Six fifty-eight. Phil had to come out soon if he had any hope of making first period, but then, probably half the seniors were sleeping in today. Tomorrow was graduation. We had it made.

  Suddenly a voice behind me said, “Die, scum!” and I felt a little thump on my back. I wheeled around, and Phil was standing there grinning at me, his NERF gun in hand, a foam rubber dart on the ground beside me.

  “Awwwwwk!” I screamed as I heard neighbors laughing from the porch next door, and Phil took out his cell phone: “Alice McKinley killed by Phil Adler at six fifty-nine a.m.” he said aloud as his thumbs texted the message.

  “I can’t believe this!” I cried. “How did you know I was here? I was so careful.”

  “Neighborhood Watch Program,” he joked. “Two different neighbors called and said there was a suspicious-looking girl lurking around my house, gun in hand. They relayed your every move.”

  “So I was on your hit list and you were on mine?”

  “Looks that way,” he said.

  As it turned out, another team got the most hits, and each of those members got sixty-five dollars each, but I had more than my five bucks’ worth of fun.

  “Do you think we’ll have this much fun in college?” Liz asked as we skipped one of our afternoon classes to wander around the school, saying good-bye to favorite teachers, our counselors, the security guys, even Mr. Beck and Mr. Gephardt. We were about to be has-beens, and we weren’t too sure how we felt about it.

  “We’re going to try,” I said.

  And then … it was graduation. Each senior had been given four tickets, and I was astonished when my cousin Carol arrived at our house a few hours before we left for Constitution Hall.

  “Carol!” I screamed. “Omigod! I had no idea! You came all the way from Chicago to see me graduate?”

  “How could I possibly miss it?” She laughed, both of us knowing that even our closest, dearest family members had mixed feelings about sitting through a two- or three-hour ceremony. Then she told us that when her husband found out he had to be in Washington for a hotel conference, she called Dad and asked if there was any chance she could come to my graduation. “And a ticket miraculously appeared! So I get to sit with Les,” she said.

  I think Carol will go on looking glamorous well into her nineties. With Dad in his best suit and tie, Sylvia in a blue silk two-piece dress, Carol in a coral polka-dot top and black skirt, and my hunk of a brother in a brown shirt and yellow tie, I felt as though I were descended from royalty as I spotted my clan when I walked in during the processional, cap jauntily placed on one side of my head, the tassel flicking against my cheek.

  All of us clapped like crazy when Gwen gave the valedictory. She thanked our parents for all they had done for us and said that graduation was a fork in the road in many ways, but we would be choosing the best parts of our parents to take along with us on life’s journey, leaving the rest behind, as each generation must do. And it was this fork in the road, this choosing, these choices, that would, hopefully, make the world a better place.

  And then, after the speeches and honors, the music and tributes, after all the names had been read and we’d received our diplomas, we tossed our caps wildly in the air.

  Some had taped words on the top of their caps; some had special symbols to help their relatives spot them in the crowd. I don??
?t think I believe in heaven, but I believe in eternal love. I had taped I MADE IT, MOM on the top of my cap, and I threw it as hard and as high as I possibly could, so that if Mom, wherever her spirit was, could see or sense it, she’d know I’d gotten this far. Then we marched back out into the June sunshine, holding whoever’s cap we had managed to catch, and … it was over. We were leaving the nest.

  Some of us would stick around our families all summer. Others would travel. Many would begin a summer job, and some, like Gwen and Liz and Pamela and me, would be combining work and travel. Ten weeks of dawn-to-dusk work on the Chesapeake Bay.

  “Do we really want to do this?” Pamela murmured as we posed for pictures after the ceremony.

  “Take pictures?” I asked.

  “Clean people’s toilets for ten weeks?” she said. “Wait on tables? Change linens? Get up at five every morning?”

  “Well, don’t we want to sit out on the deck and let the breeze blow our hair?” I answered.

  “Don’t we want to visit all the little towns and shops on the eastern shore?” said Gwen.

  “Don’t we want to meet guys?” said Liz.

  “Smile, everybody. Say ‘guys,’” said Les.

  “Guys!” we all cried together, and summer, for us, had begun.

  How it would end, I didn’t know. As we were all so fond of saying, anything could happen.

  THE SEASCAPE AND THE SPELLBOUND

  The ship was beautiful.

  Of course, since none of us had been on one before, almost any ship would do. But this one, three stories of white against the blue of a Baltimore sky, practically had our names on it. And since it would be our home for the next ten weeks, we stood mesmerized for a moment before we walked on down toward the gangway, duffel bags over our shoulders. The early June breeze tossed our hair and fluttered the flags on the boats that dotted the waterfront.

  This might possibly be our last summer together, but no one said that aloud. We were so excited, we almost sizzled. Like if we put out a finger and touched each other, we’d spark. We needed this calm before college, this adventure at sea.