The Truth About Alice

by Jennifer Mathieu

  Alice always made her own money. She babysat, walked dogs, anything. Once she even cleaned Mrs. Montgomery’s house for a month while Mrs. Montgomery was recovering from back surgery. Alice always has to have her own money for clothes or magazines or makeup or whatever because her mother doesn’t give her anything. Alice’s mom is always complaining there isn’t enough to go around with her being a single mom and all, but it doesn’t seem to stop her from going out almost every night and leaving Alice to sort of fend for herself.

  So the pool was like her first real job. One where she got a check she had to take to the bank instead of just a wad of rolled-up bills.

  One of the perks of Alice’s pool job was the free snacks Alice would sneak me. She didn’t take total advantage or anything, but there’d be a Popsicle here or a candy bar there. I would sit on a stool outside the snack bar in the blue-and-white-striped bikini Alice had helped me pick out, and we would gossip and watch the boys swim, and I would help Alice make change when she got confused with the math.

  The best perk, however, was the two high school seniors who worked there as lifeguards. Tommy Cray and Mark Lopez. They had just graduated from Healy High, and they were both so gorgeous. So totally gorgeous. The boys in our class still seemed like boys, but Tommy and Mark were men. At least that’s what Alice was always saying.

  “Why waste our time with boys when there are men right here at Healy Pool North?” she would say, admiring Mark’s muscles or Tommy’s grin.

  I figured if any of my friends knew about men, it was Alice. She wasn’t a virgin at that point and I still was. She’d lost her virginity freshman year to this junior named Tucker Bowles and then they’d broken up two months later, and this made Alice the expert in my eyes when it came to stuff like sex and boys. Or men.

  I thought Tommy was gorgeous and had spent most of the summer secretly staring at him whenever I hung out at the pool, but I thought Tommy and Mark both sort of had crushes on Alice. I just didn’t think either boy was interested in me. My problem basically was (and is) that I don’t know how to relax around guys. I can’t make that easy small talk with boys that some girls can. Girls like Elaine O’Dea and Maggie Daniels can do that weird, amazing thing where it looks like they’re making fun of a boy on the surface, but somehow the boy always takes it as one big compliment.

  Alice used to be good at that, too.

  One night toward the end of that summer before tenth grade, Alice called me after the pool had closed and asked if I wanted to come down for a party. I told my mom I was going to go to Alice’s to sleep over, but I had to convince her to let me go because she wasn’t crazy about Alice (because Alice didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ) and also because we had to go to the 8:00 a.m. service the next morning. (When I whined, she told me, “As for me and my house, Kelsie, I will serve the Lord.”)

  I don’t know what I was thinking would be going on, but when I hopped off my ten speed and walked into the guard house, I found Alice and Tommy and Mark. That was the party. They had some beers, and they smelled of bleach from bleaching out the bathrooms. Even though I’d been hanging out at the pool most of the summer, I still wasn’t as tan as the three of them. I remember Tommy had little pockets on his shoulders that were peeling, and the skin underneath was as pink as a brand-new eraser.

  Alice was sort of drunk, I could tell, and she was sort of hanging on to Mark, cutting into his side with her elbow and laughing with him at some private joke.

  “Let’s swim,” Tommy said. I think he sensed Alice and Mark wanted to be by themselves. I was glad I’d worn my bikini underneath my clothes.

  The pool felt so different at night without the shrieks of middle school kids screaming Marco! Polo! or the tweets of the lifeguard whistle. After a beer, I dove in without making a splash and sank down to the bottom, letting my fingertips slide over the slippery black lane line markers. I broke through the water and dove down again immediately, wanting to stay there forever, enjoying the feeling of being slightly buzzed and underwater. Anyway, if I got out, I would have to talk to the heart-stopping Tommy. That seemed basically impossible.

  “Where’s Alice?” I asked, when I’d finally resurfaced. Tommy was sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. He was sipping on a beer. He arched his eyebrows. He was gorgeous. Even now, after everything, I can still admit that.

  “Where do you think?” he said, like I was slow.

  I ducked back down under the water, wondering how long I should stay there or what I should say when I came back up. I loved Alice when we were alone together, eating ice cream or raw cookie dough or painting our toenails green or telling stupid jokes, but sometimes I felt left out whenever Alice was around a boy she liked.

  Like I wasn’t sure where I fit in.

  And like I knew I’d never get a boy to like me in the same way.

  When I resurfaced, I heard someone saying, “Hey, Kelsie, are you ready to go home?”

  It was Alice, coming out of the girls’ locker room, followed by Mark Lopez. Mark’s face was a little red. Tommy gave him a look, and the two of them laughed. Alice tucked her fingers under the bottom of her wet green bikini and tugged on it, like she was straightening it back out. When she let go, it made a smacking sound on her rear end. Her body was perfect, and that wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that fact with a lot of envy inside.

  “Something happened with Mark, right?” I asked that night, the two of us alone in the dark of her bedroom, sharing her double bed. We’d been too tired to shower, and the sheets and the air and everything smelled of chlorine. I’d gathered up the courage to ask Alice that question because I knew I was going to be jealous of the answer. It was like I didn’t want to hear it, but I couldn’t help myself.

  But Alice just laughed that loud honking Alice laugh.

  “Oh my God, what?” she said, rolling over onto her stomach and turning her face away from me. “He’s leaving in a week for college. We’re just friends.”

  I remember the way she laughed. The way she said, “Oh my God, what?” She said it the same way Tommy Cray had said, “What do you think?” earlier at the pool.

  Like I was slow.

  I was 99 percent sure she was lying, and this made me madder than anything. Best friends aren’t supposed to lie to each other. Not about boys.

  That next week I ran into Maggie Daniels—Elaine O’Dea’s second in command—in an aisle at Seller Brothers when I went to pick up some toilet paper and a couple of other things my mom had asked me to get. We were talking about how we didn’t want to start back at school and catching up on all the gossip when Maggie said, “So what do you think about Mark Lopez and Alice?”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Seriously? You don’t know? I thought you guys were best friends.”

  “Well, yeah, we are, but I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, nervous about seeming totally out of it.

  “Just ask her about Mark Lopez,” she said, “because he’s telling everyone.” She was laughing like she was in on a joke I wasn’t. Which I guess she was.

  I marched home, clutching the groceries, my candy cane–striped flip-flops flip-flopping on the sidewalk the whole way. I’d barely put the groceries away in the cupboard before I was texting Alice.

  ran into maggie. what happened with mark l.?

  Not two seconds later:

  it was stupid.

  what?

  u can’t tell anyone.

  Just like always in Healy, everyone already knew, but I answered back:

  u know i won’t tell.

  i’ll be over in 2 sec.

  “What?” I asked, yanking open the front door.

  Alice’s eyes darted around behind me.

  “I’m home by myself,” I said. “My dad’s at work and my mom and sister are at some church thing.”

  Alice collapsed onto the family room couch and pulled her knees up to her chest.

  “It wa
s so dumb,” she said. “I don’t know why I did it.”

  “What?” I said, totally annoyed and envious at the same time.

  Her voice dropped down low to a whisper.

  “I gave him a blow job,” she said.

  “In the bathroom?” I said, whispering, too.

  Alice nodded. I remember she tucked her hair behind her ears and gave me this look like she’d been caught cheating on a test she hadn’t studied for. Half apologetic and half irritated with herself.

  “It was just dumb,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you anything that night. It was just … it just happened. And we were drunk. I don’t know. I mean, he wasn’t my boyfriend or anything. And it’s just … not that I’m saying that it was totally wrong or whatever. It was just … stupid.”

  “Didn’t you do that with Tucker?” I asked, thinking of Alice losing her virginity freshman year. Alice slowly shook her head no and she looked down for a minute, staring at her hands. I wasn’t sure how Alice felt, but there was a part of me that thought giving a blow job seemed like an even bigger deal than having sex. But if Alice felt that way, why did she give one to Mark when they weren’t even dating? I wanted to ask, but I got the feeling Alice didn’t want to keep talking about it.

  “So, are you, like, hanging out with him now or something?” I said. I couldn’t believe how jealous I felt. I knew what Alice had done was stupid and sort of slutty even, but I was jealous she had a story to tell and, once again, I didn’t.

  And I was mad. I was mad she had lied to me.

  “He hasn’t called me or anything since that night,” Alice said, finally looking up. “And now he’s left for UT.”

  That made me feel better. I know it sounds crappy to say, but it did.

  “Well why’d you lie to me?” I asked.

  Alice took a deep breath. She looked like she was picking out her words really carefully. She got the same look when she was trying to figure out a math problem. “Kelsie, it’s just … you know … you haven’t, like … been with anyone … in that way. And that’s … fine, okay? But … it’s just, like … once you’ve had sex … I mean…”

  “You lied to me because I’m a virgin?” I said. I gave her an insulted look because, well, I was insulted. She was talking to me like I was retarded or deaf or both. I was so mad I looked away and focused on the wall behind us. My mom had hung up a framed yellow sign that read “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118, Verse 24.” I wanted to throw something at that yellow sign.

  “It’s just … I mean…” Alice said.

  “Forget it,” I said. “Forget it.”

  I didn’t, though. Not really.

  After that, I don’t think Alice ever hung out with Mark Lopez again, and I never really trusted Alice again. I mean, she was still my best friend, and we still spent most of tenth grade having sleepovers and staying up too late talking and texting people and blaming one another for our smelly farts and laughing so loud my dad would come down to the family room and start yelling at us to calm down and everything. And things were basically normal between us. The truth is, I still liked her.

  But I can’t say I trusted her.

  Not 100 percent anymore.

  I just kept thinking of how stupid I’d felt that night in the bed with her, Alice’s room still stinking like Healy Pool North. How she’d turned her face away from me. How she’d laughed at my guess about Mark. How she’d told me I wouldn’t get it. And I guess I didn’t.

  Not then anyway.

  I guess that’s why when The Really Awful Stuff happened to me later, not long after Alice lied to me about Mark Lopez, I didn’t tell her about it. Even if she was my best friend.

  I guess that’s why when all the rumors started about Alice this year it was so easy to let go of her. So easy to say goodbye. It was as easy as a buzzed, nighttime swim at Healy Pool North. As easy as remembering all the song lyrics in Grease 2. As easy as anything.

  Kurt

  I’ve been watching Alice ever since that day I saw her sobbing on the bleachers outside of the school earlier this fall. I’ve wrestled with myself, attempting to find some way to speak with her. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t talk to girls much, or to anyone at school, really, and this state, while unusual to many, seems natural to me. I do make an exception for Mr. Becker, my Physics teacher. He is one of the few teachers at Healy High who seems more interested in the subject matter at hand than what is happening on the football field or at the pep rallies. I often wonder how someone like Mr. Becker ended up staying in Healy, not married, living in a garage apartment behind his sister’s house (even though I’m sure he could afford something nicer). He certainly is a good-enough instructor to move on to a bigger city school somewhere. Earn more money. Teach more advanced students.

  He and I were sitting in his messy classroom yesterday afternoon discussing quantum gravity. Because of the Halloween holiday, everyone in Healy High had cleared out early to prepare for a night of debauchery and pranks. Everyone but me, of course. At one moment during our discussion, the conversation waned a bit, and I asked him why he hadn’t moved somewhere else.

  “It’s such a pleasure to teach you, to talk with you,” he answered. “You have a gifted mind.” He leaned back in his chair, his arms behind his head, and I could see the yellowing stains on his shirt, under his arms. If Mr. Becker knew they were there, he didn’t seem to care. Nor did he seem to care that he was almost completely bald and had pockmarks on his cheeks from bad acne, or that he had several unknowable stains on his tie.

  I have a gifted mind, all right. I know enough to know that I do not want to turn out like Mr. Becker. And I know enough to know that to ask Mr. Becker about how to talk to Alice would be more complicated than discussing quantum gravity. I get the sense Mr. Becker doesn’t know how to talk to girls either.

  Girls were still on my mind as I exited Mr. Becker’s room after school. Well, truth be told there was only one girl on my mind, and as I stepped out into the hallway magically there she was, as alive and real and beautiful as she is in all of my dreams. Alice Franklin. She was standing in the doorway of Mr. Commons’s classroom, her lovely frame covered in that bulky sweatshirt. Only she didn’t have the hood pulled up as she often does, and her gamine haircut caught my eye first. Her neck was so amazingly swanlike I had to look away.

  I tried to make myself seem preoccupied by leaning down and tying my shoe. Such a predictable move, I realize, but it worked in that I was able to listen as Mr. Commons spoke aggressively with Alice about a paper she was holding in her hand.

  “No, there is no extra credit in my class, Alice,” he was saying as I untied my tied shoe and retied it again. “I realize a 63 is going to kill your average, sweetheart, but you need to focus more in class.” Mr. Commons did not say the word sweetheart in a comforting, reassuring manner. Rather, the way he said it reminded me of a mob boss in a bad movie. It was condescending.

  “Okay, fine,” Alice said, her voice small with only a trace of spunk or life left in it. I waited for Mr. Commons to offer help or tutoring, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. When I took his Algebra II class as a freshman, he thought it was fun to make me go up to the board and teach the subject’s basic principles so he could relax at his desk. (I’m certain that piece of information makes it quite clear why I have no friends at Healy High.) I even waited for Mr. Commons to address the possibility that what had happened to Alice this year was having an impact on her grades. That perhaps becoming The Slut Who Killed the Star Quarterback was making it difficult to focus on her studies. But he didn’t mention it. I’m sure he knew about it. But I doubt he cared. Maybe he was even glad Alice was failing his class. After all, he is one of the assistants to the football coach.

  Alice walked past me. I remained bent over like a deformed hobgoblin maniacally focused on its shoe. I don’t know if she even realized I was there, but that night, sitting in my bedroom, I got an idea. It came to me in such a rus
h—in as much of a rush as my thoughts about quantum gravity and game theory come to me—but this thought was much more exciting. It was the thought that could change everything.

  But I had to ask myself—did I want to change everything? In truth I was quite happy with things the way they were. Perhaps the better word would be satisfied. I had worked out a system of living in Healy that provided me with a relatively calm existence where I was mostly left alone to do as I wished, and I enjoyed that peaceful sense of being. Sure, I had experienced the clichés of high school life that someone of my social standing is usually forced to endure—jocks calling me a nerd in the hallways or making perverted gestures at me when I spoke in class, pretty girls rolling their eyes when I asked too many questions of the teacher—but over time even those elements of my life had faded as the community simply became accustomed to me and I to them. I was Kurt Morelli, space alien from another planet who had been granted temporary residency in their world. I had my routines: my evenings were spent reading or chatting online about science and literature with some of the university students and professors from my coursework, my Saturday afternoons watching history documentaries with my grandmother. And there was even Mr. Becker to chat with at school. In another year and a half I would be gone and in college. Why change anything?

  And then I remembered Alice Franklin’s tremendous knees and beautiful face and the way she cried on the bleachers after school that day. And I remembered everything I knew about her. I remembered until my comfortable cocoon started to feel slightly claustrophobic, and I knew I simply had to follow through with my idea before I chickened out. So before I lost the little nerve I had, I ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook and spent an hour drafting until I wrote the following:

  Alice,

  I’m wondering if you would be interested in some tutoring help in Algebra II. I remember helping you with your Geometry homework last year, and I thought perhaps you’d still like the help. If so, just let me know. I’m happy to assist you as math is one of my strongest subjects.