I Know You, Al: The Al Series, Book Two

by Constance C. Greene

  We walked slowly.

  “Maybe you’ll get a letter today,” I said.

  Al pulled both her hands out of her pockets and held them up. The thumbs were tucked under. She’d read somewhere that if you make a wish when your thumbs are tucked under, the wish will come true.

  “I doubt it,” she said, but she smiled. I could tell she thought maybe today really was her lucky day and she would get a letter.

  A couple of dudes wearing high-heeled shoes and black leather jackets were walking toward us.

  “Hey hey, looka that!” they said. They didn’t act as if they were really enthusiastic. They just said the words as if they’d rehearsed a lot. We looked behind us and across the street. A thin lady was walking her dog, and a big fat mother was pushing her baby. They must mean the hey hey for us. Pathetic.

  Al flashed her bilious eye, but I guess it’d lost some of its power due to overuse because these dudes went on saying hey hey until we turned into our building.

  chapter three.

  It seems that ever since I’ve known Al, she’s been waiting for a letter. First, it was her father she wanted so badly to hear from. Her mother and father are divorced. He was always on a trip somewhere and sent Al things: postcards and Mexican jumping beans and candy she wasn’t supposed to eat. On account of she was a little on the plump side.

  Then last month her father got married again, and he asked Al to the wedding. At first she said she might not go because her father had walked out on her and her mother when Al was little. Then she changed her mind and went. It was a good thing too. She made friends with Louise, the woman her father married, and also with Louise’s three little boys, Nick, Chris, and Sam. Sam was Al’s favorite. He was seven. When they took her to the airport to say goodbye, they all kissed her. Even Chris, and he’s ten, and everybody knows ten-year-old boys don’t go around kissing people indiscriminately. Look at my brother Teddy. He’s almost ten. He practically only kisses my mother on Christmas and birthdays.

  Then Louise and the boys had asked Al to come back in the summer for a visit. That was the second letter that didn’t arrive. Louise said she’d put the invitation in writing. I’ve been telling Al that with all the work Louise has to do on the farm, with the cows and a pig and a barn and everything, she just hasn’t gotten around to writing.

  “She will,” I told her about ten times. “You wait. One of these days you’ll get a letter saying you’re supposed to come and stay for a month or something.”

  Al also met a boy at the wedding. His name was Brian. He was fifteen. He mowed Louise’s lawn. He had asked Al for her address so he could write to her. She said the reason he’d done that was that he’d had a glass of champagne. So had Al. It made her very talkative. She called me up from the wedding to give me the details, and I thought she’d never shut up.

  Anyway, Al gave Brian her address written on a tiny piece of paper. So far, he hasn’t written either. Every day she goes home from school and checks the mail. The way she used to do when I first met her.

  Al had showed me a bunch of pictures she’d taken of Louise and her father and the boys.

  “They’re a little out of focus,” she said.

  That, as my father would say, was a masterpiece of understatement. They looked as if they were swimming underwater.

  “If you sort of close your eyes and hold this one sideways,” Al said, handing me a picture, “you can make out my father. He has his arm around Louise.”

  I followed orders. Al’s father and Louise looked like ghosts.

  “This one,” Al had said, her voice different, “is Brian.”

  I squinted and put the picture of Brian up to my face. Then I held it at arm’s length. Brian looked like an astronaut about to put his big toe on the moon.

  “He’s much better looking than that,” Al said.

  “That’s good,” I said.

  I wished Brian would write to Al. It would make my life easier. Every day no letter arrived. And every day I told her he probably had lost that tiny piece of paper with her address on it. So how could he write?

  “He could get my address from my father,” Al would say.

  “He might not want to ask.”

  “If I wanted an easy out,” Al would tell me, “I’d believe you. I want to but I don’t. I guess I was just a one-night stand. Another pretty face.” She’d scowl at me. I couldn’t help laughing.

  If people make promises to write, they should follow through. It’s mean to do what they’re doing to Al. She’s counting on hearing from Louise and her father and Brian. Maybe Brian got cold feet. But that’s no excuse for the others.

  “Listen,” I said to Al as we rode up in the elevator, “let me know if you get a letter, OK?”

  As if she could keep it to herself for a second.

  “You’ll be able to hear me screaming,” she said. “Everybody in the apartment will hear me. They’ll probably send the super up to see what’s wrong.” She gave me the peace sign, and I went into my apartment.

  “Better call Polly before she explodes,” my mother said. “She’s called twice. She sounds as if she’s going to have a nervous breakdown if she doesn’t speak to you. I asked if she wanted to leave a message, but she said no, she had to talk directly to you.”

  “Polly always sounds like that,” I said. Polly Peterson is my second best friend next to Al. She lives on the West Side and is going to be a chef.

  “You’ll never guess!” Polly said, answering on the first ring. “My mother and father are going to Africa for six weeks.” Polly’s father is in the diplomatic service and whips around the world the way most people go to the supermarket.

  “Do you get to go?” I asked. I’d be afraid to go to Africa. I’m scared of lots of things. Airplanes and people I don’t know and some big dogs. Not all. Just some. I’m trying to overcome my fears and not doing too well. Polly isn’t scared of anything. That’s one of the reasons I like her.

  Polly sighed and the telephone vibrated.

  “They say no. It’s too expensive, for one thing. For another, they’re going into some areas that might be dangerous. They’re going on safari too. That’s what I’d like. To see the lions and tigers up close.”

  I shivered. “Maybe you’d see a tribal war,” I said.

  “I doubt it,” Polly said. “Anyway, when they decide they don’t want me along, they make up excuses. The crux of the matter”—I could hear Polly breathing heavily, like an obscene phone caller—“the truth of it is that if I went, I’d miss the last few weeks of school and they’re on a college kick.”

  “A college kick?” Polly and I and Al and practically everybody we know are in the seventh grade. With any luck at all, next year we’ll be in the eighth. It was a little early to start worrying about college.

  “My father says, ‘Look at Evelyn. If we’d been stricter with Evelyn, she might’ve gone to college and not be going from pillar to post, unable to make up her mind where to light.’” Polly made slurping sounds. I could hear ice rattling around in a glass.

  “What’re you drinking?” I said.

  “A little shooter of Coke,” Polly said. “To get me through my homework. I get a sinking spell around this time of day, and a shooter of Coke helps.”

  “Mr. Richards,” I said under my breath. That was another point for me. Mr. Richards always said “shooter of Coke.”

  “The thing of it is,” Polly went on, “they took Evelyn everywhere with them when they traveled. I was left home with a nurse like some little wimp. But Evelyn hit every fleshpot in Europe, Asia, and Africa, not to mention North and South America. Look what good it did her,” Polly said.

  Evelyn is Polly’s sister. She’s so far out she’s in. She has lived with a number of people. I mean boys. Polly’s parents are liberal. Or Liberals. Whatever. Her mother just recently hyphenated her last name. She was going to resume her maiden name but figured after all these years of being Mrs. Peterson maybe nobody would know who she was when she said she was Ms
. Hicks. So now she’s known as Ms. Hicks-Peterson. She’s going back to college in between trips to get her degree in sociology. She says her brain is tired and it may be some time before she gets it. But she’s trying. That’s what counts.

  Polly says her father doesn’t care what she calls herself as long as it doesn’t cost him anything.

  “Evelyn just bombed out of ballet school,” Polly said. “Now she wants to be a photographer. You know Evelyn. She really gets into whatever occupation the person she’s currently living with is involved in.”

  “When she lived with that guy in Boston,” I reminded Polly, “Evelyn was studying ballet, and he wasn’t a ballet dancer.”

  “Yeah,” Polly said, “but he wore a leotard.”

  She sighed. “Anyway, they say no soap. I’ve got to stay here.”

  “Who’re you staying with?” I asked.

  There was a long pause. Polly is very direct. She says what she means. She never beats around the bush like some people I know. Al is like that too. No subterfuge, as my mother says. Everything is laid out, right in front of you. Polly never hints. I hate people who hint. Martha Moseley, a girl in my class, is a famous hinter.

  “I want to stay with you,” Polly blurted out. “Do you think it’d be OK? My mother would pay for the food and stuff. It’d only be for two weeks. Until school’s over. Then I’m going up to the Cape to stay with my aunt and uncle. I could go to school easily. Just hop on the crosstown bus and presto, there I am. I promise I won’t be any trouble. I won’t leave my shoes under the table or anything.”

  Polly has been at my house often enough to know it drives my father bonkers to have people leave their shoes under the table. He says he belongs to the old school where people kept their shoes on until they went to bed at night. In some ways my father is very old-fashioned.

  “What about Thelma?” I said. Thelma is Polly’s best friend now that she lives on the West Side, and Al is my best friend. Thelma is all right if you like the type. Thelma is very boy-crazy, I’m sorry to say. This only happened when she started to develop a chest.

  “Thelma,” Polly said. “Thelma is too big for her britches.”

  “That’s probably because she buys them a size too small,” I said.

  Polly laughed. “That’s a snide remark,” she said. “I’m going to tell her you said that. She deserves to be taken down a peg. She’s started to frizz her hair and wear eye shadow.”

  “Eye shadow? At her age? That’s the weirdest thing I ever heard of.” I shook my head. Lipstick I could believe. But eye shadow?

  “She puts it on after she leaves home in the morning. That’s the kind of girl she is. If you’re going to wear it, load it on and face the music, I say. I don’t know about Thelma,” Polly said.

  There was more here than met the eye. I’d get the details later, when Polly came to stay.

  “I’ll ask my mother,” I said. “I’ll soften her up, set the table, scrub the bathtub—all those little things that endear kids to their mothers. Then I’ll slip it to her so smoothly she won’t know what happened. Call you back.”

  “You are a true friend,” Polly said with a catch in her voice. Polly is the least emotional person I know, but I think she would’ve started to cry if my mother hadn’t called me to say I better get off the phone, she was expecting a call. I think sometimes when she says that she’s not telling the truth. It’s just a suspicion I have. I would never accuse her of it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said.

  “What’s on Polly’s mind?” my mother said when I’d hung up.

  “Oh, her parents are going to Africa,” I said.

  “How exciting! I suppose she’s going along. Those people lead exotic lives,” my mother said. She and my father met Polly’s parents once when we were going to the same school. My parents are conservative, and Polly’s, as I said, are very liberal. Polly and I stood around the punchbowl at the parents’ meeting and watched them eye each other. We were nervous as cats. I mean, they were all great people. But all they had in common was a couple of wimpy daughters. They talked and laughed, mostly about us, I guess. After we got home that night my mother’s eyebrows zoomed up when I told her Polly’s mother was against marriage. I thought they’d shoot right up underneath her hair and fly around the ceiling.

  “If she’s against marriage,” my mother had said in her frostiest tone, “why’d she get married?” Then she ruffled up her hair in the back the way she does when she’s agitated.

  “Oh, not for herself,” I said, sorry I’d opened my big mouth. “For Evelyn. Polly’s sister. She lives with boys.” Again my mother’s eyebrows took flight.

  “Evelyn went to Boston to study ballet, and Polly’s mother said they never should have let her go because now she wants to marry the boy she’s living with because people get married a lot in New England and Polly’s mother doesn’t think Evelyn’s mature enough for a permanent relationship.”

  I knew I should shut up. I couldn’t. Every word I said I could see was creating a bigger gulf between Polly’s mother and mine. It didn’t seem to matter much at the time. Now it did. It would be a lot easier to get my parents to say Polly could stay with us if my mother didn’t have her back up about Polly’s mother.

  “I think I better go start my homework,” I said. In all of my life I’ve never known my mother to argue against that. Before I started, I locked myself inside the bathroom. The bathroom, in my opinion, is the most restful room in the house. Nobody can get to you while you’re inside. How do they know what you’re doing? How do they know whether you’re going to the bathroom or staring at yourself in the mirror, wondering what Mr. Richards saw in you that made him say you might be a model someday, or whether you’re busy squeezing zits?

  They don’t. That’s why it’s restful.

  “Telephone,” my mother called. I opened the door as if she’d shouted, “Fire!”

  “I didn’t hear it ring,” I said.

  She smiled. “It didn’t. I wanted to see how fast you’d move if I told you it had.”

  I was shocked.

  “That’s dishonest,” I told her. “And you know it. If I did that to you, you’d give me a lecture.”

  But then the telephone really did ring.

  “No letter today,” Al said. “Nada. Not even an offer for a reduced rate for a Playboy subscription. Or even House Beautiful. A big fat zero. Are you doing anything?”

  “I was in the bathroom,” I said. “But my mother pulled a fast one. She told me somebody wanted me on the phone and it hadn’t even rung.”

  “Your mother has unexpected depths,” Al said in an admiring tone. “She has a streak of cunning I wouldn’t have dreamed of.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “As mothers go,” Al said, “yours is a nonconformist.”

  This is the highest praise Al can bestow. She sets great store on being a nonconformist, which is a person who doesn’t follow the herd. When I first met her, she told me she was a nonconformist, the way other people would say they’re a Democrat or a Republican.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “I want to come over,” she said. “I have something to discuss.”

  I could tell from her voice that whatever it was she wanted to discuss was important.

  “I want to read you a letter,” she said.

  “I thought you just said you didn’t get a letter today,” I said.

  “I didn’t. I said I wanted to come over and read you a letter. I didn’t say I got a letter. I said I wanted to read one to you. That’s not the same thing.”

  Al was being mysterious.

  “Sure,” I said. “Get over here on the double.”

  “What happened about the homework?” my mother asked.

  “That can wait,” I said. “It’s Al. She needs advice. She’s coming right over.”

  I could see from my mother’s face she was going to give me an argument.

  “Mom,” I said, “what are friends for if you can’
t call on them in your hour of need?”

  I knew that would get her and it did.

  Buy Your Old Pal, Al Now!

  About the Author

  Constance C. Greene is the author of over twenty highly successful young adult novels, including the ALA Notable Book A Girl Called Al, Al(exandra) the Great, Getting Nowhere, and Beat the Turtle Drum, which is an ALA Notable Book, an IRA-CBC Children’s Choice, and the basis for the Emmy Award–winning after-school special Very Good Friends. Greene lives in Milford, Connecticut.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1975 by Constance C. Greene

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-0441-1

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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