The Truth About Alice

by Jennifer Mathieu

  Even the adults started talking about it. One Saturday when we were on the way home from another Weight Watchers meeting, my mom turned to me when we were at a stoplight and all of a sudden asked, “I keep hearing these stories about Alice Franklin. Are they true?”

  “That girl is a total slut,” I said.

  My mom gripped the wheel and told me not to use that word, but then she started asking me all these questions, and I told her what I could. I thought my mom was going to be really pissed that all this went down in our house, but you could tell she was way more interested in what everybody was saying about Alice and did Alice’s mom know and blah blah blah.

  At the Weight Watchers meeting she’d gained two pounds, so maybe she just wanted to take her mind off everything with some super crazy gossip, but I had a feeling my mom would have been interested even if she hadn’t gained weight.

  And then Brandon Fitzsimmons died.

  The news that Brandon died spread faster than the news about Alice, and the news that he crashed his car because Alice was sending him gross texts spread even faster than that. Nobody knew what the texts said exactly, but we figured they were disgusting and they were desperate, and of course they had to be both of those things because they were coming from Alice Franklin, who didn’t come to school for a week after the news got out about what she had done.

  Healy High freaked out after Brandon died—everyone was crying in the hallways and the English teachers tried to get us to write about our emotions and everyone wore ribbons with the school colors for, I don’t know, a week. They brought in grief counselors, and the next game against Dominion was, like, mandatory attendance for the entire town. They hung a banner reading “BRANDON FITZSIMMONS * HEALY HIGH TIGER FOREVER” at the front entrance of the stadium, and Brandon’s parents came out onto the field during halftime and announced the Brandon Fitzsimmons Scholarship Fund, and Josh Waverly was in his uniform on the sidelines even though he couldn’t play yet. Even the players from Dominion bowed their heads during the moment of silence, and it was almost like they let us win. Like they knew how bad it would look if we lost to them.

  * * *

  Alice came back to school eventually, of course.

  It was weird how we were all sort of connected after Brandon died—the ribbons with the school colors, the moment of silence at the all-school assembly, the stories in the paper that people cut out and put up in their lockers. Even after all of that sort of calmed down, people still needed something to hang on to. I mean, things were kinda back to normal—the cafeteria ladies asked us if we wanted a fruit cup or a yogurt, the janitors dumped the pink powder on top of people’s puke, the teachers gave out their boring homework assignments and their pop quizzes about nothing we’ll ever actually need in real life—but I think people needed something that made them feel, I don’t know … like we were all still in it together.

  So we picked on Alice Franklin. A nobody, a slut, a killer.

  * * *

  And then the craziest thing happened this afternoon. Maggie and me and some of our other girlfriends were sitting in the bathroom cutting French class or Chemistry class or whatever class we had that period. I was sort of trying not to think about the fact that I was starving because I’d only had a granola bar for lunch. Kelsie Sanders was with us. Now I could sort of tell that Kelsie was feeling really super tentative about hanging out with us—I mean, she was Alice’s best friend. I think she was worried that maybe we wouldn’t accept her, but Kelsie’s always been cool with me. She’s always been super sweet and everything. You could just tell, though, that she was thinking that any second we were going to tell her to get lost. Like the way she hesitated before talking. Or the way she laughed a little too hard at everything I said. It’s weird, the feeling of power you get sometimes when you’re popular, but I guess I try to use my power for good, not evil. So I’ve been letting Kelsie Sanders hang out with us.

  Anyway, so this afternoon we were all sitting there talking about whatever when Kelsie suddenly said all dramatically, “Okay, so I have to tell you something. About Alice.”

  “What, she did it with the entire football team last weekend?” I said, fishing in my purse for my lipstick.

  “No, it’s way worse. I think she got an … abortion.”

  Kelsie lowered her voice to a whisper when she said the word abortion. I let my lipstick drop.

  “What the hell?” I said, and before I could say anything else, Maggie said, “Oh God, did your mom make you protest again?” Maggie goes to the same totally whacked-out church as Kelsie, so I guess she figured out what was up.

  “Yes,” Kelsie said, rolling her eyes. She told us how her mom was always dragging her and her little sister to the Women’s Care Clinic in the city to protest abortion and how she tried to get out of it whenever she could, but on some Saturdays she found herself standing by the gate of the clinic, holding up posters.

  “Like, ones with dead babies on them?” somebody said, and Kelsie shuddered a little and said yes.

  “So, what? You saw her go into the clinic?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Kelsie said. “Last weekend. With her mom. She didn’t see me. They just rushed in there.”

  “Well, maybe she was just going for a checkup?” Maggie asked.

  I arched an eyebrow. “Like they don’t have doctors in Healy who do checkups?” Naturally, everyone agreed with me.

  “Do you think it was from … that night?” someone else asked.

  “Do the math,” I said. “My party was what, close to three months ago? Perfect timing. I’m sure it was from that night.”

  “And the really gross and scary thing is…” Kelsie continued, and for a second I could see how much she was loving this, just getting to be in the center of our little group with all of us listening to her. “… I mean, she would have no idea who the father is. Tommy or Brandon? Isn’t that so totally skanky?”

  “Totally,” Maggie whispered.

  “I can’t even believe she used to be my friend,” Kelsie said. “It’s just, like, that was another time in my life, you know?”

  “Totally,” I said.

  “So you don’t miss her?” Maggie asked. “You don’t even feel a little sorry for her?” I thought Maggie was acting weird. I mean, Alice was responsible for Brandon Fitzsimmons dying. And it wasn’t like Alice had to sleep with him at my party.

  What Kelsie did next really surprised me. We were just standing there in that girls’ bathroom with the green and white tile and the scummy sinks and instead of answering Maggie, Kelsie searched through her bag until she found a black Sharpie, and she opened up the stall next to us, the middle one. She uncapped the marker and wrote right there on the wall to the left of the toilet in letters that were at least two inches high.

  ATTENTION!

  ALICE FRANKLIN IS A HO SLUT WHORE WHO DOES IT WITH EVERYBODY!!!

  We all laughed, all of us, and then I said, “My turn.”

  ALICE FRANKLIN HAS GIVEN 423 BLOW JOBS!!! NOW THAT’S A LOT OF DICK!

  I stared at the graffiti and watched how quickly the shiny Sharpie writing dulled into a permanent black stain. The other girls behind me lined up to take their turns.

  Josh

  I’ve been thinking about the accident pretty much all the time. The sounds of the ambulance. The sun beating down on me as they pulled me out of the car. How it’s really true that time speeds up and slows down and your brain goes all whacked out in moments like a car wreck. I wouldn’t say I think about it constantly, but basically I think about it pretty much a lot. I think about Officer Daniels interviewing me in the hospital. I think about Mrs. Fitzsimmons sitting on my dad’s recliner asking me all those questions.

  It’s weird, the things I think about when I remember the wreck and everything that happened afterward. Like maybe my brain is trying to make it so I don’t think about what happened right before the accident and Brandon’s dying. It just focuses on the stupid stuff instead. Like Officer Daniels’s chewed-up pencil. O
r Mrs. Fitzsimmons’s glass of sweet tea.

  But I still think about it. I think about it during football games (we lost our last one against Johnston) and I think about it while eating mystery meat in the cafeteria and I think about it in English class. We’ve been reading a book about the olden days when this lady supposedly did it with some guy and they weren’t married and she had his baby, and that was a huge deal back then. So she had to wear a red letter A on her dress all the time. Kind of messed up, I guess.

  I think about it until I can’t think about it in any new kind of way. Until my brain gives out and goes fuzzy or blank.

  Sometimes I think about the ride home from Elaine O’Dea’s famous party. The one where Alice did what she did. Anyway, Elaine made this big deal about me not driving home drunk. I think she promised her parents, but I just wanted to go. After that text about Alice, it just felt like it was time to leave. Brandon kind of mumbled could I give him a lift? Could he crash at my place? “Okay,” I said.

  He was so wasted I had to help him into the car. Sometimes, when my brain remembers this night, it remembers little things, too. Like Brandon smelling of booze, and the prickle of his stubble rubbing against my face as I tried to hold him up and get him into my dad’s Chevy S-10. And the way he kept laughing at everything even when nothing was funny.

  Anyway, I was drunk, but he was way drunker, and that’s why I was the one to drive us back to my house.

  Healy is a dead zone after midnight. Sonic, McDonald’s, Walgreens, the Curl Up and Dye, Auto Zone, the Healy Advocate, the Sno-Cone Shop, Burger King, Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A: no lights on in any of them. Nobody walking anywhere; hardly any other cars. Not even the Walmart in Healy is open twenty-four hours. Drunk driving late at night is pretty safe around here, I guess.

  Making our way home, I looked over at Brandon, and he was slumped against the passenger window. But his glassy eyes were open.

  “Did you really do it?” I asked.

  “Do what?” he said, kind of slurry.

  “You and Tommy Cray … and Alice.”

  Brandon got this smirk like he was getting some image back in his head.

  “Yeah, we really did it, man,” he answered me. “Fuckin’ awesome, too. Alice is hot. Even with that short hair and shit.” He started laughing again as he rambled on.

  “Tommy didn’t mind sloppy seconds?” I asked, kind of not wanting to ask but asking anyway.

  “No he didn’t,” Brandon said. “She couldn’t get enough. Me twice and Tommy once. I’m gonna have to hit that again soon.” He yawned so wide I heard his jaw pop.

  We got home, and my mom and dad and brother were all asleep. A good thing, I thought to myself as I helped Brandon down to the floor of my bedroom. I gave him an extra pillow. Sophomore year at school, they had this guy come in and talk to us about alcohol and drug abuse, and the guy said you should always put a drunk person on his side, so he doesn’t choke on his own vomit. I guess the principal got mad at that later on because he thought the comment encouraged drinking, but it’s the only thing I remember from that whole speech.

  Brandon was passed out, so I sort of squatted down on my knees and got behind him. I tucked my hands under his back and rolled him over. Brandon had muscles all over. I could feel them under his red-and-white Healy Tigers T-shirt. It was easy to see why the girls were all hot for him.

  So I was on my knees, Brandon was on his side, and I stayed there. I stared at the back of his neck where his hair was growing together into a point, right in the center of his neck. His hair was short, brown, sort of curly. I put a finger right there, right at the back of his neck. And I touched his hair. First one finger. Then two. Then my whole hand was touching the back of his neck and his hair. I mean, I was so wasted. But I touched. His hair was softer than it looked. A lot softer. The light from the street lamp outside my window lit up his whole face. It was that perfect kind of face you see on guys who pose for aftershave ads in magazines. I don’t know if Brandon had any idea how good looking he really was.

  His breathing was slow, and for a second I worried maybe it was too slow. Then I worried what the hell Brandon would do if he woke up and saw my hand on his neck, touching his hair like some weirdo. I pulled my hand away real fast and stood up. I stared at him for a while, maybe for as long as a few minutes. The ground sort of rocked under my feet like it does when you’re drunk and tired. Then I pulled my shirt and jeans off and got into bed. The next morning, I didn’t remember falling asleep.

  * * *

  The other day some of the guys from the team and me snuck into this girls’ bathroom on the second floor when we were supposed to be in Study Hall. There was some freshman chick in there just washing her hands when we walked in; she walked out real fast because she knew why we were there.

  “Check this out,” one of the guys said, pushing open the door.

  Alice likes it fast and hard.

  Alice did it with my grandpa. And she liked it!

  RIP Fitzsimmons! Alice Franklin = Killer/Whore

  Flush if you’ve done Alice.

  “Man,” I said, not sure what to think. I mean, it was pretty crazy just the amount of graffiti. You could see one part where maybe the janitors had tried to clean it and then given up. It was everywhere, all over the place.

  “Some of the girls started it, man,” one of the guys said, laughing. “Like a week ago. But check it out. It’s totally everywhere.”

  Alice Franklin is a whore, slut, ho, bitch, and a killer, too!!!

  It’s the slut’s fault!

  Screw you, Alice! Healy Tiger #35 FOREVER.

  I thought about the accident again, but my brain wouldn’t let me replay it. It just kept jumping all over the place. I could hear Mrs. Fitzsimmons’s voice in my head.

  “So you could say she was distracting him with her texts?” Mrs. Fitzsimmons asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “You could say he was distracted.”

  My mind sort of jumped back to grade school, to the fourth grade, when I used to sit behind Alice and throw really small wads of paper at her hair just to annoy her. But it was all funny back then. Alice used to turn her head and roll her eyes at me, but then she would just laugh, this loud, crazy laugh she has, and I would try to look all innocent like I didn’t know what she was so upset about.

  And then I would laugh, too.

  Then my head was back in that stall, looking at the graffiti.

  “Add something,” one of the guys said, handing me a Sharpie. He’d already taken the cap off.

  I tried to think of something, but I just kept thinking of those little white wads of balled-up lined paper sitting in Alice’s real dark hair. Her hair was longer back then.

  “Come on, man, hurry up. We gotta get out of here,” somebody else said.

  Finally it came to me, and I put down Alice did Dallas. All the other guys laughed and they were happy it rhymed.

  Later on, when I was hanging out in front of the school with some of my buddies, I saw Alice walking home alone, buried in that sweatshirt. You couldn’t see her dark hair since she had her hood up. I looked at her for a few seconds, but I don’t think she ever saw me. Anyway I hope she didn’t.

  Kurt

  Not very long after I slipped the note into Alice’s locker, she approached me at mine. It was the end of the day, and I was packing up my numerous books and notebooks and the like into my backpack, and I looked up and there was Alice, standing to my left, holding the note I left her.

  “What’s this about?” she said, holding the paper up. She did not seem pleased. Her eyebrows sort of twitched and knit together over her beautiful dark brown eyes.

  I couldn’t look at her face. It was too gorgeous. But if I couldn’t look at her face, how would I be able to help her with Algebra II?

  “I was simply, um, offering my help. I felt like perhaps you could use that help in your math class.” I sounded like a robot. No, I sounded like a socially illiterate imbecile robot, which I suppose I can be at times
. Especially the socially illiterate part.

  The hood was down on her sweatshirt. Her short, elfin hair was tucked behind her ears. I forced myself to try and make eye contact, but I could only focus on the bottom half of her face. Her full lips looked like two fresh raspberries, one sitting on top of the other. I noticed a small freckle or two under her bottom lip.

  She is perfection. She is a gumdrop. She is everything.

  “But why are you offering your help?” Alice said. She sounded accusatory, angry. And who could blame her?

  “I just…” I muttered. There was no way I could explain about overhearing her conversation with Mr. Commons without sounding like a stalker. But what other reason could I give? My own unending crush on her?

  “You just what?” she said. And for a moment, just a slight sliver of time, I sensed she was more bewildered than annoyed. More perplexed than agitated.

  “I just want to help you,” I said, shutting my locker and forcing myself to look her in the eyes. “With math.”

  And then the most incredible thing happened. After what seemed like an eternity, Alice Franklin nodded and said, “Okay.” She said this and I felt the floor of Healy High School give out underneath me.

  “Do you, like, want to come over to my house?” she added. “Or should I come over to your place?”

  “I’ll come over if that would be easier for you,” I answered with no real thought—it was simply the first response that came out of my mouth. Alice scribbled down her address on a corner of my Physics notebook. I noticed her long and lean fingers as she gripped the pencil.

  Even her fingers are perfect.

  5530 Robindell, she wrote. Her letters were bubbly and girlish. Her handwriting made her seem happier than she actually was.

  “When should we meet?” I asked.

  Alice Franklin put her pencil back in her bag.

  “What about tonight? Eight o’clock?”

  It was a Friday night, but I had no plans, and I suppose Alice Franklin didn’t either.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be there.”